Gordon Stewart Northcott was 21 when, in September 1928, his teenage nephew told Los Angeles investigators what had happened on a small chicken ranch in Riverside County, California. The nephew, Sanford Clark, said boys had been held there and killed. Northcott fled to Canada, was caught in British Columbia, and was brought back to stand trial at Riverside. In February 1929 a jury convicted him on three counts of first-degree murder: the killing of a youth of about 18 whose name was never learned, and the killings of two brothers from Pomona, Nelson Winslow, 10, and Lewis Winslow, 12. He was hanged at San Quentin on October 2, 1930.
The case was tied from the start to another one. Walter Collins, a nine-year-old from Lincoln Heights in Los Angeles, had vanished in March 1928. When the Los Angeles police produced a boy from Illinois and told his mother he was Walter, she said he was not, and a police captain had her placed in a psychiatric ward. Clark later said Walter had been among the boys at the ranch. Northcott was never tried for Walter's death, and Walter's body was never found.
Northcott's parents were both from Caradoc, Ontario, and both came from farming families, according to Paul R. Spitzzeri of the Homestead Museum, who traced the family through Canadian records in a 2026 series on the case. Cyrus Northcott married Sarah Louisa Cawthorpe, known as Louise, on August 12, 1886, in London, Ontario. Their daughter Winnifred, born in Caradoc, was the mother of Sanford Clark. A son, Cyrus Jr., born in Michigan, died at age seven. Gordon Stewart, the youngest, was born in Bladworth, Saskatchewan, about sixteen years after his older brother, by Spitzzeri's account.
Cyrus Northcott worked at various times as a tailor, a carpenter, a storekeeper and a farmer. Census records place the family in South Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1911 and in Edmonton, Alberta, in 1921. In 1924 Cyrus, Louise and Gordon moved to Eagle Rock in Los Angeles. In September 1928 Cyrus told the Los Angeles Times that Gordon had asked for a chicken ranch when he was 17, as Spitzzeri summarizes the coverage. The ranch was bought in Riverside County, near the farming settlement of Wineville, and the parents went back to Los Angeles to live near the county general hospital, where Louise worked in the laundry.
Little is known of Gordon Northcott's childhood. In September 1928, after his arrest, he told a Vancouver reporter that he had worked as a pianist, a film extra and a car salesman. His father told reporters that month that Louise had complete control over the boy, and later said, according to the Los Angeles Times of September 27, 1928, "I think there is something wrong with the boy mentally."
The Supreme Court of California, reviewing the trial record in 1930, described the place only as a "chicken ranch in Riverside County." Contemporary reporting put it near Wineville, about three acres in size, according to the Los Angeles Times of September 15, 1928, as quoted by Spitzzeri.
Sanford Clark was Winnifred Clark's son and Gordon Northcott's nephew. He was 15 in early 1929, when wire reports from Riverside described him as the prosecution's chief witness. The state supreme court found that Northcott had "illegally brought" him "into this country from Canada." The 1928 press reported that he had been brought from Saskatchewan and kept at the ranch, and Clark said he had been abused there and made to help his uncle.
The court record also shows a pattern that the trial judge allowed the jury to hear. A couple testified that Northcott had arranged for them to come and work at the ranch with their sons and then told them it would not be possible. Two other boys testified that Northcott had taken one of them to the ranch several times and had made advances toward both, and the father of one chased Northcott but did not catch him. The Supreme Court held that this evidence was properly admitted to show motive and a scheme to bring boys to the ranch.
On February 2, 1928, the body of a young man was found beside a country road near Puente, in eastern Los Angeles County. An El Monte rancher found it and reported it to the county fire station in Puente, according to the local papers Spitzzeri reviewed. Reports at the time described him as Latino, between about 15 and 18 years old. Two Los Angeles County deputies, Jose Sepulveda and Abel Mendoza, went through Latino neighborhoods trying to learn who he was. Several leads were checked and dropped in the following weeks, and the case went quiet for about seven months. An autopsy found that he had been shot.
He was never identified. When Northcott was tried, the indictment described him as "a human being whose name is unknown," and the Supreme Court of California described him as a young man of about 18, apparently of Mexican descent. Clark testified that Northcott had said he killed the youth because he "knew too much," and a ballistics expert linked the bullet to a rifle found at the home of Northcott's father in Los Angeles. The court noted that the state did not have to prove a motive.
Nelson Winslow was 10 and his brother Lewis was 12. They lived in Pomona, and they disappeared at about eight o'clock on the night of May 16, 1928, according to the state supreme court. In May, letters reached the family from Corona and Pomona saying the boys were going to Mexico, the Los Angeles Times later reported; Clark testified that Northcott had made the boys write letters meant to suggest they were still alive. Their parents printed 5,000 flyers offering a $500 reward and, even in late September 1928, after the ranch had been searched, still believed their sons were alive, according to coverage summarized by Spitzzeri.
Small things identified them at the ranch. A Riverside constable, A. B. Chambers, told the Los Angeles Express in September 1928 that Lewis had owned a homemade banjo, given to him by a friend in Pomona, and charred banjo keys were among the physical evidence the supreme court listed. A cap found at the ranch was identified as Nelson's, the Los Angeles Times reported on September 15, 1928. The Express cited a torn page from an aviation book that the brothers had checked out.
Clark testified that Northcott brought the two boys to the ranch and kept them confined there for about ten days. Clark said he was sent to take them food, was made to dig a grave and burn their belongings, and was forced to take part in the killing of one of the boys, with Northcott also taking part. The court listed physical evidence found at the ranch that supported his account.
Walter Collins was born in Los Angeles in September 1918. His mother, Christine Collins, was a California native; in 1928 she worked for the Southern California Telephone Company, the Los Angeles Times reported. His father, who used the name Walter J. Collins, was serving a long prison term at Folsom for streetcar robberies, according to Spitzzeri, who traced the father's record. Walter sometimes sold newspapers in Highland Park, near his home in Lincoln Heights, the Los Angeles Times reported in September 1928.
On Saturday, March 10, 1928, his mother gave him a dime to see a film. He did not come home. The Los Angeles police and the newspapers mounted a large search, and the police dragged a local lake. His father suggested that former prison associates might have taken the boy for revenge. These details come from a 2008 report by Rachel Abramowitz of the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service, reprinted in Gulf News.
In August 1928 word came from Illinois that Walter had been found. The boy was brought to Los Angeles and presented to Christine Collins. "I do not think that is my son," she said, by the account in Gulf News and the Otago Daily Times. Under police pressure she took him home. The California Court of Appeal later recorded that she kept him for about twenty days "in an atmosphere of uncertainty and doubt," while some neighbors thought he was Walter and others, including a schoolteacher, did not.
She became convinced he was not her son. Captain J. J. Jones of the Los Angeles Police Department, who was handling the case, called her in, tried to persuade her, and then "expressed doubt as to her sanity or her honesty," the appeal court found. On a Saturday afternoon, September 8, 1928, Jones had her sent to the psychopathic ward of the county hospital. There was no complaint and no warrant. She was held until the following Tuesday, when Jones swore out a complaint charging her with insanity. According to her later court testimony, as reported by the Otago Daily Times, he told her, "You're insane and ought to be in a madhouse." The boy later admitted he was not Walter. Gulf News and the Otago Daily Times name him as Arthur Hutchins, a 12-year-old runaway who wanted to meet the film cowboy Tom Mix; other reports spell the name Hutchens.
Christine Collins sued Jones. A jury awarded her $10,000 in general damages, $300 in special damages and $500 in exemplary damages. On May 12, 1933, the Court of Appeal struck the $300 item, finding no evidence for it, and otherwise affirmed the judgment, holding that false imprisonment had been established. The Otago Daily Times reported that Jones never paid, that the city council's health and welfare committee had recommended removing Jones and Chief James E. Davis, and that the Legislature passed a bill barring police from placing a person in a psychiatric facility without a warrant.
The case broke in mid-September 1928. Clark's older sister, Jessie, had visited the ranch, and a letter she wrote asking for help in hiding her brother set the investigation moving, according to the Los Angeles Spanish-language paper La Cronica of September 30, 1928, as described by Spitzzeri. The American consul in Vancouver notified Chief Davis of the Los Angeles Police Department on September 8, and the Los Angeles Express complained that the department did nothing for almost a week.
Clark was taken into custody and held at the Los Angeles County Juvenile Hall. On September 15, 1928, the Riverside Press reported that a sheriff's posse had found evidence at the ranch and named Northcott, then 21, as the suspect. Cyrus Northcott was arrested in Los Angeles and later moved to the Riverside County jail as a material witness. Louise Northcott had left her job at the county hospital, saying she was going to see Gordon. Gordon was gone.
Riverside County Sheriff Clem Sweeters led the search, and District Attorney Albert Ford directed the case with his investigators, Jim Quinn and Bert Kelley. Ford said Clark's account was being treated as true but needed to be corroborated, and he told reporters that a body did not have to be identified so long as there was proof that a murder had been committed.
For several weeks the Riverside and Los Angeles papers carried daily, often conflicting reports of what was found. Many were later shown to be wrong or were never proven, and they are best read as reporting rather than findings. The items that reached the courtroom were fewer. In its 1930 opinion, the state supreme court listed blood, bone fragments, a tooth, a cap and charred banjo keys as the physical evidence that corroborated Clark's account of the Winslow killings, together with the rifle linked to the youth from Puente. In late September 1928 the Riverside County criminologist, J. Clark Sellers, said he had confirmed human blood and bones at the ranch, while cautioning that claims about hair said to be Walter Collins's rested on unofficial conversations, according to the Los Angeles Times of September 27.
The investigation also exposed friction between agencies. A Los Angeles police homicide captain told the Times that the case was "strictly a Riverside affair." William Bright, quoted in the Los Angeles Record, said the city police were "chasing mirages."
Northcott and his mother had gone north. They spent time with Winnifred Clark in Canada, and in Vancouver they left a rooming house shortly before police arrived, the Riverside Press reported. Canadian police searched across the West for four days.
On September 19, 1928, a provincial police constable, Morley Green, arrested Northcott at Okanagan Landing, about five miles south of Vernon, British Columbia, and telegraphed Inspector Forbes Cruickshank, head of the Vancouver district, according to a Vancouver dispatch printed in Alberta weekly papers. At first Northcott did not admit who he was. The Riverside Press reported that he was taken while crossing a lake by ferry, after the ferry's owner recognized him from a newspaper photograph. He was taken toward Vancouver under guard and held at the Oakalla Prison Farm in Burnaby.
His mother was detained in Calgary, Alberta, after a railway agent recognized her from a radio description, according to the Los Angeles Express. She first gave a false name. When told she would be held, she asked to be taken to her son.
Northcott hired a Vancouver barrister, Frank Lyons (spelled Lyon in some reports), and said he would fight extradition. He called the charges a "frame-up," said he had fled to shield his mother, and said he had taken Clark to the ranch at Jessie Clark's request. He described the accusations as "melodramatic in the extreme." Lyons told the Los Angeles Express that when he last saw his client he had thought him "a nut."
The process was slow. A Riverside County grand jury indicted Gordon and Louise Northcott for the death of Walter Collins, and Gordon alone for the deaths of the Winslow brothers, the Riverside Press reported around September 20, 1928. The California Attorney General returned the first extradition papers for correction, and the papers had to pass through Washington and Ottawa, the Los Angeles Times reported. Louise, held in Alberta, needed a separate proceeding. Quinn and Kelley went to Vancouver to wait for the documents. The Supreme Court of California later noted only that Northcott "resisted extradition" before he was returned for trial.
The Riverside County grand jury's indictment against Gordon Northcott that went to trial contained murder counts for the youth whose name was unknown and for Nelson and Lewis Winslow. A fourth count, which the supreme court described as "charging an entirely different offense," was dismissed on the district attorney's motion before trial.
Northcott made a series of statements. According to the supreme court, he told his parents, in front of his nephew, that he had killed a Mexican boy and left the body beside a road near Puente, and he later gave a written confession. The trial court admitted the statements, and the supreme court held that they were voluntary. His other statements went in many directions. After his conviction, guards at the Riverside jail told reporters he had repeated a claim that 11 people had been killed at the ranch, saying he had killed six and that his nephew and his father had killed the other five. County officers noted that he had made the same claim after his arrest and then taken it back. Neither Clark nor Cyrus Northcott was ever convicted of any of these deaths.
Louise Northcott was indicted with her son in the death of Walter Collins. Before the grand jury, Clark testified that she had taken part in that killing, the Riverside Press and the Los Angeles Times reported in September 1928. On January 3, 1929, an Alberta weekly, the Macleod Times, carried a wire headline reporting that a Northcott had pleaded guilty and been given a life sentence; the story beneath it cannot be read in the surviving scan. By July 1929 wire reports from San Francisco described her as serving a life term in San Quentin for her part in the case. She was not tried before a jury.
Gordon Northcott was never tried for Walter Collins's death.
The trial was held at Riverside before Superior Judge George Freeman in January and February 1929. Northcott insisted on conducting his own defense. On January 16, 1929, a wire report from Riverside said he wanted to cross-examine his nephew himself, and that his lawyer, identified as Savay, said he would withdraw if Northcott were allowed to question witnesses. The prosecution said it would ask for a delay if he took over.
The supreme court's opinion shows how the trial judge handled him. Northcott wanted to act as his own lawyer for some purposes and to keep counsel for others. "You cannot appear by both," the judge told him. Northcott chose to represent himself. He asked for continuances on January 21 and January 24, 1929; they were refused, and the supreme court later agreed with the trial judge that his difficulties came from "his own actions" and amounted to "dilatory tactics."
He also tried, late, to plead not guilty by reason of insanity and to have his sanity decided at trial. The motions were denied. The affidavits filed in support had not been sworn before the notary whose signature and seal appeared on them; the notary said he had signed neither. The court later appointed alienists, the period's term for psychiatrists, who filed an affidavit stating that he was sane. That affidavit was never read to the jury. The supreme court said Northcott had "stubbornly resisted" advice to enter an insanity plea in time.
Clark was the central witness. The court record shows that he described the confinement of the Winslow boys at the ranch, their deaths, and his own forced part in what followed, and that Northcott's statements about the youth from Puente were put before the jury. Time magazine reported on February 11, 1929, that Northcott heard his mother testify that she was in fact his grandmother. The reports give it only as her testimony.
The jury returned its verdict after about three hours of deliberation, according to a wire report from Riverside dated February 8, 1929. It found him guilty of first-degree murder on all three counts and made no recommendation on punishment; the verdict carried the death penalty. Sentencing was set for the following Monday. Northcott announced that he would appeal. He was sentenced to death.
The appeal went to the Supreme Court of California. In July 1929 the court ordered his lawyers to file their briefs by early August, wire reports said. A. P. G. Steffes represented Northcott on appeal; Attorney General U. S. Webb and two deputies represented the state.
On June 26, 1930, the court, sitting In Bank, affirmed the judgment and the order denying a new trial in People v. Northcott (Crim. No. 3220; 209 Cal. 639, 289 P. 634). Chief Justice Waste wrote the opinion, and Justices Richards, Shenk, Seawell, Preston and Curtis concurred. The court found the evidence sufficient on each count. It rejected every claim of error: the refusal to allow the late insanity plea, the challenge to the jury panel, the request for separate trials, the handling of his self-representation, the refused continuances, the admission of his confessions, the testimony of other boys, and the absence of instructions on accomplice testimony and lesser offenses.
Northcott was hanged at San Quentin State Prison on October 2, 1930, according to the execution file held by the University at Albany's special collections. That record says that before his execution he gave confessions and drew maps of supposed burial sites, all of which proved false. Gulf News, drawing on a memoir by a San Quentin warden cited by the director Clint Eastwood, reported that before his death Northcott invited Christine Collins and another mother to see him.
Walter Collins's body was never found. In 2008 Eastwood said he believed the boy had been killed at the ranch, while acknowledging that none of Walter's belongings were found there, according to the Abramowitz report.
Clark was not tried for murder. He was sentenced to five years at Nelles, a youth institution, for his part in the case, according to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune's crime reporters in December 2008. The same report quoted the writer Anthony Flacco, who was working on a book about Clark, as saying that Clark had never planned to tell his son what had happened to him, and had done so only when he feared his children would hear it from others. York University's archives in Toronto hold research materials gathered for that work, including interviews from 2005, a copy of the reporter's transcript of the 1929 trial in fifteen parts, appeal documents, extradition papers and a 1940 to 1941 pardon board file on Louise Northcott.
After the case drew national attention, residents of Wineville changed its name to Mira Loma, the historian Steve Lech told ABC7 Los Angeles. Lech said the case had largely faded from local memory, perhaps by intention. When the film Changeling was released, the ranch house still stood and was lived in; the chicken coops were gone and another family's home stood where they had been.
Christine Collins went on hoping that her son was alive, the Otago Daily Times reported. Her case is the subject of Changeling, a 2008 film directed by Clint Eastwood, with Angelina Jolie as Christine Collins and a screenplay by J. Michael Straczynski, who spent a year in newspaper files and city and court records. The film is a fictionalized account.
The number of victims. Northcott was convicted of three killings. After the verdict, jail guards quoted him as saying 11 people had died at the ranch and blaming his father and his nephew for some of the deaths, a claim county officers said he had made before and withdrawn. Gulf News reported in 2008 that estimates had run as high as 20. No court found more than three.
Walter Collins. Clark said Walter was killed at the ranch, and the grand jury indicted Northcott and his mother in his death. The count against Gordon Northcott was never tried, and Walter's body was never found. His death at the ranch is suspected, not proven in court against Gordon Northcott.
The youth from Puente. He was never identified in any court record. Names that have since been attached to him rest on unconfirmed press reports, and the court left him unnamed.
The Northcott family. Louise Northcott's testimony that she was Gordon's grandmother was given at trial; no test of it was reported.
The 1928 reports. Many details printed in September 1928, about graves, other victims, other places and other killings, were contradicted within days or never proven.
1886, August 12: Cyrus Northcott and Sarah Louisa Cawthorpe marry in London, Ontario.
1924: Cyrus, Louise and Gordon Northcott move to Eagle Rock, Los Angeles.
1928, February 2: The body of an unidentified youth is found near Puente.
1928, March 10: Walter Collins, 9, disappears in Los Angeles.
1928, May 16: Nelson Winslow, 10, and Lewis Winslow, 12, disappear from Pomona.
1928, August: A boy from Illinois is presented to Christine Collins as her son.
1928, September 8: Captain J. J. Jones has Christine Collins taken to the psychopathic ward; the same day the American consul in Vancouver notifies the Los Angeles police about Sanford Clark.
1928, mid-September: Clark's account leads to the search of the ranch near Wineville; Cyrus Northcott is arrested.
1928, September 19: Gordon Northcott is arrested at Okanagan Landing, British Columbia; his mother is detained in Calgary.
1928, about September 20: A Riverside County grand jury indicts mother and son.
1929, January 3: A wire headline reports a Northcott guilty plea and life sentence.
1929, January: Trial opens at Riverside before Judge George Freeman; continuances refused January 21 and 24.
1929, February 8 (wire dateline): The jury finds Northcott guilty on three counts of first-degree murder; he is sentenced to death.
1929, July: The Supreme Court of California orders appeal briefs; his mother is reported serving a life term at San Quentin.
1930, June 26: The Supreme Court of California affirms the judgment.
1930, October 2: Northcott is hanged at San Quentin.
1933, May 12: The Court of Appeal affirms, with a small reduction, Christine Collins's false imprisonment judgment against Jones.
2008: The film Changeling is released.