Some places and some people are evil. They exist as puss-filled sores on the landscape. They have no redeeming value, and only serve to remind us of the horrors the past possesses. No amount of time can erase this darkness, darkness that surrounds these places of terror, pain, and foreboding...they stand as monuments to the wickedness of men...and women.
Riverside County, Southern California, the modern day City of Jurupa Valley...
Almost unnoticed, sitting behind a stand of trees, is an old farmhouse. It's non-descript, you could drive by and never realize it was there. But it is, and there it continues to represent one of America's most horrific serial-killings.
Roughly 45 miles from the City of Los Angeles and was known as Wineville in the 1920s, a nod to the agricultural products of the area which relied heavily on the growing of grapes. The town was very rural, being centered between Corona to the south and Ontario to the north. At the time, you could still buy land reasonably within the environs of the L.A. area, and that is exactly what Gordon Northcott and his family did. Gordon and his parents immigrated from Canada to Los Angeles in 1924, and in 1926 his parents purchased eighteen year old Gordon a plot in Wineville. Gordon, his father Cyrus, and his nephew Sanford built a farmhouse as well as a series of coops so Gordon could try his hand at chicken farming. Sanford Clark was eleven years old. He had joined the Northcott's, his uncle Gordon and grandparents, Cyrus and Sarah Louise, for an extended stay in L.A. His mother, Gordon's older sister Winifred, was convinced by Gordon to let the boy stay on and help work the chicken ranch. All was not as it seemed...Gordon abused the his nephew physically, sexually, and psychologically...
In 1928 a boy went to the movie theatre and never came home. Walter Collins was only nine years old when he went missing on March 10th. His mother, Christine, frantically called the Los Angeles Police Department and reported that her son had not come home. They were apathetic at best, probably suspecting that the boy was just late for a number of innocent reasons. As the hours passed, they darkly asserted the boy might have been kidnapped by enemies of his father, an eight time bank robber who was sent up to Folsom Prison to do hard time. Despite the apathy, this story grew, and a lucky break fell into the lap of L.A.P.D. Captain J.J. Jones. The boy had been found...alive. With heartfelt aplomb, the boy was forced into the arms of a grieving mother and all was back to the way it was. Just one thing was amiss...the boy was not Walter. Everyone wanted it to be, but is was not. Christine Collins knew, Walter's dental records proved it, but the police wanted this particular problem to go away. They cajoled Mrs. Collins, encouraged her to take the boy, try him out, surely she must be mistaken...they said this was Walter, and told Christine Collins to just deal with it. When she continued to complain, Captain Jones had her committed to a local insane asylum. Heaven forbid some crazed mother get in the way of L.A.P.D. business...
By this time, Walter was most certainly dead...
If not for a couple of Immigration and Naturalization agents, a serial killer might have gotten away with it. Sanford Clark's mother Winifred and sister Jessie became very suspicious of Gordon and the living conditions out in Wineville. As a foreign national, it fell to the Feds to check on the boy's welfare. Winifred and Jessie reached out to American authorities with deep concerns and doubt about what was going on, so Immigration was sent to Wineville to check out the situation. Gordon observed the agents driving towards the house and threatened Sanford with death should he reveal certain dark and loathsome secrets. Nevertheless, the jig would soon be up. Gordon fled into the woods before the agents arrived and Sanford was able to tell the tale of horrifying abuses once the agents removed him from the farmhouse and took him into custody. Gordon Northcott and his mother Sarah, according to Sanford, had kidnapped, abused, and murdered, a whole host of young boys.
Remains were found on the property. Another body, decapitated then dumped, was also tied to the Northcotts. Only four boys were officially identified through testimony and some evidence as being held, tortured and killed at the Wineville farm. They were stuffed into chicken coops, beaten, raped, then murdered with an axe: Lewis Winslow, age 12, his brother Nelson Winslow, age 9, both kidnapped in Pomona, and Walter Collins, age 9, kidnapped in Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles. A Mexican teenager, possibly named Jose Gonzalez was killed too, Gordon shot him to death in the farmhouse. He cut off the head and dumped the decapitated body into a ditch in La Puente.
Sanford told a different story...
He was there, forced to participate, perhaps forced to kill. He said he witnessed both Gordon and Sarah Louise wielding the axe and splitting skulls...20 young boys, maybe more. The search was extensive. Sanford tried to remember where all of them had been buried, but a teenage boy's memory is fallible, especially after all the abuse he had suffered. From Los Angeles, to Riverside, to Victorville the authorities dug, but found nothing.
Gordon fled the country and went back to Canada along with his mother. Both were extradited back to Los Angeles and put on trial. Sarah Louise attempted to show her devotion to Gordon by taking the blame for all the murders, but it didn't work. Put on trial and convicted of the murder of Walter Collins, she was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. She served almost 12 years of the sentence before being compassionately released. Gordon was charged and tried for the murders of Jose Gonzalez and the Winslow brothers and it was an exposition of insanity. Gordon Northcott went through three public defenders, then ended up representing himself. He badgered everyone in the courtroom, hurled insults and profanity, changed his story over and over and reveled in the celebrity, working overtime to garner as much coverage as he could with his antics. When the jury went to deliberate there was really no doubt. He was convicted, sentenced to death, and hanged at San Quentin Penitentiary on October 2nd, 1930.
Christine Collins never received solace. It took a local radio campaign to expose Captain Jones' misdeeds in having her locked in an asylum and have her released. She sued Jones and won, but never could collect the judgement from this paragon of law enforcement. In other words, Captain Jones retired and was never forced to pay a cent for his crimes. Gordon Northcott maliciously toyed with her emotions, even getting her to travel up to San Quentin to see him on the pretext that he would tell her where Walter was buried. When she came, he refused to say. Gordon went to his death revealing nothing. Little Walter Collins has never been found.
The house that evil built stands as the last remains of the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders. It is located at 6330 Wineville Avenue in Jurupa Valley, California. The reputation actually forced the town to change its name in 1930 to Mira Loma. Currently, old Mira Loma has been split in-two between two cities, Eastvale and Jurupa Valley.
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