by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Posts earlier this year on this blog detailed the gruesome discovery in early February 1928 of the headless body of an unidentified Latino youth adjacent to the Workman Homestead, followed by the disappearance a little over a month later of Walter Collins, who lived with his mother Christine in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Stunningly, Mrs. Collins was brought a boy from Iowa who claimed he was Walter and, despite her reservations, she took the youngster home with her on 18 August before realizing that it was not her son. When she went to the Los Angeles Police Department about the situation, just as the revelations about where her son was killed were published, she was not only disbelieved, but incarcerated in the county hospital’s psychopathic ward. Though Christine Collins won a lawsuit, including damages, against the police captain who sent her to the psych ward, she never collected the money owed to her. The 2008 film Changeling is based on this tragedy.
In mid-May, the Winslow brothers Lewis, 12 years of age, and Nelson, 10 years-old, were reported to have run away from their Pomona home and media coverage in the Pomona Bulletin included claims that they were kidnapped by gypsies, were picked up by unknown persons in Santa Ana Canyon, with the search expanded throughout California and then nationwide, but to no avail. In all three cases, the trails followed by family members, friends, neighbors, law enforcement and others all went cold as the summer moved towards its end.
Then, on 14 September, a stunning development suddenly burst forth with what has usually been called the “Wineville Chicken Coop Murders.” The Riverside Press of the following day reported that,
A blood-stained axe, to which are sticking a few strands of hair, bones of a hand, believed to be those of a juvenile, and two open graves, from which emanates a frightful stench, is the evidence in the hands of the Riverside county authorities to substantiate the story of the kidnaping and murder of four boys by Stewart Northcott, aged 21, at a lonely chicken ranch five miles southeast of Wineville, off the Etiwanda boulevard.
The paper continued that Northcott’s cousin (a son of his older sister), Sanford Clark, was held in a Los Angeles detention home and told officials there of the killings of the unidentified Latino youth, Collins and the Winslow brothers, though it was noted that “authorities paid little heed to the story,” but, when it was relayed to LAPD detectives, they “made the investigation, and every detail of the wholesale crimes of Northcott have been checked and found to be authentic.”
Riverside County Sheriff Clem Sweeters, who served from 1924-1931, was contacted by those investigators and “headed a posse that made a thorough search at the Northcott ranch this morning.” Sanford Clark told the Angel City detectives that a pair of graves would be found, one with the remains of Walter Collins and the others with the bodies of the Winslow brothers.
When Sweeters and his men arrived, they found, some 50 yards from a chicken house, the open graves, from which the “strong stench . . . indicates that the bodies were recently there but had been removed and, it is believed, destroyed by the use of lime.” It was also stated that Northcott’s father, Cyrus, last at the ranch within the last several days took lime there, while Stewart, a middle name with Gordon being his first, was though to have been at the ranch as late as the first of September.
The Riverside paper commented that Clark was kidnapped from his home in the Saskatchewan province of Canada and taken to the Wineville ranch “where he was held prisoner and terribly abused,” this meaning sexually assaulted by his cousin. He told officers that he was forced to use the ax that had the hair strands and blood on it. There were also statements that Stewart Northcott’s father, Cyrus, was considered highly eccentric and that he was “held under suspicion in Los Angeles.”
The Northcotts were relatively new to greater Los Angeles. Cyrus hailed from Caradoc, a hamlet west of London in the Canadian province of Ontario, which was also the hometown of Sarah Louise Cawthorpe and both came from farming families. The couple married in 1886 and soon welcomed a daughter, Winnifred, the mother of Sanford Clark and born in Caradoc and a son, Cyrus, Jr., who was born in Michigan not far from the Canadian border; he, however, died at age 7 of Bright’s disease. Gordon Stewart followed sixteen years after the junior Cyrus and was born in Bladworth, in the Saskatchewan province roughly between Saskatoon and Regina.
The senior Northcott worked as a tailor, carpenter, owned a store and farmed and when, in 1924, he, Louise and Gordon migrated to Los Angeles, settling in the Eagle Rock neighborhood adjoining Glendale and Pasadena, he worked in the former occupation. Then came a move to Riverside with a Northside address, north of the 60 Freeway and west of Interstate of 215, and the purchase of the ranch before Cyrus and Louise returned to Los Angeles to reside near the county general hospital.
The Los Angeles Times, in its edition of the 15th, ran a headline of “HUMAN BUTCHERY CHARGED” as it referred to “the harrowing tale of a human butcher farm” following investigation of the three-acre property. It also pointed out that, “coincidental with the revelation by Clark that the Collins boy was one of the victims, was the declaration made to police yesterday morning by Mrs. Collins . . . that she is now convinced the youth returned to her . . . is not her boy.”
The account continued that, as Los Angeles detectives headed back from Riverside, they stopped at the Winslow residence in Pomona and got positive identification that a cap found at the ranch belonged to Nelson Winslow. Another detail is that Clark, late on the afternoon of the 14th and confined to Juvenile Hall after an arrest at the beginning of the month and awaiting Canadian immigration officials to arrive, summoned a matron to tell his story—this led to Cyrus Northcott’s arrest at an address adjacent to the county hospital in Lincoln Heights—this close to the Collins residence. It was added that, after Clark was picked up by authorities, the Northcott’s vacated the ranch and, it was alleged, tried to cover up any evidence of the horrendous crimes that occurred there.
While Cyrus insisted he had no knowledge of any of the murders, Clark told authorities that,
Several months ago . . . young Northcott became intensely interested in the William Edward Hickman case [involving the heavily publicized December 1927 murder of 12-year-old Marion Parker] and talked incessantly about it. A few weeks later he kidnaped the two Winslow boys from a street in Pomona and took them to the Riverside farm . . .
“He kept them there tied up for a long time and hurt them often,” young Clark said, “and then killed them one at a time with an ax.”
Clark took LAPD investigators directly to the graves’ locations in the chicken house and a notable detail was provided when Sheriff Sweeters arrived at the ranch and saw a photo of Gordon Northcott in the house, recognizing him as having asked about whether a reward was still offered for the return of Collins. As a test of Clark’s reliability, detectives spread out photos of thirty boys and asked him to identify the three boys, which he did “without hesitation and in rapid order.”
While the Times and Press issued these initial reports in a generally matter-of-fact way, two other Angel City papers went in a more sensationalized direction. The Los Angeles Express offered photos of the three murdered boys and Cyrus Northcott, as well as the ax and cap and its coverage mentioned that a manhunt in the western United States and Canada was underway for Gordon, also said to be under surveillance, and Louise, who abruptly quit her job in the county hospital laundry department—hence, her husband’s arrest in that area. Detectives also speculated that there were likely more bodies to be discovered at the ranch or nearby.
The paper paraphrased Clark as telling officers that “young Northcott is a degenerate of the lowest type and is aided and abetted by his mother,” adding that “all of the victims were killed after being tortured and subject to the most vile abuse,” meaning sexually assaulted. Moreover, he stated that Louise killed Collins with the ax. Another important piece of information came from the questioning of Cyrus, who said that “realizing how perverted his son was, he and the mother purchased the ranch and put their son on it to see if the work and the change would not cause him to change.” He said he checked in on Gordon weekly, driving out from the Lincoln Heights house.
It was revealed that Cyrus protested over the treatment of Clark, whose story he believed to be true, and the latter’s sister, Jessie, visited recently and was astonished by his poor condition. She, however, was threatened with death by the Northcotts, but, when she fled and returned home, she informed her mother, the daughter of Cyrus and Louise, and immigration officials were notified. An order was given to retrieve him and that was the day that Louise and Gordon vanished, but, before leaving, it was alleged, the bodies of the three boys were disinterred in reburied in the lime Cyrus, apparently unwittingly, purchased for that purpose.
As for the Latino youth, Clark related that he was the first to be taken to the ranch where he was “subjected to the younger Northcott’s tendencies,” that is, sexually abused, “and then slain as he slept.” A cot, with blood stains on it, was located at the property. With respect to Collins, Clark said that Gordon told him, “I’m going to town [Los Angeles] to bring home a playmate,” and then, bringing the boy back to the property, “tied the youth to a bed and for a week abused him with the most horrible tortures.”
When Gordon decided to “get rid of his captive,” Louise became alarmed, so she “stole into the room where the mutilated youth lay in a sleep of exhaustion” and killed him. Then, the Winslow brothers were kidnapped on 16 May and also subjected for a week to the same abuses inflicted on the others. Clark was forced, he told officers, to use the same ax to kill one of them, while Northcott did the same to the other and they and Louise carried the bodies to the chicken house for the shallow burial.
The Los Angeles Record had a banner headline of “‘DEATH-FARM’ BODIES DUG UP,” though this was not precisely true, while it published photos of Cyrus, Sanford and the ax and cap and followed with reference to “ghastly ‘plantings,” yielding what was said to be the skeleton of a boy’s hand and parts of two sets of clothing. The paper interpreted Clark’s remarks as implicating all three of the Northcotts, though it commented, “he blamed young Northcott for the actual murders, but said his other relatives knew of them and concealed the telltale evidence.”
Another reporting error was that “Sheriff Clem Sweetzer” was the one who reported the incident and was said to have pronounced that Gordon disinterred his victims and scattered portions of their skeletons throughout the ranch, using the lime to “aid in quick disintegration of the bones.” The paper added that Lewis Winslow was murdered by Clark and Nelson by Gordon and that the latter threatened to kill the former if he did not comply with the order. To get the search for Gordon and Louise underway as quickly as possible, a complaint was filed with the Los Angeles County District Attorney related to Clark’s maltreatment, through Gordon’s “unnatural appetites” and beatings, while the complaint for the murders was to be filed, of course, in Riverside County.
The Record also related, through Cyrus’s statement, that he and his wife “quarreled constantly over the rearing of their son, with the father attempting to discipline him and the mother staunchly defending the boy’s actions.” While most of the attention was on the three white boys, it was added that the head of the Latino youth was buried in the chicken house graves. With respect to Jennie Clark’s visit, the account remarked that Gordon “brutally beat her and threatened her with death if she gave voice to her suspicions,” which, of course, she did when she fled for Canada. The contact there was made, it was noted, with the American consul and this led to the assertion that Sanford was illegally taken to California, so, on 3 September, authorities arrived.
The article continued that “Norcott [sic] saw them coming and made his escape,” scaring his cousin into keeping silent, though Clark was then taken to Juvenile Hall. It was only a few days prior to the staggering revelations that Louise and her son left by car for Canada. Concerning Cyrus’ statements to detectives, he professed not to know what the lime he purchased was for, and added,
My wife and I often quarreled over the beatings our son gave the Clark child, but it didn’t do any good. I suspected my son’s fiendish habits, but didn’t know what to do about it.
Yet, the Record remarked, the “police expressed them as convinced that the elder Northcott has not told the entire truth of his knowledge of what occurred at the chicken ranch, and he was to be subjected to a further grilling today.” Lastly, it was noted that Los Angeles officials were to “act only in the capacity of auxiliary aids” to their counterparts in Riverside “who have taken complete and official charge of the investigation,” given that the killings occurred in Wineville, now part of the recently established city of Jurupa Valley.
It is striking, though, that there was more intense coverage, with photos, in the Angel City press rather than in their Riverside contemporary, which would continued in subsequent days. Speaking of which, we will continue this post over the next several days, so be sure to check back in for that.