by Paul R. Spitzzeri
During the last week of September 1928, the case of what has long been called the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders moved from the investigative to the early judicial stage with respect to extradition and Grand Jury indictment proceedings for Gordon Northcott and his mother, Louise. So, the 24 September edition of the Riverside Press informed readers that Bert Kelley and Jim Quinn, investigators from the county district attorney’s office, headed to Sacramento with an extradition application for Governor C.C. Young, following a warrant sent to the state capitol charging both with the murder of 9-year-old Walter Collins while Gordon was accused of the killings of Lewis and Nelson Winslow and an unidentified teen, previously described as Mexican, but now as Filipino, though on what basis was left unexplained.
The paper added that county Sheriff Clem Sweeters and his wife, who was a matron for women prisoners, were to soon follow with the quartet to proceed to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada to bring the Northcotts home, though there were prior reports that challenges and requirements by Canadian authorities with regard to sufficient evidence could delay the timeframe.
Additional materials found at a bonfire site at the San Gorgonio Pass west of Palm Springs were under chemical analysis while it was reported that Quinn received a stained tire cover from a car Northcott bought from an Ontario Kissel Kar dealer and the investigator, who thought there would be more bodies in the case, was said to be be sure that the stains were from blood and were telling about another murder assigned to Gordon. Collins’ mother, Christine, as did the parents of the Winslows before her, still held out hope that her son is still alive, as she told the press,
It is possible that Walter has been killed on that chicken ranch near Wineville, but I don’t believe so. I think he will return to me.
Cyrus Northcott, informed of his son’s claim that he beat Louise, denied this and the claim that Gordon forced him from the Wineville ranch, stating to the media that he supported his son from his carpentry work, while remarking, “while she was abnormally in love with my boy,” a pointed remark for sure, “I love him as a father would and did all in my power for him.”
There were other reports from Canada attesting to erratic and strange behavior by the Northcotts that contradicted the benign and bland claims pronounced by Gordon in a media interview. There were also concerns about a missing man and his three sons, headed from New Jersey for California in August, with one of the sons the subject of “mistreatment,” meaning sexual assault by Gordon, though the case was essentially dismissed in November 1925 with a police reprimand handed down.
Moreover, a 14-year-old Riverside boy told police he was offered a lift in Northcott’s car, but turned it down, and he was said to be wanted for identification purposes. Elsewhere in the paper, there was a brief piece about Gordon’s claims that Sanford Clark, his nephew whose revelations opened the matter, and his father were insane and his niece, Jessie Clark, was behind the claims brought forward to authorities. It was added that Gordon decried the “ridiculous, groundless yet terrible charges” and that he would fight “the mental and physical discomforts such a farce trial would necessitate” and he added,
I am sure the taxpayers of Riverside county (I being one myself) do not relish the idea of wasting money on farce trials. We need roads and bridges in Riverside county, not ridiculous yet expensive criminal trials.
A report from Los Angeles was also published by the Press in which it was remarked that “the fourth asserted victim of the murder farm activities . . . was identified tentatively today as a Japanese boy named Yamashak,” a name clearly not Japanese, though it might have been something like Yamasaki.
That day’s number of the Spanish-language Los Angeles paper, La Opinión, largely reproduced that Canadian interview with Gordon which we covered in part six, but turned out to be his written statement from jail and distributed to the press, noting that the charges leveled against him “serve only to [unduly] impress the public” and were the products of the overheated imaginations of his nephew and niece. He castigated Sanford as “foolish” and “difficult to manage,” categorically denied abusing him, though “I often had to scold him for his crude behavior,” while insisting that Sanford often ran away, but always returned to the ranch seeking to be forgiven, and also committed a crime with other wayward boys. Moreover, Gordon blamed his nephew for the deaths of many chickens at the ranch because of “negligence.”
The younger Northcott blamed everyone, of course, for his misfortunes, including his father for physically abusing his mother, leading to a break in the relationship, while Jennie and Sanford conspired against him and Gordon related that he was forced to seek legal counsel, concluding,
All I will do is see protection from the authorities where I am currently detained, as I consider my extradition an outrage, given that there is absolutely no evidence to justify proceedings against me.
In its coverage, also of the 24th, the Los Angeles Times cited Jim Quinn as remarking, “I believe we have just begun to dig into this affair” and he was sure that further work “will unearth other crimes that can be laid to young Northcott.” A Vancouver rooming-house owner told the press there that Gordon was “a liar and he knows it” after he acknowledged stealing blankets from her, but insisted that money was left to cover their value. She added that Northcott represented that his sister was his wife and, with respect to Winnie and Louise, the proprietor added, “they were a clever bunch” but also “queer people.”
A Canadian Pacific Railway agent found Louise’s behavior odd and suspicious, this leading him to call the police because of her anger on not being able to get change for a $50 American bill. He commented, “the woman’s own actions here in the station are responsible for her capture” because “if she had not been so scrappy . . . I don’t suppose I would have paid any more attention to her” than any other customer. He remembered, however, a radio description and contacted the police. Otherwise, the paper recounted information discussed previously here concerning ongoing investigative efforts.
The Los Angeles Express, in reprinting statements made to the press by Gordon added that his father was nothing more than “a dissatisfied husband seeking divorce grounds” and Jessie Clark was “a movie publicity-made girl,” while Sanford was a “lazy, stupid boy” and “half cracked.” Another notable pair of quotes concerned the wide range of possible murders attributed to him and a nickname he clearly abhorred:
Why blame all the disappearances and murders in California one me? It is a wonder that, considering all the terrible crimes I am charged with, they do not try to set [William Edward] Hickman [killer of young Marion Parker in December 1927] free and blame me for the Parker murder or the St. Francis dam [collapse] tragedy on mother.
If I am mentally or physically am an ape-man, then, according to officers of the provincial police, they also must be living proof of the Darwin theory. They state that they consider me a perfectly normal boy.
The Express had some new information concerning purported bounced checks passed by Gordon at El Monte, though “reports that detectives had identified the headless body found near Puente,” in fact, on the eastern edge of the Homestead, then owned by Walter P. Temple, along Hudson Road, now Hacienda Boulevard, “as a former county hospital employe,” it being unmentioned that Louise Northcott worked in that facility’s laundry, “were denied” by police and sheriff officials.
Blood found in the basement of the house where Cyrus and Louise resided, moreover, was found by analysis to not be from a human, so this considered a blow to prosecution. It was also determined that the theory that Gordon earned some substantial money from burglary and robbery was considered faulty, but wondered if the missing Scott man or his wife were the source of money that the young Northcott consciously showed off to acquaintances.
A letter from Mrs. Scott to Gordon referred to a red-headed wife, but the paper remarked that Northcott “never associated with women, having an unnatural feeling or dislike for the opposite sex,” a statement in line with remarks of his effeminacy and his sexual abuse of boys, as well as a comment made by Cyrus about Gordon wearing dresses and playing with dolls until as recently as age 16. An Alhambra garage owner told investigators that Northcott referred to Mrs. Scott as “secretary to my father’s estate,” while Gordon claimed Cyrus was an uncle and that his father was a bank director or was recently deceased, leaving a large fortune.
Meantime, the Los Angeles County Grand Jury was deliberating over the alleged mistreatment of Christine Collins by Los Angeles Police Department personnel, specifically Captain Joseph J. Jones, who demanded she take an Midwest runaway as her son despite her clear reservations and then placed in a psychiatric hold at the county hospital. She told that body that Jones yelled that she was “a damned crook, who ought to be in prison with her husband,” then serving time at Folsom State Prison, and added that he shouted, “you’re just trying to make a damn lot of fools of us. This is your kid ad we can prove it, you’re nothing but a damn fool.” She also alleged that Jones, following her release, “offered to reimburse her in cash for any money she may have lost” when confined, but she reminded him that he refused her request for a call to a friend or her employer.
The Los Angeles Record added some new information, as well, as it reported that a pair each of police detectives and sheriff’s deputies were scouring “the far corners of the county” as they engaged in the work “of completing their chain of evidence which, they declared, indicates that the Mexican or Filipino boy whose decapitated body was found near Puente was murdered in this county and perhaps in the city.” Deputy Abel P. Mendoza, working with José Ybarra, as well as José S. Sepúlveda, for seven months since the February discovery, the two apparently specializing on cases involving Latinos in some way, told reporters,
The fact that a headless body was found in the county and authorities believe they have found parts of the head in another [Riverside] county doesn’t mean a thing as far as solving the murder is concerned. First, we’ve got to make an identification of the body or else make a connection between the body and the head, which they haven’t found yet, and link Northcott in it beyond a reasonable doubt.
The trio of Latino deputies “have acted upon the remotest clue, making a relentless but futile chase from the location of the body” near the Homestead “to the Wineville chicken ranch and the Northcott cabin and old borax mines of Mint canyon after identification of a naked and decapitated body.” Their boss, homicide division Captain William Bright, “demanded that his men check over the relative location of the Northcott cabin” and those mines, but their efforts found no connection to the alleged murders. LAPD detectives, meanwhile, were hunting for other clues in the Lincoln Heights and Highland Park areas of the Angel City, as noted previously.
The Times of the 25th informed readers that any thoughts of a quick extradition of Gordon and Louise were more likely to become “a long, drawn-out legal battle” expected to “delay for several days” the return of the wanted pair, but there was also differences of opinion between officials in Riverside County and at Sacramento about what was required. Once the discrepancies were worked out, however, the matter still had to go to Washington, D.C. for coordination with the Canadian government at Ottawa, after which approvals would allow for Riverside officers to go to Vancouver.
This did not, though, account for efforts made by Gordon’s Canadian barrister, Frank Lyons, to fight extradition through hearings at which the attorney was expected to demand the presence of Sanford and Jessie Clark, as well as Cyrus Northcott, as well as a statutory two-week appeal process. Lyons told the press,
I do not quite understand what is going on across the border . . . The preliminaries at Sacramento, Washington and Ottawa before any legal documents can be obtained will take weeks . . . I anticipate it will be at least two months before any real work can be done toward securing the extradition of the prisoners.
As for continuing investigations, the paper noted that the focus would be on Gordon’s whereabouts during the period of the killings, how he obtained money, his reputed movie studio work and how he obtained several cars. Up to 30 pieces of evidence, including paper with writing samples, a piece of bone, ashes, dirt and clothing from Wineville and San Gorgonio Pass were to be analyzed by criminologist J. Clark Sellers. In San Diego, the police were hoping to solve the mysterious death of a 13-year old Latino boy, Nicolás Esparza if links to Northcott could be determined.
The Express offered another new tidbit from Sanford Clark’s recollections at Wineville as he told Kelley and Quinn that the Winslow brothers were said to have buried alive as “Clark described noises and convulsions of one of the boys after having been hit on the head with an ax by Northcott and thrown into a grave.” The paper also noted that men from Long Beach and Los Angeles went to an LAPD stations to report a grave they found in May near Lancaster, not far north of Mint Canyon, and which they reported at that time to lukewarm interest.
An Italian baker, Tony Sciortino, accused of running an illegal liquor operation and who lived a block from the Northcott residence in Lincoln Heights was missing since late May, but his car, riddled with bullets and stained with blood was found at San Bernardino, so another possible link to Gordon was to be examined. Interestingly, when LAPD officers spoke to Cyrus he informed them “that his son had planned to go into the liquor making business on a gigantic scale,” so a working hypothesis was that a partnership between Gordon and Sciortino went awry.
Another Clark detail was reported by a Riverside constable concerning Lewis Winslow having a home-made banjo while at the Wineville ranch, with the officer, A.B. Chambers, telling a reporter that he believed the story because it was apparently corroborated by a Pomona friend of the missing boy who gave him the instrument. Then, there were reports that “for days feeling has been growing against the Northcotts in the Riverside district” that evoked when, decades before, “Old Judge Lynch,” the Express commented, “was the law of the land.” These “growing whispers” apparently led Sheriff Sweeters to order two boxes of rifles to be given to reserve deputies in case there was any effort to commit extralegal justice when the Northcotts were returned to Riverside.
With respect to the Sciortino disappearance, observed the Los Angeles Record, also of the 25th, it was reported that “the Northcotts and Sciortino were well acquainted” because “members of the Northcott family patronized the wealthy Italian’s bakery shop.” It added that Cyrus’ statements to the police about his son’s ambitions to make bootleg liquor including having a still put under the concrete floor of the Wineville ranch garage. Perhaps, police posited, Sciortino was with Gordon at the ranch, was killed there, and his car dumped about 13 miles away, while they also offered the supposition that the sudden cash windfall Northcott experienced was because he took the money from the baker and bootlegger. The absence of a body, moreover, could be explained by Gordon’s use of lime. Key was matching bullets in Sciortino’s car to weapons owned or used by Northcott.
Despite all this, the Record told readers that,
Despite a thorough and comprehensive search conducted in many places where, it was believed, undeniable evidence of the slayings would be found, investigators have been unsuccessful in their attempts to establish the crimes beyond all [reasonable] doubt.
Clearly, there was more work to be done and we have more to cover with the early fall happenings with this case, so check back with us for part seven as we delve further into the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders.