by Paul R. Spitzzeri
With Gordon Stewart Northcott and his mother Louise, charged with the grisly murders of a teen and three boys in what has long been called the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders, centered at the family’s ranch in modern Jurupa Valley near Riverside, held in western Canadian jails in fall 1928, proceedings to extradite the pair turned out to be more far more complicated that local officials anticipated.
Documents were to be presented by Riverside County District Attorney Albert Ford to state leaders at Sacramento, who then had to send them to Washington, D.C. for federal review and remittance to the Canadian capital of Ottawa for final processing and submission to a judge in the province of British Columbia before the order could be issued. Problems with insufficient documentation and paperwork delayed the process significantly, while attorneys for the wanted mother and son did what they could to contribute to lengthening the process. One barrister indicated he would waive extradition proceedings if he could represent the two in California and it was said there were favorable leanings on this point.
As October dawned, the Los Angeles Record of the 1st, referring to Gordon as a “boy terror,” though he was an adult, reported that he was to be tried in Los Angeles County, as well as at Riverside, with the latter involving the deaths of Walter Collins and the brothers Lewis and Nelson Winslow at the ranch, while the former would try Northcott for the death of an unidentified teen, initially thought to be Latino, while more recent reports suggested he was possibly Filipino.
While there were lingering questions, especially among Canadian officials loath to agree to an extradition with what might be insufficient physical evidence linking the deaths of the four to the Northcotts, Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Clifford Thoms told the press, “we have an excellent case against Northcott, but will not take the case from Riverside authorities who have already indicted him,” meaning that the Riverside trial took precedence.
It was stated that a flashlight and boy’s cap with purported blood stains found in a Vancouver cemetery the prior evening were likely to strengthen the case against him. Sanford Clark, the primary witness who confessed to taking part in some of the killings, told law enforcement personnel that he held a flashlight for his uncle Gordon and grandmother Louise when they murdered Collins and, in his fright, he dropped it causing denting on the case. The cap was on its way to Los Angeles for examination and to see if Collins’ mother, Christine, could identify it. Meanwhile, two bones found in a lime pit at Wineville were said by forensic experts to be from a skull, while additional skull pieces, soil, some canvas and other material from the Northcott’s Los Angeles residence were also gathered.
Lastly, it was noted that Riverside County investigators Bert Kelley and Jim Quinn, who were said to favor the Canadian lawyer’s representation of his clients at trial, also were ready to allow the two to reunite in an hour meeting, if Louise would voluntarily go to Vancouver from Calgary and be included in the extradition process. Sanford’s sister, Jessie, also a valuable prosecution witness was reportedly ready to return to California with the investigators so she could testify.
The Los Angeles Express, also of the 1st, reported that there was an apparent plan to kidnap Sanford, though this was not viewed as credible, though Riverside County Sheriff Clem Sweeters decided to place a 24-hour guard around the teen held in his custody. This was accompanied by another rumor that efforts were to be made to burn down the Wineville ranch buildings, so the sheriff placed a guard there and ordered no access to the property other than to members of his department and officers from Los Angeles. Meanwhile, evidence continued to be sought there, as well.
As to the trial at Riverside County, the paper remarked that D.A. Ford requested that his counterpart in Los Angeles, the newly elected Buron Fitts, represent the people in that matter. This followed a meeting between the two men at which Ford apparently commented on the small size of his staff—being him and two deputies—as a hindrance, while it was also noted that the two men discussed whether to try the Los Angeles County case first. The problem, however, was there was no case in that instance against Louise, of whom it was said that she was “as guilty of the atrocious degenerate murders as her son.”
A couple of other items of note in the Express report concerned a statement purportedly made by Gordon to a friend and his niece Jessie that he “burned up all the evidence” at the Wineville ranch, and that officials undertook an experiment “showing that a human head can be destroyed by fire in less than six hours,” this in reference to what was said to have happened at the ranch to the head of the young man whose body was found off today’s Hacienda Boulevard at or adjacent to the eastern edge of the Homestead, then owned by Walter P. Temple.
In a separate article regarding Jessie Clark’s agreeing to go to Riverside to testify against her grandmother and uncle, it was noted that she would do so dependent on whether a job as a stenographer could be obtained for her while in southern California. Investigator Quinn apparently sent a telegram on this point, expressing his and Kelley’s concern that “there are powerful influences in the Northcott and Clark families in Canada who might change Miss Clark’s mind about testifying for us.”
The Los Angeles Times of the same day, as did its contemporaries, reported that Gordon tried to stage a fake suicide attempt by driving his car to a steep cliff edge overlooking a canyon with a deep river in it and scattering some belongings to make it appear he dove to his death, though there was evidently no proof that such a scene was enacted. The paper also informed readers that the Los Angeles County Grand Jury was to hear evidence about the Puente-area killing for a possible indictment.
Another statement was that two suitcases belonging to the Northcotts were filled with camping gear and food, indicating an abandoned plan to hide out in a remote forest. A piece of luggage apparently contained stationery thought to be that used in letters sent to the Winslow parents back in May. Lastly, it was remarked that Winifred Clark, daughter and sister of the accused, went to Vancouver “for the purpose of raising funds to aid her mother and brother in their California trial in case they are returned.” As to money, Gordon apparently had just $89 when arrested, while Louise’s monies were “very low,” so selling the Wineville property, valued at $5,500, was likely to be needed to pay defense attorneys.
Under a headline of “Concealing New Northcott Clues,” the Record of the 2nd related to readers that “secrecy shrouded the Gordon Stewart Northcott case today as local authorities prepared what they termed an ‘ironclad’ case against Northcott for the murder of the ‘headless corpse of Puente.'” Sanford Clark was sent to Los Angeles from Riverside for further questioning before a charge was to be placed to the grand jury the next day, at which proceeding the youngster was to appear. The Riverside County grand jury, it was added, found five indictments against the Northcotts regarding the killings of Collins and the Winslow boys, this done “in record time.”
Moreover, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department homicide squad Captain William Bright said he would take Clark back to Riverside “and let him face the elder [Cyrus] Northcott in his cell at Arlington hospital to thresh out reports that a divorce [from Louise] was contemplated long before the asserted murders were committed.” Deputy Sheriff Abel Mendoza and José Ybarra, it was noted, “were working today on ‘something confidential’ regarding the Latino or Filipino teen, who, investigators believed, was killed and decapitated at the Northcott home near the county hospital (the Keck USC medical center now) and the body dumped near the Homestead with the head taken to the Wineville ranch to be burned.
Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Thomas Menzies told the paper that,
The case against Northcott, in the murder of the headless youth, is ironclad and complete. The grand jury undoubtedly will act quickly.
The evidence to support this, though, was suppressed, including material, such as .22 caliber rifle and soil samples from the cellar, tested from the Los Angeles house by county chemist Raymond J. Abernathy, while his Riverside County counterpart Rex Welch and investigator J. Clark Sellers gave the results of their lab work to Sheriff Sweeters and D.A. Ford, with Sellers saying that all samples of bones, earth and lime showed human blood traces. Bright, it was noted, had the burlap sack that covered the headless youth’s body and found it “of identical make and name taken from one of the chicken coops on the Wineville ranch by Deputy Sheriff Mendoza.
As to the extradition of the Northcotts, revised paperwork were sent to Sacramento for Governor C.C. Young’s signature and then transmitted by air mail to Washington and approval by Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg. Any idea of waiving extradition was countered by news that Louise and her barrister, J. McKinley Cameron, “took step to delay her extradition hearing.” This apparently included demands that Kelley and Quinn be forced to testify, while Gordon’s counsel, Frank Lyons, had, by Canadian law, 15 days to answer to the request.
The Express, more apt to display large blaring banner headlines offered, in its edition of the 2nd, “APE-MAN LAUGHS IN COURT,” as an Associated Press report from Vancouver, stated that Gordon was remanded to an additional week of custody, this by request of the Riverside County officers, after just 15 minutes in a courtroom. The account observed that Northcott “listened to the proceedings with intense interest . . . and offered a smile to several persons” before “he burst into a quiet laugh” while conversing with Lyons after the proceeding concluded.
A new development was reported as a neighbor of Walter Collins saw a photo of Cyrus Northcott and though “that looks very much like the face” of the driver of a vehicle that stood out because its steering wheel was on the right side, as was the case with a car owned by the Northcotts. Moreover, the witness said he saw two feet in the air “as though someone was tied down on the car floor” and the testimony was said to be consistent through three hours of questioning.
The paper commented that Ford told the media that Fitts agreed to join the prosecution team for the Riverside County case and that the latter did this based “on the ability of the new eyewitness to positively identify the elder Northcott as the man who spirited the Collins boy away.” Another twist was that Gordon and Louise were evidently willing to waive extradition in return to a change of venue for a trial under the presumption that “they cannot obtain a fair trial in Riverside because of strong sentiment prevailing against them.” It was added that this offer “was occasioned by their stresses financial condition” and that the pair were open to trials in Los Angeles or San Diego counties.
Sanford, meanwhile, requested that he be permitted to speak to Christine Collins “in order that he may convince her of his sorrow for the part he admits having played in the murder of her son.” Also new reporting was that young Clark “convinced [Mr. and Mrs. Winslow] of the truth of his story, inasmuch at least as that the two boys were actually on Northcott’s farm,” though the couple “insist they still hope for the return of heir sons.” Mrs. Collins, likewise, held onto the idea that Water would be found alive, even as officials opined that they were “forcing themselves to this belief in an effort to keep up their courage.”
The Times offered little at variance from the reports of its contemporaries other than its staff representative, James M. Kendrick, noting that the secretary of the California State Bar Association told the paper that “the matter of Lyons’s appearance before the Riverside court in Northcott’s defense, is strictly a courtesy formality, and rests entirely with the Superior Court judge before whom the case is tried.” It was previously thought that Lyons would be barred from representing his client in the Golden State because he was not admitted to the bar here.
The international nature of the extradition proceedings with Canadian requirements putting more responsibility on southern California legal officers to meet those demands, taking place as Los Angeles County and Riverside County investigators were completing evidence collection, testing and reporting for grand juries, necessarily delayed the process of getting Gordon and Louise Northcott returned to this region to face trial for the accused murders of Walter Collins, Lewis and Nelson Winslow and the unidentified teen, but we’ll continue our review of October media accounts, even as that transfer ended up taking far longer than anticipated.
Check back tomorrow as we move to part two!