Acknowledging the love and strength of Christine Collins

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Christine Collins

In 2008 I saw the film Changeling. Today I watched it on dvd and was reminded of the harrowing struggle of Christine Collins. A woman who lost her 9 year old son on March 10, 1928. She gave him a dime to see a movie and never heard from him again. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) searched for Walter Collins but never found him. Instead they decided to lie to Mrs. Collins and returned to her a boy that was not her son.

The LAPD did so as they did not want to avoid bad press. At the time they had been under much scruitiny due to a history of misconduct. The most infamous story at the time was Chief James Davis' orders two years prior, to send a 50 man "gun squad" to go after the city's criminals and shoot them. His orders were to bring them in "dead, not alive."

The LAPD insisted to Mrs. Collins that the boy they were presenting to her was indeed her son. They had her take the boy home to care for. She continued to fight with the police department but they only insisted harder that Ms. Collins was delusional. When she brought in dental records to prove that the boy she was housing was not her son, the police department decided to place her in a mental institution. She was told that she was either mentally ill, or a bad mother trying to rid her son for the state to raise. She was told she could not leave unless she admitted that the boy from Illinois was her child. Ms. Collins refused.

Luckily Rev. Gustav Briegleb, a pastor with a radio pulpit decided to help. He hired a lawyer to take up her case.

Eventually news came in of what was known as the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders. A man by the name of Gordon Northcott was found guilty of molesting, abusing and murdering several boys at a ranch in Wineville. Sexual abuse was not mentioned in the movie Changeling.

According to internet sources Northcott and his parents had illegally moved from Canada to Wineville, California purchased the chicken ranch. Northcott lived at the ranch by himself until he began caring for his teenaged nephew, Sanford Clark, in 1926. At one point Northcott had complained to the police that his neighbors were loud and interfering with Sanford's studying to enter the priesthood. The police questioned the neibhbors only to find that they accused Northcott of physically abusing his nephew.

Sanford's mother had reported him missing from her home in Canada that summer. She knew where Sanford was, but hadn't realized he was being mistreated until her daughter visited the ranch and discovered that Sanford was being beaten.

Sanford confided that Gordon Northcott had murdered several young boys with an axe and buried their bodies on the ranch. Sanford was given a stack of photos at the police station and recognized Walter Collins. He claimed Walter had been killed about a week after his abduction. Sanford himself was forced to kill or be killed by Northcott. Sanford led police to two gravesites near his uncle's chicken coop, where partial skeletal remains of three children were found.


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Gordon Northcott

Northcott said he made his victims pray before an altar which he had built specially for the purpose before he killed them. “I wanted the little boys to make their peace with God so they would go to heaven,” declared Northcott.


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Wineville Ranch

In the film Northcott forced a boy he had kidnapped to help kill some of the boys. However, according to some findings on the internet Northcott's mother had admitted to killing Walter Collins. However, she eventually retracted her statement and then later again admitting to the murder of Walter Collins.


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Louise Northcott

Louise Northcott was sentenced to prison but not death. According to Wikipedia (as we all know isn't always a reliable source) she was not put to death being that she was a woman.

At one point during Gordon's trial, Louise Northcott was summoned from prison to testify on her son's behalf. Louise Northcott shockingly revealed that Gordon was not her son, but her grandson. She stated that he was the product of her husband's rape of their daughter. Gordon hadn't known he had been born to his "sister" in 1908. So in reality Sanford Clark was not his nephew but his brother.

Gordon Northcott was eventually sentenced to death. One month after his execution, the town of Wineville officially changed its name to Mira Loma in an attempt to escape the bad publicity that came with the Chicken Coop Murders. Only a few streets and one park retain the original name and the ranch was destroyed.

Later it was determined that the boy who had claimed to be Walter Collins was a 12-year old runaway from Illinois named Arthur Hutchins Jr. It turns out that a man at a cafe in Illinois had told Hutchins that he resembled Walter Collins. Hutchins thought that if he could get away with impersonate Wakter Collins he could perhaps meet his favorite actor Tom Mix in Hollywood. He had been living with his step mother Violet Hutchins and wanted to get away from her. His own mother died when he was 9 years old.

Christine Collins remarried, but she had no more children. Today no one seems to know what happened to Christine Collins later on. Some website entries say she died in 1935. Others say she was born on April 24th 1900 and died in 1996 in Lafeyette. According to the film Changeling, she was never convinced that her son had died and never stopped looking for him. Apparently she rejected the confessions of Mrs. Northcott and Sanford Clark.

I am very curious as to why those confessions were not included in the film. In the film, Mrs. Collins's finds that one of Gordon Northcott's victims escaped from the ranch and remained in hiding for years. The boy was fearful that he would be blamed for possible murders but eventually came out of hiding to reunite with his family. Mrs. Collins finds comfort in the story and hopes that her own son is alive somewhere. In reality, no known victim of Northcott survived aside from Sander Clark.

Arthur Hutchins, the boy who pretended to be Walter Collins, was sent to Iowa's State Training School for Boys until the age of 14. He worked as a carnival concessioneer and later moved back to California to train horses and be a jockey. He married and fathered a daughter. He died of natural causes in 1954.

I found the film Changeling to be excellent however it was shy of some important details. I am disappointed that the film dismissed many truths that are so important to the story.

I am touched by this story as I think many are. Christine Collins was a true hero. Not only did she continue to fight for her son but she did so in an age where women were often deemed too emotional to have a real sense of logic and awareness.

Today "difficult" women are considered "bitches". Back then they were taken away against their will.

Collins was forced to spend five days in the psychiatric ward against her will under “Code 12”. This was a term that referred to a difficult or inconvenient person, usually a woman, committed to the local psychopathic ward. This was carried out without a warrant or any legal due process. I tried to find more information on Code 12 but found nothing. It is my assumption that Code 12 is akin to today's 5150 which is California Law which allows for Involuntary Hospitalization.

I once worked at a psychiatric hospital and under 5150 (fifty one-fifty) is an individual is sent to an inpatient ward in the event that one wants to harm themselves or another. Under today's law, Christine Collins would not have been mandated to a psychiatric ward.

Women have undergone a long history of patriarchy and that is exactly what Christine Collins suffered. I tip my hat to this courageous woman.

I must also mention that the police system also has a long history of abusing its power. Even though the Walter Collins case proved that the LAPD was capable of much corruption, many scandals followed.

Changeling is a film that I highly recommend. But I also recommend doing your own digging as to finding out more details for yourself. Perhaps this blog post has been helpful.

I encourage anyone who has interest in this story to pause and consider the obstacles Mrs. Collins had to overcome as a woman. For me it was a moment to reflect on how far women have come in this society and how far our society still has to go.