[Mella]

*Covers Eyes* I haven't read any of your posts because I don't want to read any spoilers, but this looks like such a great movie, can't wait to see it!

[Hephaestion]

Originally Posted by Mella

*Covers Eyes* I haven't read any of your posts because I don't want to read any spoilers, but this looks like such a great movie, can't wait to see it!

Ha ha must have been near impossible. Some loved it, some were more *blah*.

Originally Posted by margaret smith

The clips from the Riverside county where interesting Hephaestion

Yes, pitty he is cut off at the end of no.6.
Would like him to explain why he debuncs the incest story.

Are your friends still hooked Margaret?

Clint Eastwood's new film depicts the drama of truth


J. Michael Straczynski, screenwriter of "Changeling," spent a year trawling through newspapers and records, piecing together an elaborate tapestry. Il



One of the most notorious crimes of Jazz Age Los Angeles began quietly enough with a lost boy.
But the Walter Collins case would end up becoming the O.J. Simpson drama of its day, a horrifying crime that inspired a media frenzy and captivated Southern California. What started as the real-life tale of a missing child would take on a much larger significance in the then-burgeoning city. Although the details might have faded, its commentary on corruption and abuse of authority, on female empowerment and on the ultimate price of justice, continues to echo throughout the canyons of L.A.'s collective memory.
In the middle of it all was Christine Collins, Walter's mother, a victim turned unlikely heroine.
On March 10, 1928, Collins gave 9-year-old Walter a dime to see a movie. Collins, who lived in a middle-class neighborhood north of downtown L.A., was an anomaly for an era when women were considered to suffer from the vapors. A handsome woman with prominent features, she was a single mom whose ex-husband sat in jail for helping to run a speak-easy. She was also a professional woman who worked at the telephone company and apparently prided herself on maintaining a non-emotional, businesslike manner when dealing with men in authority.
Walter disappeared that day, a fact that was chronicled in the Los Angeles Times several days later. Within weeks, the police (with the media watching) were conducting a massive manhunt and dragging a local lake for Walter's body.
Tips poured in, with people claiming to have seen the boy in a nearby gas station, sitting in a back seat of a car, wrapped in newspaper -- and even as far away as San Francisco. The boy's father, Walter J.S. Collins, floated the theory that some of his former inmates kidnapped his son, perhaps out of revenge.
In August, the L.A. Police Department delivered a boy to Christine Collins, her putative son who had been found in Illinois. It was an apparent coup for the LAPD, which routinely had suffered bad press and whose chief, James Davis, was famous (now infamous) for having created only two years before a 50-man "gun squad" to go after the city's criminal element with the express command to bring in the purported crooks "dead, not alive."
Upon seeing the proffered child, Collins, according to an account from that time, stated, "I do not think that is my son." But, pressured by the LAPD, she took the boy home. Three weeks later, she returned the child to the LAPD, armed with dental records of her actual son and statements from people who knew Walter. Collins unwittingly initiated what would become a veritable media storm, which ended with a court fight that lasted a decade, and a new state law, but never definitively resolved -- at least for Collins -- what happened to Walter.
Now her story is being told in the new Clint Eastwood film, "Changeling," which opened Friday in select cities. (It follows the true story, so if you're worried about plot spoilers, think twice before reading further.) The title comes from European folklore; a "changeling" was the offspring of a fairy or troll secretly swapped for a human child. The film stars Angelina Jolie as Collins and John Malkovich as the Rev. Gustav Briegleb, a pastor with a radio pulpit who took up Collins's cause.
The Collins story was unearthed from city and court archives by journalist turned screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski, who had been tipped off by a former source to transcripts from a City Council hearing about the Collins case. Straczynski wrote for the Times and the now-defunct Herald Examiner. He became fascinated by her story and spent a year trawling through newspapers and records, piecing together an elaborate tapestry.
"I was so caught up by the raw, naked courage she showed, that she fought so hard for her son, and nobody remembered this. It was outrageous," Straczynski says. So many of Collins's travails, he says, stem from the fact that she was a woman who didn't conform to what men -- in this case the LAPD -- expected her to be like.
Collins was treated brutally by the police. When she tried to give back the child, the captain in charge of the case, J.J. Jones, ridiculed her. According to court testimony, he told her, "What are you trying to do, make fools out of us all? Or are you trying to shirk your duty as a mother and have the state provide for your son? You are the most cruel-hearted woman I've ever known."
Collins testified that Jones told her, "You're insane and ought to be in a madhouse. You're under arrest and I'm going to send you to the psychopathic ward." Jones threw Collins in the psych ward of the Los Angeles County General Hospital -- that is, the insane asylum -- where she remained for about a week.
"At the time, it was very easy for the police to throw anyone they didn't like into the asylum for causing problems," Straczynski says. "They did it more with women than men. The reality is if Christine had been a single dad, this would have never happened."

much more here

Contains spoilers, oh and Eastwood was wrong about the evidence part.

[Tony]

hep this is why i ask if there was a book before the film.its like the film papillon with dustin hoffman and steve mc queen.the film is good but the book is 10 times better.the film is only a fraction of the whole story,there really is no comparison.

anyone who hasnt read papillon do 1 thing before you die read it

[margaret smith]

Originally Posted by Tony

hep this is why i ask if there was a book before the film.its like the film papillon with dustin hoffman and steve mc queen.the film is good but the book is 10 times better.the film is only a fraction of the whole story,there really is no comparison.

anyone who hasnt read papillon do 1 thing before you die read it

Yes i have done both and the book was far better then the movie but i did enjoy the movie as well Dustin Hoffman and Steve Mc queen played great parts Going back to Clint Eastwood i liked a movie he was in Escape from Alcatraz a true story

Hephaestion yes my friend did enjoy seeing the movie and then reading all what you put on here

[Hephaestion]

Originally Posted by Tony

hep this is why i ask if there was a book before the film.its like the film papillon with dustin hoffman and steve mc queen.the film is good but the book is 10 times better.the film is only a fraction of the whole story,there really is no comparison.

anyone who hasnt read papillon do 1 thing before you die read it

Well yes, but this was unfortunately not fiction. But the true story is certainly more bizarre.

Originally Posted by margaret smith

Hephaestion yes my friend did enjoy seeing the movie and then reading all what you put on here

Will be posting some of the more grim stuff soon. Stay tuned Margaret & all the viewers out there.

The real impostor boy


Walter Collins (left) and impostor Arthur Hutchins

One of the enduring questions behind Angelina Jolie's film Changeling is why a little boy pretended to be a distraught mother's missing son. Now after almost 80 years, that mystery has been solved.

PEOPLE has exclusively obtained a 25-page narrative the then-15-year-old Arthur J. Hutchins wrote in 1933, detailing how and why the Iowa-born runaway – whose own mother died when he was 9 – fooled the police, the real missing boy's closest friends, and even the missing boy's dog and cat in 1928.

Hutchins began the masquerade primarily to get as far away as possible from his stepmother, Violet.

"A person doesn't realize what a hell this world can be at the hands of a step-mother that doesn't love or want you," wrote Hutchins, who called himself "a boy adventurer," in a document provided to PEOPLE by his family.

"I know I owe an apology to Mrs. Collins and to the state of California," wrote Hutchins, who spent more than two years in the Iowa State Training School for Boys in Eldora, Iowa, as a result of his actions.

Arthur Hutchins would grow up to sell concessions at carnivals and even made it back to California as a horse trainer and jockey. He died of a blood clot in 1954, leaving behind a wife and young daughter, Carol.

"My dad was full of adventure," Carol Hutchins tells PEOPLE. "In my mind, he could do no wrong."

In your mind only, I think.

More here



The boy claiming to be Walter Collins poses with Christine Collins, Aug. 18, 1928



The "Enigma Boy" who fooled police into believing that he was Walter Collins is identified as Arthur Hutchins Jr. of Iowa.

Step mom - ecstatic!




Confession



http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2...ing_23_bdnov23

That summer, Arthur Hutchins Jr., 11, got in trouble with Marion, Iowa, police for stealing small amounts of cash. When the authorities required that he write a weekly letter accounting for himself, he rebelled and ran away, turning up in DeKalb, according to newspapers of the time.

“This kid was incorrigible, a black sheep,” Arthur’s half brother, Doug Hutchins, 80, who still lives in Marion, said by phone recently. “My mother said he was trouble all the time.”

In the end Arthur said he had pulled off his hoax by gleaning details from Christine Collins’ letters and hints from cops. His stepmother came to get him, the Los Angeles Times reported, and a cop said, “Tell your mother how you almost made a wreck of the police department.”

[Hephaestion]

Film spurs lesson in family history

Fiery ‘Changeling’ preacher was Westfir man’s grandfather


iven all the pre*release hype about director Clint Eastwood’s new film, which opens in area theaters today, it’s pretty hard not to know that “Changeling” is based on a grisly real-life murder case that took place in Los Angeles in the late 1920s. And yes, it’s no secret that Angelina Jolie plays Christine Collins, the mom whose 9-year-old son, Walter, disappeared from the neighborhood on March 10, 1928, never to be seen again.
Likewise, it’s been made known that John Malkovich plays the part of the Rev. Gustav Briegleb, a fiery Presbyterian minister and pioneer radio evangelist who had been fighting corruption in the Los Angeles Police Department for years and took up Collins’ cause when the LAPD botched the investigation of Walter’s disappearance.
But you will be among the first to know that the character played by Malkovich has a close-to-home connection: Kenneth Briegleb, the grandson of the prominent — and persistent — preacher, lives in Westfir and, thanks to the movie, has learned more about his forebear than he ever knew before.
“I never knew my grand*father — he died the year after I was born,” Briegleb said. “But my brother, Ross, who is four years older, remembers meeting him once, and he said he was ‘grumpy.’ ”
But when Briegleb heard about the movie and the portrayal of his grandfather in it, he remembered a notebook full of old newspaper clippings that his mother had compiled decades ago, making a copy for both him and his brother, who still lives in Southern California.
“I had never really looked at it, but I knew it was in a box someplace, so I dug it out,” Briegleb said.
Oddly enough, the notebook contains nothing about the story that intrigued Eastwood enough to turn it into a full-length film, but its contents, combined with other information Briegleb has been able to unearth via the Internet, reveals enough about the pastor, who died in his early 60s in 1943, to justify a movie of its own.
It turned out, for example, that the Collins tragedy wasn’t the only murder case the minister had weighed in on. In 1921, according to a “history paper” written by Shawn Nelsen and posted on the Internet, the beautiful Madalynne Obenchain had divorced her husband to marry a well-known insurance broker, J. Belton Kennedy, who then didn’t get around to marrying her.
Obenchain allegedly enlisted the help of an old college friend, Arthur Burch, who shot Kennedy dead. When her former husband, attorney Ralph Obenchain, got wind of events, he left Chicago to return to Los Angeles, where he became a member of her defense team.
Commentators left and right portrayed the cuckolded Obenchain as weak and foolish to rush back to his ex-wife’s aid, according to Nelsen’s research, but the Rev. Briegleb came to his defense in the pulpit.
Through the entire mess, “perhaps the character of the former husband stands forth as worthy of the greatest admiration,” he said, though he did allow that it was “a pity that Obenchain did not feel the necessity of laying a heavy hand on the despoiler of his home.”
While his sermon blamed Madalynne Obenchain for all of the domestic disasters, he noted that women at the time frequently found themselves in the position of forgiving their husbands’ indiscretions, “while the male of the species is more deadly than the female when it comes to the question of forgiveness for moral turpitude.”
He also preached against a Texas preacher — known as Two-Gun Frank Norris — who killed a man, telling his congregation that “No preacher nor any layman can afford to lose sight of the injunction, ‘Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you and pray for them that despitefully use you.’ ”
Briegleb obviously enjoyed the admiration of his parishioners.
After 10 years at the city’s Westlake Church, the congregation at first refused to accept his resignation when he “was called” by St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church to become their pastor. Likewise, when the Bethany Presbyterian Church offered him its pastorate nine years later, the St. Paul’s congregation took the same action before letting him go.
According to a clipping from the Los Angeles Times on June 16, 1930, Briegleb’s 25th year in the ministry occasioned a celebration that included the mayor of Los Angeles, movie mogul Louis B. Mayer and many other city dignitaries.
During the celebration, Mayer reportedly “arose and quietly announced that he and a group of friends had purchased an automobile to be presented to Doctor Briegleb in honor of his anniversary.”
Shortly after the death of his close friend, comedian and commentator Will Rogers, Briegleb wrote a prophetic, 24-page tract in 1935 entitled, “A Timely Contrast: Will Rogers, Ambassador of Good Will; Adolph Hitler, Promoter of Hate.”
Two years later, with his 9-month-old St. Bernard pup, Rex, in tow, Briegleb and his wife led a successful fight to quash a proposed ordinance that would have established a “10 p.m. curfew on dog barks, cat meows, rooster crows and other animal noises” in the city limits of Los Angeles.
Given his interest in community justice, the Rev. Briegleb’s interest in the Collins case probably took no one by surprise.
Perhaps desperate for a happy ending to counteract all the rest of their scandals, the LAPD picked up a young lad in Illinois — who admittedly looked like Walter and who claimed he had been kidnapped and somehow transported there — and returned him to Collins for a joyful reunion.
It didn’t take the young mother long to figure out the “changeling” wasn’t her Walter, but the police weren’t happy with that plot twist.
Instead of taking her word for it, they said the kidnappers had brainwashed him, and when she continued to deny maternity, they had the woman committed to a psychiatric ward, where she remained for several days.
Outraged by her treatment at the hands of city officials, Briegleb did his best, in and out of the pulpit, to make sure Walter’s unsolved disappearance would not be forgotten and that the inhumane treatment suffered by the boy’s mother and others consigned to mental wards would be exposed.
Kenneth Briegleb, who intends to see “Changeling” as soon as he can, has one quibble with the advances he’s seen of the movie: “As far as I know, my grandfather never wore a mustache.”
Still, “I’m honored to have John Malkovich play my grandfather,” Briegleb said.


http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms...8-35/story.csp


The only image I could find- LA public library.


Rev.Gustav Briegleb to the right - and NO mustache.


John Malkovich & mustache.


Eastwood directing.

[margaret smith]

What a good Job Rev Gustav Briegleb did take up Christine Collins cause because otherwise she would have been left in the asylum like a lot of other woman where and forgoten What a good person to stand up to the lapd like he did his Grandson must be very proud of him

[Hephaestion]

Originally Posted by margaret smith

What a good Job Rev Gustav Briegleb did take up Christine Collins cause because otherwise she would have been left in the asylum like a lot of other woman where and forgotten What a good person to stand up to the lapd like he did his Grandson must be very proud of him

I´m not if that is the way the real story goes Margaret. It´s very difficult to ascertain the truth and I am getting increasingly annoyed with the screenplay writer who has taken artistic liberties.

But it does seem that Briegleb was a thorn in the side of the LAPD.


Cyrus Northcott is a bit of an enigma, he got off scott free. Apparently he was scared stiff of his son who had confessed the murders to him. It was probably Cyrus and Sanford who built the Chicken ranch (the house is still standing) for his son Stewart.
Jeffrey Paul (the author I refer to further up the thread) did not believe Stewart´s claims that he was molested by him or believe Louis Northcott (his wife) story that Cyrus had a incestuous relationship with his daughter Winifred who was supposedly the real mother of Stewart. But the author never substantiates why he doesn´t believe this would be true. Stewart was a compulsive liar and would change his story many times. Cyrus reunited with his wife Louisa after she was paroled and moved from California to Maryland and died there in the 1940´s.

The chicken ranch was five miles south east of Wineville (now Mira Loma), off of Etiwanda Blvd. (on Wineville Ave in Riverdale area). Investigators found an axe and bones, hair, and fingers in lime were found. Cyrus George Northcott, 62, father of Gordon Northcott, recently brought a load of lime to the Northcott Poultry ranch, Riverside County Sheriff Clem Sweeters investigated.

September 17, "father admits son admitted murders to him." Bodies were said to have been "cut into pieces and thrown promiscuously over the ranch." It was also said that Gordon Stewart Northcott cut off the head of a Mexican boy at El Monte and carried the head to the "murder farm." The body was found several weeks ago in Puente, in a burlap bag. The bodies were never found, but graves soaked with blood, bones and fingers were found.

“I knew of the killings but never saw them,” Cyrus told police. “My wife would go to any extreme, not excepting murder, to please her son.”

A dramatically ironic foreshadowing of Northcott's fate came when officers searching his Los Angeles home found a rope tied in a noose with a hangman's knot. Police Commissioner W. G. Thorpe is shown examining it. The house is located at 1239 Brittania Street, Boyle Heights

Authorities have termed Gordon Stewart Northcott an "ape man," and Sanford Clark has described him as being "covered with hair." The picture of a hairy ape man is the cover of a pamphlet describing books about primitive men. This is being investigated as clues to a possible "complex" of Northcott. The pamphlet was found in the Northcott home.

Things got even stranger when Louise Northcott was summoned from her prison cell to testify on her son's behalf. During her testimony, Louise Northcott publicy revealed for the first time that Gordon was not her son, but her grandson. She alleged he was the product of her husband's rape of their daughter, Winifred. Apparently even Gordon hadn't known he had been born to his "sister" in 1908, so it must have come as a surprise to him that Sanford Clark was not his nephew, but his brother. There were allegations, however, that Cyrus had also molested Gordon when he was a child.
Cyrus Northcott testified against his son/grandson, saying he had seen some of the bodies before Gordon destroyed them with lime, lye, fire, and an axe. Gordon had even bragged about the murders to his father. Only a few months earlier, Cyrus had insisted Gordon had always been a "good boy" who displayed no "abnormal tendencies", shortly before admitting that he had known all about the killings. (L.A. Times, Sept. 16 and 17, 1928)

Cyrus G. Northcott, father of the suspect and asserted owner of the farm, was grilled by police in September 1928 and denied any knowledge of the crimes

Gordon Stewart Northcott's father, Cyrus G. Northcott, identifying a .22 rifle as that owned by his son. Police believe a Mexican youth, whose headless body was found near Puente, was slain with a .22 gun. Experts are trying to find if this gun was linked to the killing.

Arrows point to the Northcott home and a location where a car stood. Evidently in the foreground is the Alvadrez home in Mira Loma.
(I think this photo has been manipulated, the house in the background is definitely the Northcott home in suburban L.A - Britannia Street).

But I have also read that Cyrus ended his days in a lunatic asylum. Which seems quite plausible. I´m not convinced that he didn´t molest both son and daughter.

[Hephaestion]

There is more to Sanford´s Clark, it is not as rosy as that previous article stated.
My original post on him

But tonight I found some more information which was much more personal:

Jerry Clark, 17, was on his way to a hockey game when his father, Sanford, pulled the car over and revealed a shocking past. When he was 15, Sanford Clark became the main witness against his uncle, Gordon Stewart Northcott, who kidnapped boys from the Southland in the 1920s then molested and killed them at a chicken ranch in Wineville.
Not only did his uncle rape and beat him, Clark told authorities he was made to help dispose of the bodies and, at gunpoint, ordered to shoot one of the boys.
"Sanford said he never planned to tell Jerry the story," said Anthony Flacco , who is writing a book about Clark and was at the Whittier Museum last week doing research.
But he said Clark was worried reporters working on an unrelated killing near their town would unearth his past. His concern was that his children would hear about it from others. His fear didn't materialize.
Clark wasn't tried but was sentenced to five years at the Whittier State School, which was later renamed the Fred C. Nelles Youth Correctional Facility. Flacco said Clark was there for 23 months and, after his release, deported back to Canada.
He served in World War II, married and worked 28 years for the Canadian postal service. He and his wife, June, adopted and raised two sons. The couple were married for 55 years and were involved in different organizations. Clark died in 1991.
"I'm not writing a true crime book. I'm writing a psychological drama. What's here is a boy and a psyche saved. It's the road out of hell," Flacco said.
The book, set for a fall 2009 release, will be published by Union Square, an imprint of Sterling Publishing.
He said the book is about how Clark emerged from this dysfunction and went on to live an exemplary life.
He credited June Clark, Clark's sister, Jessie, associate prosecution counsel Loyal C. Kelley and the Whittier State School for helping save Sanford Clark.
Kelley recognized Clark was a victim and the Whittier State School emphasized rehabilitation, according to Flacco.
"It seems the judge quietly sent him to Nelles. ... I don't think anybody knew in Whittier he was here," said Myra Hilliard, executive director at the Whittier Museum.
At the Whittier State School, she said the boys were placed in cottages with a house mother or father or both. They learned skills like tailoring, cooking, gardening and woodworking so they could earn their keep as adults.
The whole idea was rehabilitation. Not all the boys at the place had criminal records. She said some were too old to be adopted or their parents could not take care of them.
"This was such a unique facility," she said.
Hilliard said bragging about past criminal behavior was not allowed.
"I know boys were told that was your life before. They were now part of a family. That's what Fred C. Nelles brought," she said.
Nelles served as superintendent at the Whittier State School from 1912 to 1927. The place which later bore his name was closed by the state in 2004.
Jerry Clark wanted to honor his father by telling his story and had been trying to write a book for years, Flacco said. The Canadian truck driver approached a literary agent. Flacco decided to write the book with Clark as a source.
Jerry Clark couldn't be reached for comment Friday.Instead of having his own children, Flacco said Sanford Clark chose to adopt because he didn't want to spread what he viewed as his family's sickness.
"This was the most dysfunctional family," he said.
He described Clark's mother as a sociopath who told her son to go with his uncle in 1926. He said Clark's father was ineffectual, his uncle a psychotic killer and his grandmother a killer.
The two years at the ranch affected Clark. Flacco said the man was plagued with thoughts of suicide all his life.
One time when Clark wasn't at the dinner table, June Clark found him in a room with a gun in his hand. Flacco said she took the gun, smacked her husband and told him to go down and have dinner.
And when Jerry Clark told his dying father he loved him, Clark's last words were, "Why would you?"
"What he could still feel was his own guilt and pain," Flacco said.
Clark was 13 when Northcott took him from his home in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada to the chicken ranch in Wineville (now Mira Loma).
Sanford's older sister, Jessie, became suspicious of the letters he was forced to send home that assured the family he was well.
She went to the ranch. Flacco said she stayed several days but, terrified of Northcott, left and told authorities her brother was being held by a killer.
When they didn't believe her, Flacco said she told them that she and her brother were in the country illegally.

Taken from here.

Sanford in the movie Changeling.


Sanford´s mother - Winifred Clark.
A Sociopath according to Sanford.
Possibly also the mother of Gordon Stewart Northcott,
according to Sarah Louis Northcott. Apparently Cyrus (post above)
had an incestuous relationship with her.

Mrs. Winifred Clark, mother of Sanford and Jessie, has turned against her accused relatives, the Northcotts. Sanford was Gordon's teen-aged nephew who lived for a time at the farm. Clark said, "I hope Mother and Brother can make their peace with God."

Jessie Clark, 19-year-old Saskatoon, Canada, girl who said, "Gordon said he burned four boys on a pyre."

Jessie Clark, sister of "murder farm" resident Sanford Clark, went to the farm to rescue her brother. Fearing for her life, she would tiptoe in the middle of the night to Sanford's bedside, where he whispered his story of the murders of several boys, according to her sworn statement.

Sanford Clark, 15, testified against his uncle, Gordon Stewart Northcott, who kidnapped boys then raped and murdered them at a chicken ranch in Wineville in the '20s. Author Anthony Flacco is writing a book about Clark who served time at Whittier State School for Boys then later fought in World War II, worked for the Canadian Postal Service and raised two sons. (Photo courtesy Martin Literary Management)

[Hephaestion]

Sara Louise Northcott 1868 - late 1940´s. (mother or Grand Mother of Gordon Stewart Northcott depending who you want to believe).

She wasn´t featured in the movie, but she played a key role in the story.
She suggested that the boys be killed as they knew too much. And she insisted it by axe as a riffle would create to much noise and would alert the neighbors. She testified to killing Walter Collins, she wielded the last blow which killed him.

Sara Louise lost many of her children including a six year old and was so grief stricken that I think she went mad. By the time Stewart Gordon was born in 1908 she let pretty much run the household and subsequently created a monster.

Los Angeles Times file photo

Louisa Northcott, the mother of Gordon Northcott, isn't portrayed in "Changeling," but played a key role in the actual case. Above, she's booked in jail.

Los Angeles Times file photo

Louisa Northcott with one of her attorneys (she was represented by Norbert Savay, A.H. De Tremaudan and J. McKinley Cameron).

Los Angeles Times file photo

Deputy P.H. Peterson and his wife escort Louisa Northcott to San Quentin for her role in the killings.

Los Angeles Times file photo
Louisa Northcott, December 1928. She was paroled in 1940.

Mrs. Louise Northcott, Gordon's mother, holding a pet rooster on the ranch near Wineville. Murder charges were issued at Riverside September 18, 1928, against her and her son, who are reported under surveillance in Canada.

Mrs. Louise Northcott, mother of Gordon Stewart Northcott, accused jointly with her son of murder in connection with the probe of the "murder farm" near Riverside. She was being held in Canada for extradition. It was said she "always let him have his own way." Gordon accused both his parents of killing a boy known as Richard Gordon.

Sarah Louise Northcott, accused with her son, Gordon, of slaying four boys. The youth and his mother have been ordered extradited to the United States by Canadian authorities.

In this dramatic note to Stewart Northcott, his mother, Mrs. Louise Northcott, told him that she had pleaded guilty and concluded, "Just use your own judgment, my son." Northcott trembled and raged and laughed until he cried when he read it.

Sarah Louise Northcott, left, as she arrived at San Quentin Prison in the custody of Mrs. Clem Sweeters, wife of the Riverside County Sheriff, to serve a life sentence following her murder confession.

Northcott had his mother brought from Tehachapi State Prison to testify on his behalf. Her startling testimony was that her husband, Cyruss George Northcott, had had intercourse with their daughter, Winifred, who gave birth to Gordon Stewart Northcott.

When Redwine asked the haggard, gray-haired Sarah Louise Northcott how many husbands she’d had, she couldn’t remember. Nor could she recall the names of her five children. She shrieked at the prosecutor, “The next time I get married, it won’t be to a man like you.”

The judge said:"It is only because you are a woman that I do not sentence you to be hanged."
She was given a life sentence, but only served 11 years and was paroled in 1940.
Apparently when she was released she was reunited with Cyrus and moved to Maryland. But I have also read that Cyrus ended his days in a lunatic asylum.

J. Clark Sellers, criminologist, examines an axe which Sanford Clark says Mrs. Louise Northcott used in Walter Collins’ murder. Rex Welsh, police chemist, declares the axe is stained with human blood. It was found in a chicken coop on the ranch.

Okay next Stewart and finally the chicken ranch.