Wineville Chicken Coop Murders

Between 1926 and 1928, Gordon Stewart Northcott, a Canadian who had moved with his parents to Los Angeles in 1924, abducted and murdered boys in Los Angeles and Riverside County, California. He built a chicken ranch in Wineville (now Mira Loma), Riverside County, with help from his father and his 14-year-old nephew, Sanford Clark, whom he brought from Saskatchewan under the pretext of work and subsequently physically and sexually abused.

In August 1928, Clark's older sister Jessie visited the ranch and Clark told her he feared for his life and that Northcott had murdered four boys. Jessie reported this to a U.S. consul in Canada, who alerted the Los Angeles Police Department. Immigration Service inspectors visited the ranch on August 31, 1928; Northcott fled, and Clark eventually told the inspectors what had happened. Northcott and his mother, Sarah Louise Northcott, fled to Canada and were arrested near Vernon, British Columbia, on September 19, 1928.

Clark testified that Northcott, with the help of Sarah Louise and Clark himself, had kidnapped, molested, beaten, and killed three boys at the ranch, and described the murder of a fourth boy — an unidentified Mexican national, near La Puente — whom Northcott beheaded. Clark said quicklime was used to help dispose of remains from the ranch murders. Authorities found three shallow graves at the ranch matching Clark's description, containing partial remains; testimony indicated the bodies had been exhumed and likely burned shortly before Clark was taken into protective custody, and were never recovered.

While held in British Columbia awaiting extradition, Sarah Northcott confessed to multiple murders, including that of nine-year-old Walter Collins, then retracted the confession, as did Gordon Northcott. After extradition to Los Angeles on November 30, 1928, Sarah again confessed and pleaded guilty to killing Collins; she was sentenced to life imprisonment on December 31, 1928, was paroled in 1940, and died in 1944. Because his mother had already been sentenced for the Collins killing, the state did not separately prosecute Gordon Northcott for that murder, though he was implicated in it.

Gordon Northcott was indicted for the murders of brothers Lewis Winslow (12) and Nelson Winslow (10), who had disappeared from Pomona on May 16, 1928, and of the unidentified "headless Mexican" victim. His trial before Judge George R. Freeman in Riverside County ended on February 8, 1929, with a guilty verdict; he was sentenced to death on February 13, 1929, and was hanged at San Quentin State Prison on October 2, 1930, at age 23.

Sanford Clark was not prosecuted for murder; the assistant district attorney concluded he had been a victim of Northcott's threats and abuse rather than a willing participant, and Clark was instead sent to Whittier State School. Walter Collins's disappearance became separately notorious after a boy who was later identified as runaway Arthur J. Hutchens Jr. falsely claimed to be Collins, and Collins's mother, Christine Collins, was briefly committed to a psychiatric ward by LAPD after disputing the boy's identity. Wineville was renamed Mira Loma in 1930 due to the case's negative publicity.