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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/justice-story/california-crop-
horror-1920s-article-1.1229595

There was once a California town that was named Wineville, in 
honor of its primary crop, the grape.

But in 1928, something so awful happened there that it wiped the 
name off the map. It was a series of child killings that will 
forever be known as the �Wineville chicken coop murders.� As 
many as 20 boys may have died there at the hands of sadistic sex 
maniac Gordon Stewart Northcott, 21. Newspapers dubbed him the 
�ape man� because of the thick black hair all over his body.

Crimes on Northcott�s little farm of horrors went on for about 
two years, and might have continued longer, had he not brought 
in his nephew, Sanford Clark, to care for the chickens. Clark 
became an unwilling accomplice in his uncle�s murders and a 
victim of the man�s perversions.

In 1926, Northcott had traveled to Clark�s home in Saskatoon, 
Saskatchewan, Canada, and persuaded his sister, Winnefred Clark, 
that he needed a farmhand to launch his California poultry 
business. She willingly turned her 13-year-old son over to her 
brother.

After that, there was so little communication that the boy�s 
sister, Jessie Clark, 19, became worried. In the summer of 1928, 
she scraped together the cash for a trip to Wineville to check 
on her sibling.

What she found was so disturbing that upon her return to Canada, 
she promptly contacted authorities, who alerted Los Angeles 
police. They visited the farm to investigate and found Sanford 
alone on the property.

Police took the boy in for questioning.

>From his sister�s accounts, they were expecting something 
unsavory, but nothing near the nightmare that came from the 
boy�s mouth. Sanford revealed a tale of horror, frequent 
beatings, death threats and rape.

Mexican boys, Sanford said, would arrive in Northcott�s car and 
later disappear. Then there were the murders of four boys � an 
unnamed Mexican beheaded by Northcott; the Winslow brothers, 
Lewis, 12, and Nelson, 10; and Walter Collins, 9.

Collins� murder had been a family affair, with Sanford, 
Northcott and his mother, Sarah Louise Northcott, who came from 
L.A. for the event, taking turns hitting the child with an ax.

Shockingly, until that moment, L.A. police thought there had 
been a happy ending to the Collins case. The boy vanished on his 
way to a movie on March 10.

Hundreds of police officers searched the L.A. area, and the hunt 
spread across the country. There was no sign of him until 
August, when a boy in Illinois said he was Mrs. Collins� lost 
son.

The case appeared to be closed, until the �mother�-and-child 
reunion, when Mrs. Collins took one look and said the child was 
not her son.

Despite police urging her to take him home and �try him out for 
a couple of weeks,� her denials continued. Authorities 
determined she had lost her mind, and locked her up.

All this was going on at the same time police were questioning 
Sanford.

When his story went public, the fake Walter Collins admitted 
that it had all been a hoax. This �enigma boy,� was really 
Arthur Hutchins Jr., 15, of Iowa, who had concocted a big fib to 
get away from his stepmother.

Collins sued the LAPD and decades later her story made it to the 
silver screen in the 2008 Clint Eastwood film, �The Changeling.�

Police descended on the �murder farm� and turned up evidence 
supporting Sanford�s story � bones in quicklime pits, human 
skull fragments, and clothing that would fit boys of that age, 
including a Boy Scout cap.

The body of a headless youth was found in near Los Angeles, 
wrapped in burlap that matched sacks from the farm.

Northcott and his mother fled to Canada, but they were quickly 
caught and sent back to California. Mama Northcott pleaded 
guilty to the Collins murder and received a life sentence, of 
which she would serve just 10 years.

Stewart Northcott�s trial for the murders of the headless 
Mexican and the Winslow brothers started on Jan. 11, 1929. �He�s 
lying,� the defendant screamed as Sanford gave the court his 
testimony. The boy described the night Northcott came home with 
a bucket containing the head of the Mexican. He told of the 
murders of the Winslow brothers, admitting that he struck the 
younger boy: �I hit him first with the ax because Stewart told 
me that if I didn�t he would kill me.�

Northcott insisted on cross-examining his nephew himself. When 
the judge allowed it, his attorneys quit, leaving the defendant 
on his own.

The trial descended into theater of the absurd, especially when 
Northcott got on the witness stand and grilled himself. The jury 
found him guilty.

As he awaited execution by hanging, Northcott amused himself by 
making lewd gestures at his jailers, sending police on wild 
goose chases, and cruelly taunting the mothers of his victims.

�Say a prayer for me,� were his last words before the trap door 
swung open and he plunged to his death at the end of a rope, 
after an agonizing 12-minute dangle, on Oct. 2, 1930.

Sanford Clark spent two years in reform school, then moved back 
to Canada. He served in the Army in World War II, married, and 
adopted two sons, wrote Anthony Flacco and Clark�s son, Jerry 
Clark, in a 2009 book on the case, �The Road Out of Hell.�

As for the town, not long after the execution, Wineville�s name 
was officially changed to Mira Loma, Spanish for �view of the 
hills.�

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