Infamous Chicken Coop Murders Stillfascinate

Some murders are so infamous that books are written, movies are made and, almost one hundred years later, people are still morbidly fascinated with the details. Such is the case of Gordon Stewart Northcott and the most infamous murder case in the history of Jurupa Valley — the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders.

Gordon Northcott was born in Canada in 1906 to George and Louise Northcott. Gordon had one sister named Winnifred who was sixteen or seventeen years older than him. His sister married the same year that he was born. Between the two births, Louise Northcott had five other pregnancies, only one of which resulted in a child that lived for any length of time. That little boy, Willie, died when he was just five years old. It was the traumatic loss of numerous children and, particularly, the devastating loss of Willie that may have at least partially driven Louise's unnatural attachment to her son Gordon. Gordon was her true love, far more than her husband, her daughter or her grandchildren. In her eyes, he could do no wrong and had to be protected at any cost.

In 1924, Gordon and his parents moved to Los Angeles. Gordon was approximately nineteen years old at the time. There has been some speculation that they moved because Gordon was already getting into trouble due to his desire for young boys. However, there is no proof that the family moved for that reason.

In the spring of 1926, George Northcott bought three acres of vacant land in Wineville, a rural area in Riverside County. The plan was for Gordon to start a chicken ranch on the property. By this point, Gordon's parents had to know that Gordon sexually abused boys. He was charged with mistreating a young boy in 1925, but the case was dismissed due to lack of evidence. Did his parents think that sending him to the rural area of Wineville would remove him from contact with young boys? Whatever his parents were thinking, the purchase of the Wineville property simply gave Gordon a more isolated place to satisfy his desires.

In the summer of 1926, before any improvements had been made to the Wineville property, Gordon decided to visit his older sister and her family in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, under the guise of needing someone to help him get the chicken ranch going. However, Gordon did not mention his need for help with the chicken ranch to his sister's family. Instead, he talked his thirteen-year-old nephew Sanford Clark into coming with him on a trip to Regina, the Saskatchewan province's capital. Sanford's parents agreed to let him go with his uncle. However, after the trip began, Gordon informed his nephew that they were not going to Regina. Instead, they were actually going to go to Los Angeles. After Sanford received some coaching from his uncle, the border crossing went without a hitch. Gordon had gotten Sanford into the United States illegally, and they were able to continue on to Southern California.

The pair stopped at George and Louise's house in Los Angeles before going on to the chicken ranch in Wineville. Later, Sanford testified that it was while they were staying with his grandparents that his uncle first molested him. Gordon continued to molest Sanford at least twice a week for the next two years.

Gordon and Sanford left Los Angeles about a week later and traveled out to the Northcott's Wineville property. At first, they slept in a tent while clearing the property of weeds and building the improvements. George, a trained carpenter, would come out from Los Angeles to help build the small four-room, wood-framed house. Over the next two years, other buildings were added to the property, including a garage, six chicken coops, a brooder house, chicken runs, a goat house, rabbit hutches and a small building to store grain.

One might think that a twenty-one-year-old man who was kidnapping and molesting young boys would keep a low profile at his chicken ranch so as not to attract the attention of his neighbors. But that was not Gordon Northcott's style. He was known in the Wineville and West Riverside areas as a man of "peculiar characteristics." Gordon was a quarrelsome person who swore out complaints against several people in petty justice court while residing in Wineville. He even managed to obtain a search warrant for a nearby ranch based on his allegations that tires and other things he said were missing from his property would be found there. However, a search of the ranch by local law enforcement did not turn up anything, and officers dropped the case. Gordon also had a suit filed against him by a local man who claimed that Gordon had sold him spoiled chicken feed.

Starting in late summer 1926, Sanford found himself in a peculiar kind of hell with his uncle on the ranch in Wineville. Sanford was forced to do most of the work on the ranch, which included feeding and watering the animals and cleaning up after them, as well as cooking for Gordon. Sanford never knew what might set off his uncle's terrible temper, which would result in a beating with anything Gordon was able to lay his hands on. Occasionally, about ten or twelve times, as Sanford later testified, Gordon left the ranch in search of a young boy to molest. The boy would be brought to the ranch, blindfolded, and Gordon would send Sanford out of the house while he had his way with the new boy. An hour or two later, Gordon would take the boy away and release him. For over a year, this was Gordon's modus operandi.

Something changed on February 1, 1928. Gordon returned to the ranch and told Sanford that he had murdered a young Mexican man. Gordon had the man's severed head in a bucket, which he showed Sanford. The headless body had been dumped by the side of a road in Puente, where it was discovered the following day. Gordon made up an elaborate story about the killing and forced Sanford to memorize it. It had to do with hiring the young man to do work on the farm and the fellow threatening Gordon with a knife, forcing Gordon to shoot and kill the man in self-defense. Actually, the more truthful statement is probably the one that Gordon said later — that the man "knew too much." Sanford later testified that the Mexican man was never on the Wineville property and was not killed there. Unfortunately, the young man known as the "headless Mexican" in the press was never identified.

On March 10, nine-year-old Walter Collins disappeared from his home in the Lincoln Heights area of Los Angeles. Walter and his mother were customers in a grocery store where Gordon Northcutt had been employed for a short period of time, and it is thought that Walter met Northcutt there. Northcott kidnapped Walter and took him to the Wineville property. Instead of keeping Walter for just an hour or two, Gordon kept Walter locked up in a chicken coop on the ranch for about a week. Then Northcott got a call from his mother who told him she was coming out to the ranch that day. Louise arrived and, suspicious of what her son was hiding in the chicken coop, went out and found Walter Collins imprisoned there.

Louise was quite perturbed with her son, as little Walter knew Gordon and could identify him to police. She insisted that the problem be dealt with. In order to prevent anyone from going to the police, she forced both Gordon and her grandson Sanford to participate in the killing. She thought that none of the three could go to the police because incriminating the others would incriminate themselves just as much. Each took a turn hitting Walter in the head with the blunt end of an ax. He was buried in a grave dug inside one of the chicken coops.

Two months later, at about 10:00 p.m. on May 16, Gordon showed up at the ranch with Lewis and Nelson Winslow. The boys, twelve and ten, respectively, had been picked up near their home in Pomona as they walked home at about 8:30 p.m. from a Model Yacht Club meeting. Lewis had a book he had checked out from the Pomona Library with him that night. Gordon imprisoned the boys in one of the chicken coops on the ranch for about a week. Sanford was forced to bring them food and water and empty their chamber pot.

On or around May 25, Gordon announced to Sanford that it was time to kill the brothers. After an unsuccessful attempt to use ether to kill one of the boys, Lewis and Nelson were each struck over the head with the blunt side of an ax head, the same ax used to kill Walter Collins. Gordon struck the first blow on both boys but forced to Sanford to once again participate in the murders so that he wouldn't go to police. Obviously, Gordon had learned that lesson from his mother very well. Gordon also threatened Sanford that if he did not participate, Gordon would kill him as well. In spite of multiple blows from both Gordon and Sanford, both boys were still alive when they were placed in a grave and buried, again in one of the chicken coops.

The demented life Gordon had created at the Wineville ranch began to come apart in August. During the two years that Sanford was his uncle's captive, Gordon made him write letters home full of lies about going to school, having friends and the wonderful life he was living in Wineville. Jessie, Sanford's nineteen-year-old sister, became suspicious that her younger brother was not going to school because her brother's letters did not improve in grammar, spelling and composition over the two years that he had lived with his uncle. We don't know if she shared her suspicions with her mother, but in any case, it was young Jessie who made the trip to California to check up on Sanford. Jessie later said that she had been saving money to make a trip to California, having always wanted to see the state, particularly after Sanford moved there. She would find that neither her uncle nor her grandmother were particularly happy to see her.

Jessie came by ship down the coast, sending a telegram ahead announcing the time of her arrival. When no one was there at the dock to meet her, she made her way to a hotel, where she looked through a phone book and found the phone number of the hospital where her grandmother worked. Louise told her to stay at the hotel, and Gordon would come to get her. Gordon finally appeared the next morning and reluctantly took her to the Wineville ranch. Sanford was very happy to see his older sister, but Jessie was not pleased by what she saw. She could tell by Sanford's hands that he was working very hard, and she felt he looked thin and pale. She wanted to talk to Sanford, but Gordon never left them alone.

On the second night of her visit to the Wineville ranch, Jessie took matters into her own hands. After Jessie heard Gordon fall asleep, she snuck over to Sanford's bed, crawled in beside him and pulled the covers up over their heads to muffle the sound of their whispers. Jessie began asking her younger brother questions and finally got the full story of the lack of schooling, the beatings and the molestation. Sanford told her he was too afraid to try to get away and explained about the murders that had happened on the ranch.

After a week in what must have seemed like a house of horrors, Jessie went to Los Angeles to stay the rest of her visit at her grandparents' house. During those two weeks, she plotted and schemed to get her brother away from their uncle. She managed to help Sanford escape while they were at the Los Angeles house. During the few days he was hidden away, Gordon and Louise became very concerned. One day, they put a load of firewood in Gordon's car and drove off to the Wineville ranch. When Jessie asked her grandfather what they were doing he flat out told her they were going to get rid of evidence. Apparently Louise and Gordon wanted George to go with them, but he declined to help them with "their dirty work." It was during this trip to the ranch that Gordon and his mother dug up the three bodies of the boys that had been buried in the chicken coops. The wood was probably to be used to burn the bodies. While some bits of evidence were later found at the ranch, Gordon and his mother never told where they had disposed of what was left of the boys' bodies.

Sanford had been moved from his first hiding place to stay with a family that was friends of his grandfather. Unfortunately, after Gordon and Louise came back from the ranch, Gordon was in a tizzy. The next morning, he began arguing with George, scuffling with him, calling him names and threatening him with a gun. He began to threaten Jessie as well, and she ran out of the house. While she hid at the home of a neighbor who had befriended her, George admitted where Sanford was, and Gordon went and got him and took him back to the ranch.

Jessie, defeated in her efforts to get her brother away from the horrors of living with their uncle, returned to Canada in the middle of August. Gordon, realizing that the jig was probably up, began selling off everything he could at the Wineville ranch. Meanwhile, Jessie, upon her return to Canada, went to the American Counsel in Vancouver and swore out a statement that Sanford had been smuggled into the United States illegally, that he was being mistreated and that his life was in danger.

On August 30, the Los Angeles police department received a telegram from Canada asking them to find Gordon and investigate the accusation that he had smuggled Sanford into the United States illegally. They went to the Los Angeles house of George and Louise, spoke to them and made a report to the Immigration Service. The next day, August 31, two immigration inspectors arrived at the ranch around 11:00 a.m. Gordon saw them coming and ran off across the farm fields of Wineville. The inspectors searched the area for about two hours for Gordon and then gave up and took Sanford with them to Los Angeles.

After approximately two days in custody at the juvenile hall in Los Angeles, Sanford to begin to tell the story of his uncle and the Wineville ranch. On September 14, several police officers came to question Sanford. He told officers what had transpired out at the chicken ranch during the two years he had been there. When they heard about the murder of Walter Collins, they didn't know what to believe, as it had been a big news story. They put thirty photos of young boys on a table and asked Sanford to pick out the photo of the boy that had been murdered at the ranch. He picked the photo of little Walter. The officers then took Sanford out to the ranch, and as they searched the place, they found two rectangular holes in the floors of two of the chicken coops that had lime in them, as well as a cap that was soon identified by the father of the Winslow boys as little Nelson's. Needless to say, the police were beginning to believe Sanford's story of the horrors that went on at the ranch.

On the evening of September 14, Riverside County sheriff Clem Sweeters was called into the case by the Los Angeles detectives. He and three of his deputies went out to the property that same evening to discuss the situation with their colleagues from Los Angeles. A guard was placed at the ranch and would remain in place, twenty-four hours a day, until Northcott's trial was over.

The Riverside County Sheriff's Department began conducting a thorough search of the ranch the following day. This search continued for months and found evidence of the crimes committed there including axes with human blood on them, numerous small human bones, finger nails and toenails, a tooth, two five-foot-deep graves that were empty but smelled strongly of the bodies that had recently been removed from them, pieces of human skulls and a board with a drawing of a yacht in blue and red crayon.

George Northcott was arrested and held as a material witness soon after the gruesome finds were made at the Wineville ranch. He was sixty-two years old at the time, and authorities were still trying to determine if he had any part in the crimes. He was never charged with any part of the murders, even though authorities acknowledged that, at the very least, he knew of the murders after the fact.

Meanwhile, on September 1, the day after Sanford was taken into custody, Gordon, with the help of his father, fled to Vancouver, Canada. His mother followed him a few days later. They enlisted the help of Gordon's sister Winnifred, and she joined her fugitive mother and brother for at least part of their life on the lam. On September 18, mother and son finally went their separate ways. Louise boarded a train for Calgary, while Gordon took a train to a seaport town and boarded the steamship Sicamous.

Even when in his best interests, Gordon still found it impossible to keep a low profile. On the ship, he demanded a stateroom even though he was just taking a daytrip, and he paid for his trip with a one-hundred-dollar American bill. These actions caught the attention of the purser on the ship. Once the purser took a good look at Gordon, he realized that the man in front of him looked like the description of the fugitive that was all over the newspapers.

After the ship docked, the authorities were called, and an officer followed Gordon onto the train he was taking, which happened to be heading back to the United States. The officer sat down next to Gordon and accused him of being a wanted fugitive. Gordon at first denied this, but eventually admitted his identity. He was returned to Vancouver the following day.