Location: An isolated poultry farm in Wineville (now Mira Loma), California .( 1926 to 1928) š
Story:
In the late 1920s, Gordon Northcott, a handsome but deeply disturbed young man, lured boys to his remote chicken farm with promises of work or adventure. There, he imprisoned, sexually assaulted, and brutally murdered them,often with an axe in the farm's incubator room. His teenage nephew Sanford Clark was forced to watch and assist. Among the victims was 9-year-old Walter Collins, whose disappearance had been mishandled by a corrupt LAPD. When Collins's mother Christine insisted a boy returned by police was not her son, she was institutionalized as "hysterical." š
Twist:
Northcott's crimes came to light after his sister alerted authorities. The farm yielded horrific evidence: bone fragments, blood-caked tools, and children's belongings buried in lime. Northcott was hanged in 1930. His mother, Sarah Louise, who participated in the murders, was imprisoned. Though Northcott never fully confessed, the case exposed police incompetence and cruelty. Christine Collins never gave up hope that Walter might still be alive; his body was never definitively identified. The town renamed itself Mira Loma to escape the infamy, but the tragedy endures as a stark lesson in evil's banality, and a mother's love that outlasted even the darkest of truths. š