Two Queens True Crime

When her son, Walter, failed to return home on March 10^th, 1928, after taking a trip to the cinema, Christine Ida Collins would begin a heart-breaking and lifelong search for him whilst also battling a LAPD Captain who was willing to go to extremes to save his and his department’s reputation. 

As the day began to draw to a close and Walter had still not appeared Christine, rightly, became worried and headed out to call on his friends’ houses, hoping that perhaps her 9 year old son had simply met up with one of them and lost track of time. However, at each house she visited she was given the same answer time and again, no, Walter was not there and no, nobody had seen him that day. After exhausting her door-to-door search, Christine went straight to the police and, to give them credit, they took her report very seriously and immediately began an intensive local hunt for the missing child. 

Many believe that the LAPD’s actions in the first few days were driven by the tragic case of Marianne Parker, a 12-year-old girl who had been abducted and murdered by her Father’s ex co-worker, William Hickman. Whilst Hickman was caught just days after her murder and sat in jail at the time of William’s disappearance, the police and the community were still reeling from its brutality. None of them wanted this awful crime to be repeated.

Despite the initial monumental efforts of the LAPD and the public to locate Walter, he could not be found. It was as though the boy had simply vanished from the face of the Earth. As the months passed the leads dried up and Christine began to push the search for her son to a national level, an understandable act but one that would bring more pressure and negative publicity to the LAPD. The relationship between them and Christine began to crumble.

The nationwide media coverage meant that more people were on the lookout for Walter, which was a great thing, however it also brought in more and more mistaken sightings, some well-intentioned, some not so much. But, five months after his disappearance, a sighting would be reported that was different from all of the rest, and this was because it came from Walter Collins himself. In DeKalb, Illinois, over 2000 miles away from Los Angeles, a boy matching his description told police that he was indeed Walter Collins. 

Understandably Christine was initially doubtful about this boy’s claim, how had her son ended up so far from home and how had nobody else recognised him whilst on this long journey? It’s not clear if an explanation was ever given to Christine about what had happened to her son over the five months he was missing but we do know that letters and photographs were exchanged between the two of them, and these were enough to convince her to pay for the boy’s transportation to Los Angeles. 

Yes, strangely, it was not the police’s responsibility to get Walter home safely, which probably could have been easily coordinated with the different departments, but it was the Mother’s, to the tune of $70, which today would be around $1100. However, what the LAPD were very happy to organise was a huge public reunion with media in attendance in order to document their success in finding Walter Collins. Sadly, it would not be the emotional reunion that Christine and the police were hoping for. Christine’s heart sank as soon as she set eyes on the boy ‘presented’ to her. It was not Walter.

Trying to remain calm and not ‘make a scene’, Christine pulled aside Captain J.J. Jones, the officer in charge of the investigation, as soon as she could and stated that this child was not hers. Now, J.J. did not want to hear this, he felt that Christine had been deliberately bringing shame onto him and his department throughout the investigation and now she was ruining his opportunity to sway public opinion on the LAPD. He stated that it had been some months since she had seen her son, and that Christine should take him home and ‘try the boy out’. 

So, Christine was a smart woman and she knew that trying to push back against the police Captain at this moment, in a public arena with media present, would gain her nothing, in fact it may well see her in trouble. She made the choice to return home with this stranger and spend the next couple of weeks gathering actual, physical proof that he was not Walter, which, she believed, would be impossible for Captain J.J. Jones to ignore. 

Three weeks later Christine Collins visited the police station with her ‘son’ in tow. She carried with her numerous statements from friends and family that all said, without doubt, this was not Walter Collins, alongside these there were also official dental records which showed irrefutable proof that this boy was not who he was saying he was.

At this juncture J.J. had two options; he could accept he made a little bit of a booboo, apologise, reopen the investigation into Walter’s disappearance and figure out who this mystery boy was, or he could bluff it out, double down and do something so incredibly horrific that we’re all still incredibly horrified 96 years later. Want to take a guess at what Captain J.J. Jones thought was his best option?

That’s right folks, he doubled down, he bluffed it out and he did something real bad. J.J. accused Christine of being a bad Mother, unable to recognise her own child, and he also accused her of deliberately bringing ridicule to the LAPD. With Christine refusing to back down in the face of his temper and ridiculous allegations, the police Captain was able to fall back onto a good ol’ favourite of the department when it came to dealing with ‘nuisances’.  He filed a ‘Code 12’ against Christine Collins and had her committed to the psychiatric ward of Los Angeles County Hospital. 

Yes, he had a woman sectioned because he couldn’t admit that he made a mistake. 

Now, we are in no way forgiving J.J. for his shocking actions but he at least decided to talk to the boy, which may have something to do with the fact that said boy was now stranded at the police station, with his supposed ‘Mother’ imprisoned in the hospital. It would only take a couple of hours for the boy to finally admit that he was not Walter Collins, but in fact Billy Fields, who upon being told that he greatly resembled the missing boy decided he could use this uncanny likeness to get to Hollywood. Despite his written confession, it would take another ten days for Christine to be released from the psychiatric ward. Rightfully so, Christine Collins did not simply go home and be grateful for her freedom, as the authorities were hoping, but immediately filed an unlawful imprisonment suit against the LAPD and Captain J.J. Jones. Finally the law fell on her side and J.J. was found guilty and ordered to pay $10,800, roughly $200,000 today. However, it then bounced right back out of her side as, despite several visits to the courts, she never received a cent.

Following Christine’s release and the shocking confession of Billy everyone began to ask the same question, where was Walter Collins? The missing boy had been almost forgotten by everyone, except his Mother, amongst the absolute chaos caused by J.J. Jones and his inability to be wrong. People had stopped looking out for him, the case had been officially closed, but Walter was still missing and a lot of time had been wasted. 

Despite the case being reopened and Christine pouring everything into looking for him, there simply weren’t any leads. It had already gotten pretty cold before Billy had begun his masquerade but now, with the year drawing to a close, any trail would be months old. However, Christine still held out hope of finding her son.

Tragically, before the year ended, Walter’s name would end up being connected to the horrific Wineville Chicken Coop murders. Whilst we won’t go into details here, partly because this is about Christine and partly because I don’t want to ruin your day, it appears that Walter fell victim to the gross Gordon Northcott and his equally as gross Mother, Sarah Northcott. 

Whilst both Sarah and Gordon Northcott admitted to killing Walter Collins at various points during their imprisonment, they would always retract their statements or change certain details in them, making them an unreliable source of information. However, Gordon’s nephew, Sanford Clark, who had also been a victim of horrendous abuse by his Uncle, confirmed that he had indeed met a boy calling himself Walter Collins on the infamous farm and that he had been killed there. Sanford not only repeatedly mentioned Walter in his statements at the time but would also name him in his book ‘The Road Out of Hell’ which was published in 2009. 

Sarah Northcott was officially charged with Walter’s murder on December 31^st 1928 due to her initial confession. There was no trial as she entered a plea of guilty, and she was sentenced to life imprisonment, being spared the death penalty because she was a woman. She was actually paroled in 1940 and died in 1944. I hope her life sucked. 

Gordon Northcott was never charged with Walter’s murder as his Mother had already be sentenced for it. Instead he was found guilty of three murders, that of the brothers Lewis and Nelson Winslow, and sadly an unidentified young Mexican boy. Northcott was hanged on October 2^nd1930, but not before he chose to torture Christine Collins by continually promising to tell her the truth regarding her son and then either cancelling their meetings when she had already arrived at the prison, telling her different stories or simply refusing to talk at all. Christine took Northcott’s unwillingness to commit to a story as hope that her son could still be alive. However, Sanford Clark would later say that this was exactly the kind of thing his Uncle would enjoy, knowing that whilst he could no longer physically torture a victim he could inflict pain both mentally and emotionally. He would have taken great pleasure in leaving Christine without an answer.

And what of Billy Fields, the boy whose lies not only brought false hope to Christine but also wasted so much of the investigators time? Well, he would have one more confession to make. Later, whilst in the hands of the juvenile authorities, he would admit to not being Billy Fields either, but actually Arthur Hutchens Jr., a 12-year-old runaway from Iowa. Arthur explained that he had fled his home in order to escape mistreatment by his unloving stepmother and had been on the road for about a month when he arrived in DeKalb, Illinois. When told of his resemblance to Walter Collins, and that the missing boy was from California, he saw a way to get himself far enough away that he would probably never be found.

Following his confession, Arthur was returned home and sent to the Iowa State Training School for Boys, a ‘rehabilitation programme’ for juvenile delinquents. In 1933, five years after Walter’s disappearance, he would admit that he owed Christine and the state of California an apology for his actions. Arthur Hutchens passed away in 1954 at just 35 years old.

Christine continued to search for her son for the rest of her life, never believing that he was dead despite the authority’s verdict and Sanford’s testimony. She passed away on December 8^th 1965, at the age of 75.