Latest / True Crime California / TCC #22: The Wineville Chicken Coop Murders

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TCC #22: The Wineville Chicken Coop Murders · True Crime California

0:03
Speaker 1: Dark Cast Network. Come to the dark side of indie podcasts.
0:25
Are you tired of hearing about the Ted Bandys and
0:27
Jeffrey Amazon true crime podcasts?
0:30
Speaker 2: I thought, so, Who've got something just for you.
0:32
Speaker 1: I'm Pat and I'm Darcy and we are the hosts
0:35
of Pod of Terror, a true crime podcast that dives
0:38
into lesser known cases from around the world.
0:40
Speaker 2: Grab a glass of wine and join us every Thursday
0:43
as we discuss the most vile, despicable human beings on
0:46
the planet.
0:47
Speaker 1: It will be a dark and twisted journey. So don't
0:49
forget your drink. You're gonna need it. We're looking forward
0:52
to say in your next Thursday you knowing Noddy. Hey everyone,
1:05
welcome to True Crime California. I'm your host Cindy, and
1:09
I'm glad you're here. Hey, guys, welcome back to True
1:21
Crime California. It is November first, and we just had
1:24
Halloween and it was super super fun. I hope everybody
1:28
had a really great time.
1:29
Speaker 2: Really weird thing.
1:30
Speaker 1: We just moved back to North Hollywood from Burbank, hopefully
1:34
the last time we have to move in a very
1:35
very long time.
1:36
Speaker 2: And we got.
1:37
Speaker 1: Zero trigger treaders, which is totally totally wild. Last year,
1:42
we actually ran out of candy because we didn't think
1:45
our neighbor or no two years ago when we were
1:47
anyway whatever. We've had various levels of success with Triger treaders,
1:52
and this year we had zero. So now I have
1:54
two giant bags of candy, which I mean, I'm not
1:57
super mad about it, but it's not exactly good for me,
1:59
and it's going to be gone in like a week.
2:01
Watch anyway, Sorry, it's been a couple of weeks since
2:04
I've recorded. I think I'm just gonna have to post
2:06
these when I can, and hopefully it's enough to keep
2:08
everybody interested.
2:10
Speaker 2: I will say that one of the reasons.
2:11
Speaker 1: That this took so long is that for this case
2:14
that I'm going to cover, I read a whole last book,
2:17
which I've actually done before, but this was like a
2:19
really long book, and in addition to the book, I
2:22
went on like a really deep dive through articles and things,
2:25
because what I've noticed is a lot of news articles
2:28
and podcasts that cover this case they just do like
2:30
a really high level version. They don't really go into
2:33
any of the details, and it's a really twisted, really
2:36
fucked up case with a lot of really horrible but
2:39
interesting details. So I wanted to do more of a
2:42
deep dive, and I think I did. This may end
2:44
up being two parts, we'll find out, but anyway, let's
2:48
get started. I also want to call out I got
2:50
a new microphone. I talked to CJ at Dark Cast,
2:53
and maybe we decided like maybe the problem was the microphone.
2:55
Speaker 2: So we're going to see this one has like a.
2:57
Speaker 1: Gain on it, and I swear every time I even
2:59
like think about like swallowing, it's picking up. So I
3:02
turned the game all the way down and I'm really
3:04
just hoping that this is gonna have better sound for everybody.
3:06
I know some people are like, I don't want to
3:08
hear you swallow.
3:10
Speaker 2: I don't want you to hear me swallow. So let
3:12
me know if this sounds any better.
3:13
Speaker 1: I know I get lots of comments on Spotify because
3:16
they let you leave comments.
3:17
Speaker 2: I appreciate them.
3:18
Speaker 1: I appreciate all the really positive ones, and the ones
3:20
will let me know what's going on with sound quality
3:22
and other stuff.
3:23
Speaker 2: So keep it up.
3:23
Speaker 1: Please let me know how this sounds. But hopefully this
3:25
is like much much better. Anyway, I'm gonna do the
3:29
case of the Wineville Chicken coop murders. This is actually
3:33
an old timey case. I don't do a lot of
3:35
old timey cases. I really, I feel like I've been
3:37
sticking to like the seventies, eighties, and nineties mostly. But
3:41
this is a really interesting case and really really twisted,
3:44
so be warned it's not an easy case. This takes
3:48
place in Wineville, California, which is actually no longer called Wineville,
3:53
basically because of this case. It's now called Miuralma, and
3:57
it's in like the Greater Los Angeles area, but they
4:00
strayed up changed the name after this all happened.
4:03
Speaker 2: So this case takes.
4:03
Speaker 1: Place mostly in nineteen twenty six through nineteen twenty eight,
4:06
so in the mid nineteen twenties. And it's one of
4:09
the most terrible stories of child sexual assault and murder
4:13
I've ever read. And I wanted to also note that
4:17
a really interesting tidbit that I read all over the
4:20
place about this is that the man perpetrating these horrid
4:23
crimes was covered like neck to ankles in body hair
4:29
that was so thick it looked like he was wearing
4:32
full length pajamas whenever he was standing naked, Like there
4:37
are people that have a lot of body hair, but
4:39
this was like notable, Like there was something I don't
4:43
know if we want to say wrong. I mean, there
4:44
was a lot wrong with this man, potentially also in
4:47
terms of his hair growth. So that just adds like
4:50
this extra layer of like horrific, crazy scariness to this
4:54
already awful tail. So, like I said, be warned, this
4:58
is not a case for the faint of heart. So
5:01
I'm just gonna I'm just gonna jump in again. I
5:03
hope everybody had a happy Halloween, and I'm very sorry
5:05
about what I'm about to do to you all. On
5:09
March tenth, nineteen twenty eight, nine year old Walter Collins
5:14
was given ten cents by his mother, Christine, so he
5:17
could go see a movie at the local cinema. He
5:20
lived with his mother in Lincoln Park, which is near
5:22
downtown Los Angeles but a little bit on like the
5:25
Pasadena side. His father, also named Walter, was in prison
5:29
for robbery and was currently in San Quentin up in
5:31
the Bay Area. When Walter didn't come home after five hours,
5:36
his mother, Christine, called police to report him missing. Now,
5:40
normally the next thing I would say is that police
5:42
don't take this seriously and they bungle everything and believe me,
5:45
we will get there. But at first police really did
5:48
take this very seriously and began a large search for
5:51
the boy. The reason they took the seriously is because
5:53
they were already under terrible scrutiny for multiple cases of
5:57
corruption because apparently something's never changed, So they were very
6:01
motivated to solve this case and find Walter. They followed
6:05
up on a ton of leads, including people saying they
6:07
saw Walter with a quote foreign couple as well as
6:10
with a single man walking down the street. Unfortunately, all
6:13
of these leads went nowhere. Walter Senior suggested from his
6:17
prison cell that maybe one of his fellow inmates had
6:20
arranged something to happen to his son in retaliation for
6:23
his being a prison snitch. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on
6:28
how you look at it, this lead also went nowhere.
6:32
Now that they had exhausted all leads, the police were
6:34
getting desperate and Christine Collins, Walter's mother, was not letting
6:38
them off the hook. Christine, who spent pretty much all
6:42
of her time when she wasn't working looking for her son,
6:45
was obviously beside herself that had to keep working and
6:48
doing her daily life, as she was the only one
6:50
supporting herself and her family. Despite this, she always made
6:54
time to search for her son, and she kept Walter's
6:57
name in the news and stayed on the police every
6:59
day for five months. Finally she received news that her
7:04
son had been found in a small town in Illinois
7:07
and would be coming home on a train in just
7:09
a day or two. This was amazing news. Christine waited
7:15
at the station for her son to arrive, but when
7:17
he did, her heart sank. It was not her son now.
7:22
When she told police as much, they weren't super happy
7:25
with that response. The officer in charge, JJ Jones, straight
7:28
up refused to believe her and said to quote, try
7:30
the boy out at home for a few days, you know,
7:33
like a pair of shoes. Like if you don't like him,
7:35
you go ahead and bring them back, except with some
7:37
random child while hers is still missing.
7:40
Speaker 2: And to be clear, this wasn't really a suggestion so much.
7:42
Speaker 1: As a command. So Christine, feeling helpless and still very
7:45
much missing her son, did as she was told. But
7:48
despite feeling like her hands were tied, Christine was nothing
7:51
if not a determined mother, and she set out to
7:53
prove that this child was not hers. First, she went
7:57
to the dentist and got dental records for her action.
8:00
Ual son then had this new quote unquote Walter whoever
8:03
he was, get his teeth checked. Obviously the records did
8:07
not match.
8:09
Speaker 2: Next, she had.
8:09
Speaker 1: Several friends and family write out statements saying that this
8:12
child was most certainly not Walter. She did this over
8:15
the course of like two weeks or so, and from
8:18
there went back to the police to tell JJ Jones
8:20
that she had proof this child was not hers. This
8:24
motherfucker acted exactly as expected and totally lost his shit,
8:27
making this about him and his reputation rather than trying
8:30
to actually do his job. He told Christine he wouldn't
8:33
be talked to that way, not by a woman at least,
8:35
and accused her of being hysterical. Now we could go
8:39
on about the origins of that word for an hour,
8:41
but we'll just say that this man was a sexist asshole,
8:43
which was totally of the time. He then had her
8:46
locked up in a mental hospital where she was held
8:49
as a prisoner for ten days for being hysterical for
8:53
saying that this child who was not her son was
8:56
not her son, And to be clear, the only reason
8:58
she was released was because the the boy finally admitted
9:01
he was not in fact her ten year old son Walter.
9:04
He was instead a twelve year old runaway who had
9:07
been told a few times that he resembled the missing
9:09
Walter and decided to capitalize on that by posing as
9:12
him so that he could come to Hollywood and meet
9:14
his favorite Western movie stars. Unbelievable. Christine Collins went on
9:23
to sue the police and JJ Jones specifically, and was
9:26
awarded ten thousand dollars by the court, which was a
9:29
very large amount of money in those days. Unfortunately, she
9:33
never saw a dime and JJ Jones was of course
9:35
only suspended for I think about four months before going
9:38
back to work and life as usual. As for Walter,
9:42
what actually happened to him. In nineteen oh six, Sarah
9:48
Louise Northcott had just discovered she was pregnant, and she
9:51
was very unhappy about this. She had just lost her
9:55
infant son to illness and as a result had sunk
9:58
into a deep depression. News of a new baby on
10:01
the way only enraged her, as it felt like some
10:03
sort of sick joke. When her baby boy, Gordon Stuart Northcott,
10:09
was born, just a few months later in Saskatchewan, Canada.
10:12
It was all she could do to make sure that
10:14
the infant didn't also die. She gave him no love,
10:18
nothing extra, just food and a warm place to sleep.
10:22
Her husband was away working more often than not, and
10:25
her older daughter was still young, so her attentions were
10:27
divided anyway, but beyond that, she felt nearly nothing for
10:31
this new baby. Now, as a note, a lack of
10:35
love for babies can actually lead to death and likely
10:38
creates lifelong mental trauma, which is crazy that can happen
10:41
to a child so young, but it does, and even
10:45
knowing this, Sarah Louise did not care. Weirdly, this changed
10:53
after about a year. They say that losing a child
10:57
is worse than losing a parent, a sibling, or a
10:59
close friend, and I both believe that and am happy
11:02
to take their word for it.
11:04
Speaker 2: Now.
11:04
Speaker 1: Often parents will become detached as a way of protecting
11:06
themselves from the severe trauma of their loss, turning off
11:10
their brains and sort of just going through the motions now. Luckily,
11:13
after a time, most people begin to recover from this,
11:16
at least, you know, for the most part, like the
11:18
most severe parts of their emotional trauma and they can
11:21
get back to some semblance of a normal life. And
11:24
this was the case for Sarah Louise, who from now
11:26
on we're just going to refer to as Louise because
11:29
apparently that's what she went by. Once she came out
11:32
of her fog. Her son Gordon, who also went by
11:34
his middle name of Stuart, became the apple of her eye.
11:38
Speaker 2: Now. To be clear, normal can mean a lot of things.
11:41
Speaker 1: For Louise, it meant being a domineering wife and mother
11:44
with a son who could do no wrong in her
11:46
eyes and therefore no wrong at all, while she.
11:50
Speaker 2: Treated both of her children like little royalty.
11:52
Speaker 1: It was really over the top with Stuart, who learned
11:54
from a young age how to manipulate people to get
11:56
what he wanted, and also learned that even if he
11:58
was in the wrong, mom would always make it better.
12:02
As Stuart grew up, it became clear that he was gay,
12:04
which I don't think his mom cared about, but people
12:07
in the area, of course, would not like that, so
12:09
it was kept a secret as best as the family
12:11
could manage. Stuart's father, George, was so beaten down by
12:15
his wife that he barely said a word or had
12:17
any involvement in Stuart's young life. So again, very dominating mother,
12:22
absent father, little prince. You know Stuart here, I think
12:27
we're painting a good picture of what his young life
12:30
looked like and how he was raised to be. Now,
12:35
the family lived in British Columbia, Canada. That's where Stuart
12:39
was born and where he spent most of his young life.
12:42
Something strange happened, though, and he, his mother, and his
12:45
father all moved to California after Stuart did quote something
12:48
to upset the neighbors regarding their children in nineteen twenty four,
12:51
when Stuart was not yet eighteen. Now, Stuart's older sister,
12:55
Winnie was already out of the house. She was married,
12:58
she had a couple of kids, so she stayed behind
13:00
in Canada while the rest of the family went to California.
13:04
Winnie and Stuart were very close, possibly too close in fact,
13:08
which is one of the many rumors kind of swirling
13:12
around about him that I couldn't confirm or deny. But
13:14
I did want to mention it because the way that
13:17
they interact, especially later on, is pretty telling, and both
13:21
were very similar in their dispositions, charming but scary, cunning,
13:26
manipulative and Winnie, like her mother, was domineering and controlling.
13:30
So anyway, the family moved to Los Angeles, and shortly thereafter,
13:33
in nineteen twenty six, Stuart convinces his parents to buy
13:36
him a chicken farm. His reasoning is it's time for
13:40
him to make his own way now being nineteen, but
13:42
in reality, Stuart was looking for a place where he
13:44
could hide himself away from the world and do horrible
13:48
things to helpless children. His parents unfortunately agreed, and he
13:53
moved on to the farmland in Wineville, California, now known
13:57
as Mari Loma. Before he did this, though, he went
14:00
up to Canada to visit his sister Winnie, and also
14:03
to bring his nephew, Sandford back with him. Sandford was
14:07
a small, meek, twelve or thirteen year old boy who
14:11
was used to being beaten for talking out of turn
14:13
or just because his mother felt like it. Again, his
14:15
mother was very controlling and domineering, and like her mother,
14:18
would give Stuart anything and everything he wanted. So it's
14:22
not clear, at least from what I read, if Winnie
14:25
is equally manipulative as Stuart and just really likes him
14:29
because they're one and the same, or if Stuart had
14:31
her wrapped around his finger just like he had his
14:33
mother wrapped around his finger as well. It's hard to tell,
14:37
but anyway, their dynamic was very, very strange and borderline inappropriate,
14:42
if not inappropriate. But regardless of whether or not we
14:46
can confirm or deny these rumors, all of this is
14:49
to say that when Stuart showed up on her doorstep
14:52
asking to take one of her young sons across the country,
14:56
out of the country to another country illegally, no less yes,
15:00
she of course said yes. Now she had two sons,
15:03
one was a little bit younger than Sandford, and that's
15:06
who Stuart originally wanted. Weirdly, she put her foot down
15:09
and said no, because she liked that son much more
15:12
than she liked Sandford. So instead she said, you can
15:14
take Sandford. I don't care, get him out of my
15:16
fucking house. We can't afford him, you know. His dad
15:19
put up a fight and was like, I don't want
15:20
you to take my son. He's thirteen, twelve, thirteen, something
15:22
like that, And she's like, well, you don't work enough
15:24
to afford to keep him, so unless you suddenly can
15:27
come up with some money, this kid's going to California. Now,
15:31
Sandford me because he was was definitely not interested in
15:34
going with his horrible uncle, but he also knew he
15:36
had no choice, so after a day or two away
15:40
they go. The trip to California was filled with beatings
15:43
for Sandford if he spoke wrong, if he looked wrong,
15:47
if he didn't speak just because he was getting smacked
15:51
over the head, punched in the head, thrown on the ground,
15:56
really fucked up shit, just out of nowhere for no
15:58
reason from his own uncle. But it got really bad
16:02
once they got into Los Angeles. It was maybe the
16:05
second night they were there, still staying at Stuart's parents' house,
16:09
just you know, temporarily, when Sandford was raped by Stuart violently.
16:17
Once they moved to the farm, this became nearly a
16:20
daily occurrence. Sandford was forced to work all day on
16:23
the farm, tending to the chickens, digging ditches, cleaning, harvesting
16:27
and candling eggs, anything and everything the farm needed, and
16:31
at night, after his work was done, he was beaten
16:34
and raped by his uncle. He was also raped with
16:39
objects by his uncle, and there was a lot of
16:43
damage done to his body over this time as a.
16:46
Speaker 2: Result of this.
16:48
Speaker 1: Now, this specific situation went on for a few weeks,
16:51
maybe a couple of months, until they were able to
16:54
build a small shack with no electricity. So it wasn't
16:57
really like a house. I think they called it a house,
16:59
but it was a pretty small space. Sorry, you can
17:01
hear my dog's barking in the background. But before this
17:05
they had been just sleeping in a tent and all
17:08
of this horribleness was happening basically just outdoors. They also
17:13
built a barn and a few more coops for the chickens. Now,
17:16
once these bigger projects were done, it seemed Stuart's attention
17:19
turned to his real reason for even being on this
17:21
chunk of land. He would still violently assault Sandford nearly daily,
17:26
beating and raping him and seeming to get more violent
17:28
each time. But after these buildings were built, he would
17:31
also leave the property for a few hours at a time. Now,
17:35
he started doing this after he knew that he had
17:37
had Sandford so beaten down and scared that he wouldn't
17:42
leave and he wouldn't tell anyone. And again, Stuart is
17:45
like a master manipulator, and he's been manipulating people his
17:48
entire life, with pretty good success, so he knows when
17:54
he can leave without being in fear of Sandford telling someone. Right,
17:59
So he's got a really good sense for how Sandford's
18:02
going to react. Now, Sandford would be left there to
18:05
read or do farm work, and after a few weeks
18:07
when Stuart came back, he.
18:08
Speaker 2: Brought someone with him.
18:10
Speaker 1: We still aren't sure exactly who this child was, but
18:13
we do know that he was a migrant farm worker,
18:15
probably around fourteen or so, and that he came willingly
18:18
to Stuart's farm. He was probably offered work. Sandford, unfortunately,
18:23
immediately knew what was going to happen to this poor boy,
18:26
but he was forbidden from being in the same room
18:28
with Stuart and the boy, and had to instead hear
18:31
the horrible screams, pleading, and crying that came from this
18:34
boy for hours the first night that he was there.
18:37
This created another kind of trauma for Sandford, hearing the sounds.
18:40
He knew he himself also made well being attacked and
18:43
having to be there while his uncle raped and beat
18:45
another child while not being able to do a thing
18:48
about it. Now, this boy, whoever he was, remained on
18:51
the farm for a few weeks, chained up in one
18:53
of the coops. Sandford had to bring him food, but
18:56
was not able to help him beyond that for fear
18:58
of you know, being beaten killed for trying to help
19:02
the boy. After a few weeks of this, nightly terrors
19:05
Sandford himself had experienced but now only heard from another room.
19:09
Finally Stuart left with the boy and when he came back,
19:13
he came back alone. We now know that this boy
19:21
was murdered and dumped by Stuart, but at the time
19:25
Sandford hoped against hope that the boy had been let go.
19:29
Unfortunately that was not the case. But you know, he's
19:32
twelve or thirteen years old, he's really just hoping for
19:34
the best. From here, a pattern emerged over the next
19:37
eighteen months, starting in mid nineteen twenty six and going
19:41
until nineteen twenty eight. Every few weeks, Stuart would find
19:45
another boy, bring him to the property, torture and rape him,
19:49
and then the boy would disappear after a few weeks.
19:52
Every victim was a migrant worker, and this was unfortunately
19:55
a very smart move by Stuart. Despite being as young
19:59
as you know, twelve year years old. A lot of
20:00
these boys were in la without their families. They were
20:04
just there coming up from Mexico trying to get work,
20:07
and would rarely speak to their parents, so even if
20:10
they went missing, this wouldn't be noticed for a long time,
20:13
and after they were found to be gone, this wasn't
20:16
a big deal to the police. There wasn't a lot
20:18
their families could do, and the cops didn't really give
20:20
a shit because these aren't American citizens. They're just you know,
20:24
boys from Mexico. And back then, I mean, people don't
20:27
care nowadays, imagine what it was like back then. Sandford
20:32
later said that this pattern of abuse gave him a
20:35
sort of sick relief, which he of course felt extremely
20:38
guilty about. He knew that any night another boy was
20:42
tortured was a night off for him, and to be clear,
20:45
he was still being beaten and assaulted multiple times a week,
20:48
but far less than he had been when he first
20:50
came to the farm and was the only boy there.
20:53
In the eighteen months this went on, Sandford later estimated
20:56
around twenty boys had been brought to the farm in
20:59
this manner, which is absolutely fucking crazy. Finally, in nineteen
21:04
twenty eight, Stuart, who loved getting away with these crimes,
21:07
decided to kick things up a notch, because don't all
21:09
psychopaths do that eventually, which is great because then they
21:13
get caught. Stuart had previously worked at a grocery store
21:16
in the area before he conned his parents into buying
21:18
him a chicken farm, and while he was there he
21:20
met many families in the area, including a woman, Christine,
21:24
who had a young son, Walter. If these names sound
21:28
familiars because they're from the beginning of this story, Christine
21:33
would often send Walter to the store on his own
21:35
to get her groceries, so by the age of nine,
21:38
he already knew many of the people in the community,
21:41
which included Stuart the grocer, and that's why on March tenth,
21:47
nineteen twenty eight, when Stuart happened to see Walter, it
21:50
didn't take much to get him to come with him
21:52
back to his chicken farm by promising to take him
21:54
to his quote ranch to ride some horses.
21:58
Speaker 2: Pretty quickly after they arrived.
22:00
Speaker 1: Realized there were no horses and he'd been had, but
22:03
unfortunately by that time it was too late. Stuart threatened Walter,
22:08
then tied him up and abused him horrifically. I actually
22:11
read a book on this crime that was written by
22:13
Sandford's son, and it turned my stomach many many times.
22:18
It's really graphic and horrible, and it all comes from
22:21
Sandford's memories, which is terrifying. Now the details of how
22:25
these little boys were raped and beaten, also young and
22:29
scared and in so much pain, and the way that
22:31
it's described, it's just very, very difficult to digest. So
22:34
we're just gonna leave it there and say that this
22:37
went on for weeks at least, which is what makes
22:40
the beginning of the story so frustrating, because the police
22:42
could have found Walter potentially and could have saved him,
22:45
but instead they locked up his mother and tried to
22:47
force her to adopt some random fucking child. Anyway, according
22:51
to Sandford, who again also endured the trauma on nearly
22:54
a daily basis, Walter was a tough kid and was
22:57
able to endure what he did because he thought, as
22:59
did Sandford, that he would eventually be freed. Now, again,
23:03
Sandford didn't know what was happening to these boys, but
23:06
his hope was that they were being let go, and
23:09
I think he expected this would be the case for Walter,
23:11
specifically because Walter knew Stuart, so Stuart's picking a person,
23:19
a victim that knew him, And to Sandford, that was crazy,
23:24
and it's like the only option he has is to
23:27
let him go because if you kill somebody, you know,
23:29
police are gonna trace it back to you. They're gonna
23:31
know that you saw him. You're gonna be a suspect.
23:34
It's too dangerous. So his thinking was that, you know,
23:38
Stuart's gonna scare Walter into just doing whatever he wants
23:42
and not telling anyone. And in Sandford's mind, this is
23:44
possible because Sandford was scared into not telling anyone. Sandford
23:49
was was, you know, in brief contact with his family
23:52
this whole time. He didn't go to school or have
23:55
a job, but he was like in touch with his family.
23:58
Speaker 2: He didn't say a word.
23:59
Speaker 1: So for him, he thought, you know, maybe the same
24:02
thing was gonna happen. So he reasoned that Stuart would
24:05
be too afraid of being caught to kill Walter, so
24:08
instead he would just scare the shit out of him.
24:10
Now again, you know, it's a nice thought, but sadly
24:14
more of a pipe dream than anything. However, even knowing
24:18
this poor young child will die, you may still be
24:21
very surprised as to how it all went down.
24:23
Speaker 2: You see, Stuart was trying to.
24:25
Speaker 1: Get himself an alibi for Walter and invited his mother
24:28
to his farm to look after the chickens while he
24:30
and Sandford left for a day or two. He was
24:33
gonna leave Walter tied up in a coop and after
24:36
likely kill him, but only after he could say he
24:38
had been out of town when Walter was killed. Unfortunately
24:42
for him, his mommy overbearing as she was snooped around
24:46
and found Walter tied up in the chicken coop. Now
24:50
you're gonna think, oh, thank god, a sane person has
24:53
entered the room. But alas, Jewist's behavior came from somewhere,
24:57
and it was cultivated somewhere as well, and both of
24:59
these places where his childhood home and his mother Louise.
25:03
Now Louise here was extremely angry, of course, but Stuart
25:07
began crying and whimpering, telling her he could never lie
25:09
to her and that he just quote lost control. She
25:12
was having none of it and immediately jumped in to
25:16
cover up mode. She insisted the poor child must be killed,
25:20
and not just by Stuart, it had to be by
25:23
all three of them, herself, Stuart and Sandford, so that
25:27
he couldn't go to the police, So that night, while
25:31
this poor tortured little soul slept, the three of them
25:33
crept into his pen and, thankfully before he is able
25:36
to wake up, bash him over the head with the
25:39
blunt end of an axe. They each took turns doing
25:42
this repeatedly until the boy was dead, and it said
25:45
that Stuart continued to beat him well after he was dead,
25:48
just because he's a sadistic fuck. Now I want to
25:51
pause the story for a second here and go back
25:53
a couple of months in time before Walter is murdered,
25:57
before he's abducted, to talk about something that. Had I
26:01
talked about it before, it probably wouldn't have been as
26:03
shocking that Walter had died, even though the fact that
26:06
he was made to be killed by Stuart's mother is
26:09
pretty fucking crazy.
26:10
Speaker 2: Now.
26:11
Speaker 1: Prior to this abduction and murder, at one point, Stuart
26:15
and Sandford went over to Stuart's parents' house and Stuart said,
26:19
I have something I have to confess to you. He
26:21
then goes on to tell his parents about how he
26:23
had just had to murder a man in self defense. Now,
26:27
Luis and George are like, what on earth are you
26:30
talking about, and Stuart's ready. He'd already coached Sandford in
26:34
a story that he had to make up about this
26:36
man attacking them. So when asked, you know what the
26:40
hell happened, Sandford goes, oh, this man attacked him and
26:42
he had to kill him, and dah dah, da da dah.
26:45
Then when his parents are like, well, what'd you do
26:47
with the body, he produces only the head of this
26:50
poor man, as he had removed it from his body
26:53
and put it in a bucket. Now, prior to going
26:56
to his parents' house and claiming self defense, he had
26:59
actually brought the head home to Sandford and shocked him
27:04
with it. Said, Oh, I have something in a bucket
27:05
for you. Sandford looks in the bucket, it's a severed
27:08
fucking head. He then also makes Sandford carry the bucket,
27:12
and before going.
27:12
Speaker 2: To his parents' home.
27:13
Speaker 1: You know, he's laughing gleefully while Sandford literally lost his
27:17
lunch on the ground looking at this thing. So, dude
27:21
is one sick fuck.
27:23
Speaker 2: Now.
27:23
Speaker 1: His mother, of course, helped cover this up for him,
27:25
and his father simply sat quietly saying nothing, though clearly
27:28
deeply troubled, but also you know, cut down by his
27:31
overbearing wife. So in a way, Stuart had laid the
27:34
groundwork for something like this, and apparently it was the
27:37
smart thing to do. Anyway, She made Sandford help kill
27:41
this poor boy, then made him dig his grave, then
27:45
dump him right there in the coop and cover him
27:48
with dirt. Louise then left, but not until telling her son,
27:53
no more boys, who know you?
27:58
Speaker 2: She's fucking crazy. Just a few short.
28:01
Speaker 1: Months later, on May sixteenth, nineteen twenty eight, twelve year
28:04
old Louis Winslow, who went by Louie, and his younger
28:08
brother Nelson, who was only ten, went missing while out
28:12
in their hometown of Pomona. They were on their way
28:16
home from some sort of club meeting and met Stuart,
28:18
who they possibly knew along the way. They both ended
28:21
up back at his farm, and we all know what
28:23
happened to them. They were held for almost exactly a
28:26
week and forced to write letters home to their frantic
28:28
parents telling them that they had run away but that
28:31
they were fine. After a week, Stuart decided to really
28:34
destroy Sandford psyche by telling him he was going to
28:37
let the boys go. Sandford even got so excited that
28:40
he went and told the boys so then, without warning,
28:43
Stuart clubbed Nelson over the head with the sharp end
28:45
of an axe. He then forced Sandford to kill Louis,
28:49
just moments after Louie had thanked him for helping him
28:52
stay alive, and he did this under the threat of
28:55
killing Sandford. They were then buried next to Walter's body
29:00
in a grave. Sandford had also been forced to dig.
29:04
Now after these murders, and pretty shortly after, in fact,
29:07
Stuart got really out of control when one day in
29:09
early summer he brought an entire family of six people
29:13
out to his farm. His intention was to kill the mother, father,
29:16
and two older sons, then enslave and abuse the two
29:20
younger sons until he was tired of them as well.
29:23
This family, the Dolls, had come out looking for work,
29:26
which Stuart had of course promised them. At this point,
29:29
Stuart believed he had fully broken Sandford and that the boy,
29:32
now fourteen, would do whatever he wanted him to do.
29:36
He had even said to him after he had helped
29:37
kill Walter, now you're really one of the family, which
29:40
is so insane a thing to say, like completely fucking crazy. Now,
29:44
Fortunately for this family, Stuart was wrong, and on this day,
29:48
when he was told to distract the children. When Sandford
29:51
was told to distract the children so Stuart could handle
29:53
the parents, he said no. Stuart was furious, but there
29:58
was nothing he could do, and stead he beat Sandford
30:01
over the head with the blunt side of a shovel
30:02
and put him under the boards of the chicken coop
30:04
with a chain around his neck. Sandford spent the next few.
30:08
Speaker 2: Days in there.
30:09
Speaker 1: Unlikely he would have died were it not for his
30:11
older sister Jesse showing up out of the blue to.
30:14
Speaker 2: Come visit him.
30:15
Speaker 1: Now I don't think I had mentioned this previously, but
30:18
Sandford and his sister Jesse were very, very close, not
30:22
in an inappropriate way like Stuart and Winnie, but in
30:25
a brother and sister lee love kind of way, in
30:29
the right kind of way. In fact, for the nearly
30:32
two years Sandford had been gone, all Jesse did was
30:35
save up money to come visit him, and it took
30:37
her about eighteen months to do so. But here she was,
30:41
and I think at this point she's barely I think twenty,
30:43
so she'd been working and saving money from the moment
30:46
Sandford was made to leave home. Sandford later said her
30:50
arrival is certainly what saved him from dying in that
30:53
hole in the ground. He also obviously feared for his
30:56
sister's life, as Stuart had killed probably you know, over
30:59
twenty people at this point, including people he knew and Sandford.
31:03
You know, had he not stopped him, Stuart would have
31:05
killed an entire family of six. So Jesse is not safe,
31:09
but at least in that moment, her her presence had
31:13
saved Sandford. Anyway, Jesse arrives and, after a lot of
31:17
very weird back and forth, convinces or threatens Stuart's dad
31:21
into helping them escape after finally prying the details of
31:24
what was really going on at the farm out of Sandford. Now,
31:27
Sandford at first was refusing to talk to her about anything,
31:30
but Jesse knew him really well, so she knew that
31:33
something was very, very wrong. Finally, one night, while Stuart
31:37
was asleep, she convinced Sandford to tell her what was
31:40
going on, and she also saw that his underwear were
31:43
filled with blood because he was always bleeding because he
31:47
was always being attacked. Now, Unfortunately, even though Jesse had
31:53
planned this escape, Stuart found out and forced Jesse to
31:57
leave while making Sandford help him and his family sell
32:01
the farm and go pack up to go back to
32:03
Canada before Jesse told the police what was going on.
32:06
And I think the reason he didn't kill Jesse was
32:08
because too many people knew where she was. It was
32:10
like too obvious that he would have killed her, and
32:13
he thought that even if he let her go and
32:15
she told the police, they would still have a head
32:18
start to get back to Canada. So they picked up
32:22
the farm and left him in the dust, promising to
32:25
come back, but obviously never doing so. So they take
32:27
Sandford back to the pig farm or pick farm, chicken farm,
32:30
it's always a pig farmer. People die, but anyway, they
32:32
take him back to the chicken farm, they have him
32:34
pack everything up, and then the family leaves, leaving him
32:37
on the farm in the middle of nowhere by himself. Meanwhile,
32:41
his sister, Jesse, had in fact made it back to
32:44
Canada and alerted the authorities after Sandford never came to
32:47
meet her after she escaped. So Sandford had told her
32:50
I will escape as well, I'll meet you up in Seattle,
32:54
but he never came. Had he come, maybe she wouldn't
32:57
have told the authorities. But he never showed up, and
33:00
she was so worried about him she couldn't help but
33:02
tell the authorities because she.
33:03
Speaker 2: Thought maybe he was dead.
33:05
Speaker 1: So they arrived at the farm about a week after
33:06
Stuart and the family had fled to Canada, and Sandford
33:09
was there alone, trying to survive off the little food
33:12
that they had left behind. Now, pretty quickly the police,
33:16
you know, they bring him in, they kind of find
33:19
out what's going on. They start questioning him, and at
33:23
first Sandford is very very cagey. You know, he's afraid
33:26
because he did kill these people. He was a part
33:29
of it. You know that he's going to get in
33:31
so much trouble. But even more so, he's afraid that
33:34
his uncle is going to hurt him. He's afraid that
33:37
somehow his uncle is going to get to him and
33:40
he's gonna hurt him. Now, for a change, for once,
33:44
the police actually do something right, and they bring in
33:46
some heavy hitters, some people who have really dealt with
33:49
things like this, who have worked with children, who understand
33:53
child abuse. And the main guy that comes in basically
33:56
convinces Sandford to tell him what happened, and in return,
34:00
and Sandford is seen as a victim. He's not seen
34:03
as an accomplice, because obviously he's not, you know, which
34:06
is also what he was really afraid of. So eventually
34:11
Sandford gives them the whole story. He takes them out
34:14
to the farm, and one thing I should tell you
34:16
is that right before the family left Sandford there alone,
34:21
they dug up the bones of the murdered boys and
34:24
moved them to an undisclosed location. These bones have never
34:29
been found, but luckily they didn't do such a good job,
34:33
and when police went to kind of redig up the
34:36
grave sites, they found bone fragments from each of the
34:40
three little boys. Now, as to the other kids who
34:43
had been murdered and buried off site, there's no proof
34:47
of that, which is why when you look at these
34:51
when you look at this case, you know, it's listed
34:53
as him having three victims or four, I guess because
34:56
of the headless person. But then it's also listed you know,
35:00
twenty plus because even though there's not proof of it,
35:04
we have you know, Sandford's testimony as to kind of
35:08
what was going on, and it's probably very likely, you know, unfortunately,
35:12
that all of those boys were murdered somewhere off site
35:16
by Stuart. So they arrest Louise, they arrest Stuart Sandford does,
35:24
I think, get arrested, but you know, it's kind of
35:27
more of he becomes a witness. It's more of a formality.
35:31
Speaker 2: I think.
35:32
Speaker 1: Basically at the end of all of this, he was
35:34
just left to go back to Canada and he definitely
35:36
did face a lot of adversity there because people don't
35:39
didn't really understand what had happened to him. So he
35:42
was at least for a while, seen as a victim.
35:45
Speaker 2: And I'll talk more about that in a minute.
35:46
Speaker 1: But going back to the trial, Stuart decided to represent himself,
35:54
which is absolutely bonkers and just completely silly, but they
35:59
had to let him so, I mean, it's in the constitution, right,
36:02
So he fires as lawyers, he decides to represent himself. Now,
36:05
prior to this, Louise had admitted to killing Walter, she
36:11
didn't know anything about the other two boys, but then
36:14
she admitted to killing them as well, trying to like
36:16
cover for her, you know, perfect baby boy. And then
36:20
after that she went back and denied everything, I think
36:23
because she was afraid of, you know, the death penalty
36:25
or whatever. So she's going back and forth and giving
36:27
details that prove she knows what she's talking about, saying
36:30
she killed them all, saying she only killed Walter, saying
36:32
they all killed Walter, you know, all this crazy shit.
36:35
In the end, she ended up I think, just getting
36:37
life in prison. Stuart, however, attempts to represent himself, and
36:42
the craziest part of this is that Sandford has to
36:44
go up on the stand and be questioned by his uncle,
36:50
who has been violently abusing him for the better part
36:53
of two years, and who had such a hold on
36:56
him that I think Stuart was expecting to be able
37:00
to manipulate Sandford on the stand and make him say
37:03
whatever he wanted him to say. Now, fortunately, Sandford had
37:07
been away from him long enough that he'd kind of
37:08
got himself together, and in the end, this was one
37:11
of the most disastrous questionings of a witness probably in
37:15
the history of, you know, the United States court system.
37:20
Stewart did a terrible job, basically just incriminated himself entirely,
37:25
and in the end he was given the death penalty.
37:29
He was twenty three years old when he was hanged
37:32
and died, thankfully, and it said that the fall did
37:37
not break his neck, so he actually choked to death
37:42
over several minutes. They also said that before he was killed,
37:47
he asked to have a bag on his head so
37:48
that he couldn't see it coming, and that he was
37:50
extremely scared. And I gotta tell you, I don't really
37:53
give a shit, Like I don't believe him the death penalty.
37:56
But I can't go back to nineteen, you know, thirty
37:58
one or thirty or whenever this was, and I think
38:01
nineteen thirty and undo it.
38:03
Speaker 2: So I'm not going to shed a tear, you know. Now.
38:06
Speaker 1: As for Sandford, what happened with him? You know, he
38:09
endured so much in his young life. Oh I should
38:12
also mention that when his mother found out that he
38:15
had been getting violently abused by his uncle, she tried
38:19
to help Stewart evade authorities. That's the kind of mother
38:22
he had. So this guy just was, you know, cursed
38:26
from the beginning. And when he goes back to Canada,
38:29
he's not seen in a very positive light.
38:31
Speaker 2: But he just.
38:32
Speaker 1: Continued to live his life. He served in the army,
38:36
he was a pillar of the community. Over time, he
38:39
was finally accepted as he just continued to be a
38:42
good person. He got married and remained married for most
38:45
of his life, had children, and you know, helped his
38:50
son write this book, and he died in the nineties
38:54
after living a very long and happy life, which I
38:56
think is really really important, and after being such a
39:00
good person that those in the community couldn't help but
39:03
accept him and later came to understand his story. So
39:08
this is a really fucked up case, really disgusting. Like
39:12
I said, a lot of the coverage of it that
39:14
I've found is very kind of high level. There's not
39:16
a lot of detail, so I want to give a
39:18
little bit more. If you want even more detail, there's
39:21
quite a few books out there that you can read
39:22
about this case. I'll link though in that I read
39:26
in the sources, so if you want to read it
39:28
you can. It's kind of interesting. It reads like a
39:30
fiction almost, but it's not, which kind of made it weird.
39:34
It was almost like sensationalized, which was not my favorite,
39:37
especially when you're dealing with such a serious subject matter.
39:40
But it also kind of conveys the absurdity of the
39:43
entire situation, which I think is definitely fair. Anyway, this
39:48
is a really terrible fucking case, and I'm sorry to
39:52
tell you all about it. I hope you guys enjoyed
39:54
hearing about it, and I'll be back in the next
39:56
week or so with another case of murder and malice
40:00
and horrificness, and until then, stay safe.