Latest / The Evidence Room: True Crime, Investigations & Justice / The Wineville Chicken Coop Murders: A Dark Secret in California | The Evidence Room
Transcript
- Imagine the sound of a chicken coop at night. It should be just the scratch of claws on straw, the low hum of wings settling in for sleep. But if you listened closely to the farm in Wineville, California, between 1926 and 1928, you would have heard something else entirely. You would have heard the silence of boys who were never meant to be seen again. Let’s look closer at the land itself. In the early twentieth century, Riverside County was changing. The orange groves were giving way to new subdivisions, but there were still pockets of quiet, dusty earth where families could start over. Gordon Stewart Northcott was one of those men trying to reinvent himself. Born in Bladworth, Saskatchewan, he had crossed the border into the United States in 1924 with his parents, Sarah and Charles. They were looking for a fresh start, far from the prairies of Canada. Two years later, Gordon, then only nineteen, asked his father to help him buy a plot of land in Wineville. He told everyone it was for a chicken ranch. It was a simple, honest-sounding dream. To raise poultry, to feed the community. His father bought the land. Gordon built a house. And with the help of his fourteen-year-old nephew, Sanford Clark, who had been brought all the way from Canada to work the farm, they constructed the main feature of the property. On the surface, it was just a coop. But beneath the floorboards, hidden from view, was a cellar. A dark, underground space designed to keep things secret. We don’t forget how easily a home can become a cage when power is abused by those who are supposed to protect you. Sanford Clark was not just a worker; he was family. He was a teenager, impressionable and alone in a strange country. But his presence on the farm did not save him. It made him a target. As time passed, the dynamic on the ranch shifted. Gordon began to exert control that went far beyond discipline or labor. He began to physically and sexually abuse his own nephew. This is a detail we must hold gently, because it speaks to the betrayal inherent in such violence. The person who brought Sanford across the ocean, the uncle who promised safety, became the source of terror. For months, perhaps years, Sanford lived in this shadow. He watched other boys arrive. He saw what happened to them. He knew that Gordon was abducting children, luring them under the pretense of employment or rides, and bringing them to the cellar. Three boys were murdered there. Their bodies were buried in shallow graves on the property. But Sanford was forced to stay. He was threatened. He was trapped. And he carried the weight of their deaths every single day, unable to speak, unable to leave. The truth has a texture, and in this case, it felt like suffocation. It took a sister’s instinct to break the silence. In August 1928, nearly two years after Sanford had arrived, his older sister Jessie visited. She was nineteen herself, coming from Canada to check on her brother. She expected to see a young man working hard on a farm. Instead, she found a boy who was afraid. When she sat down with Sanford, he didn't mince words. He told her he feared for his life. He told her that his uncle had murdered four boys. He told her that three were buried on the ranch, and one more had been killed elsewhere. Jessie was horrified. She didn't know what to do with that information, but she knew she couldn't carry it alone. Within a week of leaving the ranch, she traveled to a U.S. consul office. She gave a sworn complaint. She detailed everything Sanford had said. The consul wrote a letter to the Los Angeles Police Department. Finally, the outside world had a map to the darkness. But even with that letter, the path to justice would not be straight. There were bureaucratic hurdles, immigration concerns, and delays. But the seed had been planted. The authorities were now looking. On August 31, 1928, two inspectors from the Immigration Service, Judson F. Shaw and George W. Scallorn, drove up the long dirt road to the Wineville ranch. They were there to investigate the complaint. Gordon Northcott saw their car approaching. Panic seized him. He didn't wait for them to knock. He fled into the treeline at the edge of his property. But before he disappeared, he turned to Sanford. He ordered his nephew to stall the agents. He threatened to shoot Sanford from the woods with a rifle if he did not comply. Imagine that moment. The sound of boots on gravel. The fear in a fourteen-year-old’s eyes. Sanford stood in the doorway, buying time. For two hours, he kept the agents talking while Gordon ran through the trees. Finally, when the threat felt less immediate, when he felt the agents could protect him, Sanford broke. He told them the truth. He told them where Gordon had gone. He told them about the cellar. He told them about the bodies. The lie of the chicken ranch collapsed in an instant. But Gordon was already gone. He and his mother, Sarah Louise Northcott, had fled north. They thought they could hide behind borders. They were wrong. Authorities tracked the Northcotts to Canada. They were arrested near Vernon, British Columbia, on September 19, 1928. But the real test came back in Wineville. With Gordon gone, the police returned to the ranch. Sanford Clark guided them to the exact spots where the bodies were buried. He described how quicklime had been used to dispose of the remains. He described how the bodies had been moved. But here is where the story takes a heartbreaking turn. When the exhumation teams dug, they found nothing but empty holes. Clark and his sister Jessie testified that Gordon and Sarah had exhumed the bodies weeks earlier, on the evening of August 4. They had taken the corpses to a deserted area and burned them. So, when the investigators looked into the ground, they found fifty-one parts of human anatomy. Bones. Blood. Fragments. These silent bits of evidence corroborated Sanford’s testimony. They proved that boys had died there. They proved that the farm was a crime scene. But they did not bring the victims home. The completeness of the tragedy remained fractured, lost to fire and haste. There was a fourth boy. One who was not killed at the ranch, but whose fate was equally grim. This victim was a Mexican citizen, possibly named Alvin Gothea. His murder did not happen in Wineville. It happened near the town of La Puente. The details here are particularly harrowing. Gordon Northcott beheaded the boy. He brought the severed head back to the ranch. He ordered Sanford to burn the skull in a fire pit and crush the bones. As for the body, Gordon left it by the side of the road near La Puente because he had no other place to put it. This act of dismemberment speaks to a calculated cruelty, a desire to erase identity, to make recovery impossible. It is a detail that chills the bone. It shows us that this was not a crime of passion, but a systematic effort to destroy evidence and dehumanize his victims. Sanford’s testimony confirmed this horror. He spoke of the fire pit. He spoke of the crushing of the skull. These were not vague accusations; they were specific, terrible facts that painted a picture of absolute evil. We honor these victims by remembering the precision of their loss. Gordon Northcott was tried in February 1929. He was found guilty of three murders: the Winslow Brothers and Alvin Gothea. He confessed to the killings, claiming responsibility for up to twenty murders across multiple states, though many of those remain unproven. He was sentenced to death. His mother, Sarah Louise Northcott, was also convicted, specifically for her role in the disappearance of Walter Collins, a boy who had vanished in Los Angeles earlier that year. Her guilt was tied to the broader web of deception that surrounded the case. Gordon Northcott became the last person executed at San Quentin State Prison before its execution chamber was closed. He was hanged on August 25, 1930. Justice was served, but it was heavy and incomplete. The town of Wineville changed its name to Mira Loma in 1930, hoping to wash away the stigma. Decades later, in 2010 and 2011, new cities like Eastvale and Jurupa Valley took shape from that land. The farms are gone. The houses are gone. But the memory remains. The truth has a texture, and sometimes, it is the texture of regret. We don’t forget. We carry the names of the boys who were stolen. We carry the courage of Sanford Clark, who spoke when he was terrified. And we carry the warning that evil often hides in plain sight, behind fences and front porches. Thank you for listening today. Thank you for holding space for these difficult truths. I’m Cynthia Bandeville, and I will see you in the next episode. This story is drawn from public records and widely reported accounts. Our thoughts are with everyone affected.