Gordon Northcott

Gordon Stewart Northcott (November 9, 1906 – October 2, 1930) was a Canadian serial killer, child rapist, and child abductor known for killing three children in Wineville.

Gordon Stewart Northcott was born in Bladworth, Saskatchewan, Canada and raised in British Columbia. He moved to Los Angeles, California with his parents in 1924. Northcott asked his father to purchase a plot of land in Wineville, California. On this land, Gordon built a chicken ranch and a house with the help of his father (who was in the construction business) and his nephew, Sanford. It was this pretext (building a chicken ranch at Wineville) that Northcott used to bring Sanford from Bladworth to the United States.

While residing at his chicken ranch, Northcott abducted an undetermined number of boys and molested them. Typically, after molesting them, he would drive the victims home and let them go. Four of them, however, he murdered at the ranch.

Ultimately, Northcott was tried and convicted of murdering the two Winslow boys and a Hispanic teen, Alvin Gothea. He had shot and then decapitated Gothea, who was his first murder victim.

Allegedly, Northcott also participated in the murder of a boy named Walter Collins. A few days after abducting Walter Collins, Northcott received a phone call from his mother, Sarah Louise Northcott, informing him that she was on her way to see him at the ranch in Wineville and that she was going to stay for a few days. The drive from her home in Los Angeles to Wineville was only about an hour. By then, Northcott had held and molested Walter for several days. During his mother's visit, Walter was kept in a chicken coop.

Sarah Louise became suspicious of the chicken coop and of Northcott's desire to keep her away from it. At some time during her visit to the ranch, she discovered Walter in the chicken coop. According to Sanford Clark's testimony, she told her son that Walter could identify him (Northcott had worked at a supermarket where Walter had shopped for his mother Christine Collins).

Because Walter could identify him, she told her son that Walter knew too much and would have to be silenced permanently. Sanford Clark testified that Sarah Louise decided that all three of them should participate in murdering Walter. That way, none of them could implicate the two others without placing themselves at risk. Northcott suggested using a gun, but Sarah Louise feared that a gunshot would alert the neighbors. Sarah Louise chose the blunt end of an ax to bludgeon Walter in the head as he lay sleeping on a cot in one of the chicken coops. After striking the few first blows, Northcott and Clark joined.

The two Winslow brothers were killed in the same way.

Imprisonment and hanging

Canadian police arrested Gordon Stewart Northcott and his mother on September 19, 1928. Due to errors in the extradition paperwork, they were not returned to Los Angeles until November 30, 1928.

Gordon Northcott was implicated in the murder of Walter Collins, but because his mother had confessed to murdering Collins and had been sentenced for it, the state chose not to prosecute Gordon Northcott in that murder.

It was speculated that Northcott may have killed as many as 20 boys, but the State of California could not produce evidence to support that speculation. Ultimately, the state only brought an indictment against Northcott for the murders of an unidentified underage Mexican national (known as the "Headless Mexican") and the brothers Lewis and Nelson Winslow (aged 12 and 10, respectively). The brothers had been reported missing from Pomona on May 16, 1928.

In early 1929, Gordon Northcott's trial was held before Judge George R. Freeman in Riverside County, California. The jury heard that he kidnapped, molested, tortured, and murdered the Winslow brothers and the "Headless Mexican" in 1928. On February 8, 1929, the 27-day trial ended with Gordon being convicted of those murders.

On February 13, 1929, Freeman sentenced him to death and he was hanged on October 2, 1930 at San Quentin State Prison. He was 23 years old.

Clint Eastwood directed Changeling in 2008, and Gordon Northcott was portrayed by Jason Butler Harner.