A Wretched Recommendation from Aimee!
The Road Out of Hell: Sanford Clark and the True Story of the Wineville Murders
by Anthony Flacco with Jerry Clark
Aimee’s Review:
This book is about the case of California serial killer Gordon Stuart Northcott, who, with the unwilling assistance of his teenage nephew Sanford Clark (whom he brought to California from Canada for just that purpose with the complicity of Clark’s mother) raped, tortured and murdered at least 20 young boys on his isolated chicken ranch in the desert east of L.A.Very disturbing book. Especially so given the attitude of nearly everybody in the Northcott family. Just an example:Northcott had kidnapped a nine or ten-year-old boy named Walter Collins, whom he knew and whose mother he had met, and and kept him chained up in an empty chicken shed for over a week. During that week, Northcott’s mother, Sarah Louise, came to stay, ostensibly to help with some ailing birds. One evening while Sanford and Northcott were getting ready to eat dinner, Louise came storming into the house, furious.She had noticed her son making trips to the supposedly empty shed and had taken it upon herself to take the key and go inside to see what was in there. There she found the badly injured and terrorized Walter, and in talking with him she learned all about what was going on at the ranch.Louise’s fury was triggered not by the pitiful state of the young boy, but rather by the fact that Stuart (her son) had behaved so recklessly in kidnapping a boy whose family he knew. She then insisted that the boy must die immediately, and that furthermore each of them was to strike him with an ax, so none could squeal on the others without implicating himself. Louise herself led the way to the shed, and she struck the first two blows.
Sounds like a fascinating read! I’ll put that one on the morbid reading list immediately and I’ve added it to The Library Eclectica’s Maniacal Monsters aisle. It’s available on Kindle too!
wow. sounds absolutely fascinating.
It was. Very upsetting. Also interesting to ponder Sanford’s own reactions. He was a victim, no question about that, and the courts treated him as one. But he was an incredibly passive person, both before and after coming to the chicken ranch. His sister was the one who finally got suspicious and came down from Canada on her own and sent the roof crashing down.
This sounds familiar, especially Walter Collins.
Does this story have anything to do with the facts of the story that that Clint Eastwood/Angelina Jolie film ‘The Changeling’ is based? I could’ve sworn her son was named Walter Collins….
“The Changling” is based on this story.
Actually, the Changeling took some liberties. There was a case of a missing/murdered boy named Walter Collins whose mother was told he’d been found alive, but it took place in Massachusetts some years after the Northcott case. Eastwood apparently thought it would be more interesting to the story if he played fast and loose with his Walter Collinses. “The Encyclopedia of Kidnapping” by Michael Newton has an entry for Walter Collins from Massachusetts.