Stuff You Should Know - The Christine Collins Story

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

When Christine Collins' son disappeared in 1928, she thought that was the worst that could happen.  What followed was more upsetting than any parent could imagine. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant right there and Jerry's, well she was just here a second ago and she's pretty much here. She left so

recently that she might as well still be here. So this is still Stuff You Should Know. Yeah, true crime edition. We do these occasionally. I just dropped on my knees to thank the creator that you didn't say a dish. Yeah, true crime edition. We do these sometimes without getting a bandwagoning. We've kind of always done them here and there and hey, update. I'm sure we'll get a million emails between now and then but the chow chilla bus kidnapper, did you see, has been granted parole. Yeah, I did see that. So that was one of our recent true crime episodes and we've had a few people right in. Say the guy's looks like he's getting out. Yeah, the last one, right? The other two are out.

Last one. Yeah. The main jerk with that all the money. He was the main jerk for sure. So this is true crime too, as you were saying. Yeah, probably won't be an update on this one. I don't think so. That's possible, but probably not. The most recent update was a movie from 2008 called Changeling, not The Changeling, which is maybe the greatest horror movie ever made starring George C. Scott back in 1980. Man, that's a good movie. This is a totally different kind of movie called Changeling and starred Angelina Jolie. It was directed by Clint Eastwood and I watched it last night, made it through the whole movie and still had an hour to go.

It is pretty long. It was okay. I thought it was, had a little bit of a movie, the weak quality to it. Definitely, because some of the acting was way over the top. Yeah, I mean, I give it medium, like I give it a two and a half thumbs out of five. Okay, I like that. What would you give it? You know, I would probably give it precisely the same amount of thumbs. It's watchable, it's engrossing and all that, but it's also hard to look past some of its flaws. Agreed. It's no no exit, I'll tell you that.

And there was some parts that like, it's sort of hard to parse out the dramatic license and the fictionalized aspects of it with the true story. And I even tried to look up some to see like, well, did this happen? And it seemed like it was verified that it did. But then I was like, or is this person just writing from seeing this movie? The latter. Probably so. So we might mention a few of those in there. Yeah, because he did take a tremendous amount of license and just little details, nothing that ultimately changed the story, but you know.

Well, the ending. Important stuff when he's reunited with his mom. No. Well, I'll point it out at the end. Y'all just stick around for that. Please do. Because like I said, I split like before the end, I was like, I'm going to bed. Oh, he didn't watch the very end. No, I didn't. Okay, that was, I thought that was a joke about it seeming like it was forever. I mean, I was joking. I would have been blown away if you've been like, yeah.

But, but I mean, small things. So we'll get into it a little bit. And we'll just pick on Clint Eastwood from time to time for fun. Right. So what we're talking about is a disappearance. A very sad case of a famous disappearance that took place in 1928 in Los Angeles. Back when you could like pick oranges on any given street back there. It was still a weird town. Is that true?

It was a weird town. People have orange trees in their yard. Sure, but not everybody. We're at the forefront of everybody. Yeah. Okay, thank you for that. But it's trying to find its feet, its purpose, its point. It was a freaky little town back then.

Still is a freaky town, but it was really freaky. For some reason to me, like the 1920s in Los Angeles is as weird as it gets for that city. And this was a, this was, it was during that time that this boy went missing, a nine year old named Walter Collins. And that in and of itself is extremely sad. But the different twists and turns in horrors of this case, and not necessarily horrors in the traditional true crime sense. Right.

Although there were some of those. Oh, sure. But just bizarre horrors, things that just shouldn't have happened, and that just compounded to the tragedy of this case. It makes it one of the most unique, I think, true crime cases in American history, if you ask me. Yeah. And trigger warning, if serious, harmful gaslighting triggers you,

then skip the episode or hold on to your hats, because, oh boy, it's infuriating. Yes. All right. I guess we should start with the simple fact that in March in 1928, a mother named Christine Collins told her nine year old son he could go to the movies and gave him a dime to go do so, and he disappeared. Or she was called into work and he disappeared from their home, if your Clint Eastwood just making stuff up. That's right.

Right. A little bit of backstory here. She was a single mom in a sense that her husband was in prison, Walter's father, Colin Sr., whose real name, it turns out, was Walter Anson. She had married about 10 years prior to Walter Jr.'s disappearance and did not know that he had a criminal background or a different name now. And he was, in 1923, put in prison for multiple armed robberies, and I believe the sentence was about five to 10 years. Yeah. I mean, that was just totally unbeknownst to her.

She thought she had a good one, or at least a mediocre one, not an armed robber who was going to get sent to Folsom. I think in 1928, mediocre was about what you could shoot for. Sure. Sure. So she was the sole breadwinner in the house. She was supporting their son by herself, and this is just a generally unplanned life, but from all accounts, including Clint Eastwood's, she was a good mom who was making her way and just kind of took the hand that was dealt to her

and was making it work as best she could. Right. And a little more backstory to kind of color what was going on in terms of the Los Angeles Police Department at the time, because that figures in in a very key way here, is they had just, right before its disappearance, had been recently fairly exposed, slash embarrassed by another kidnapping case. In December of 27, when a 12-year-old named Marion Parker was a very prominent banker's daughter was kidnapped, held for ransom, and then when it came time to do the money exchange, she just dumped her dead body on the lawn and was arrested and convicted of murder,

which was a big black eye and stain on the LAPD's reputation. Yeah. It was like her case. I mean, we bring it up just to kind of set the tone like this happened and was in all the papers, it was a huge piece of news in Los Angeles, like just a month or two before. But also, like if you're into true crime, that case is really heart-rending. It's really awful too in and of itself. But of course, you can imagine that Marion Parker's case is front and center on Christine Collins mind when she realizes that Walter has not come home from the movies. Yeah. So it's sort of a double whammy. It's on every parent's mind and the LAPD has gotten mud on their face or egg or muddy egg. Plus also, they seem to be widely

considered an extremely corrupt but then also just as bad, almost as bad, incompetent. I guess if you have a police force that is well-meaning but incompetent, like maybe the Keystone cops or something, it's hard to get mad at them all the time. But if they're corrupt and incompetent, like that's about as bad a combination you can ask for in a police force. Yeah, no, an incompetent police force is only funny in slapstick comedies. Right. It's not funny in real life. No. But yeah, no, not at all. It's funny on the Andy Griffith Show. Yeah, but I mean, ultimately was Barney incompetent? Like he would drop his gun and stuff, but he always got the bad guy, didn't he?

That's pretty funny. He dropped his gun and stuff, but is that really incompetent? I mean, if it all turned out well and the end is all I'm saying, you know, the end justifies the incompetence. Because all it's going to do is drop and go off and shoot the dinner bell and Andy's going to go, dinner already? Right. Dinner happens early and the criminal sits down to dinner with the family. Nothing like an Andy Griffith Show reference to just keep us popular with the kids. Yeah. Where are we? Please stop. I can't. I know. I'm sorry. We are, Chuck, to answer your question. Add about the point where Christine has just realized that Walter is missing, which is a terrible point to be at. It is. She goes to the cops.

I'm not sure if this happened in real life, but in the movie, there was a 24-hour wait period before they would do anything because kids usually come home. And I think that has been the case historically in a lot of missing person's cases, right? They'll delay it for a minute. Yeah. You know, I wondered though how, what an anachronism that is in the movie. I don't know if that was like something that came later or whatever, but that's like the first thing Angelina Jolie is told when she calls the cops that you got to wait 24 hours. Whether that happened or not, the Los Angeles Times had an article about the case back in 1999, and they said that the LAPD mounted a national search. It was a big deal. So whether it started 24 hours or later, whatever,

there was like a big search for Walter. It wasn't just like, you know, whatever. At some point, it picked up and became a legitimate like missing child case. Yeah. There were a few tips. One of the best ones was from a gas station worker in Glendale said they saw someone who looked like Walter in the back of a car hiding under some newspapers. Right. Right. But only his face wasn't covered. So it was like the worst covering job of all time. The worst covering job or the kid managed to wriggle out or something. Okay. Well, yeah, I guess that could be the case too. But the driver was described as Italian looking. And then there was another report of a quote foreign looking end quote couple roaming Walter's neighborhood looking suspicious

in the days before the disappearance. So the first, you know, posters that were put up by the cops said to be on the lookout for a middle-aged Italian man and a very small woman. Yeah. So and Walter's dad said, hey, hey, I don't want to be left out of this. I want to contribute. What if it's one of the enemies I've made here in prison? Apparently he worked in the kitchen and part of his responsibility was snitching on other prisoners. I guess they kind of came with kitchen duty. So he was like, of course I've made some enemies here or there. Maybe it's one of them exacting revenge. That apparently was a lead that the police followed, but it didn't go anywhere. So Walter senior can go step back out for a little while of the picture. Yeah. I mean,

it is kind of stymied at this point because they didn't have money. So it wasn't a clear case of ransom like it was with the wealthy banker. Right. So I don't know if that's better or worse for a parent to have money and think it's probably a ransom situation. It seems like it's probably more distressing in this case because your child was just gone and like, what could they possibly want in return? Yeah. Yeah. So but also I could see it giving you hope too that maybe he's just missing, maybe ran away or something like that, but that the reports of that couple and then from the gas station attendant too, certainly didn't help ease any concerns that he had been kidnapped for one reason or another. And that seems to be the premise that everybody was moving on,

that he wasn't just missing. He hadn't just run away. And if Angelina Jolie is to be believed, his mother would have known that he wouldn't have just run away, that he would have had to have been taken against as well. Right. So they've, I think about five months ago by no more big leads, no clues, no forward movement of the case really. And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, and it's a very dramatic moment in the film, obviously, they call up Christine and said, we found your son. He's in Illinois, DeKab, Illinois. He's doing fine. All you gotta do is scrape together the money to pay for him to come back when I was like, really? And that was actually true. And they were reunited. Dave Bruce, who I'll put us together, said it was in a juvenile

hall, but in the movie, it's by a train at a train station because that looks great on film. It does. Yeah, the, that's my train. But what happens, Josh? Something really terrible happened in the film and in real life. When Christine Collins saw her son, she said, that's not my son. Yeah. That's someone else. I don't, I don't know who that is, but I think the quote was, I don't think that's my son. And here's where the gaslighting begins, by the way. Yeah. So the villain, one of the villains, but yeah, one of the villains of the story is a guy named JJ Jones. He was a police captain with the LAPD and he was in charge of

the juvenile crimes unit. So he had this missing persons case of Walter on his hands. So he was there presiding over this reunion because, you know, the LAPD could use the good press. And it was a happy story. It was a huge story. And this was definitely more of a feather in the cap for the LAPD versus a black eye for the LAPD, like the Merriam Parker case was. So, of course, they wanted to play it up. So it did not settle well with Captain JJ Jones, that the mother of this boy who was supposed to be happy and crying and, and thanking the LAPD was saying, essentially, you brought the wrong kid. This is not my kid. Yeah. So he starts gaslighting right out of the gate in the room saying, Oh, no, no, no. No, mom, you're just not recognizing

your son. He's been away for five months. He's acting weird. And in the movie, it's hysterical because I guess it was a directorial decision to have the boy be sort of stilted because, you know, he's not the real son. But in the movie, he's just like, Hello, I am Walter, and you are my mother. And I would like to hug you now, basically. Yeah, it was really pretty bad. Yeah. But maybe that was the point. But anyway, they, he starts gaslighting and saying, No, he's changed. He's lost some weight. He's going to return to normal. And what was the classic line was try the boy out. Just take him home and try him out for a little while. Maybe, you know, see if you like him, maybe he'll fit. But yeah, that set off this, like you said,

you know, campaign of gaslighting that Christine was clearly, you know, distressed, fraught, was still recovering from the shock and that Walter had changed in some ways out on this five months that he endured having God knows what, you know, being involved in God knows what, and that those two things put together were making her think that this wasn't her kid. And there's, she finally relents actually, and Dave tries to, tries to kind of gas at what, what it was. And I think he kind of paints a really good picture of, you know, the pressure from the police, the press there taking photographs, everybody wanting this to be a happy occasion, a little boy looking up at her, I'm sure wanting this kid to be her little boy, but also being

repelled by the idea that, that, you know, she's going to take some other kid as her boy. She did, she did relent there at the juvenile detention center and basically agreed to take the strange kid home with her. She agreed to try them out. And there is a photo of Christine Collins with this boy that's pretty famous. You can find it very easily. I think if you just type in Christine Collins and you see her face, the expression on her face, and you know the backstory, it's one of the most heartbreaking photos you'll ever see. When you know the full story, it's, it's awful because you can see all of these thoughts that are in her mind, like in just the, the, just the terrible everything that she's going through just right there on her face.

But she's also trying to smile in a way too. And that little boy is just beaming, grinning from ear to ear. It's a really weird juxtaposition. Yeah. It's very distressing to look at. And the gaslighting continued with the psychologists later and the doctors who had examined the boy, psychology in 19, I mean, feel what you feel about it now, but 1928, you know, they basically said, and this is a quote, he has certain aisles of memory that are apparently blank and then went on to say, you know, he doesn't remember any of the toys he played with and he doesn't remember any of the people from before, his neighbors and stuff or any of his classmates, but this will all pass and, and he's your son and he'll be,

he'll be normal pretty soon. Yeah. And she knows it's not her kid. Like that's what's so maddening is that it's a parent and their child. Right. Yeah. So imagine like being in that position where everyone is telling you like, no, you're wrong. Not just this one police captain, but the people, the police captain is basically hired and recruited to come back as, as point in the LAPD's position up that you're wrong. This is your kid. Stop, stop being a weirdo and just accept this kid. And also, and the movie really does a good job of hitting this several times. If the, if the LAPD thinks that they brought Walter back and that's their position, they're not out looking for Walter. So therefore who knows where Walter is and like just more and more time

is being wasted while they're not looking for Walter because they're saying this kid is Walter, even though she knows that this is not Walter. So that would, I just, I, I can't imagine having been in that position and just the, you know, just when you're stressed out about normal stuff, like work stuff or whatever, like that, the attention you can have in your, in your shoulders, around your neck and like just how your face can just feel weird sometimes and you can get headaches and stuff like that. Imagine having that starting to creep up and develop and compound because that's your situation. And then having no framework, no guidelines, no nothing to help you say, oh, well, when this happens, when somebody says that a kid that's not your kid is your kid,

this is what society is prescribed for you to do to kind of as a release or an outlet. Having nothing like that and having to figure out what to do on your own. I cannot imagine the turmoil that Christine Collins went through, just from this part. All right. I think we should take a break. That was a nice robust first act. Yes. Yeah? Yeah. And we'll come back and talk a little bit about what happened when she got this boy home right after

this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh God. Seriously. I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each

week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in

the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So Christine Collins has fake Walter Collins back at her house.

And this is one of those things where it was a scene in the movie that I looked up and I did see another article that mentioned this, but I couldn't tell if it was taken from the movie or not because I didn't find it elsewhere. But one of the big giveaways to her was when she was bathing the boy that he was circumcised. And I couldn't find out if that was really the case, which is frustrating. But in the movie, you know, when she tells this to the officer to what's his name, Jones, he basically says, you know, it's amazing what people might do to a kid, like basically gaslighting further saying like, well, he was circumcised while he was after he was abducted during those five months. But I don't know if that's true or not. And

that's really frustrating. What I do know is that she knew it was a charade. She got dental records. She went to his teachers and like everyone, you know, these teachers who spend every day with them during the school year were like, no, this isn't Walter, obviously. Yeah. So she got people who were not only willing to back her up, but we're like, we're willing to testify to this. Here's this kid's dental records. Here's Walter's dental records. Apparently Walter had fillings and this kid had never seen a dentist before. I saw somewhere. And she went back after I think three weeks of trying to make this work. Three weeks, she went back to Captain Jones and said, here's his dental records. Here are all these people

who say, no, this is not Walter. And Captain Jones had a very unpleasant response to that, to being challenged by this again, this thing that he had decided was settled. He basically charged her with being a terrible mother. He said, you are the most cruel-hearted woman I've ever known, accused her of trying to shirk her motherly duties and to get the state, basically, to raise her kid, as if she didn't want her son anymore. So now she'd seen a chance to kind of pawn him off. And as she persisted during, I guess, this conversation, and he, I guess, brought the hammer down. He played an even harder card than continuing gaslighting. He had her committed to the state hospital against her will.

Yeah. I think it's that deal where you get caught in a lie, so you just keep lying. The LAPD already looked bad. They all of a sudden looked pretty good with this case. But if it came out that they purposely gave her the wrong kid, like what that would do to the LAPD's reputation, he was desperate and just dug himself into a pit and had her, like he said, had her committed using what's called a Code 12, which means that you were a dangerously disturbed criminal. And she was none of these things. And they sent her away. And this was at a time when you could do that and sneak her out the back door and no one knows anything happened, basically. Yeah. So she spent, I believe, six full days in this psychiatric unit at the LA County Hospital.

Again, against her will, she was medicated there. She was held there. She was put in a room with, she had to share a room with a woman who she said she could feel her hands around her throat every time she dozed. Who, by the way, Chuck, if you noticed in the movie that that roommate at the mental hospital was played by Dale Dickey, who was also in Mila's movie, No Exit. Oh, wow. So it really is. So, and she's actually just a really, like she's one of those character actors. You've seen a bunch of different times, but never paid attention to. Really? Like she's in Winner's Bone. She plays a pretty, pretty prominent role in that at the end. Anyway, she plays Angelina Jolie's roommate in there, to great effect. But she spent, so the real Christine Collins spent

six days in this hospital against her will. And it's not entirely certain. Well, I guess it is certain she would have gotten out because at the end of six days, a psychiatrist finally got a chance to see her and said, you're totally sane. You can go. But in that six days, this whole story took an even more incredible twist. Yeah. And just quickly, like if you've seen the movie, I'm guessing that that sort of evil doctor was a movie addition. Yes. Because I think they probably needed like a nurse ratchet type in there. I don't think that was a real person. No. And not only did they have the evil doctor, they had a nurse ratchet and then a nurse ratchet's assistant. Like he just threw everything. It was just really hamfisted that.

Nurse ratchet was Ricky Lindholm, which is weird. Who is that? She's a comedic actor. So it was strange to see her in this role as like an evil nurse. Oh, really? Okay. And then I don't know if you noticed also, but Michael Scott's girlfriend, Holly Flax, plays a sex worker who ends up befriending Angelina Jolie in the mental hospital. Did I notice Amy Ryan? I noticed her in everything. Okay, great. Did you like her in Only Murders in the Building? I did. I liked her. I like Amy Ryan in everything. She's one of my favorite actors. She's great. And I really love that show, by the way.

Yep. And not because they have sponsored the show. Oh, have they? Yeah, they were, or maybe that's coming down the pike, but they asked, they were like, they're going to come on as a sponsor. And I was like, great, I love that show. Oh, yay. Well, nobody asked me, but I'm on board too. They did ask you. You approved it. Oh yeah, okay. I do remember. I do remember. Okay, you're right. All right. So you were talking about things getting really crazy. They had managed to keep this quiet that she was falsely arrested and basically stuck in a mental hospital that did not get out. She got out. She went home.

Walter at this point, Fake Walter, is kept in juvie as a ward of the state. And there was another kid in juvie, a 15-year-old named Sanford Clark, who had quite a story to share. Isn't that right? Yeah. So Sanford Clark is the nephew of a guy named Gordon Stewart Northcott. And Sanford says, he wants to speak to the cops because he wants to say that he has been forced to participate in the murder of a number of little boys. And that one of those little boys was the boy who was in all the newspapers, Walter Collins. So you can just like, I guess they had gramophones back then. So you just hear the needle scratch on the gramophone at this point. Right. So at this point in the story, the evil police captain Jones is put on that murder case. And he's in a position

where he's on this new case. This boy says that Walter Collins was murdered, but he had just, you know, stuck Christine Collins in a mental ward for a week. So he starts lying even more and told reporters that Christine Collins just told me a day before that she didn't think Walter was her son, that it was a fake Walter, when it was actually a week earlier. And so he was just, again, just digging holes here with these lies. And they also said, the reporter said, sir, sir, okay, where is Christine Collins? We want to talk to her. And he's like, oh, well, she's at the county hospital for observation. She obviously had, you know, she took it really hard when she heard that her son had been, you know, was a murder victim. So yesterday, we put her in there

yesterday. And she'd already been in there for six days. So the question was raised just immediately if Walter Collins was killed by Gordon Northcott and with an assist by his nephew, Sanford Clark, who was this little kid who was saying he was Walter Collins and everybody else was saying, yes, he's Walter Collins. And that was a pretty interesting story in and of itself. For sure. Why don't we take a break and we'll let everyone know. Oh, you're so mean. You're so mean. Who fake Walter is right after this. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands

give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God, seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever

you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father.

And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, lay it on us. Fake Walter Chuck was, drum roll please, Arthur Hutchins Jr. That was a Michael Scott reference joke. It was. So here was Arthur's story in June of 1928, which is the summer before the disappearance of Walter. Arthur ran away from home in Illinois. He had a bad stepmom. He had a dad that wouldn't do anything about it. Just not a good home situation. And he was the time in America

when a 12-year-old was also like a full grown adult that they wanted to be. So he kind of took off on the road. He worked jobs. He hitchhiked. And it gets a little dodgy about what exactly happened. In the movie, he basically levied a charge against the police saying like, this was their idea. Like they kind of picked me up and told me to pretend I was this kid. Other people say that he hatched the plan. He always wanted to go to LA to meet Tom Mix, the cowboy movie star, silent era movie star. So like he saw this kid was missing. So he hatched the idea himself. Other people say that they picked him up in Decav, Illinois. The police did. And when they were talking to him, I might have mentioned Walter and the kid had the idea from there. I don't know.

Yeah. Either way, this kid saw his chance for a free one-way ticket to Hollywood in his cowboy hero Tom Mix. And he took it. He styled himself, we should say, as a boy adventurer. So that was like kind of the mindset this kid had. Totally lost on him from, you know, what I can tell, the gravity of what he was doing to Christine Collins, the fraud that he was perpetrating. He knew he was perpetrating a fraud, but it seems like he considered it harmless. And it wasn't until it was pointed out, like, do you understand what you've done to this poor woman that he was like, yeah, I guess I owe her an apology or something like that. It just didn't occur to him. However you want to characterize it, he was a bad kid or thoughtless or careless or

careless or whatever, but he finally confesses. And apparently he put up a fight too that it wasn't until they had proof that his handwriting didn't match Walters, that they finally, and the cops, by the way, finally said, you're not Walter, kid. You make different Rs here. Apparently the way that he wrote Rs was in a way that was taught in Illinois, but you couldn't find that kind of R teaching anywhere in California. The old Illinois R. That's right. They had him dead to rights, and he finally confesses and tells them all this, that he's little Arthur Hutchins Jr. So he gets reunited with his family, but then that leaves us back at square one. Walter's still missing. And then now there's Sanford Clark, who is saying that Walter's actually not missing.

Walter's dead because my uncle and I, against my will, killed Walter among some other boys. And that's where we're at with Christine. Yeah. I mean, the story of Sanford Clark is equally sad. He did participate in these crimes, but he was there getting sexually abused, physically abused, emotionally abused, was told that he would be killed if he didn't help out. So this is a kid who didn't know what he was doing and forced into doing these things. He's also a victim here. So at this point in the story, it could have been the end, like Christine could have said, my son is dead. The boy, fake Walter, is gone back to his family. I'm a woman. It's 1928. What recourse do I have? But to her credit, she stood strong and said, no, I'm not taking this.

Not only am I not convinced that Walter's dead, but that aside, I need to tell, I need to expose my treatment and I need to expose Captain Jones and the LAPD. And so I'm going to come forward with this information. Yeah, well, she did. So remember, by this time, the press had no idea what had happened to her. And she just dropped this truth bomb on him saying, so the LAPD heard from me for a long time that this was not my kid and not only told me it was, they institutionalized me against my will, told the press her story with the help of apparently local women's leagues took up her cause. And then so did Reverend Gustav Briegelib, who's played by Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich in the movie. I think he got involved way earlier in the movie than he did in

the movie than he did in real life. Yeah. Yeah. But he helped publicize her. He was a anti LAPD corruption crusader. Yes. And this is a great example of the corruption and incompetence of the LAPD. And he helped take up her story and publicize it. But she probably thought that was going to be enough because the county convened a grand jury and they heard her testimony and they didn't even bother calling Captain Jones to testify. They just basically gave her a chance to tell her story and then hope that it would go away. And they demonstrated that they hoped it would go away because they referred the matter to the police commission to handle itself. That's right. And the commission said no disciplinary action against Captain

Jones. Arthur Hutchins fooled everybody. And Dave points out like, yeah, except for mom, who was screaming the whole time that this is not my kid. So that was such a flimsy argument to not do anything to Captain Jones. And this could have been the end of the story. And Christine Jones met with another brick wall. But no, she said, uh-uh, I'm going to hire a lawyer and I'm going to sue the LAPD and Captain Jones for false imprisonment. It made all the news sued for a half a million bucks. And again, the Reverend in the women's league got, you know, press going and got everyone whipped up into a frenzy about it and got a lot of support. And the LA County opened up a grand jury investigation. Again. And the city council welfare committee recommended

that Jones and police chief resign. That didn't happen. He ended up getting a four month suspension without pay. And the civil suit did make it to court and she won, but was never paid a dime, which is what happens in a lot of cases. Yeah. And she kept, she kept doggedly pursuing Captain Jones for decades. She would drag him to court every once in a while and have a judge say, you have to pay her. And Captain Jones would be like, I don't have any money. Can't get blood from a stone. Sorry. And she, she, yes, she never got a penny out of him, despite being owed about 180 grand in today's money, $10,800 back then, which is just so infuriating. But at the very least, she was like, okay, if you're not going to pay me, I'm not, I'm just not

going to drop it at least. I'm still going to drag you to court whenever I can to make you have to talk about this again. And so apparently Christine, like you said, she did not believe, I don't even want to say apparently, she definitely did not believe that Walter was killed by Gordon Stewart Northcott. And Gordon Stewart Northcott turned out to be a serial murderer. And his murders are called the Wineville chicken coop murders, because apparently the actual murders took place with an ax in the chicken coop on this remote ranch about an hour east of Los Angeles. And Sanford Clark was there, but also too, and this isn't portrayed in the movie, Gordon's mother, Sarah Louise Northcott was also an active participant in all this too,

which makes the whole thing about a hundred million times more horrific than it would have been had she not been involved, frankly. Yeah, now it's like a Texas chainsaw massacre family living out in the sticks at the time. It was the sticks east of Los Angeles. Now, like everything else in the Southland, it's just one continuous suburb. Back then it was just farmland. And these, you know, he could have murdered up to 20 kids. We'll talk a little bit more about the case. But he sexually abused these boys, he kept them in the chicken coop. He originally lived not too far from the Collins's. And what started here was this weird game between Northcott, his mom and Christine of him telling her like he's dead, that been him saying I didn't kill him,

and then him saying, well, I did kill him. And then him saying, no, I didn't. And then the mom saying, well, no, I killed him. And then the mom saying, no, I didn't. And I just can't imagine after all Christine Collins has been through, like how upsetting it was to go through this emotional rollercoaster still of them admitting and then recanting their murder. Yeah. And even worse than that, Gordon Northcott represented himself in court. And he called Christine Collins as a defense witness and said, put her on the stand and said, do you think I killed your son? And she was like, no, actually I don't. And she produced a piece of evidence that had been left out of the papers that a few days after Walter went missing, someone threw a rock through her

window and on the rock or attached to the rock, it's not clear to me. Something said, boy, bad, sick, afraid to call doctor. And to her, that meant that somebody had abducted Walter, but it just wasn't Gordon Northcott. Yeah, that's a, I still don't know what to make of that one. I don't either. But what Christine made of it is that Gordon Northcott did not kill her boy, that he had been abducted by somebody else. And that to her, he was still out there. And she was so either convinced of this or wanted to believe it so badly that she went on to the stand to this serial murderers trial and acted as a witness in his defense. And in the end, it didn't, it didn't work. Gordon Northcott was convicted of killing a handful of boys, multiple boys,

but it's, I think you said before, Sanford Clark said that maybe as many as 20 boys had been killed out there. I think he was convicted of four and the mom was convicted of killing Walter specifically. Yeah. But yeah, the boy said that, you know, there's 20 bodies buried, which wasn't exactly true because they burned a lot of the bodies. There ended up being bones and evidence though. There was enough, like they found letters written by two of the boys that he was accused of murdering, that was written by them to their parents that were, that never went, that were never sent. But they got enough evidence, at least against Gordon to convict him. And then apparently he was all circumstantial against his mother,

but she was convicted anyway. And so Gordon was sentenced to hang. His mother was sentenced to life in prison. And a couple of days before he was executed, Gordon sent a telegram to Christine Collins and said, I lied about not killing your boy. If you'll come visit me in prison before I'm executed, I'll tell you the truth. Okay. So remember, she thinks she's testified at his trial that he didn't do it, that this terrible person had not killed her son. And now he sent her a telegram two days before he died saying he did. So of course she goes to San Quentin, meets with him and he says, I don't want to meet with you. I didn't have anything to do with your boy go away. Yeah, I mean, I just can't imagine her mental state at this point of being jerked

around by the cops for all that time and now being jerked around by this guy on death row. Just, I don't know if he was just sick and like toying with her, or that sort of prisoner thing. I feel like I've seen this in movies before, where they do something like this just to like have one last meeting with somebody before they die that isn't a prison guard. Everybody loves a good meeting. But he was hanged right in front of her face, apparently. Yeah, she stuck around. I guess the warden was like, he did what to you? Listen, if you want to stick around and witness his death, do. And apparently she did not out of vengeance necessarily, but because she was hoping that at some point before he died, he would tell her the truth

or tell her something and he didn't. He went like a schmo because he was a schmo. He was a terrible child murdering schmo. And so Gordon Northcott is executed and these Wineville chicken coop murders are so notorious and so disgusting as child murders tend to be that the town changed its name a couple months after Gordon Northcott was executed to Mira Loma. It's what it's called today. Yeah, like just drive east from Los Angeles. You'll hit it. They didn't like that name anymore. Change the name. Here's where the, what you missed at the end of the movie. And I think this is created out of whole cloth to give everyone like a good feeling in their tum-tums in the movie version. And if you don't want to hear this, you stop listening right now.

Can I? Give you plenty of warning. Okay. So this part we know is true. It was how many months later did another boy show up that said that he had escaped from... I heard five years. Oh, was it five years later? All right. So in the movie, they squashed that down. So that's obviously licensed, dramatic license. But I think the true story is that this boy just said that he had been a kidnapping victim of Northcott but got out. Isn't that right? Wasn't that kind of the end of it? I don't know. I saw that a kid who Northcott had been accused of killing turned up safe and sound five years later. So that gave her hope. Yeah, that gave her hope for the rest of her life. She died in I think 1964 and apparently was looking for Walter the whole time.

So in the movie version, and this is clearly dramatic license, the story the boy tells is that there was a late night escape after they dislodged the wire of the chicken coop and that he had gotten stuck and that Walter had already run away and came back and saved him. And if it hadn't been for Walter, he never would have gotten out of there. So in the movie version, they obviously felt the need, or Clint felt the need to paint Walter, whoever the screenwriter was, as a hero in the end who gave his life to help this other boy get saved, which you don't even need to do that. It was so aggravating. No, it really is. The writer's like, how am I going to get out of this? So that's it. One little footnote of this. If you

didn't think Christine Collins had it hard enough, this whole time at the peak of this stuff, at some of the worst parts of it, her husband, remember, is in prison the whole time. And so she's petitioning the parole board and actually has friends. There's a record of a friend writing the parole board talking about what a terrible state Christine is in. And won't you please let her husband out? So at the very least, he can go to work to support her because she can't work anymore. And the parole board wrote back in the movie version and said, we're sorry, but Walter Collins died in prison in 1932. Very interesting and sad. So you got anything else about the sad story of Christine and Walter Collins? No, it is a hard lesson in gaslighting and what still happens,

but what definitely used to happen a lot more back then. Yeah, heavy stuff, man. Well, since Chuck said it used to happen a lot more back then, followed by heavy stuff, as everyone who listens to the podcast knows that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this rewilding follow up. Hey guys, long time listener, really interesting episode on rewilding. I'm glad you got the point across at the end goal. It's to let nature do its thing, but the humans have messed things up so much in places that sometimes we need to give it a little helping hand to help it along its way before stepping back and giving it space. Right. You mentioned that we tend to be very short time frame focus, but there is a distinction between cultures. Many indigenous

cultures have a mindset that focuses on much longer time frames with specific practices in place for thinking of future generations. I believe one is to think about things for seven generations time. Wow. Getting indigenous cultures involved in projects and stewardship of the land serves to gain wisdom from cultures that have been living harmoniously with nature for generations, plus brings in the mindset of thinking for generations to come and not even mentioning the ethical reasons for involving them. That is from Paul. With the question mark? No, that is from Paul, who is the chief technology officer at Mossy Earth, helping to rewild our planet. So wow. Go to the Mossy Earth website and check it out. See what they're up to. Yeah,

but we got one from a legit insider. That's great. I think so, and that is Mossy.Earth. Cool. How do you get a.Earth website? You pay through the Wazoo. Use a lot of donations. I want to be Joshinchuck.Earth. Yeah, that'd be good. I was thinking Joshinchuck.biz, but sure, that one works too. How about.Earthbiz? Thanks a lot, Paul. We really appreciate you writing to us, and if you want to be like Paul, you can send us an email to StuffPodcast. Man, I'm going to get it after we're done at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on myHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me, and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.