On this day, Feb. 8, in 1929, Gordon Northcott was found guilty of the Wineville Chicken Coop murders of young children, later made into the movie “Changeling” starring Angelina Jolie. Northcott had been captured in Canada several months earlier after investigators checked a tip about a kidnapping at the Northcott chicken ranch in Wineville, Calif. Police found a library book checked out by one of two missing brothers with a note written to their parents. “Don’t worry,” the note said. “We are fine.”
Beneath the chicken coop, police found graves filled with bones, pieces of a bloody mattress and a .22-caliber rifle.
Before his execution, Northcott claimed to have killed up to 20 youths.
The case so disgraced the people of Wineville that the town changed its name to Mira Loma.
Scott McCabe
