Christine Collins

Early life

She was the daughter of Clara (née Horn; 1851-1923) and Francis "Frank" Dunne (1839-1912). Her mother was an immigrant from England, and her father was from Ireland. Her father was a shipman, and the family had lived in Hawaii and California before settling in Seattle. She had several sisters and a brother.

Her family chose to stay in Seattle, but Christine chose to live in California, where she was born. She worked as a manager for the telephone company. She met a conman and robber named Walter Anson, who used a pseudonym of Walter Collins or Conrad Collins. He worked for the streetcar system. They married and had a son in 1918, living in the Lincoln Heights area of Los Angeles. In 1923, her husband was sentenced to Folsom State Prison for armed robbery, where he died in 1932. She was heartbroken at the news of his death, and he was buried in the prison cemetery.

Disappearance of Walter Collins

Walter Collins went missing on March 10, 1928, after having been given money by his mother to go to the cinema. His disappearance received nationwide attention, and the Los Angeles Police Department followed up on hundreds of leads without success. The police faced negative publicity and increasing public pressure to solve the case, until five months after Walter's disappearance, when a boy claiming to be Walter was found in DeKalb, Illinois. Letters and photographs were exchanged before Christine Collins paid for the boy to be brought to Los Angeles.

A public reunion was organized by the police, who hoped to negate the bad publicity they received for their inability to solve this case and others. They also hoped the uplifting human-interest story would deflect attention from a series of corruption scandals that had sullied the department's reputation. At the reunion, Christine Collins claimed that the boy was not Walter. She was told by the officer in charge of the case, police Captain J.J Jones, to take the boy home to "try him out for a couple of weeks," and Collins agreed.

Christine Collins persisted in her claim that the boy was not Walter. Even though she was armed with dental records proving her case, Jones had Collins committed to the psychiatric ward at Los Angeles County Hospital under a "Code 12" internment—a term used to jail or commit someone who was deemed difficult or an inconvenience.

Jones questioned the boy, who admitted to being 12-year-old Arthur Hutchins Jr., a runaway from Iowa. Hutchens was picked up by police in Illinois and when asked if he was Walter Collins, he first said no, but then said yes. His motive for posing as Collins was to get to Hollywood so he could meet his favorite actor, Tom Mix. Collins was released ten days after Hutchins admitted that he was not her son and filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department.

Collins went on to win a lawsuit against Jones and was awarded $10,800, which Jones never paid.

Trial testimony showed that Walter Collins had been sexually molested for days by Gordon Northcott, and then murdered by; Gordon, his mother Sarah, (as well as the key trial witness), Sanford Clark. The facts of the case are that: Walter was murdered while he slept in the chicken-coops at Wineville. Not only was the testimony accurate and provable; partial body parts and bits of clothing that Walter had worn, were discovered in the exact located grave at the Wineville Chicken Coops. The State of California concluded 100% that Walter Collins was dead. Testimony indicated that Walter's body, (along with the Winslow brothers bodies), were pulled from their graves at Wineville and taken out into the desert night and burned to ashes by both Gordon Northcott and his Mother in a successful attempt to eliminate the bodies.

Sarah Northcott confessed and was convicted of the murder of Walter Collins. As the State of California already had a conviction and confession regarding the murder of Walter Collins, Sarah Northcott's son, Gordon, was simply implicated in the murder of Walter Collins. Gordon was convicted, and hanged to death, for the murder of the 2 Winslow brothers as well as an unknown person, (whom the State identified as the 'Headless Mexican').

Christine Collins would not / did not accept the results of the trial, (in regards to the matter of Sarah Northcott and Gordon Northcott in the murder of Walter Collins). Mrs. Collins chose instead to believe and hope that Walter had survived (because the State of California had never been able to find the body of Walter Collins). Trial testimony showed that Walter's body (and the 2 Winslow brothers bodies) had been removed from their graves and take out into the country and burned to ashes. Christine Collins continued to unsuccessfully search, for her son Walter, for the rest of her life - eventually she faded into obscurity without ever accepting the true fate of her son. The last public record of Christine Collins is from 1941, when she attempted to collect a $15,562 judgment against Captain Jones, by then a retired police officer, in the Superior Court.

Later life

She used aliases to stay out of the media, and lived alone through the 1950s. She died in Los Angeles on December 8, 1964, at the age of 75 in Lafayette, California.

Portrayal in media