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Hi listeners, it's Vanessa. Before today's episode, I want to tell you about another show I think you'll love. Crime House and A E are teaming up on the podcast version of the famous true crime series the First 48. Each week, Carter Roy takes you inside a landmark homicide case. The interrogations, the dead ends, and the breakthroughs in the critical first 48 hours. Listen to and follow the first 48 every Thursday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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This is crime house. Denial is one of the most powerful things the human mind can do. At its best, it helps people survive trauma that would otherwise swallow them whole. But it has a dark side, too. Sometimes it lets us look at something terrible and pretend we never saw it. Gordon Stewart Northcott's family knew that feeling well. From the time he was a boy, his parents could see that something was deeply wrong with him. They watched him prey on younger children, and every single time, they decided to look the other way. Then in 1926, 19 year old Stuart talked his father into buying him three acres of empty land outside Los Angeles. He said he wanted to raise chickens, but his family suspected the truth. What Stewart really wanted was a place far from the city where no one could hear his victims screaming. People's lives are like a story. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end. But you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon, and we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy and this is True Crime Stories, a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes come out every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, with Friday's episodes covering the cases that deserve a deeper look. Thank you for being part of the Crime House community. Please rate, review and follow the show and for early ad free access to every episode. Subscribe to Crime House Plus. You'll get part one and part two at the same time, plus exclusive bonus content. To join go to crimehouseplus.com or tap try free on the Murder True Crime Stories show page on Apple Podcasts. Before we get started, a warning. This episode contains descriptions of child sexual abuse, sexual violence, incest and graphic violence. Please listen with care. This is the first of two episodes on the Wineville Chicken Coop murders in Southern California. Today we'll get to know Gordon Stewart Northcott. After a difficult childhood, Stewart moved to California and settled on a small plot of land. He told his parents he was going to raise chickens. Instead, he used that land to act out his darkest fantasies. Next time, we'll cover what happened after several young boys vanished near Stewart's ranch. Police eventually zeroed in on Stewart and searched his property. What they found was worse than anyone could have ever imagined. All that and more coming up.
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Even now, Gordon Stewart Northcott is hard to pin down. Over the years, his parents, Louise and George, told all kinds of stories about their family, and a lot of them contradicted each other. So piecing together his childhood takes some guesswork. But here's what we know. George and Louise got married in 1886 in Canada. A few years later, Louise gave birth to a daughter, Winifred, and at some point the family settled in the little prairie town of Bladworth, Saskatchewan. We also know that Louise dreamed of a house full of kids. Over the next decade, she gave birth to three more times. None of those children lived very long. The cruelest blow came when her fourth child, a little boy named Willie, died of pneumonia at 6 years old. Back Then, losing a child wasn't rare the way it is now. But that doesn't mean it wasn't devastating. Losing Willie broke something in Louise. She'd always been a strict Christian, but after he died, she started to believe God was punishing her. That he was taking away her children on purpose, one by one. Her husband George was a construction worker and he handled his grief in an uglier way. He turned violent toward his wife and their only surviving daughter. Around the same time, he started getting blinding migraines that made his temper even shorter. Calling that household a nightmare would be putting it kindly. And it was about to get worse. A couple of years after they lost Willie in 1906, Louise found out she was pregnant again. She was 37. She and George agreed that another baby would only bring more heartbreak. According to Winnie, who would have been a teenager by then, her mother tried to end the pregnancy. She jumped up and down. She rode horses hard. And that wasn't all. At one point, in a fit of rage, George kicked her in the stomach so hard he injured her spine. Somehow the baby survived. Gordon Stewart Northcott was born on November 9, 1906. Physically he was healthy. But with parents like that, the damage was already baked in. Winnie said that at first her mother wouldn't even look at the baby. Louise was terrified of getting attached, sure that if she let herself lose love him, he'd be taken from her like the others. She couldn't keep that up for long. One day Stuart started crying and she picked him up just to quiet him down. The second she looked into his big blue eyes, that was it. She decided he was her last shot at being a mother. Her whole purpose. From then on, Louise was completely devoted to her son. And she swore she'd protect him no matter what. For his part, Stuart denied all of Winnie's stories, even though he wasn't alive for most of them. Instead, he claimed Winnie was the one who was mentally ill. And he accused his father of sexually abusing both of them, though he insisted George never hit them otherwise. Some writers have also claimed that Louise dressed Stuart as a girl and raised him as her daughter until he was 16. But every surviving photo from his childhood shows him in boys clothes, so it's hard to know if that's true. In the end, there are only two things everyone who knew the Northcots could agree on. One, Louise was obsessed with Stuart. In her eyes, he could do no wrong. And he was just about the only happiness she had. And two, in public, George did whatever Louise told him. Whatever went on behind closed doors, she ran that house. And he almost never pushed back. Everything else is up for debate, but however you cut it, everyone seemed to agree that something was not right about the Northcots. And the older Stuart got, the more obvious it became. While Stuart was still a baby, when he married a man named John Clark and moved out, that meant Stuart was essentially now an only child. His parents weren't well off, but Luis was so devoted to him that he basically got whatever he wanted. So it's no surprise he grew up with a smug, entitled streak. One that got worse once he started piano lessons. He turned out to have a real gift for it. Good enough to land regular gigs at a local movie theater and a cafe. By his teens, it looked like Stewart had a few things going for him. He was a good looking, talented kid with fair hair and deep blue eyes. And when it suited him, he knew how to turn on the charm. But underneath, there were warning signs. The other kids knew Stuart would lie about anything, spinning wild, pointless stories for no reason at all. And he couldn't take criticism. The second anyone tried to correct him, he'd melt down into tantrums and screaming threats. All that made real friendships hard to come by. The only kids he really spent time with were Winnie's children. At that point, they had a daughter named Jesse and a son named Sanford. Even with family, things were tense. Jesse, who is about three years younger than Stuart, reportedly tried to kill him when they were kids. Nobody seems to know exactly why. The one upside to all those troubles was that Stuart had almost no ties to his hometown. So when his parents announced that they wanted to move to California in 1924, Stuart was happy to come along. Nobody knows for sure why the Northcots left Canada. There were whispers of some kind of scandal forcing them out, but they were probably just chasing work. In the 1920s, Southern California was booming. The movie business and big agriculture were pulling families west by the thousands, all of them hoping for a fresh start. The Northcotts settled in Los Angeles, and it didn't take them long to find their footing in a city swelling with new arrivals. One more family from out of town barely drew a glance. George found work as a contractor. Luis took a job doing laundry at the General Hospital. And Stuart bounced between odd jobs selling cars and clerking at a store on the side. He enrolled in a trade school and. And that's where the real trouble started. In one of his classes, Stewart befriended a student named Claude Scott and started hanging around the family's home. There, he got to know Claude's younger brother, a boy named Philly, who was somewhere between 9 and 12 years old. Stuart started making excuses to get the boy alone and eventually he sexually assaulted him. On July 25, 1925, Stewart was arrested on a child sexual abuse charge. What happened next isn't clear. There wasn't much evidence. So either Stewart got off with probation or the charges were dropped altogether. But the damage to his reputation was done. Word got around the neighborhood and Stuart became more of an outcast than ever. His family did what they always did. They looked away. Louise decided the boy who accused her son must have been lying or confused or out to get him. George said nothing at all. And Winnie, who is still in Canada, probably never even heard about it. But an allegation like that doesn't just go away. About nine months later, in April of 1926, 19 year old Stewart decided he'd had enough. He told his father he wanted a place of his own, somewhere quiet and out of the way where he could raise a few chickens and start fresh. George, passive as always, didn't argue when his son asked for money. He bought Stewart three acres near a tiny town called Wineville, about 50 miles east of LA. There's just one problem. Stewart had no idea how to raise chickens. He spent the next three months camping on the property, slowly nailing together a few flimsy coops for birds he didn't even have yet. With his father's help, he eventually managed to build some sturdier henhouses. But to actually get a real ranch going, feeding and watering and breeding all those chickens, he realized he was going to need help. And in the back of his mind, he had another reason for wanting that land. Chickens were never really the point. What Stuart wanted was a place far from prying eyes where he could do whatever he liked. And because he didn't feel one ounce of guilt about what he'd done to his friend's little brother the year before, he was only sorry he'd been caught. And now, with three private acres all to himself, he was going to make sure it never happened again.
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In early 1926, 19 year old Stuart Northcott had just barely dodged jail time for molesting a young boy. Boy. The close call taught him a lesson. Not to stop, but to be smarter. If he wanted to keep preying on children, and he did, he'd need help. So once his parents bought him the land near Wineville, Stuart went looking for an accomplice. Someone to do his dirty work who was guaranteed to keep quiet. He found his answer inside his own family. He knew his sister Winnie and her husband were struggling with money back in Canada. If he could talk them into lending him one of their sons, he'd have the perfect helper. A boy who depended on him for food and shelter, stranded thousands of miles from home. That summer, Stewart drove all the way from Los Angeles to Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan. He spent two weeks there staying with Winnie, her husband and their four kids. The whole time he worked on Winnie, trying to convince her to let him take one of her boys back to California. He said he needed help on the new ranch and promised it would be good for the boy, either 11 year old Kenneth or 13 year old Sanford. He said Uncle Stuart would teach him the value of hard work and show Him a bit of the world. To Winnie, it sounded like a gift. Money was tight and this was one less mouth to feed. Eventually she said yes. There was just the question of which boy. Stuart wanted the younger one, Kenneth. But Kenneth was Winnie's favorite and she wouldn't part with him. So Stuart settled for Sanford instead. Sanford didn't want to go, but at 13 years old, no one asked him. He had a family, friends, a community, and he lost it all in a single conversation he wasn't even part of. At first, the drive south wasn't so bad. After about 12 hours on the road, Stuart and Sanford reached the US border. There, Stuart coached the boy to lie, to tell the agents he'd been born in the United States. That was Sanford's first real look at his uncle's gift for manipulation. In private he was bossy, smug and exhausting to be around. But when he needed something, he could talk almost anyone into anything. He spun the border agents a tangle of half truths and excuses and somehow got Sanford waved through without any papers at all. Their next stop was his grandparents house in Los Angeles. And that's when the real nightmare began. When Sanford walked in with his bags, George and Louise barely batted an eye. But Louise practically fell over herself, rushing to hug Stuart and welcome him home. She fussed over her son, bringing him tea and candy, even shooing George out of his favorite chair so Stuart could have the best seat in the house. Sanford didn't fully understand what he was seeing, but he could feel it. There was something cold in the air, something about him being there that bothered his grandparents. At one point, Louise cut in front of him in the hallway and Sanford accidentally clipped her heels. She exploded. She called him useless. She told him he was lucky Uncle Stuart was taking pity on him at all. And she made him promise to do every bit of the hard work on the ranch because Stuart couldn't risk getting calluses on his hands. It might hurt his piano playing the whole time. Stuart egged her on. Then he capped off the tirade by punching Sanford in the side of the head. The boy hit the wall and crumpled to the floor. When he twitched, Stuart hit him again for getting up without permission. And that wasn't even the worst of it. The visit lasted about two weeks. On one of the last nights, Stewart slipped into Sanford's room, beat him bloody and sexually assaulted him. When it was over, he warned the boy that it would get much worse if he ever tried to run. He reminded Sanford that as far as anyone knew, he was in the country illegally going to the police for any reason would only land him in jail. Then Stuart smiled and described what happened to young boys behind bars. The next day, Sanford avoided him like the plague. But when they finally crossed paths, Stuart acted like nothing had happened. He just laughed when the boy flinched away from his touch. And for a little while, Sanford managed to tell himself maybe it had all been a bad dream. He let himself hope things might be better at the ranch. He decided he'd keep his head down, do enough work to keep Stewart happy, and focus on school. That hope didn't survive the drive. The second they pulled up to the ranch, Sanford realized he'd been lied to. The three acres were pathetic. Just a bare patch of dirt with a flimsy wire fence, a few chicken coops, and a well. Beyond that, there was nothing but miles of empty, reddish brown desert. No neighbors, no town to walk to, nowhere to run. Stuart explained that the two of them would camp in a tent while George's construction crews built them a proper farmhouse. A few days later, he raped his nephew for the first time on the property. Afterward, Stuart left the boy bleeding in the dirt and told him he'd break his legs if he moved an inch. Hours later, Sanford was still lying there, hurting too badly to stand. From inside the tent, he heard his uncle's car pull back onto the property. Then he heard Stuart showing someone around, talking to a young boy who didn't seem to speak much English. It sounded like he was offering the kid a job building extra coops. Then came the sounds of a struggle and three quick, piercing screams. In that moment, Sanford understood his uncle hadn't come to Wineville to raise chickens at all. Some part of him just knew the way. You know a storm is coming before the first drop of rain. The chickens, the coops, the talk of a fresh start, all of it was just a story Stewart told the world to hide his darker plans. Over the next week, Stuart kept his new victim bound and gagged inside one of the bigger coops. He was careful during the day while George's crew was around building the farmhouse. But once the sun went down, the abuse started. Sanford coped the only way he could by going somewhere else. In his head, terror, shame, and and helplessness churned inside him, and he learned to drift away while it was happening. After a while, Stuart noticed that Sanford knew what was in that coop and was steering clear of it. So one night, he shoved a can of beans into the boy's hands and ordered him to feed the captive. Sanford opened the door and found a Latino boy chance Chained to a post sunk into the ground. He looked about the same age, maybe 13. His face was bruised and bloody, and the careful way he held his left arm made it look broken. When the boy saw Sanford, his face lit up with hope. In broken English, he managed a few words. The grammar was off, but Sanford understood exactly what he meant. You and I are the same. Please help me. Sanford stared at the heavy chain around the boy's waist. He wanted to help, but he had no idea how, not without his uncle finding out. So he backed out of the coop and spent the night trying to think of a plan. He never came up with one. He fell asleep, still turning it over in his mind. When he woke up the next morning, his uncle was gone. So was the boy in the coop. Stuart didn't come back until nightfall, and when he did, he was alone. The first thing he did was drag Sanford out of the tent and tell him, almost cheerfully, how hard it was to hide a dead body. He seemed to be in a good mood, so Sanford worked up the nerve to ask what had happened to the other boy. Stuart just grinned. He wouldn't say whether he'd let the kid go or not, but he made Sanford promise not to breathe a word of any of it to the police. Then he knelt down and wrapped his hands around his nephew's neck. He didn't squeeze. He just leaned in close and whispered in the boy's ear, calling him darling. He told Sanford never to talk to anyone, anyone again without his permission. Stuart swore that if he did, he'd strangle him.
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By the fall of 1926, 13 year old Sanford Clark had been a prisoner on his uncle's chicken ranch for about three months. Stuart, who was 19, treated him like a prisoner. During the day, Sanford did the chores and waited on Stewart hand and foot. At night, he chained Sanford in a coop just like he'd done to his other victims, and assaulted him almost daily when Sanford stepped out of line, and sometimes even when he did everything right. The punishments were brutal and bizarre. More than once, Stuart poured boiling water over the boy and laughed while he screamed. There's a particular cruelty in routine. The first time something terrible happens, your mind refuses to accept it. By the hundredth time, it's just another day. Sanford was 13, then 14. His entire world had shrunk to a patch of dirt, a tent, and a man who could hurt him whenever the mood struck. Survival meant getting used to the unbearable, and little by little he did. And still Sanford knew it could be worse because Stewart kept kidnapping other boys who were almost always Latino, and locking them in a separate coop. And that wasn't random. In the 1920s, big agriculture had pulled the thousands of poor Mexican families into Southern California, and their children were exactly the ones the world was least likely to come looking for. They had every reason to be afraid of the police, not reassured by them. Boys like these could disappear without a single missing person report. Stewart understood that and purposely chose victims no one would search for. He'd keep them a few days at a time, beating and assaulting them before finally letting them go. At least, that's what Sanford prayed was happening. The truth was, he had no idea whether his uncle was killing those boys or turning them loose in the desert. Either way, he lost count of how many he watched come and go. For a while, the only break Sanford got was on Sundays when his grandfather came to visit. Not that he liked George much. The man was cranky, cold and hard to be around. But while George was at the ranch, Stuart kept his Abuse hidden. At first, Sanford figured his grandfather would step in if he knew what was really going on. But eventually, he understood the truth. George knew he was just choosing not to see it. One night, George stayed over while Stuart had a victim chained in the coop. The boy screamed for half the night while Stuart tortured him. George's only response was to yell at his son to keep it down. He was trying to sleep. There wasn't any help coming from the neighbors, either. Stuart scared most of them off fast. After one neighbor caught him beating Sanford and shouted at him to stop, Stewart simply dragged the boy into a coop, out of sight. The neighbor was so shaken that he moved away two months later. Another time, a local teacher came by to ask why Sanford wasn't in school. Stewart lied about the boy's age, then claimed he was too sick to attend. The excuses were paper thin. Anyone who actually cared could have seen through them. Sanford was covered in bruises and dangerously skinny. But once people met Stuart, they decided it wasn't their business and moved on. As for Sanford's family back in Canada, Stewart dictated Sanford's letters home, making him write that he was going to school and making lots of friends. His older sister, Jessie, wasn't convinced. She knew their uncle was strange, and something about her brother's letters felt off. But their mother, Winnie, insisted everything was fine, and their father wouldn't argue. The family agreed to let Stewart keep Sanford in California until he finished high school. And just like that, the one door out clicked shut. Sanford's family, the people who were supposed to come looking, had been told everything was fine, and they'd chosen to believe it. There would be no rescue coming from Canada. If Sanford was ever going to get off that ranch, he'd have to do it himself. He just didn't know how yet. Sanford was trapped. The nightmare never let up. And it kept getting worse. On February 1, 1928, after almost two years on the ranch, Stuart left early one morning. Usually that meant he was out hunting for a new victim. Sanford, now 14, took the rare quiet moment to read in his tent. Stewart came back that afternoon, but this time, instead of pulling a boy out of the car, he hauled an enormous bucket out of the trunk and called Sanford over. He said he'd brought him a present. At first, Sanford thought it was some kind of dead animal. The bucket reeked and it looked full of bloody hair. Stuart cackled as the boy leaned in for a closer look. That's when it hit Sanford that he wasn't looking at an animal at all. He was looking at A severed human head. Sanford's first reaction was to be sick. When he was done, Stewart fed him a ridiculous story. He said he'd killed the boy in self defense. And it was so clear cut there was no point telling the cops he'd already dumped the body. Now he wanted Sanford to get rid of the head. The 14 year old had no choice. He carried the bucket to the edge of a small pond where Stuart built a roaring bonfire and ordered him to keep it stoked all afternoon. Once it was blazing hot, Stewart tossed the head onto the fire. Then he lay down for a nap and left Sanford to watch it burn. A few hours later, while Stewart sat on the porch sipping a soda, he made his nephew pound it to dust with a fence post. The image stuck with Sanford, but he didn't get a single second to deal with it. The moment he finished, Stuart told him to clean up. They were going to see his grandparents. Sanford knew better than to ask questions. On the drive to la, Stewart laid out his twisted logic. He'd left the victim's headless body on the side of a road in plain sight. The police would find it sooner or later. And if they ever came around asking questions, he'd need an alibi. That's where George and Louise came in. In the car, Stewart and Sanford rehearsed a phony story. One built to get the grandparents to lie to police if it ever came to that. Stuart figured they'd be more likely to go along with it if Sanford was the one telling it. Just a couple of hours after the most traumatic day of his life, Sanford sat on the edge of his grandparents couch. George listened closely. Louise stared off into space, sipping her tea like nothing was wrong. With Stuart prompting him at every turn, Sanford told the story they'd practiced. It went like this. Stewart had brought a young Latina boy to the ranch to do odd jobs, then caught him stealing from the house. Stuart pulled a pistol and told him to leave. Instead, the boy grabbed a kitchen knife while Sanford grabbed a hunting rifle. And even with two guns on him, the boy supposedly lunged and threw the knife. It missed, so Stuart fired, hitting the boy square in the forehead. Somehow the boy was still alive. So Stuart kept firing while Sanford shot him in the chest with the rifle. And after all that, Sanford told his grandfather the boy still wasn't dead. So he decapitated him. Finally, Stuart jumped in. He explained that he'd dumped the body in a panic, gotten rid of the head and rushed straight to George and Louis's. He needed his parents to back him up. If the police ever came knocking. Sanford could tell from his grandfather's face that he didn't buy a word of it. The story was so over the top, so soaked in violence, it would have been hard to swallow in a cheap action movie. But Louise wouldn't let George push back. Every time he started to question a detail, she jumped in to defend Stuart. She acted like her son was the real victim here, and she swore she'd protect him from the police. By now, you understand Louise. To her, Stuart wasn't a killer. He was the child God had let her keep, the living proof that she'd finally been forgiven. Admitting what he really was would mean admitting her hope had been for nothing. So she did what she'd done his entire life. She decided not to see it. And she dared anyone else to. The visit ended with Stuart asking his mother to take him to the movies. That left George alone in the living room with Sanford, the two of them sitting in a heavy, awful silence. Sanford thought about telling his grandfather everything right then, but one look at George told him the old man didn't want to hear it. So instead, the boy went to the bathroom and threw up again. He couldn't get the image of the severed head out of his mind. It would haunt him for the rest of his life. The next morning, around 8:30, a farmer was driving his usual route along Hudson Road, just east of Los Angeles. He let his dog run ahead of the car for some exercise. Suddenly, the dog froze and started barking. The farmer pulled over and spotted a man's arm sticking out of a ditch. When he scrambled down the slope to help, he found a headless body with a burlap sack tied around its shoulder. Shoulders. Within an hour, sheriff's deputies were on the scene and the body was later taken to a mortuary. In 1928, identifying a man with no head was nearly impossible. But the coroner did learn a few things. The victim was Latino and probably around 18. He had been shot once in the chest at close range and probably bled to death. About half an hour later, the head had been removed with some kind of saw. After he was already dead, there were no signs of sexual assault. Detectives told reporters they were using every resource they had to identify the victim. But privately, they knew the odds weren't good. The forensic tools of the day were limited, and so far, no witnesses had come forward. At 21 years old, Stuart Northcott had gotten away with his first known murder. It wouldn't be his. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy, and this is True Crime stories come back next time for Part two on the Wineville Chicken Coop murders and all the people it affected. True Crime Stories is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media at crime house on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review and follow Murder True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference and to enhance your Murder True Crime Stories listening experience, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get both parts of every story dropped on Tuesday completely ad free. No waiting for Part Part two plus ad free and early access to every show across Crime House and bonus episodes every month. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap try free at the top of the Murder True Crime Stories page. We'll be back on Thursday. True Crime Stories is hosted by me, Carter Roy, and is a Crime House original. Powered by Pave Studios. This episode is brought to life by the Murder True Crime Stories team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Natalie Pertofsky, Alyssa Fox, Terrell Wells, Cassidy Dillon and Russell Nash. Thank you for listening.
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Hi listeners, it's Vanessa. Before today's episode, I want to tell you about another show I think you'll love. Crime House and AE are teaming up on the podcast version of the famous true crime series the First 48. Each week, Carter Roy takes you inside a landmark homicide case. The interrogations, the dead ends, and the breakthroughs in the critical first 48 hours. Listen to and follow the first 48 every Thursday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Podcast: Scams, Money, & Murder
Host: Carter Roy (Crime House)
Episode Title: SOLVED: The Wineville Chicken Coop Murders (Part 1)
Release Date: July 23, 2026
Theme:
This episode delves into the harrowing history of the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders, focusing on the early life and escalating violence of Gordon Stewart Northcott. The first of two parts, it offers an unflinching look into Northcott's upbringing, family dynamics, and the creation of his isolated ranch—the site of unimaginable abuse and murder in 1920s Southern California.
Denial’s Dark Side: Carter Roy introduces the theme, stating that denial, while a coping mechanism, can also blind people to true evil within their families. ("Denial is one of the most powerful things the human mind can do... Sometimes it lets us look at something terrible and pretend we never saw it." – Carter Roy, [00:41])
The Northcott Family Background:
Notable Quote:
"There are only two things everyone who knew the Northcotts could agree on. One, Louise was obsessed with Stuart. Two, in public, George did whatever Louise told him. Everything else is up for debate."
— Carter Roy, [08:26]
Stewart’s Personality:
First Criminal Act:
Building the Ranch:
Recruiting an Accomplice:
Initial Abuse:
Notable Moment:
"Sanford opened the door and found a Latino boy chained to a post sunk into the ground. He looked about the same age, maybe 13... When the boy saw Sanford, his face lit up with hope. In broken English, he managed a few words: 'You and I are the same. Please help me.'"
— Carter Roy, [26:26]
Neighbors & Family Look Away:
Strategy of Targeting Vulnerable Children:
First Known Murder:
Notable Quote:
"There’s a particular cruelty in routine. The first time something terrible happens, your mind refuses to accept it. By the hundredth time, it’s just another day."
— Carter Roy, [31:15]
Body Found:
End of Part 1:
On the Depth of Denial in Family:
"Admitting what he really was would mean admitting her hope had been for nothing. So she did what she’d done his entire life. She decided not to see it. And she dared anyone else to."
— Carter Roy, [39:23]
On Sanford’s Hopelessness:
"Sanford’s family, the people who were supposed to come looking, had been told everything was fine and they’d chosen to believe it. There would be no rescue coming from Canada. If Sanford was ever going to get off that ranch, he’d have to do it himself."
— Carter Roy, [31:39]
On the Horror of the Murders:
"At 21 years old, Stewart Northcott had gotten away with his first known murder. It wouldn’t be his last."
— Carter Roy, [43:08]
| Time | Segment | |---------|------------------------------------------------------| | 00:41 | Introduction: Denial, Family, and Early Red Flags | | 05:49 | Northcott Family History, Childhood Trauma | | 09:00 | Stewart’s Personality and Early Troubles | | 12:38 | First Known Abuse and Arrest | | 18:43 | Recruiting Sanford Clark, Initial Abuse | | 21:00 | Arrival at the Ranch, Escalation of Violence | | 26:26 | Encounter with Another Victim, “Please Help Me” | | 31:05 | Community and Family Failing Sanford | | 33:40 | Stewart’s First Known Murder, Forcing Sanford’s Hand | | 39:23 | Family Denial, Impunity, and Trauma | | 41:40 | Discovery of the Headless Body | | 43:08 | Episode Close: Stewart Escapes Justice (for now) |
Part one of Crime House’s coverage of the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders pulls no punches. Through careful research and honest storytelling, it details how evil can flourish in the shadows of denial and apathy, and how the victims—especially those most vulnerable—are so often failed by the systems around them.
Next episode: The investigation, arrests, and aftermath—plus the impact on survivors and the community.
(If you need support after listening, please seek out resources for survivors of abuse or trauma.)