Christine Collins

Christine Collins was a phone company supervisor whose nine year old son Walter disappeared from their home in Los Angeles, California on March 10, 1928

The story of Christine Collins was fictionalized in the 2008 movie Changeling, directed by Clint Eastwood.

The LAPD was under a cloud of negative publicity at the time. When this case received national attention, they felt compelled to solve it so that they could record a success. Five months after Walter disappeared a boy in Dekalb, Illinois claimed to be Walter Collins. The LAPD announced the case solved, and brough the boy to Los Angeles. Mrs. Collins refused to acknowledge the boy as her son, despite pressure from the LAPD. When Collins persisted in her assertions that the boy from Iowa was not Walter Collins the LAPD had her committed to a psychiatric hospital to discredit her. The boy, later revealed to be 12-year-old Arthur Hutchins Jr., admitted her was not Walter Collins, and ten days later Mrs. Collins was released. She won a lawsuit against the LAPD captain who had had her committed, but never definitively learned what had happened to her son. It ispresumed that he was a victim of Gordon Northcutt, the serial killer responsible for the Wineville Chicken Murders. Although Northcutt did not admit to murdering Walter Collins, his mother, Louisa Northcutt, maintained that Walter was one of the victims.