Walter Collins

Walter Collins disappeared in March 1928. His disappearance was the focus of the 2008 movie, Changeling, which tells the story of the Los Angeles police department's attempts to convince his mother, Christine Collins, that they had found her son. The boy they produced was not Walter, however, and Mrs. Collins continued objections prompted the LAPD to commit her to a mental hospital. It was later established that Walter was most likely a victim of the Wineville Chicken Murders.

In March of 1928 a nine-year-old boy, named Walter Collins disappeared after he had gone to a movie theater alone in the Mt.Washington section of Los Angeles. At the time, it captured a large amount of public attention, as months earlier, another child had been kidnapped and murdered in an attempt to collect ransom money.http://articles.latimes.com/1999/feb/07/local/me-5769

The father of the missing boy, Walter J.S. Collins, serving a prison sentence at the time of the kidnapping, believed that the culprit of his son's abduction was somehow connected to an inmate that had been released from his prison.http://articles.latimes.com/1999/feb/07/local/me-5769/2

Active search efforts continued by the Los Angeles Police Department until August of that year when a similarly aged boy turned himself to police authorities in Illinois and was subsequently taken to Los Angeles to be returned to his mother.

The boy, as dental records, the mother, friends and family attested, was an impostor and not the real Walter Collins. The mother, distraught with the situation was committed to the Los Angeles County General Hospital's psychiatric ward to undergo an evaluation for a five day period.http://articles.latimes.com/1999/feb/07/local/me-5769/2

While Collins' mother was under psychiatric evaluation, the boy posing as Collins confessed that he was in fact Arthur Hutchins of Iowa.http://articles.latimes.com/1999/feb/07/local/me-5769/2

In February 1929, Gordon Stewart Northcott was convicted of killing three young boys at his family's chicken ranch in Wineville, California. Although Collins' body was never recovered, he is presumed to have been one of Northcott's victims.