WALTER COLLINS
In European folklore a Changeling is a mischievous or troublesome faerie child which has been left in the place of a human child, with the real human child stolen by faeries and hidden away in the faerie realm.
This week we are exploring a couple of different missing children’s cases wherein the children have been found but they’re not quite the same as they were before they went missing. One of these stories actually inspired the 2008 Angelina Jolie film Changeling.
In the small number of cases where a missing child is found alive and well after having been missing for a long period of time it should be one of the happiest days for the family, but for Christine Collins, being reunited with her son Walter five months after he went missing on a trip to the cinema in Los Angeles in 1928 only brought more heartbreak in what is perhaps the most well-known of these missing children Changeling stories.
Christine Collins was a single mother bringing up her nine-year-old son Walter Junior in the Lincoln Heights neighbourhood of Los Angeles while her estranged husband Walter Senior was serving time in Folsom State Prison for robbery. On Saturday March 10, 1928 Christine gave her son money to go to the cinema. That evening when he hadn’t returned from the cinema Christine called the LAPD to report him missing.
Initially the police didn’t take Christine’s concerns too seriously, believing that Walter would just find his way home within a day or two. But when that didn’t happen, they launched a huge search effort and the investigation followed up on hundreds of leads and sightings, without any success.
That was until one day five months later a boy in DeKalb Illinois, just outside of Chicago, claimed to be the missing Walter Collins.
Letters and photographs were exchanged between Christine and the boy claiming to be Walter, and as the boy in the photo looked like her son, Christine paid $70 for the boy to take the 2000 mile train journey from DeKalb to LA. $70 today would be $1,049.57 or £836.64, that is no cheap train fare.
Walter’s disappearance had garnered national attention with increasing pressure on the LAPD and negative publicity following their inability to find the missing Walter. So, the LAPD arranged a very public reunion between Christine and Walter at the train station, surrounded by the press and onlookers, hoping this spectacle would help to negate the months of bad press they had been on the receiving end of. The LAPD was also the subject of numerous corruption scandals, and the city was also still reeling from the kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Marion Parker in December 1927. So, they hoped this uplifting reunion story would distract from these scandals.
But things didn’t exactly go to plan.
Walter showed virtually no emotion upon being reunited with his mother, you would expect that a child who had been separated from his mother for five months, and Christine immediately told officers present that he was not her son. Although the boy did bear a physical resemblance to Walter in the photos which had been sent to Christine by law enforcement in Illinois, in person she realised he wasn’t her son. The police tried to explain these differences away as five months of being missing and moved across the country had taken its toll on Walter and that Christine had mis-remembered minor details about her son’s disappearance.
In the weeks following the reunion Christine is quoted as saying:
“Yes, he looks like Walter and in some ways, he acts like my son. But I’m still not certain about it. You see Walter was quiet and well behaved. He always called me mother. This child calls me Ma and at times is hard to handle. I certainly hope he is my son – but somehow I can’t bring myself to believe it”
Having received five months’ worth of bad publicity for their failure to solve the case, the LAPD forced Christine to pose for photos and take the boy home with her, telling her to “try him out” for a few weeks. As many of us had when growing up, Walter’s height had been marked against the doorframe in their home, and when Christine measured the boy against Walter’s latest height mark, he was two inches shorter. The boy was also circumcised, which Walter was not.
Christine took the boy to the dentist and had the dentist compare the boy’s teeth to Walter’s dental records, the dentist concluded that the boy was not Walter as he did not have the same fillings as Walter had. The dentist wrote a statement for Christine to take to the police station saying that the boy wasn’t Walter. She also went to his school and his teacher came to the same conclusion, the boy behaved differently, interacted with other students differently to Walter and didn’t seem to recognise his friends. This teacher was also willing to make a statement for the police.
So armed with these statements, Christine once again returned to the police station to tell them that she was sure he was not Walter and asked them to begin searching for Walter again.
But the police weren’t about to accept a woman’s claim that she knew who her son was or wasn’t. They conducted a number of ‘tests’ on the boy to prove that Christine Collins, the dentist and the schoolteacher didn’t know what they were talking about. These tests included making the boy find his way home from memory and seeing if his pet dog recognised him and when the boy found his way home and the dog recognised him, they concluded that he was Walter Collins. They also had a doctor visit Christine and tell her that her son’s spine could have shrunk due to stress.
Despite the police’s best efforts to pawn this boy off on Christine she was adamant he was not her son. Police Chief JJ Jones called her a bad mother, accusing her of shirking her responsibilities, and stated that she had grown to enjoy the freedom of not having a child to look after in those five months and that she didn’t want to go back to a life as a single mother. He also complained that she was trying to ridicule the police who had worked tirelessly to find her son.
When Christine refused to back down, the LAPD did what they tended to do with all women who questioned them, they had her locked up in the psychiatric ward on a Code 12. It was later revealed that code 12 was the code used for difficult women or women who were becoming an inconvenience to the LAPD. And let’s be honest that wasn’t a particularly unusual way to treat women back in the day, if you were a man in a position of power and a woman stood up to you, you could say they were hysterical and have them locked up and left to rot in an asylum just for questioning you, a man. And we are not exaggerating, from around about 1850 onwards you could have a woman under your control, so a wife, daughter or sister, admitted to the asylum for disagreeing with you, and coincidentally, the woman’s assets automatically passed to her nearest male relative.
Christine was admitted to the Los Angeles Public Hospital, but the doctor who treated her told her that she could be released if she just admitted that she was wrong, and the police were right and that this boy was in fact her son. But Christine refused to back down, and she remained locked up in the public hospital.
While she was incarcerated local minister Presbyterian Gustav Briegleb took up Christine’s story, he was known for taking up many local causes and campaigning on issues he was passionate about. Reverend Briegleb campaigned for Christine to be released and had previously been critical of the LAPD for their handling of the initial search for Walter. He also advocated for the other women who had been locked up on Code 12s by the LAPD with no real basis for their internment.
While Christine was in the hospital and the Reverend was campaigning for her release, the LAPD finally decided to interview the boy claiming to be Walter. When he was found in Illinois the local police in DeKalb had been sceptical of his story as to how he ended up 2000 miles away from home – and we don’t actually know what story he gave, we couldn’t find it anywhere, it is just described as vague or hazy. But the LAPD were desperate to close the case, so they insisted that the boy’s story was correct and arranged for him to be brought back to LA.
They brought in a handwriting expert who concluded that the boy’s handwriting did not match the known handwriting of Walter Collins before he disappeared. In subsequent questioning, the boy finally admitted he was not Walter Collins, but instead Arthur Hutchins, a 12-year-old who had run away from his father and stepmother in Iowa.
Arthur was hitchhiking around the Midwest when someone mentioned his resemblance to a missing boy from LA, and so he decided to hand himself in to the authorities as the missing boy so he could go to LA. When he finally admitted this to the LAPD, he gave the excuse that he was a huge fan of Western movies and wanted to meet his favourite cowboy actor Tom Mix.
In 1933, Arthur wrote that he impersonated Walter to escape his stepmother. “A person doesn’t realise what a hell this world can be at the hands of a step-mother that doesn’t love or want you,”. He did however fail to mention he was also running from his hometown police. That summer, he was arrested for stealing, and when the police required him to attend a weekly check in with them, he ran away to Illinois.
Arthur was returned to the custody of his father and stepmother in Iowa and he attended the Iowa State Training School for Boys, a rehabilitation program for juvenile delinquents. As an adult Arthur sold concessions at carnivals and trained horses. He died from a blood clot in 1954.
Despite Arthur’s confession, it was still another 10 days before Christine was released from the psych ward. Upon her release she sued the LAPD and Captain JJ Jones for his treatment of her and her unlawful internment in the psych ward at LA General Hospital. Christine won and the judge awarded her $10,800, which surprise, surprise JJ Jones never paid her a cent of. That is worth $161,933.05 today or £129,003.96.
The LAPD took the case extremely seriously by suspending JJ Jones for a few months before reinstating him permanently.
So now the case of the changeling has been solved, there was still the original case that was unanswered, what happened to Walter Collins?
The disappearance of Walter Collins was officially solved a few months later when he was deemed to be one of the Wineville Chicken Coop Murder victims carried out by Gordon Stewart Northcott and his mother Sarah Louise Northcott. The murderous mother and son duo from Wineville, which is between Anaheim and San Bernardino, had kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered as many as 20 young boys from southern California between 1926 and 1928.
Side note: this case was so awful that in 1930 the town of Wineville renamed itself Mira Loma to try and distance itself from the murders.
In December 1928, almost nine months after Walter had gone missing, Sarah Northcott confessed to his murder. Gordon Northcott always maintained his innocence but in 1929 he was convicted of three murders: Lewis and Nelson Winslow, aged 12 and 10, and a third boy referred to only as the Headless Mexican.
The Headless Mexican was a boy who was determined by the LAPD to be of Mexican descent, although it is possible, he was from another Central or Southern American country, and his head was never found, only his body, and so he has never been positively identified.
Sarah was sentenced to life without parole, and Gordon was sentenced to death and he was hanged in San Quentin prison on October 3, 1930 at age 23.
However, Walter’s remains were never found, and despite Sarah’s confession Christine remained hopeful that her son was still alive, and her resolve was stiffened when another suspected victim of the Northcotts’ came forward five years later and told police that he was held in the chicken coop with Walter and the Winslow Brothers, but he had escaped. Christine held out hope that Walter had too, and she remained in Los Angeles and kept searching for him until she died at the age of 75, 36 years after Walter disappeared.
BOBBY DUNBAR
Robert Clarence Dunbar, known as Bobby, was born in August 1908 and lived in Opelousas [Op-a-loose-us], Louisiana, about 50 miles from state capital Baton Rouge, with his parents Percy and Lessie Dunbar and his younger brother Alonso. On August 23, 1912 the family were on a trip to the family’s cabin at Swayze Lake about 25 miles away from Opelousas. They were joined by other family members and friends. Percy had to leave early for work, which led to a bit of a tantrum from Bobby, so one of the family friends Paul Mizzi took Bobby and the other children to the lake to do some fishing, while Lessie remained at the cabin preparing lunch.
Lessie called Paul and the boys back for lunch a few hours later, but on the short walk from the water back to the cabin, Bobby disappeared.
The family immediately began searching for Bobby around the lake and along the wagon trails nearby in case Bobby had tried to follow his father back to Opelousas. When they found no sign of him, they reported him missing to the local police who quickly dragged the lake and the next morning sent divers into the water to see if they could find a body, but all they found was the body of a deer. We should also point out that this is swampsville, the lake literally runs into a body of water called Bayou Petit Prairie
The day after Bobby disappeared more than 500 men had come to help with the search for the young boy. The Dunbar family returned to Opelousas, but Paul Mizzi and other family friends remained at the cabin for weeks to help with the search.
With no indication that he had drowned in the lake, it was thought that Bobby could have been taken by a predator such as a bear or an alligator, so police began killing large alligators and cutting them open to see if they could find Bobby’s remains inside the animals. Later a set of footprints were found leading from the swamp up to a railway/railroad trestle bridge and it was theorised that Bobby could have made his way to the trestles and wandered off along the railroad and gotten lost. But with no evidence nor any trace of Bobby found, those searching for him began to wonder if he had been kidnapped.
Bobby’s father travelled 130 miles to New Orleans to hand out 700 flyers y with Bobby’s photo and a description that read: Age four years and four months; full size for age; stout but not fat; large, round, blue eyes; light hair and very fair skin, with rosy cheeks. Left foot had been burned when a baby and shows a scar on the big toe, which is somewhat smaller than big toe on the right foot. Wore blue rompers and straw hat; without shoes.
A local detective agency made postcards with a photo and description and circulated them to town and county officials across southern states from Texas to Florida.
Residents of Opelousas also raised a $1000 reward for information leading to the discovery of Bobby Dunbar alive. Which is the equivalent of approximately $26,500 today.
Still there was no sign of the missing boy, and the reward money was returned to the townspeople. That was until eight months later when the Dunbars received word that a boy matching Bobby’s description had been found in the community of Hub, 200 miles away in the neighbouring state of Mississippi.
A man named William C Walters from North Carolina was staying in the Hub area, he is described as a travelling salesman, a peddler, a tinker, we don’t know which is correct, but he was travelling throughout the southern states with a young boy. Walters gave various stories about who the boy was and why he was with him, in some accounts he is his son, in others his nephew. After he was seen whipping the child the local citizens detained Walters and examined the boy as none of them had previously been able to get close enough to him to see if he was in fact Bobby Dunbar.
Walters eventually settled on the story that the boy was his nephew Bruce Anderson, the child of his brother and his brother’s mistress Julia Anderson, who had cared for their ailing parents.
But the ladies of Hub didn’t believe his story and asked the Dunbars to send photos of Bobby so that they could compare them to the boy Walters claimed to be Bruce Anderson. They sent photos to the Dunbars for them to examine and asked if it was their son, the Dunbars were sceptical but agreed to travel to Mississippi and meet with the boy. The boy had the same moles and scars as Bobby but refused to answer to the name Bobby and showed no emotion when he was re-introduced to his parents, refusing to interact with them at all.
The Dunbar parents still weren’t entirely sure if this was their son, but they stayed in Hub and met with the boy again the next day, and it is after this second meeting that the Dunbars claimed to know it was their son without any doubt.
William Walters continued to claim that the boy was his nephew Bruce Anderson, and that his mother Julia Anderson had given him the boy willingingly. Julia agreed that she allowed Walters to take her son for a few days, but not permanently. It had been 15 months since she had seen her son and as a poor single mother, she didn’t have the means to track him down as he travelled around the USA with her child.
The boy returned to Opelousas with the Dunbar family, the local residents threw a parade and he was brought through the town on a fire truck and his parents gifted him a new bike and a pony.
All the while Walters begged authorities to send for Julia and have her come to Louisiana and identify the boy.
And if you’re thinking that maybe Walters is just a man with a guilty conscience who wants to reunite mother and son, you would be wrong. Kidnapping was a capital offence at the time in Louisiana, and so if the boy was ruled to be Bobby Dunbar, Walters would be charged with kidnapping and the death penalty would be on the table. If the boy was ruled to be Bruce Anderson, he would not be facing the death penalty as Julia initially allowed him to take the boy, although he was supposed to bring him back a few days later.
Eventually a local newspaper paid for Julia Anderson to travel to Opelousas and see if she could identify the boy. Like Lessie Dunbar, Julia couldn’t initially identify the boy as her son but after a second meeting she claimed him to be her son Bruce. Unlike Lessie, the papers weren’t kind to Julia and her name was dragged through the mud for not being able to immediately identify the child.
The main attack on Julia stemmed from the fact that the boy had been born out of wedlock because obviously that means that she is the devil incarnate. She also had two other children, one of whom had died.
There were some newspaper reports from the time which stated that Lessie and Percy had said that the boy wasn’t their son but kept him anyway, and that the boy had not recognised his parents, brother, or any of the local children he had been friends with.
A local mediator was appointed in Opelousas to decide who the boy was, and the boy was determined in court to belong to the Dunbar family. Julia was in enemy territory in the Dunbar’s hometown and people thought she was trying to steal their child. Because Julia had no money for legal representation, she was unable to contest the ruling and had to return to North Carolina still missing her son.
Walters went through a two-week kidnapping trial and was found guilty but was sentenced to life in prison rather than to death.
Julia did actually return to Louisiana for Walters’s trial and met many residents from a town called Poplarville in southern Mississippi, which was a town Walters had spent a lot of time in prior to being arrested. Many of the residents of Poplarville travelled to Louisiana for the trial and protested Walters’s innocence, supporting him and Julia in their claim that the boy was Bruce Anderson. The people of Poplarville claimed to have seen Walters with the boy BEFORE Bobby Dunbar went missing.
The people of Poplarville took Julia in and she settled there, eventually marrying and having seven children, she also founded a church and served as a nurse and midwife in the town. Despite her happy life in Poplarville she frequently spoke of her son Bruce who she always regarded as having been kidnapped by the Dunbars.
Though the case had been a media sensation at the time, over the year’s attention faded away and the two families lived in relative peace. That was until 90 years later when one of “Bobby Dunbar’s” granddaughter Margaret Dunbar Cutright began to look a bit deeper into her family’s history.
Throughout the early 2000s Margaret travelled around the southern states, visiting small town archives and libraries to find out more about Bobby Dunbar’s disappearance. She also tracked down Julia Anderson’s descendants to find out what they knew about this chapter of their family’s past. She had initially hoped to prove her family’s claim that the boy had been Bobby Dunbar and justice was done when he remained with the Dunbar family. But after reading about the treatment of Julia Anderson in Opelousas and the conflicting accounts of the family reunion, she began to have doubts about whether the boy was actually Bobby Dunbar. This also brought up questions about her own identity, whose granddaughter, was she?
Eventually the Dunbar family decided to use DNA to settle the question once and for all. Samples were taken from the son of Alonso Dunbar, Alonso was Bobby’s brother and so this was the closest relative to the original Bobby Dunbar who was still alive, and was compared to Margaret’s father Bob Dunbar Jnr, who was the son of the changeling boy.
The samples did not match. The boy who was found with William Walters in Hub Mississippi in 1913, eight months after Bobby went missing was NOT Bobby Dunbar.
However, the samples weren’t compared to any of Julia Anderson’s descendants, so this isn’t concrete proof that the boy was Bruce Anderson. Another of Julia’s sons, Hollis Anderson had been willing to provide a DNA sample, but he passed away before testing could be carried out. And although it is easy nowadays to do DNA testing, it was still a very expensive process in the early 2000s which could have been why more tests weren’t done at the time. Also, be very careful about doing these cheap DNA testing kits, there’s a shittone of small print about what happens, and who has access to the results.
We weren’t able to find out if any more tests had been carried out, so we still don’t know the identity of the boy who lived his whole life as Bobby Dunbar.
Margaret’s original aim was to settle the question of who she was and prove that she, her father and grandfather were all Dunbars, obviously this didn’t go to plan. Her decision to carry out the DNA test caused some problems in the family too with her uncle Gerald Dunbar, another of the boy’s sons saying: “No matter how it turns out there’s going to be a sense of loss.” But her father Bob Jnr recalled a conversation he had with his father when he was a teenager where he had asked him how he knew he was a Dunbar, his father told him: “I know who I am and I know who you are. And nothing else makes a difference.”
FURTHER READING:
The Boy Who Vanished– and His Imposter – LA Times
Wineville Chicken Coop murders
Mizpah: The Bobby Dunbar Kidnapping
A Case for Solomon: Bobby Dunbar and the Kidnapping that Haunted a Nation
Bobby Dunbar: The Boy Who Vanished And Came Back As A New Child
Bobby Dunbar mystery solved? DNA test puts 100-year-old mystery to rest
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