The annals of child kidnapping are replete with heartbreaking tragedies, but probably none have been quite as bizarre as the crime that first mesmerized, then convulsed, Los Angeles more than 70 years ago.
By the time it was over, it would involve not only an apparent abduction, but also impersonation, police coercion, false imprisonment, psychiatric abuse and--this being Los Angeles--a court fight that stretched on for more than a decade. It was a story with victims and villains, but what it never had was a resolution.
On a sunny afternoon in March 1928, 9-year-old Walter Collins disappeared after his mother, Christine, a telephone operator, gave him a dime to spend on admission to the theater near their Mt. Washington area home.
Angelenos rallied behind the grieving mother and her missing boy while the police dragged Lincoln Park lake and launched a national campaign to find Walter.
His apparent kidnapping struck a chord in a city still traumatized by a vicious crime only three months earlier. In that case, 12-year-old Marion Parker was kidnapped for ransom by a psychopath named William "the Fox" Hickman, who shoved her dismembered body from his car just before being captured.
Countless tips on Walter's location led to dead-ends. He was allegedly spotted as far north as San Francisco and Oakland. One reported sighting was at a Glendale gas station in the back seat of a car, wrapped in newspaper with only his head showing. The station owner described the driver as a "foreign-looking man, probably an Italian," accompanied by a woman.
The boy's father, Walter J.S. Collins, who was serving time in prison for robbery, believed that former inmates out for revenge against him may have kidnapped his son, though there were no witnesses and no proof that that had occurred.
Police continued their search until August, when a boy claiming to be Walter turned himself in to Illinois authorities. Christine Collins paid $70 in travel expenses so the boy could return to Los Angeles.
When he arrived, however, Collins said that although he resembled Walter, the boy was not her son.
'You Are . . . a Fool'
However, the Los Angeles Police Department--under terrific pressure to declare the case happily closed--refused to believe that the boy wasn't Walter, whatever the mother said.
Emotionally drained, Collins caved in to the cops' suggestion that she "try the boy out," and took him into her home.
