Northcott had his mother brought from Tehachapi State Prison to testify on his behalf. Her startling testimony was that her husband, Cyruss George Northcott, had had intercourse with their daughter, Winifred, who gave birth to Gordon Stewart Northcott.
Winifred married and had more children, including Stanford Wesley Clark.
Northcott's father testified that his son had bragged of killing many boys and that he had seen evidence of the carnage before much of it was destroyed with lye and fire. He even testified that he had bought the lye.
When Redwine asked the haggard, gray-haired Sarah Louise Northcott how many husbands she'd had, she couldn't remember. Nor could she recall the names of her five children. She shrieked at the prosecutor, "The next time I get married, it won't be to a man like you."
After a 27-day trial and two hours' deliberation, jurors convicted Northcott of three slayings -- all but young Walter Collins. Northcott was sentenced to death.
The teenager who first revealed the killings, Clark, was sentenced to the Whittier State School for Boys for his role in one murder. After his release, he returned to Canada.
On Oct. 2, 1930, the date fixed for Northcott's execution, he began screaming and trembling. His hands shook as San Quentin guards strapped his hands together. "Will it hurt?" he asked.
He requested a blindfold so he wouldn't have to see the gallows. He had to be dragged up 13 stairs to the noose, pleading with guards, "Please -- don't make me walk so fast."
Just before the trap was sprung, Northcott hollered, "A prayer -- please, say a prayer for me."
Prison Warden Clinton T. Duffy later wrote that Northcott told him he'd killed "18 or 19, maybe 20" young men and boys. Duffy wrote a book about the death sentences he'd carried out, "88 Men and 2 Women."
After Northcott's execution, in his cell Duffy found a crudely drawn map of the ranch, which had acquired the newspaper nickname "murder farm." In one margin, Northcott had written, "I am not guilty," but he had drawn coffin-shaped boxes and written, "If you will look here you will find what you want."
Duffy mailed the map to Riverside investigators, but they found nothing. Apparently the map was Northcott's last hoax.
But six weeks after Northcott was hanged, a Hesperia trapper found the remains of a youth in the desert near the ranch. The body was male, from 12 to 15 years old, and was believed to be another Northcott victim. It was never identified.
The macabre case exhausted Wineville, which had had its fill of bad publicity. Weary townsfolk changed its name to Mira Loma.
