When the police showed Strothers and Staley Walter Collins’ photo, they both said he was the boy in the back of the car. The couple stopped for a few moments in front of the police station and then sped out of town losing Staley. Staley followed the couple when they left the gas station. A gas station attendant in Glendale, Richard Strothers, reported seeing a dead boy wrapped in newspaper in the back of a car when a “foreign” couple stopped to ask for directions. Several tips came in, but nothing turned out to be very useful. With this sort of job, it is possible that he made more than a few enemies. He worked at the prison’s cafeteria and was responsible for reporting other inmates’ infractions. Collins’ father thought former prison inmates were responsible for his son’s disappearance in an attempt to get revenge. The police looked along Lincoln Park Lake but were unable to find anything. The police chief, James Davis, was under a lot of pressure to solve the case. The Los Angeles Police Department was already under investigation for several corruption scandals and their inability to locate Walter Collins was rather embarrassing. His father was in Folsom State Prison for robbery. His mother, Christine Collins, gave him some money to go see a movie at a nearby theatre. This nine-year-old boy was last seen around 5:00 PM by a neighbor at the corner of Pasadena Avenue and North Avenue 23 in Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles. On March 10, 1928, Walter Collins disappeared. It is believed that he had the help of his mother and his Canadian nephew to commit these crimes. A man named Gordon Stewart Northcott kidnapped, sexually abused, and murdered at least three, and possibly as many as twenty, young boys. However, a string of child abductions and murders in the small town of Wineville changed the views of the city. Agriculture and the movie industry had transformed this area into a lively metropolis. In 1928, southern California was booming.

The Changeling by Sarah Langan