Murder Witness Disappears

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 480, 9 October 1928, Page 9

Murder Witness Disappears

ACCUSED IS HER UNCLE Chicken-Ranch Sensation Again MOVE BY THE POLICE ? (United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) a.m. __ VANCOUVER, Monday. ESSIE CLARK, aged 19, the Canadian girl whose startling disclosures brought about the arrest of her uncle, Gordon Stuart Northeott, on sensational murder charges, made a dramatic flight at midnight on Sunday across the border.

The girl was bundled into a highpowered car, and disappeared before the officers were aware that she was gone.

It is reported that agents o£ Northeott in California, engineered the coupe to iwevent her from giving testimony.

Northeott and his mother await extradition. They are charged with the murder of four boys on their chicken ranch in California.

A later report indicates that the flight was engineered by the California police, to prevent any recantation of the girl’s statement at the extradition proceedings.

The alleged “ape-man” pervert, Gordon Stuart Northeott, aged 21, was arrested in Okanagan County, as he was about to cross the border to British Columbia. He is accused of the murder of four boys on a Californian chicken ranch. The boys are said to have been killed on a Californian chicken ranch after horrible torture. Northeott’s father is being held at Los Angeles as a material witness. The place is known as the “Murder Farm.” Human bones have been dug up on the farm. A crude guillotine was found in the cellar of the Northeott house. The revelations were made when Jessie Clark, of Saskatoon, Canada, applied to the United States authorities to deport her brother, Sanford Clark, aged 15. The boy told a sensational story of wholesale killing.