The Road Out of Hell: Sanford Clark and the True Story of the Wineville Murders

The Road Out of Hell : Sanford Clark and the True Story of the Wineville Murders

by Anthony Flacco with Jerry Clark.

Non-Fiction; True Crime

This book is based upon what Sanford Wesley Clark told his adopted son Jerry Clark. Sanford Clark's road out of hell began when his twenty year old Uncle Stewart (Gordon Stewart Northcott) took him at thirteen years old out of Canada and into the States to Los Angeles. Uncle Stewart said he needed help on his isolated chicken ranch in Wineville.

According to Sanford, it was hell. And he survived it. He actually thought his uncle was going to kill him. Stewart threatened, beat and sexually abused him to keep him from escaping and telling the world how disgraced he would be.  The worst thing for Sanford were the rapes he could hear from the house and the murders he had to participate in, in order to escape the sadistic nature of Uncle Stewart.

This book actually contains information of what happened to Walter Collins and Lewis and Nelson Winslow and a headless Mexican. Fortunately, because this happened during the 1920s, Gordon Stewart Northcott was hanged. Today, he would have been given a life sentence and enjoy the luxury of breathing while his victims remain buried and scatted in the ground. Hanging Gordon was complete justice. Poor Sanford Clark who even dug his own grave, thinking he would end his days the same way those boys did, was saved by his furiously protective older sister, Jessie Clark. Without her he would have surely died.

Sanford Clark never forgot, his terrible dreams, forever engraved in his mind. He kept the details of his past to himself and tried to live in the present as much as could be allowed. I thought it a pity he never received proper counselling for the kind of abuse he did suffer, maybe he would have been able to live with himself better.

The police and authorities wanted to quickly dispose of Sanford in Whittier School for Boys, a place of rehabilitation. Here, he was forbidden to mention anything to do with what happened and look to the future. He did excel and was released early. His rehabilitation served him well, but never forgave himself even on his deathbed.

This book has 15 chapters and is 265 pages.

I rate 5 out of 5.