THE ROAD OUT OF HELL-Anthony Flacco

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which led to his conviction and execution. It was a shocking story. Perhaps the most shocking part of all is the extraordinarily ordinary life Clark went on to live as a decorated World War II VET, a devoted husband of fifty five years, a loving father, and a productive citizen. Using never before heard information from Sandford's son, Jerry Clark, Flacco tells the real story behind the case that captivated

the nation. In dramatizing one of the darkest cases in American crime, Flacco constructs a riveting psychological drama about how Sandford was able to detoxify himself from the evil he'd encountered, offering the ultimately redempt the story of one man's remarkable ability to survive a nightmare and emerge intact. The book that we're featuring this evening is Road Out of Hell, Sanford Clark and the True Story of the Wineville Murders

with my special guest, journalist and author Anthony Flacco. Welcome back to the program, and thank you for agreeing this interview. Anthony Flacco, Thank you, Dan, I appreciate being here today. Well, thank you very much. And I got a like I said to you in the just before, I'm going to tell people to fasten their seatbelts, because this one is an extraordinarily horrifying tale and like I say, where fiction is trumped by nonfiction hands down. So let's get right

to this. What brought you to this story?

Eastwood in the film Changeling, but that movie focused on the murders and the murder farm and never really told you anything about what about the kid who was put through it all and what happened to him. And that's when, through Jerry, I got this amazing story of this guy, which is in my mind so powerful because Sandford Clark, who went through this in the age of twelve to fourteen, was just a completely ordinary person. He wasn't stupid, but

he wasn't brilliant. He wasn't ugly, but he wasn't handsome. He was kind of small statuted, he was kind of quiet in his demeanor. He's someone who could pass through a crowd unnoticed. He could be anybody. And yet when it came down to this hellish goolog that he was dragged through for two years, he found a reservoir of determination to be well, to get back on his feet that was so astounding. It puts on that level. He was, like,

you know, a brilliant musician playing at their best. He encountered this talent for survival that I believe makes the story so interesting because obviously, if he can do it, so can you, and so can I. We spend our lives detached from that ability, because you know, God forbid we have to actually call on it. But it exists, and you can watch it happen here in this very ordinary boy. And then how he went about living the next half century later and without not without great great

pain and sacrifice. He wasn't able ever to shrug this off. He was able to carry it and endure and flourish in spite of, you know, like a heavily handicapped person of any kind does when they meet their determination with reality. So to me, that's what captured me in the story, and it was the only reason I could endure learning about and then even worse, having to write about his

two years on the murder farm. But it was an early choice I made in one of the things I said to Jerry when we were first talking about the project was, if you're going to tell this story, you can't backpedal on what happened. You can't make it politically correct, you can't soften it in any way, because if you

do that, you're already lying. The boy didn't go through a softened version, and until we understand what the cave he was pulled through for those two years, I don't believe you can appreciate his recovery as well, because you can't really measure the distance otherwise. So that's why we spend a fair amount of time on that murder farm in this story, because I think in that way, it's like any medieval torture situation, like Auschwitz or any other place where it's so horrible you have to say what

it is. You have to describe what it is because you can't sanitize it. The very act of sanitizing. It seems somehow a little obscene, given the fact that this boy didn't get anything sanitized. And yet, and yet, and yet, many years later, when he finally meets his love he stayed with forever, and they marry and find out they can't have kids of their own. What does he do.

He goes to the orphanage and adopts two of their hard adopt older boys, three and six years old, because he has been so filled with empathy for what it's like to be stranded, and he doesn't want those guys stranded in an orphanage the way he was stranded on that farm. I mean, that's a hint as to how he transposed his torment into success. And I say again,

I don't mean to make anything blithe about this. You know that it was at easy at all, or that he had any ability to wall it off, which he didn't. You know, he suffered with it. But that's an example of how he physically transformed the energy he was carrying into something good in his present day life.

terms of her character. Tell us about this as you do in the book. Describe this very very vivid scene.

They'd fled their home neighborhood because there were all sorts of bad rumors about their son, Gordon Stewart Northcott and his conduct around the little children, and so they went to escape to America. But after two years he shows up back in Canada at his sister Winnie's house, and Whinnie is Sandford's mom. He and when he's his older sister,

but they're extremely close. They have this incestuous relationship which I don't know or nor do I claim there was a sexual component, but there was certainly a hugely inappropriate intimacy between them, like two giggling lovers, and they would carry this out underneath her husband, John's nose, because Winnie was already basically a poorly contained psychopath and John had just been bitched into silence. This guy just wanted to get through the day without having his ear chewed off

and have dinner. So in terms of being any protection to Sandford against Winnie, he was inert. He was a piece of furniture. Unfortunately, now Stuart shows up, Uncle Stuart and says he's got this grand plan. He's going to start a chicken ranch out outside Los Angeles, down near his parents' place, and he needs for Sandford to come along to help him work on the ranch and get it started. And after all, Sandford's not doing well in school and they figure it's time for him to learn

a trade. And he actually talks Sandford's mom into letting him put Sandford in the car, and of course they're crossing the border illegally and drives straight down into La and outside La in the little town of Wineville, which was this irrigated part of the desert where they were growing some grapes. Back then. He had this three acres of land his parents had bought for him, raw desert scrub with a little fence around it, and these two guys were to transform it into a functioning chicken ranch.

And the thing is, she let him go, even though the whole family knew why they had had to flee Canada in the first place two years earlier, and he was back there by himself, without a kny oversight at all. But she let him go, and Sandford right away knew it was trouble and objected and didn't want to go and was basically dragged into the car, and shortly after they got on the road, virtually as soon as Sandford was completely under Uncle Stuart's control is when the beatings began.

By the time they even reached California, he had already taken a lot of violence enough to know that he was in real trouble. So they get to Uncle Stuart's parents' house in LA before they go on out to the Chicken Ranch area, and he thinks, well, now finally there's other people around and he'll stop this. And it turns out their household is just as crazy and violent as his own, which kind of tells you where the man who would become Gordon Stewart Northcott grew up and

why he grew up the way he did. Because there again the woman is a completely toxic, psychotic woman who has completely beaten her husband into silent submission, and she winds up driving a lot of the murder story herself, and then later participating and trying to help her son escape once the whole thing unravels two years down the road.

So these two guys, Gordon Stewart Northcott and Sanford Clark, were both trapped between two highly psychotic, dominant female figures who just had their own demons and like some kind of magnetism. They were drawn together, this group of people, a psychotic magnetism, and for Sandford found himself caught in the middle of that. I'm losing my train of thought.

But oh no, they got pups of They go out to the desert and they pitch a tent and literally begin building this chicken ranch from scratch, building the chicken coops, building a small two room house to be the main home there, and they do over time get it built. Sandford winds up doing much of the work while Uncle Stuart overseas, and it isn't too long during their time out on the ranch before Sandford takes his first knockdown

beating rape from Uncle Stuart. These rapes then continue throughout the rest of his time there, and shortly after that he brings home his first boy to lock into a chicken coop and force Sandford to be his jailer.

going to come anyway. So tell us a little bit more about distinctively Stuart's behavior, right.

But what, yes, and what. Uncle Stuart may have been born as a normal person, but with the family he was in, you're almost guaranteed to come out crazy. And by the time Sandford was in his care from the age twenty on of Uncle Stuart, he was already a full blown psychopath. And to me, when I say psychopath, I'm not a doctor. I'm not using any kind of

a psychiatric term. That the distinguishing mark I draw when I'm interpreting any character or any person as a psychopath is it's not enough that they don't care if they hurt you. There's something in them that needs to hurt you while they're getting done whatever it is they're getting done. That even if they could steal your money, that's okay, But it's not enough unless they steal your money and

hurt you, or steal your money and kill you. That need to do harm to the innocent on top of whatever you're stealing or whatever's going on, that need to me is the element of psychosis. And Gordon Stewart Northcott had it in spades, and you're right. Shortly after getting in the car, Stuart, excuse me, Sanford, he knew he was in deep trouble, deep deep trouble. But part of it is a sign of the times. It's nineteen twenty six.

Then what is he going to do? The only communication is a telephone, and most people still don't have one. Once you're out of sight, once you're out of shouting distance. Back in those days, you are gone. And he was gone, and now he's an illegal alien in a country. He's not supposed to be in where they have no connections, no friends other than one toxic family of psychotics in Los Angeles. This boy had invisible bars around him from

the moment he left Canada. And of course Stuart doing the thing that so many dominating people will do in a situation like that, to assert dominance immediately makes Sandford paranoid about what would happen if the Americans caught him down there illegally, and how he would go to prison, and what they do to boys in prison, and graphically describing gang rape to him ironically while he's doing this as they're driving down, as if this is the way

to avoid all of that. It was actually getting close to the beginning of that very thing for Sandford himself, at the hands of his uncle.

And I'm not sure when this occurs, but he has this huge scar on his back, which becomes very very important later with his sister, but where he is scalded. So any little thing he is beaten for. But tell us about how the sexual assault is perpetrated on the boy and some of the things, horrendous things that he does to him.

let's set the scene a little better. This chicken ranch is in what's now even now is it kind of a remote suburb of Los Angeles. But back then was an isolated little desert town with that California sun, big desert stretching in all directions around him, or some equally dry desert mountains on the other side, even if he ran, that's what he was running too. He was afraid to knock on doors because he'd been indoctrinated about what would happen because he was there illegally, and how he would

wind up in prison. There was no telephone anywhere in the area. Residences didn't have them except for wealthy people back then. And once, after months of abuse and terror, he finally risked just running just I think his instinct made his legs run. But once he got out in the desert realized there was nowhere he could go, he turned around and came back, and you know, was thrown in a chicken pit for days for his trouble. So it's a lesson too, on the psychological breakdown a person

goes through under this kind of captivity. When we sit and say, well, why didn't you run, you know, we're being really ignorant of what they're up against. That his world at that time was so crushed and so distorted, and help was absolutely remote. Help was a fantasy to him,

the only escape he ever had. He had been a voracious reader, even though he was a poor student in school, and he had brought down a stash of his favorite westerns which he loved to read, and so he would use the fact that he could read and these Okay, round.

injury from his latest beatings. So he's starving, he's intimidated, and he's constantly recovering from one injury or another and the related illnesses and infections of those injuries. And this kid was under a personal holocaust all his own.

it's a human head. And Uncle Stuart gives him some absolutely off the wall explanation about how this was a Mexican worker he was going to maybe hire, but the guy tried to rob him and he was going to shoot him, and so he had to kill him, and he threw his body out in the desert, but he kept the head for whatever reason, and now they had

to dispose of the head. And he made Sandford build a big fire pit out back and put the head in it and burn it and keep the fire burning under it for many hours, and then take the skull and put it in the pail and pound it with a fence post until it was broken up like rocks. Supposedly to keep Uncle Stuart from being prosecuted for a murder that was nothing more than self defense. And so not only did it, it introduced this horror, just like you know, waking you with cold water out of a

sound sleep. On one hand, it also demonstrated Uncle Stuart's modus operandi for the rest of those two years, which is that he would come to you. What he was posing is a perfectly logical explanation. Any fool could see this is how it is, and then proceed to recite some piece of twisted madness that no sane person is going to go along with, such as it was self defense, so I had to cut off his head and hide

his body and burn the skull. But you're expected to go along with him as if he's sitting there like your personal accountant, giving you facts and figures instead of absolute twisted nonsense. That's what he demanded that Sandford do. Not only did he help him, but participate as if this is what you do in such a situation. That contrast of obvious lying with obvious sickness became a theme for the next two years.

some way. And I think that's what makes a person a bully. It isn't being big or strong or using violence, though it can be all these things. It's the same reason that mean girls in a great school class can still be bullies too, as small as they are, because there'll just be those who have the personality that needs to belittle others. And this was constant with Uncle Stuart,

that for him it was almost like breathing. You constantly treat sin as though everything he did was wrong and everything he said was foolish, and every thing about him was an irritating problem, so that it's like rubbing someone with sandpaper all day long, that in addition to whatever torments he might inflict, the ordinary neutral, the idling engine of his craziness needed to just sandpaper your face twenty four hours a day. And of course Sandford had nowhere

to go to get away from it. There is no one to turn to. It's a two room house in the middle of a baking desert, stinking of chicken crap, and he spends his day gathering eggs and cleaning up the cages. And that was what he knew of what it meant to be a human being and to be alive. That was his experience. If he had died, that would have been what he found this life to be. And I think as we get to that, then the real element of horror it starts to It's like the theme

from Jaws. It just starts to follow you and grow larger. And the reason that we do that, the reason the story proceeds in that way, is because this is exactly what happened to Sandford himself. It's as much as he knew he was in trouble from day one. Man, the news just kept getting worse and worse and worse. It's

difficult to stay with. And yet, like I said, you can't just say, wow, he had a bad time for two years, because once you see how far down he is, you then get to watch the process of what are you're going to do. You haven't died, You've gone through the legal side of this thing. You've gone through the trial. They put you in juvenile home, which they did until he reached eighteen. But the juvenile home was the healthiest

place he'd ever been, and he flourished there. It was a place where you're treated kindly, by the way, was not a prison, and he was never tormented or harmed while he was there. Somebody goes back to Canada and now you're eighteen years old, your whole family's gone. The town you go back to, they all know what happened. And you know how gossip is. Even though there was no Internet back then, gossip was very effective at something like this. It was far too juicy to not be known.

And this is where you're supposed to go to start a new life. Well, when we see the depth of the quicksand he'd already pulled himself out of just to cross that border again back into Canada, just to step back into Saskatoon one more time. The last time he'd seen that he was twelve, and now he's coming back after on the flip side of all of this, and to me, this is when this story becomes truly fascinating. Yes, the murder Farm episode is horrifying, but something really fascinating

about it in itself. It's just violence and psychosis. For me. The element of fascinating that looms, the thing that counters the theme from Jaws, that counters that sense of dawning horror and begins to shrink it is now when it's what are you going to do?

this on his head. And the extraordinary thing about that, and another tip I'll give to the listeners about how he specifically was able to carry this burden to transform into positive energy. It's like this one of the things he was noted for among his crew was. The guy had no fear. Remember now, as an artillery cannon operator, you're under a field of artillery fire. That means shells are going off all around you, over your head. Unless you're in a pit or something like that. They're shrapnel.

It's tearing people to bits. You can feel the explosions in your chest. Men, good men's strong men, brave men will wet their pants and not even know it. It's so horrifying an inhuman and environment. And he would stand there helping the guys load and calling out to them and joking with them and whistling and stuff, and no one could believe it. But the way he would keep up the morale, well, it wasn't just John Wayne balls, That's not what it was. It's that this guy had

already been in hell. This guy had been thrown in pits that were smaller than a casket and left there for days. So in an artillery fire, why he knows, even if they do his you'll be here once second and gone the next. No one's going to torture you. You know, you're not going to be alone and despairing in an agony. Now, you're just not going to exist, anymore, and that was okay with him, and that's how he

got through. So where you might imagine that he would be unable to take that kind of stress, he was actually able to process that kind of stress because of the torment he'd had to endure. And that, to me, is the miracle of this story. And that's the thing I think the book really offers to readers is bits like that where you actually see it in action, because it's easy to put it out like the self help book and say, oh, you put one foot in front of the other, and you know, throw some slogans at

you and say that's how he did it. But we all know that's crap, and we all know the slogans don't work. So what did he do? And to me, that's the real gift of the book that brings to the readers kind of like these examples I've put out here, Yeah, here's what he did ABCD, and here's how it worked. And the reason I believe that's so valuable is the

random horror that fell on him. Then your news feed is full of that today, different causes, but the same kind of random horror dropped on innocent people and can't do anything about that, but we can strengthen the message to people that we all have resources and reserves that

we can't imagine until they're called upon. I think the purpose of a story like this, the positive purpose of a story like this, is to not just remind you of that message, but to show you how it works in action, because it will fortify us just a little bit more against the random crap that drops on all

of us from time to time. That's the thing that just got me locked onto the story from day one was the chance to kind of do an autopsy on someone's recovery from being in hell and say, beyond the slogans and the self help bumper stickers, what do you really do? If that's you, What are you really going to do tomorrow tomorrow morning, and then tomorrow afternoon and then tomorrow night. What are you going to do when

you carry this kind of burden? And here's what he did, and here's how he kept on his feet.

she was suspicious, she had her questions. Will say the father protested, but very mildly, like you say, he was not dominant in that relationship whatsoever. But let's talk about the first kinds of things that Sanford sees and experiences, because we're talking about a few boys that he did save, a whole family that he did save. But before that, he was helpless to help the people that his twisted

uncle brought onto that farm. So what horror did he have to endure that he had to carry with him his entire life, that it took special people in his life, and then years of self realization, I imagine, So what you talk about in that he could not blame himself, not think of himself as worthless. Let's talk about the horror and then that pivotal moment, that crucial event that created the opportunity that he could get out of hell.

Every few weeks, he'd send another one. Now, the family was indifferent to the letters, except for his sister Jesse. His older sister Jesse. She was seventeen when he left and then nineteen when it ended. But so she was at the end of her teenage years and chomping at the bit to get out of the house herself, even back in those days when young women tended not to do that. And she would read his letters very carefully and then write responses and ask him questions, well, how

about this, and are you doing that? But the next letter he would never answer any of her questions, just pretend they'd not been asked, and tell another story that was so rosy it made her suspicious, because, after all, this is uncle Stuart she knows who he is, and it's hard for her to believe he's all of a sudden the boy scout leader and you know, taking Sanford through this lovely life of work in school. So she's

kind of not buying the concept to begin with. Then these letters come, she writes back, she's not getting responses, and then after a period of time, she notices that although Sandford braggs about going to school and doing well, his handwriting isn't getting any better, and she wonders why

that is. And finally she becomes so suspicious that after she has moved out of the house at eighteen and taken a little job as a secretary working in town, living in a rooming house on her own, she scrapes up just enough money for a train to the coast and then a boat down to Los Angeles, which she does.

She shows up out at the ranch just there's a phone call from the parents in LA that she's there, and she's headed out, and a couple hours later she's out at the ranch in a car and Stuart, Uncle Stuart, tries to put on a show of oh, yes, here's the ranch and here's what we're doing and keeping up an illusion. But right away she sees her brother and one of the things that stops her cold is it's been a couple of years now. He hasn't grown at

all in that time. It has actually lost quite a bit of weight.

I think had just shut down his system. And then when they're one night, they're sort of lying on the sofa talking, she runs her fingers along Sandford's back and through his undershirt she feels all these pebbly kind of scar tissue on his back, and that's the thing that finally makes her. She pulls him aside late at night when Uncle Stuart is asleep and she try, had tried a couple of times, and Sandford would refuse to talk, and she, finding this, coroners him and says, look, what

is going on? You tell me now, I'll go in there and I'll wake up Stuart. I'll make him tell me. And that freaks out Sandford because he goes, no, he'll kill you. You can't, you can't do it. And he finds it, and he breaks down and tells her that Stuart's been beating him, that the scar tissue she feels comes from boiling water that was poured on his back

as punishment for some irritation or another and healed. All he was ever given was vasolene to rub over the burn, and so of course he had all that scar tissue there. And this horrifies her to the point she's about to go grab Stuart right now, and Sandford just implores her, you can't. You can't. You don't know what he is, you don't know what he'll do, and he makes her leave. She gets in the car says, all right, I'm going to go, but you can bet i'll be back. We're

we're not going to stand for this. But she's also in America illegally. She's afraid to just call the police. Now. The truth is back then, even as I think at their worst, the authorities would not have done anything bad to these guys if they had caught them. At worst, they might have been deported back to Canada, and maybe not even that, but they had this, their family had this terrible fear of what would happen. Is she wasn't much more rational about it than her brother Sandford was.

So what she does is immediately reach turned to Canada and alert the authorities there, who then going through them, they go back to the sheriff back down in California, and they eventually get authorities out to the ranch, getting ahead of myself. But that's why Jesse is such an important and heroic figure of the story. And I'm grateful that she's there because otherwise you got these two psychotic mothers and it seems like we're coming down on the

females here and we're really not. That's just the way this family dynamic was structured. And our feminine hero and Jesse is just fabulous because think about this again. Remember it's nineteen twenty eight now, she's just turned nineteen. She's traveling thousands of miles by herself, she's got no money down to a place where she's got no friends or contacts of any kind except you know, Psycho Ma and say nothing Pa. And with that she's supposed to work

on finding out what's wrong. With her brother. So the sheer courage and grit that she displayed in doing this, I just think is phenomenal. And it was only because of that that the dime got dropped on Stewart at last and the authorities came in. So yeah, she's a fabulous figure. And it just it kills me that she died shortly before we had begun work on the book

and I never got to interview. I would love to have met this woman, because there again, there's a quality of grit in these people who were otherwise ordinary people. They could be anybody, and yet boy, she had love that drove her and gave her courage and gave her determination up against a guy who would cheerfully have killed her to keep her quiet if that's what he thought

he needed to do. So you figure, even once she's found out what's going on from Sandford, she still had to face Stuart out there on the ranch for the a day or so before they finally left and keep him from suspecting that she knew, although otherwise the game is up. So yeah, Jesse, sister, Jesse, what a woman, and what a young woman, What a powerful young woman

for the day. It's easy now I think to say, oh, you go girl as a strong woman, But remember they had nowhere to turn to be a strong woman with anyone else. There were no other females supporting her. Women didn't do things like that. Young woman didn't do things like that back then. And she did it anyway because her little brother was down there and she didn't know what was wrong. But she finally got to the point said this is whatever, this is crap, and we have

to find out what's going on with Sandford. And as it turned out, the condition of his health and his just slow starvation was such that I don't believe he'd have lived physically much longer anyway if she hadn't come. So she saved his life on a couple of different levels. And let's hear it for having a great big sister him.

And that's part of this as well, brought on by Jesse coming into the picture and confronting all of them. And really Stuart had this bizarre relationship right out of psycho in that he would curl up with his mother and cry, and again she would us that the Mexican boys that could couldn't be traced back to them, that was okay. And as we skipped over as well, she was a participant in a murder on the farm itself. So again, really truly, who needs fiction type story with the whole.

in a continually disintegrating state by then. You see over these two years his psychosis evolving that I think in order to get his high from the crazy behavior, he had to push the risk farther and farther each time, kind of like a gambler who has to keep raising the stakes to get that rush, and he was becoming more and more careless. He stopped picking up the Mexican boys. And the reason they were important is these were boys who were here illegally to work and labor, whose families

were back in Mexico. That made them easy pickings as victims who they would simply disappear in the family would never know. But he graduated into picking up the local kids, white kids in town who have a history in the area. And then at one point brings home young Walter Collins, who actually he's had some contact with the family in

the past, and Sanford's is freaking over this. And then finally he brings home an entire family, mom, pop and two kids, all one evening, under the guise of their coming there to interview to be managers of the chicken ranch, to live there and be managers of the chicken ranch. Of course, this is nineteen twenty eight. People starting to get desperate for work out in that part of California, and it was easy to get them to come. But once he brings them there, he then springs the news

to Sandford He's going to kill the whole family. I guess now to get his rush, he needs multiple murder and enlists Sandford to keep the kids busy out supposedly looking at how you candle eggs out in the sheds while he takes care of the parents in the house. And this point was finally for Sandford. This was his straw that just broke his back where he finally decided

he didn't even care if his uncle killed him. He was not taking another step like this, and he wouldn't help him keep the kids separate from the parents because Uncle Stuart was sure if he started killing them in all four were there, they would overpower him. That's why he

wanted to separate them, divide them up that way. But Sandford wouldn't help, and so they wound up the family just concluding the fake interview, getting back in their car and leaving, having no idea they had come within just a hair's breadth of all being slow watered out there and being buried under the chicken pits with the other boys. And of course Sandford paid dearly in terms of retribution and beating, but they lived and he got them out

of there. And I think too, this is a seminal moment for Sandford because it's the first time he truly asserts himself and asserts his goodness against the evil around him. He's been such a beaten and broken little mouse of a guy for so long. It's like suddenly watching him find the strength in his legs and to stand up

straight and scream the word no and mean it. And of course Uncle Stuart actually kind of let it slip, just because he was so floored at this level of objection and an opposition from Sandford, who was usually his pliable little boy, that he flummoxed and allowed the people to drive away, Thank goodness. But that was the last of it in terms of Stuart's attempts, because they were

busted shortly afterwards. But it also I think it illustrates this decomposition process Uncle Stuart was going through, and all serial killers do seem to share that thing. Bundy was the same way. They seem like they're getting stupider. But I don't think it's a thing of IQ. I think they are addicts. They need their fix. They're adrenaline fix.

And what they find is if you did it this way last time, doing it this way again doesn't feel as good, it doesn't charge you as high, So they need to add something even sicker and even more twisted, or more victims, or some more horrible kind of violel that to keep just turning up the volume on the experience itself. I think that's where Uncle Stuart was. And even if there had been no Sandford at all, he would have quickly gotten to the point where he was.

I don't killing people in public in front of witnesses or whatever. He thinks all he needed to do to get high, and that would have been his downfalling. Somebody would have finally stepped up, a man somewhere would have just taken him to the ground. But he was very, very clever about always isolating his experiences so that he was basically just around people younger and smaller or much

older and weaker. He didn't like hanging around with people who might grab him by the throat and make him start talking.

what happens again. He has this man that comes into his life, gets him examined by a doctor because he notices the abuse that he's had and physically the toll that it's taken, and as you mentioned, he puts him into a reformatory, which is the best thing that they could ever happen to him. And this person really believes in him and makes him feel like he has some self worth rather than he still despises himself basically for everything that he's witnessed and gone through and participated in

and endured in terms of abuse. Still believes that lots of this is coming to him and nothing good should come to him, So let's also talk about that. But also his horror still is still not over because Uncle Stuart has the right to defend or had to defend himself and be his own lawyer. So right, well, tell us a.

basically semi retired at the time. He literally came out of retirement back to the office, got signed back up on active duty just to prosecute this case, and in so doing he took care and custody of Sandford because from the beginning, Loyal Kelly understood that Sandford was a victim, even though at first Sandford had denied everything and stuff and he did the the Stockholm syndrome kind of thing

for a couple of days. Loyal Kelly had this tremendous level of insight, like a trained FBI profiler might have today, but he just had it as a man, and on some level, clearly he had some background with something similar because he was so impassioned.

have been his destination. But Loyal Kelly wouldn't allow him to be charged, kept him entirely away from the murder proceedings. They held him on the being in the country illegally thing, but that was just a roost to give him, keep him somewhere safe, and keep him fed and getting medical care to this broken boy because he had no family, and if they sent him back to Canada, he had nobody there to help him either. So from the first, get go Loyal Kelly. And what a great name for

a character, Loyal Kelly. From the first he is on this case, he's on Sanford, protecting him as beautifully and as lovingly as any father anywhere ever could. But man on the other side of the coin, Loyal Kelly is one mean bastard and he is out to get Gordon's Stewart Northcott. There's one photograph I have, it's in the book.

That's great. That just shows the courtroom and the lined up attorneys and stuff, and you can see Loyal Kelly right there watching Gordon Stewart Northcott, who's trying to grin, but you can already start seeing like the doom and fear on his face. He's starting to realize, even through his psychosis, that he's in it bad. So there's that great guy, and there again, he's a pleasure to write about, a pleasure to talk about, because and this is nineteen

twenty eight. With a guy with this level of insight, we hear so many stories about crooked attorneys and crooked judges, and there was a lot of bigotry back then. You know, there's a lot of things you can look down on. But man, here was this one shining example of a fully awake human being firing on all cylinders, who just came into this situation said no, no, not on my watch, No no, no, you over here, you over there, and

just started sorting it all out. So yet, the reason in fact that I think Sandford was able to even begin this long recovery process, it goes straight to loyal Kelly just coming in like a dad or like a big brother and basically saying, all right, you've suffered enough, Sandford, We're putting it into this. And so they did. So they did. But as you said, then the second part of your question was regarding the trial itself, because I think you already mentioned that it wasn't over for Sandford yet.

This was just the murder farm was done, but the story was ramping up and changing lanes man because now not only does he of course have to testify, but Uncle Stuart, being a toxic narcissist who thinks he's smarter than everybody else else, demands his right to defend himself and loyal Kelly has to go back to Sandford and say, guy, I'm sorry, but this is how the law works in our country. And he actually does to get to grill you on the stand in court, and we have to

let him do it. And so Sandford has to go back to the court and spend I think it's two days under the gun all day, all afternoon of the man who has tormented him, raped him, raped him with foreign objects, forced him to kill other little boys, forced him to bury their bodies, forced him to grind up the broken bits of a burned skull, and mocked him steadily throughout that time. This guy is now prancing back and forth in a courtroom, throwing questions at him and

since he's crazy Gordon Stewart. Northcott conducts himself almost as if this is his show and done for his pleasure, that he is so lost in the ability to speak and force other people to listen to him. And of course for him, this is heaven, having a captive audience. He's the original lover of captive audiences, and he's got Sandford captive again. And now he's got him captive in front of a whole room full of people. I don't doubt that at some level the satisfaction was sexual for him.

I wouldn't be surprised if he had an orgasm in court while he was doing this, because it distilled down his need for control to such a refined degree and gave it such power. Here he was in this room full of judges and cops and detectives for the press, witnesses, the jury, and he gets to just hold forth hour after hour after hour. But Sandford, very quietly and very steadfastly, just stood there, stated his peace, would not be in imitated,

wouldn't be turned away, wouldn't take it back. And the steadier Sanford remained, the more it seemed to begin dawning on Uncle Stewart that the whole game is now changed, and as much pleasure as he might be taking at first in his command of the case and his control of the courtroom, now he realizes, wait a minute, he's wrapping the rope around his own neck, and that's what everybody is actually watching him do, because suddenly now you see how he looks just crazy compared to this quiet,

steadfast boy who just keeps testifying, stating the facts, not getting upset, not faltering, not having to ever backstep and correct himself. This was for Sandford Clark the moment to finally just get it out, and he did. Boy, he rose to the occasion.

not turning way, not crumbling, just quietly staring. I think that was like a wealth of information going back and forth between these two that nobody would even know. It just looks like, oh, two guys looking at each other. But what a radical thing. Yeah, Sandford's looking right at you, pal, Sanford's looking You're right in the eyes. How many times in the last two years had he even seen Sandford's eyes, you know, unless he was looking into his eyes to

enjoy the hurt while he was abusing him. So yeah, huge turnaround, huge turnaround in the whole universe for Gordon Stewart Northcott simply to step up to that stand look this little victim boy in the eyes, this boy who was such an object of contempt, he was barely even treated as a human, And to have him just calmly look right back at you, this is what you did. Yes you did and no, no you didn't do that, you did this other and keep calmly correcting the lies

and asserting the truths and not backing away. I would be willing to bet that there was this awful sinking, you know, that feeling in your gut of dread, when you just know you have massively screwed up. Of course, not to Nians ever have, but in whatever in life, where just your stomach knows it before your brain even knows it. You know that feeling, don't You just know?

Gordon Stewart Northcott had it at that moment, standing in front of that case, looking at this little boy, and holy shit, all of a sudden, there's a calm human being staring right into my pupils and not wavering, and this re reorganized his whole world, his whole universe.

this kid's onto something. And that's when all the full resources went into the case and they really went out and combed the place, and you bet by the time they came back, they certainly had enough to put Gordon Stewart Northcott in prison. Whether or not they could have gotten him on a first degree murder and on a

death penalty case, I don't know. Without Sandford Clark, I think that's why they were so insistent on having him testify, that this had to be a guy who didn't ever walk the streets again, no matter what you know, there can't be a judge in the future who decides to

commute his sentence. We can't have that. And they it's like putting down a rabid dog has got to go, And so I think that's that was the real reason for Sanford there, that to put him in front of the jury and make the jury see specifically who this was that was put through that and had him tell of what he was made to do by the defendant. That's what starts making the jury get hungry for a rope, and which they were by the time the case went to trial. A very short deliberation.

you just hang and strangle. Well, of course, even though it's nineteen twenty nine, by now, hangman have a very accurate rope tables, weight versus fall, versus distance, and they know the physics of exactly how long to make your rope to snap your neck if that's what they want to do in this case, because by now everybody knows. And to give you an idea, how traumatized the entire community was. They were called Wineville, then they dropped the

name and changed it to miro Loma. They didn't even want to be called by the name of Wineville anymore, because they were just so mortified and horrified by this, by these boys, by all these boys, all these victims. Jeff forgot my point. I went off on Wineville, which is now miro Loma. The murder farm is still there, although it's been transformed into a pleasant little roadside house. Now, if you didn't know the story, you wouldn't have any reason to suspect the story. But when you stand in

from that house, you're looking at the place. It was covered over with a cladding at some point in the past. But that's the building, that's the house where it all had happened. And without Sanford's testimony, yeah, he might have just gotten life. And back then that might have been in twenty thirty years, he'd have walked out with the young guy. He'd come out of prison at the age of fifty and been perfectly cable to kill a hundred more kids while he's at it. So they needed him dead.

They did a short drop at his hanging, which didn't break his neck, so a guard ran out, grabbed on to his feet and hung onto them for twelve minutes while while the body strangled to death. Interesting in today's world. If someone did that, the guard would probably be prosecuted.

Back then, it was part of the job, the idea being if a person can bounce and do the hangman's dance at the end of the rope, it might lengthen the amount of time it takes for them to strangle to death, although they'll still inevitably die, and that that in itself is cruel and un usual. So the best thing to do, the most humane thing to do, is hang on his feet so he strangles as quick as possible,

And that would have been the reasoning put forth. But of course I think it was all just one big last up years to Gordon Stewart Northcott from this community that I mean, to this day feels stained by the depth of this little piece of hell that they had right out there, which is now a pleasant suburban neighborhood, but was then a piece of the Holocaust, right out there in the desert for these boys, for all these boys.

I did? You know what kind of crimes I committed. So, mister Kelly, why are you even doing this? And what do you want in exchange? What's the payback? Tell us?

you do that, paid me. And that wasn't just some nice piece of fatherly advice. Sanford took that as his gospel. He carved that in stone in some part of his own mind, and it guided him for the next more than half a century. And it is exactly what he did was slowly and steadily just slog forward and rebuild

from nothing once again. Imagine carrying the burden he carried and finding a woman who loves you and knows what happened to you and still loves you, and staying good and married and faithful with her for fifty five years. Most people today, no matter how good their life has been, they can't do that. They can't blend with another person and well enough to keep it going for that long. And yet he did it with this kind of background.

It's why I mean, I'm sorry if I sound like a broken record, but I keep going back to my own amazement at the quality of the power of survival and the power of determination, even an ordinary guy. We had this in us. And that's the lesson that Sanford brought through this. He did repay yal Kelly. He did exactly that, lived a life one could only admire even if nothing had ever happened to him in his youth.

And yet he did it in spite of that. And you know, if he can, you can, and I can, and God forbid we should have to call on ourselves at that level, but it is there, and you get to watch this guy go through the process and see how he did it.

This productive, positive person had his times where these two heroic figures in his life, with his wife again giving him that joy that most of us might not even enjoy, but also his sister as well, always maintained contact and knew tell us just a little bit about the demons that he did have.

saw through that to who he was. She saw the guy who was capable of going back and honoring loyal Kelly's request, and of living the good and decent and admirable life. She saw that instead of a crime victim, or even worse, of some depraved criminal, she saw it. I don't know how, but she obviously saw it clearly. Their their devotion was steadfast. And of course his sister Jesse remained a big part of his life. And but what happened even she moved some distance away, but would

still come in regularly. Now as he went through his life, and particularly in the younger times when he was first trying to find his feet struggling, he would have these moments where it would all just come rushing back, and the flashbacks, and as anyone. Auschwitz survivors also talk about similar things, that a sense of smell, a sight of something that is similar to something from your time of trauma,

will just throw everything right back on you. Not that you're hallucinating and thinking you're there again, but that it's more like an instant panic attack. Suddenly your body is filled with the terror and the need to get away, even though your mind sees I'm just walking down the sidewalk on a sunny day. He had that syndrome, and he would suddenly just kind of go lax and stare

into space. June learned to recognize what that look meant, which was different than I'm steering the space thinking, or I'm remembering, or I'm daydre. I mean, this was I'm captive to visions I shouldn't have to have. And she developed this whole way of talking to him, forcing him to engage. She would call Jesse, the two of them would come over and they would play cards and talk and just keep him occupied, because you know, if they just keep him talking, it didn't even matter what they

talked about. That was enough to kind of just break the spell and help him stay above the surface, stay in the here and the now. And they were like these two white witches in that way that they would bring this invisible form of very powerful healing back to him. If we had a video camera that we could watch, what you would see as three adults, two women and a man, playing cards and maybe drinking beer around a

kitchen table. But what's really going on is these two women are reaching back down into that hell where he's just he's fallen into a manhole. He's back there again, and they are grabbing him and pulling him back out in the most ordinary of means, with daily conversation and contact with people who love you, where you know you're safe.

And there's a picture in the book I have that I'm so grateful to obtain from Jerry that someone took once when Sanford is an older man, I think he's in his fifties at this point, had one of those episodes and he's just captivated and staring away, and we have the photo of his face. This was the expression June and Jesse learned to recognize, and they kept him from that. Otherwise, who knows, maybe despair and suicide would have overcome him. You know, he needed his human angels

to take care of him here in this world. But there again, you can see step by step how they did it. And I'm so glad too to be able to tell the story about these two wonderful women because we've got these two toxic horror show women at the opening of the story. I would hate for readers to think that I've got it in for the females. You know, that's just who those two happened to be, And yet June and Jesse were as far on the opposite side

of that spectrum as too. They show what a healing feminine power of love can be upon a broken male, and it's like water in the desert.

on their own. So their solution, and here again perfectly in keeping with his oath to loyal Kelly, they went to the local orphanage and adopted first one and then a couple of years later a second boys from their quote hard to adopt unquote group, which means the kids who were in the toddlers stage, you know, adoptive parents like babies. So at the age of three, they brought home the guy who was to become Jerry Clark, who gave me this story for the book, and I think

two or three years later brought home Jerry's brother. Both of them were from the orphanage, both of them from with him the older set. It brought home as toddlers and raised them as sons. And even though this is way back when parents didn't coddle children, and so he wasn't just like this doting dad from television. He was a strong and moral force who never forever physically struck his kids. Jerry was adamant about that. There was no

fear of ever being even slapped in his house. But after the night that he finally told the son Jerry about this story, Jerry was seventeen, I think, and he told them especially about being trapped in those chicken pits, buried unto those boards, in spaces smaller than a coffin eight inches or so. You're lying there with his hands pressed up just above his chest, pressing against the boards, trying to relieve some of the pressure on his chest.

Well Jerry was so struck by that. I mean, he went home that night and his father, Sandford, heard some noise from down in Jerry's room, went down his bedroom, opened the door and Jerry sound asleep, a sleepwalg is standing up in his bed, pressing up against the ceiling of the ah ah, pressing away. That's how profoundly he had been affected by the vision behind what his father

had told him. Fortunately, they had agreed with each other they would talk it all through that night, that one time, and then that they would never speak of it again. And they never did. But you can see why this is. And I knew once. I knew a woman whose parents were both Holocaust survivors, and she said they and their other friends or relatives who were also survived, also shared the technique. None of them ever wanted to talk about it. That there are some things I think so awful that

there's nothing therapeutic about going back over it. It just needs to be left alone and lived out. And that's what this was for him. He did tell him because he was afraid Jerry would hear it from someone else and get the wrong idea. And it was very important to him that Jerry understand what had happened and why he was caught up and all that. But having done that, having tried to protect Jerry from the misunderstandings of a gossipy public, he then said, all right, but that's done. Now,

we're done with that. We're now we're gonna go back to living. And that's what they did. I don't have I don't have any wisdom beyond that. I mean, I think that this is a fairly uneducated guy who made an awful lot of highly educated, sensitive, smart decisions. And all credit, of course to Sandford Clark. But here again he was living out his oath to loyal Kelly, to earn it, you know, to show that nothing was wasted on you. This was the right thing to do. You

were worth preserving. And hear all this goodness that rolls forth from your life that's there because of you, because you're here. I mean, the reader gets to see this guy, well, he's still is fairly just a labor work or this is before he even got his job as a post office worker and a mail carrier, which he did years later. Is building a little house on a two house lot

that he's purchased. Who levels off the empty part of the lot and every winter freezes it over so the kids can come and play hockey with his sons, and his sons can have a placed ice hockey right there by the house. That's the kind of consideration and sensitivity he was still able to muster. And yet so all those kids play in hockey, they're enjoying the very thing that loyal Kelly was trying to save in the first place. You know, there's something that wouldn't be there if it

weren't for Sanford Clark, and he did it. You know, he lived up to that obligation. I really think all those Jesus would come to the same conclusion.

there was nothing there, his grandparents, his uncle. I really didn't have anybody in the world, and yet he met this June. The community again was very profound in your book how you talk about the community accepted him and he was surprised that he didn't have to tell June about his past. She already knew and she didn't care. And so it was very very again amazing for that time that people, when both countries are so forward thinking

and able to put things in the past. But to his credit, he really became such an upstanding man that there was never anything but little whispers that even he was not affected by That's right, that's right. Yeah, it's very dramatic story. I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about Road Out of Hell. I know this is a book that your publishers diversion books with this. Can you tell us a little bit about if people want to get this book or find

out a little bit more about you. Do you have a website Facebook? How my people might contact you or find out at more about your work?

and it's not even a crime story. It's a human story. And I think everybody everywhere wants to see how our human are, common human spirit functions under tremendous stress. And I believe that's the engine of success for the story. That it doesn't matter who you are, if you're a human being and you can read it has something to tell you. Yeah, I've got to end it with that. My voice is starting to go. Dan, I'm sorry.