Introduction

"And you wonder: How the hell did this guy go on to be a loving father and grandfather? How did he bury all that crap? That's a whole story in itself.Clint Eastwood, director of Changeling, regarding Sanford Clark

 

From 1926 to 1928, Gordon Stewart Northcott committed at least twenty murders on a chicken ranch outside of Los Angeles. His nephew, Sanford Clark, was held captive there from the age of 13 to 15, and was the sole surviving victim of the killing spree. Here, acclaimed crime writer Anthony Flacco-using never-before-heard information from Sanford's son Jerry Clark-tells the real story behind the case that riveted the nation.   

Forced by Northcott to take part in the murders, Sanford carried tremendous guilt all his life. Yet, despite his youth and the trauma, he helped gain some justice for the dead and their families by testifying at Northcott's trial?which led to his conviction and execution.  It was a shocking story, but perhaps the most shocking part of all is the extraordinarily ordinary life Clark went on to live as a decorated WWII vet, a devoted husband of 55 years, a loving father, and a productive citizen.

In dramatizing one of the darkest cases in American crime, Flacco constructs a riveting psychological drama about how Sanford was able to detoxify himself from the evil he?d encountered, offering the ultimately redemptive story one man's remarkable ability to survive a nightmare and emerge intact.

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Excerpt

One

Thirteen-year-old Sanford Clark felt his stomach lurch when he realized that his mother was really going to send him away. He stared down at the floor and fought to control his breathing while his brain reeled from the news. Everything about it felt wrong. The atmosphere in the room took on a poisonous feel, as if a thin mist of acid had just rolled in through the window. He knew that his mother and uncle were telling him a pack of lies. It was all so off-kilter and strange that the moment belonged in a bad dream.

There was his mother, Winnie, doing more of that wink-and-grin whispering that she and her younger brother Stewart always fell into whenever they thought nobody was around. Today, for some reason, she didn’t appear to care that Sanford was standing right there—or even that her husband was in the room. She seemed determined to end Uncle Stewart’s visit with all the closeness that she could get from him. Sanford wondered how his father could fail to see it. But when John Clark was at home, he just kind of floated around in their lives. He had gotten himself bitched into silence at some point in the distant past, back when Sanford was too small to remember. Now he only knew his father’s ghost.

He strained for a way to get his father involved, even though that was generally not productive. While John did have enough strength to explode for a minute or so when life’s stresses became too much for him, he also burned out as quick as a match head. Nowadays, he seldom bothered with anything enough to lose his temper over it. On the rare occasions when he did slip, Winnie made sure he paid for it, sometimes for weeks.

But today their whispering—it almost seemed more like flirting—had the terrifying purpose of giving Sanford away to Uncle Stewart. It was clear that no one could stop her. Their story was that Uncle Stewart would be taking Sanford on a road trip in his big Buick roadster to visit the city of Regina, about 150 miles southeast, the capital of Saskatch¬ewan. “It will be a grand trip, Sanford!” Uncle Stewart enthused. “And I know you’d love to see the Regina Pats on their home field, right?”

“They’re junior league.”

“Sanford,” Winnie added, “Regina is our capital city and you need to know about it. It’s a beautiful place and you’re going to let Uncle Stewart show you around.”

“We’ll make a game out of it!” Uncle Stewart chimed in, lying like a crooked salesman. “We’ll drive around town, looking for any leftover signs of the Regina Hurricane.”

“Wasn’t that before I was born?”

“Not that far. It’s been fourteen years—so if they haven’t fixed everything back up by now, we’ll write to the newspapers! An exposé! Think of it: two hicks from Saskatoon criticizing the capital. It’ll be a scandal, ha-ha!”

Sanford figured that the only scandal here was that his mother was going to give him away while she and her brother lied to him with such conviction. Sanford was no stranger to his mother’s skills at deception—he had spent much of his life in listening to her lie to anybody who had anything to give up.

He had forgotten how much his mother and her brother shared the trait. Prior to this two-week visit from Uncle Stewart, Sanford had not seen him or his family since they had left Canada in a hurry two years before. Nobody ever told Sanford why the Northcott family wanted to leave the country, but their whole family knew that Uncle Stewart had managed to infuriate certain neighbors with his treatment of their children. No doubt he could lie well about that too. But Sanford had sneaked up on his mother and uncle earlier that day while they were gig¬gling in the corner, making their plans for him. Now he knew full well that nothing about this Regina story was true.

He sneaked another glance at his mother. Winnie was in one of her detached moods, not really recognizing anything that was going on around her. The only time she looked anybody in the eye while she was in this mood was to rage at them. He figured that was why she could dis¬cuss shipping him away like it was nothing. He struggled for his voice.

“This is a bunch of baloney!” he finally blurted. “I know we’re not going to Regina! He’s taking me all the way down to the States! I heard you talking about that stupid chicken ranch!”

Winnie aimed that stare of hers directly into his eyes. He saw it then: she would sooner take a bite out of his skull than acknowledge the truth of anything he said. Her eyebrows pulled inward. “Why, you selfish, self-centered son of a bitch! What about momma? Huh? What about me?”

“. . . About you?”

“Do not answer my question with a question, you little shit!”

“Hell, Sissie—go ahead and tell him.”

“Oh, now you want me to tell him?”

“Might as well.”

“You want to listen to his whining?”

“He’s not gonna whine.” Uncle Stewart now directed a menacing gaze at Sanford. “Are you, sport?”

Sanford tried to ignore the question. “I don’t want to go to—”

“He’s not gonna whine!” Uncle Stewart barked. Then he continued in a menacing, overly soft voice: “Are you, sport?”

“I wasn’t whining.”

Winnie snorted with disgust. “God damn it, you spoiled bastard! You don’t know what work is. You don’t know what struggle is.”

“That’s something every boy should learn, Sanford,” Uncle Stewart added.

“It’s not fair to just—” Sanford began, but Winnie cut him off.

“All right!” she shouted. After a pause to stare into space and slowly shake her head, she took a deep breath and spoke, giving the appearance of weighing every word while she delivered her considered thoughts. “Son. There is truly—and I mean this—truly something wrong with you. I think that you are missing something that a normal boy is supposed to have. It’s this selfishness of yours, the way that you only think about yourself. There are words for people like that. Bad words. So all right, then, you want to know what’s up? Fine and dandy: here it is! You’re going down to California with Stewart. I was trying to make it easier for you, but no, you won’t have it.

“Any normal boy loves adventure. Once any real boy gets out onto the road, you know, with the wind in his hair, it’s only natural for that boy to want to keep on traveling as far as he can, as long as he’s got plenty of sandwiches. A mother knows these things.”

“Why would I want to keep on trav—”

“But it’s a waste of time to think about you. A show of courtesy is lost on you!”

Winnie ticked her way through the old list of his sins, one finger at a time. She could take two or three minutes per finger, use up every one of them and add in a few of her toes before she got it all out of her system. He took a deep breath while the familiar damnations began trundling before him: A foolish daydreamer too misty-headed for his own good. A loafer who devoured popular fiction but who could barely sit through a class and seldom passed an exam. A dolt who responded too slowly, got her orders ass-backwards, or just went about everything wrong. He had always been more trouble than he was worth.

“That’s why you need this new life,” she summed up. “You can go to school down there and help take care of Uncle Stewart’s place the rest of the time.”

But to Sanford, this “real story” sounded every bit as ridiculous as their lie. Breeding livestock with Uncle Stewart out in the desert? San¬ford’s Uncle Stewart was a delicate, twenty-year-old aspiring pianist. He had lived all of his life in Canada until two years ago, when he and his parents had left for the States. The would-be chicken rancher had always been tremendously proud of the fact that he played the piano with enough skill to appear professionally with local orchestras and silent film houses. Uncle Stewart had played up here in the province and supposedly down in the States as well. The whole damned family knew about his dreams of becoming a concert pianist. And as for living in the desert, Sanford had never thought about it before, but why would any¬body move from a city like Los Angeles to live in the middle of nowhere unless they had to?

He chewed his lip in consternation and pushed his brain for an answer: what could there be about such an isolated location that would hold Uncle Stewart’s interest? Nobody was mentioning anything about that. But it stood to reason that a bunch of cooped-up fowl would be filthy and have an overpowering smell in that heat. Taking care of them was a guaranteed grind of disgusting work that went against everything Sanford knew about his uncle.

A stinking chicken ranch.

He threw a sideways glance at Uncle Stewart, who was staring at him with a mixture of impatience to get going and disappointment with his cargo. Uncle Stewart had made it clear for the entire two weeks of his visit that he really wanted Sanford’s younger brother Kenneth. He had raved like a trial lawyer, trying to persuade Winnie to let go of that boy. It was a surprise to everybody when Winnie flatly refused. She had always been willing to give her brother anything he wanted, so much so that Sanford fully expected that he and his brother would both have to go. Young Kenneth was Winnie’s favorite son, however. She never made a secret of that. So to Sanford’s amazement, she actually told her brother that he was asking too much of her. She stopped his objections before he could even get started by holding up her hand and announcing that she would “only say it once.” All talk of taking her favorite boy was over. Stewart would just have to make do with Sanford.

“But all my friends are here,” Sanford began again.

“You’ll make new ones,” Winnie replied with a shrug. “You’re a kid.”

“And you need to get away from your trouble-maker friends,” jeered Uncle Stewart.

“They’re not—”

“Sanford!” Winnie’s voice shot through the room like a gun blast.

After a pause, Uncle Stewart began to console him with talk of enrolling in a local Scouting program down there “to offer you some boyhood adventure and also to help with your character development.” Winnie added that it might be just what he needed.

Sanford desperately wanted to produce an argument in the stron¬gest possible terms against going, but he had no idea how to stand up for himself against these two adults. He had no available examples. The most that he could do was to stuff his outrage back down out of sight. After that, all he could do was to grit his teeth and look for the chance to jump in on the conversation like a kid who has to pee. Meanwhile, two of the adults planned his future while his father studied the daily paper.

Now that the pose about going to Regina was over, Winnie and her brother dropped it as if it had never existed. Neither of them dis¬played any trace of embarrassment over being discovered. Ordinarily this shared trait was the only thing that Sanford liked about dealing with either of them, because when they decided to bury something, it just disappeared. The pattern was that they got mad, flew into a rage, then got over it and moved on. Sanford noticed how easily they meshed that way; they didn’t even have to check with each other first. There was a degree of certainty in that. Winnie’s fires flashed quickly and burned hot; smoldering was something left to her husband. This time, however, Sanford found that the topic of his forced trip was disappearing much too quickly. He felt himself being flushed away with it.

Uncle Stewart noticed Sanford’s distress and broke into a broad grin. “Winnie! I get the feeling Sanford doesn’t appreciate how the ranching experience is going to mold his character. I’m really going to toughen him up!” He laughed out loud at that, then winked at Winnie like a guy who has just made a very fine joke indeed.

This one time, Sanford’s mother did not laugh along with him the way she always did. That struck Sanford as very odd, combined with the way her expression changed when her brother spoke of toughening him up. Even though Winnie was in that detached mood of hers, she looked away from Sanford as if she could not meet his eyes. That was so out of character for her that it instilled a sense of dread in him. Restrained silence was the domain of the male in that house.

“Ahem!” John Clark surprised everyone by speaking out this time.

For one flashing moment, Sanford’s hopes soared. His father came to life like a man snapping out of a nap. His gangly form rose from the chair and stood tall with an angry set to his jaw and determination in his eyes. He nodded to his son, then stared back and forth between the other two. “Might as well say it right now—I don’t care for the sound of this plan at all. I have not heard one single solitary thing about it that shows me any common sense!” He glared at Uncle Stewart to emphasize that he didn’t trust him one little bit. It was glorious.

“Oh, my!” Winnie replied at the very top of her voice, acting like she truly was impressed. “Aren’t you the smart one, John! Aren’t you the manly parent! So tell us: what is your new job that’s going to bring home the extra money to make up for what it would cost us to keep him here? Knock-knock, anybody home? Oh, what’s that? No answer? Bastard! Figure out that one, if you get to feeling cocky—instead of just standing there with your cock in your hand!” She and Uncle Stewart both snorted like horses.

That was all it took for Winnie Clark to beat John Clark back into his silence and his newspaper. Sanford could almost see the puncture marks in his father’s face. The machinery of their relationship groaned into action while his father clenched his jaw and blushed an angry color, then sat back down without looking at his son. He shook his head and stared into space. Sanford could hear him grinding his teeth.

Sanford would have bolted from the house if he had had any idea of somewhere safe to go. He tried to think of a workable destination, but it was no good. At his age, what could he tell people that would keep them from sending him right back? And then how angry would Winnie be?

The only real glimmer of hope left to him was his older sister Jessie. She was already seventeen and would be able to leave home soon. Then he might be able to run off and live with her. Somehow improvise a new life. He would be willing to try almost anything else besides living out in the desert, just him and Uncle Stewart and hundreds of caged birds.

A stinking chicken ranch.

Uncle Stewart gripped him by the back of his neck and announced that it was time to get going. It would take days to drive all the way through the States to southern California. Uncle Stewart announced that their first stop in California was going to be a visit to his parents in Los Angeles. Sanford remembered his grandparents well enough from when they had lived up here nearby, but he barely knew them. His natu¬rally shy nature gave him no comfort in the idea of their home.

Uncle Stewart snatched up Sanford’s small duffel bag with one hand and kept the other on the back of his neck while he walked him out of the house. The hurried good-byes passed in a blur. Sanford noticed that his father’s handshake felt extra firm. He figured that it meant his father was sorry that he couldn’t do more to help. The thought felt good.

He felt better for a moment when Jessie hugged him. The hardest thing was to leave Jessie behind. She had been his protector often enough, but there was nothing she could do in a situation like this. It struck him then, getting back to his previous thought, that she could hardly be expected to take him with her and support them both. And Jessie was far too protective of him to ever agree that he could quit school and work, just to escape their family home.

“You’d better write to me,” she whispered into his ear.

“Don’t let ’em do this, Jessie!” he blurted out and immediately regretted it.

“What? Come on now, Sang.”

The nickname always got his attention. Nobody else called him that. Her voice was so soft that she practically breathed the words to him.

“I know you’ll make the best of everything. Why, I’ll come and get you myself if I have to, soon as I’m able to do it.”

Then she let go of him. He hated the feeling of helplessness and could not imagine how grownups managed to get used to it.

By the time they hit the United States border at Montana, they had been driving for nearly twelve hours over some pretty poor roadbed. Sanford was glad for the chance to stretch his legs at the border, so he hardly bothered to pay attention when Uncle Stewart told him what to do next.

“All right, now: no matter what, you keep quiet. I do the talking. It’s legal for me to cross back over, but to get you into the States we have to claim you have dual citizenship.”

“How do I do that?”

“You don’t. That’s why I’m telling you to shut up. We have to make sure your story works. You need to let me take care of it. The way you do that is, you keep quiet and you say nothing to nobody. My goodness, you really can be thick sometimes.” He placed his hands on Sanford’s shoulders and focused his gaze on him. “Stand. Stay.” Then he went off to get some lies going.

Sanford felt so intimidated by the foreign-looking American uni¬forms that he didn’t mind hanging back. He stood in the corner and watched the whole process, marveling at the energy that his uncle invested into lying to these people. The part of the story that Sanford overheard had something in it about Sanford being born in the United States but they lost his papers and somebody was dying down in the States at this moment, in a hospital. “God, it’s a saga,” Sanford muttered under his breath. Meanwhile, Uncle Stewart kept up a nonstop patter at the guards while he wove one excuse into another until it seemed that in the end the officials waved them across into the States just to get them out of the way.

As soon as Sanford and Uncle Stewart cleared the border, they fell into a pattern of driving through the daylight hours and then camping near the road at night. Uncle Stewart staked claim on the car seat, so Sanford slept in blankets on the ground. He didn’t mind. It felt good to stretch out straight. Otherwise, the long ride was mostly an ordeal of boredom. He passed the time by studying sudden wild shifts in his uncle’s moods.

For most of this trip, Uncle Stewart was wide awake and excited, nearly frantic. But then there were those periods when he would slide down into foul moods and glower for a couple of hours. Sanford found that the strangest part was the way he always pulled back out of it. He would start talking up a blue streak again, whether or not anything had actually hap¬pened that could logically make him feel any better or worse.

The weather got noticeably warmer while they moved south, and that was nice for a while. Uncle Stewart put the convertible top down so that they rode with their hair flying while he shouted over the sounds of the engine and the onrushing air. Sanford figured Uncle Stewart liked shouting over the wind because it forced Sanford to work at understanding what he was saying. So far, the only thing that had made his uncle happy at all was for Sanford to pay complete attention to him.

At the moment, Uncle Stewart was half an hour into the topic of Hollywood movies. His tone was beginning to take on a strange urgency, as if he had a solemn duty to figure out what should be done about the current state of American movies and that he needed to have the answers ready by the time they got down to Los Angeles. “It’s typical! I am telling you. Completely typical procedure for Hollywood movies! So when you do something stupid like putting that nasty old queen Greta Garbo in the female lead—and F.Y.I. here, The Paradise Case is only going to be the biggest picture that David O. Selznick has ever done. Are you listening? Good! This is important! Anyway, this fool, this idiot, this hopeless moron puts her in the lead of his biggest picture even though she’s supposed to be some kind of crackpot who treats everybody like garbage and even though he could have cast Jeanette MacDonald.”

He reached over and poked Sanford. “Jeanette MacDonald! Do you hear me?”

“Yeah, I hear you!” Sanford yelled to keep him from poking again. Stewart’s fingertip felt like a knitting needle.

“Okay, then, do you know who she is?” Uncle Stewart jeered. “No?” He playfully slapped the back of Sanford’s head, as he had already done several times that day. “Well I am telling you this and you had best hear me loud and clear, buddy: on top of beauty that drives men crazy, Jeanette MacDonald has talent, humility, and brains! Can you say that?”

“Sure,” Sanford replied into the wind.

“Then let’s hear you! Talent, humility, and brains!”

It took Sanford a moment’s worth of blank staring before he real¬ized that it was an actual request. All right, he thought, if this will do it for him, eager to give him the expected answer and get him to relax, maybe even stop and take a break. “Talent! Beauty!” Sanford bellowed in Uncle Stewart’s direction. But before he finished, Uncle Stewart reached over and struck him in the back of his head with the flat of his hand. This time the blow was so strong that Sanford’s chin bounced off of his chest. He bit his tongue and felt a mouthful of fire.

Uncle Stewart glanced over at him and broke out laughing, as if the two of them were famous friends. “You look like you just shit your¬self!” He dropped the friendly mask before he continued. “It’s talent, humility, and brains! Didn’t I just say that?”

“Yes,” Sanford shouted back, maybe a little too fast.

“Well then, what are you trying to do, piss all over me?”

“What?”

“Are you saying that you are willing to repeat two-thirds of what I tell you but you intend to just ignore the other third, then?”

“What are you talking about?”

Uncle Stewart hit him in the back of the head again, and this time Sanford saw stars. He stared straight into a swimming school of twinkling lights, trying to get his vision into focus. As a small-framed boy with a passive nature, Sanford had already learned how to tense any part of his body just a split second before the impact of an oncoming blow, but the skill was useless with a strike to the head. It took too long to get his arm up there. Uncle Stewart kept catching him unprepared.

Meanwhile a rush of guilt flooded through him. The truth was that he could have avoided that last blow altogether. Uncle Stewart was correct that Sanford knew what he meant. He had to admit to him¬self that he tried to play dumb and Uncle Stewart saw straight through it. Sanford made an indelible mental note: Do not lie to Uncle Stewart unless you are prepared to really put one over. He’s an expert and he will catch you.

Uncle Stewart laughed. “That last little love tap got your attention, didn’t it?” Sanford looked in his direction and nodded. He couldn’t see him clearly yet, and he was still too surprised and frightened to speak. “Good,” Uncle Stewart continued. “So try it again: Jeanette MacDonald would be a far better choice for the female lead in Mr. Selznick’s next picture, because of her . . .”

“Talent, humility, and brains!” Sanford immediately chimed in.

Uncle Stewart’s face lit up so brightly that Sanford realized he had scored a point. “Exactly! These are the values that ought to drive Amer¬ican movies today. But when you think about the sheer size of the audi¬ences who see these things, you have to realize that they represent money, my friend! Money creates phony goodness and reveals all women for the whores that they are!”

“You mean like with prostitution?” Sanford asked, being thirteen. This time the blow to the back of his head snapped it forward so hard that he landed against the passenger door, fighting dizziness while his ears rang. Outrage filled him, and he instinctively turned to glare in shock at Uncle Stewart—who burst out in good-natured laughter.

“You should see your face! Don’t worry about it. Just don’t inter¬rupt me. Because in fact, I was going to tell you about values, all right?”

They slowed down to cross a set of railroad tracks. On the other side, he pulled off to the side of the road, put the car in neutral, and set the brake. Sanford felt a rush of fear and fought the urge to jump out and run. Run where? He didn’t know any men who behaved like this, but he sensed that it was a variation on his mother’s explosiveness. This meant that if he ran, it would only enrage Uncle Stewart in the same way that it enraged her. Winnie’s violence could be endured by making a game out of dodging her, but Uncle Stewart would be able to chase him down. It would not matter how fast he ran. Uncle Stewart hit a lot harder than Winnie did.

Even in that moment, Sanford automatically kept his distress to himself. He knew better than to cower before his uncle. When they see that, it makes them want to hit you again. He turned to look at some¬thing safe like the floor while he kept his left arm ready to whip upward and cover his face.

But Uncle Stewart did not strike out at him this time. Instead he turned and looked straight ahead through the windscreen, then inhaled deeply, closed his eyes, and slowly let the air back out. His eyes remained closed for another few seconds until a smile crossed his face. His features softened and his expression turned coy, like somebody who has a secret. When he opened them, the anger was gone from his face. He regarded Sanford with bored amusement. When he spoke, his voice sounded so different that it reminded Sanford of a flirtatious teenaged girl. “Your mother told me how much trouble you are to her. Dreamer. Can’t pay attention. Don’t like to go to school. But that was back there, and you’re not back there any more. I’m the adult and you’re the kid. You do what you’re told. You don’t give me grief. This is how we get along. Together. In life. Correct?”

Sanford picked up his cue and tried to respond, but his throat caught. Nothing came out but air. He got the immediate sense that it would be a dangerous transgression of some kind for him to misspeak, even though he was not sure why. He tried a second time. “Yes.” This time the sound came out.

He was almost too late. Uncle Stewart’s eyes flashed with annoy¬ance as if the familiar anger was about to return. But a moment later the relaxation came back over him. When he spoke, he was still using that odd girly voice. “So as I was about to say, about the values, is that you take all of the children of the world who have talent, humility, and brains, and you nurture them. You cherish them. You . . . well. Then you get rid of all the rest! And there you have the making of Utopia, buddy! Simple as pie.”

Uncle Stewart was looking at him as if he expected a response, but Sanford had nothing. The best he could do was to mutter: “Um, all right.”

His uncle gave him a strange smile. Like a nasty girl. Sanford had never seen him use it.

“You can say that again,” he said with a solemn nod. He put the car in gear and released the brake, then pulled onto the road and accel¬erated with a heavy foot. “All we need is the willpower to do it!”

“Do what?” Sanford asked, guessing that further questions were allowed.

“Get rid of all the rejects!” Stewart shouted over the growing head¬wind.

Sanford figured he should work at keeping the conversation going. Anything to keep him happy. “How does somebody do that?” It seemed as if he would somehow tread lighter with Uncle Stewart if he avoided asking how he would do it.

“How? What do you mean, ‘how’? Somebody needs to just stick out his chest and get the job done, that’s how!” He steered the car to avoid a dead skunk. “Woops! Get that smell on your tires, it’s there for miles. Anyway, Hollywood is pitching in with this, helping us to get rid of the rejects! And you have to admit, it’s brilliant. Really. Do you know how they do it? Say no.”

“No.”

“I’ll tell you. They do it by making ugly people sorry to be alive! Ha! And they accomplish that by showing the ugly people everything that they’re missing out on, just by being fat and twisted-up looking and generally inferior. And so when the ugly people see that, it depresses their spirits, naturally. And get this—it’s brilliant—that inhibits their urge to breed! American movies are going to make the whole world ten times smarter! Ingenious, no?”

“. . . I guess.”

“No, you don’t ‘guess.’ When you are dealing with a sure thing, there is no ‘guess’ involved.”

“Except the kids are here already. They’re going to be in this world as long as we will, right?”

Uncle Stewart regarded him with clear disappointment, then turned back to the road. He stared straight ahead and took another deep breath, slowly letting out a long exhale before he spoke. “There’s never a good man around when you need one.”

Sanford had no idea what to say to that, but he got lucky—Uncle Stewart appeared to be done for the time being. It looked like there might even be a little peaceful time before his energy built back up. In the meantime Sanford decided to avoid all unnecessary conversation. See if that might do any good. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. This story began over eighty years ago, still within the lifetimes of certain older people, and yet consider the isolation that so effectively cut Sanford off from escape. How have attitudes changed among the public regarding runaway children, in the sense of the differences in response that he might have expected by appealing for help from a random stranger, then -- as opposed to today?

2. Can you think of any way that he could have escaped from that place earlier than he did? What sort of risks would he have to take and what obstacles would he have encountered in that time and place?

3. Here’s the killer question: Could you do it? If you had two years of such madness and violence inflicted upon you, could you emerge back into the world? If so, where would your internal support come from?

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