The Road Out of Hell:Sanford Clark and the True Story of the Wineville Murders - Anthony Flacco Audiobook

Written by Anthony Flacco
Read by Anthony Flacco
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
Publisher: 2014 Audible Inc.

Michael Stone (Foreword), Jerry Clark (Contributor)

From 1926 to 1928, Gordon Stewart Northcott (only 19 years old at the time) committed at least 20 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.

Grisly facts–Northcott was found guilty of three of the murders in February 1929, and was executed at San Quentin State Prison in October 1930. He was hanged. The rope failed to break Northcott’s neck, resulting in taking 13 minutes for him to die from strangulation

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 of one man’s remarkable ability to survive a nightmare and emerge intact.

Caution–Flacco reconstructs the details of the grisly murders. It is not an easy, or comfortable read. The movie, The Changeling, starring Angelina Jolie, was based on this murder case.