What I read
According to the “The LAPD Couldn’t Find Her Son – And Tried To Send Her Home With A Replacement” by Lamoureux (2018), in 1982, The Los Angeles Police Department suggested Christine Collins to take an impostor child back home instead of her missing son. As Collins tried to tell the police it was not her son, she was sent to an asylum by Captain J.J. Jones. Collins was released from the psych ward after the impostor child had confessed. She then spent the rest of her life searching for her son and die at the age of 75 without any satisfied conclusion from the case.
Collins acted happy with the impostor child for the press.
Collins acted happy with the impostor child for the press.
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My response
| Changeling (2008), starring Angelina Jolie |
After bringing Christine Collins an impostor child, The LAPD linked the case to the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders. A lot of boys, probably around 20, were kidnapped and killed at Wineville. Collins, with extraordinary courage, went to talk with the killer whether he killed her son or not. Although the killer admitted that he kidnapped and killed some boys, he told Collins that he did not kill her son. With the fact that the police didn’t find the body of her son and a tiny bit of hope, Collins kept searching for her son ever since.
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| Walter Collins, the one went missing (left) and Arthur Hutchins Jr, the impostor (right) |
How long would someone keep waiting with such a slight hope? Christine Collins kept searching for her son for 36 years until she died! She didn’t lose her hope even a bit. Not even after a police sent her to a psych ward. Not even when the police linked the case to the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders. This is what a mother can do for her child, not just in a movie, but also in a real life.
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My question
What is your favorite based-on-true-story movie? Why?
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Reference
- Lamoureux, A. (2018, March 22). The LAPD Couldn’t Find Her Son – And Tried To Send Her Home With A Replacement. Retrieved from http://allthatsinteresting.com/christine-collins
Thank you Boss. I wonder if the police knew they were wrong or whether they really believed the falsehood that they were insisting on. I think people do often believe wrong things with great sincerity, for example, that the Earth is the centre of the universe, which every educated Western person believed for 2,000 years from Aristotle to Copernicus and Galileo, but which was never a fact, only a false belief.
ReplyDeleteIf the police who insisted that the impostor was Collins' son were sincere, they were at least only wrong factually, not also morally evil. Unfortunately, the police do often make mistakes, which is why courts must set a high bar for proof before finding someone guilty of a crime and then punishing them, but we know that courts are also often mistaken, especially when they rely on such essentially unreliable evidence as eye witnesses and confessions. In fact, a confession isn't really evidence of a crime at all, and should never be a good reason to say someone is guilty of a crime. Eye witness accounts are at least evidence, but dependent on highly fallible human observation and memory, both of which are very often wrong.