Voices -- Christine Collins, January 12, 1933

And so we complete our journey through the official documents telling the unfortunate saga of Walter and Christine Collins. I heard from a number of Daily Mirror readers who enjoyed the trek (scanning all these documents was more labor than I expected), one author working on a Collins project who was not terribly pleased that I was posting them on the Internet and from at least one reader asking "who cares?" One of my goals was to share the experience of discovery, of unearthing human drama in papers that I didn't even know existed. I'd like to thank Chris Garmire of the California State Archives for alerting me to the existence of the Walter Collins file. "Changeling" offered a unique opportunity to explore the historic record and I'm not sure anything like this will come our way again. But I do hope to post more original documents when possible because they can be so rich in information that is otherwise undocumented and they provide the opportunity for people who are long gone to speak to us once again.

Comments

[zabadu]

I loved the series - especially the letters from Christine to the warden which clearly show she was of full, sound mind. It was quite interesting - too bad we don't really know what happened to her.

[Jim]

I too enjoyed the series. I know that she sued the police officer who had her committed and won a judgement against him. It would be interesting to see whether there are any archives of the court records.

Perhaps someone will find out what happened to her. I thought the voting records showed that she voted until 1952. If she was born around 1891 or so, that would have placed her in her early sixties. Either she moved or died.

[Jon Weisman]

I can understand the author's vexation, but I loved this, Larry.

[Chia Evers]

You can let the author know that this series of (publicly available!) documents has done more to spark my interest in the case (and therefore his or her book) than the film, which I haven't yet seen.