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.