Sadly, the methods used in Changeling are not uncommon...tactics like
this have been used by others in varying combinations. (As a kid in
Paterson, maybe ten, I'd gotten lost coming home from school, was
walking around crying, and a car with two guys and a woman said that
my dad had sent them to get me. The woman was trying to reassure me
that it was okay to get in the car. I didn't. And no, my folks had
never sent them.)
As for the script excerpt, I'd mentioned elsewhere in various
interviews that I'd heard of the Collins case a number of years
earlier, and had tried on several occasions to write the script but
had never gotten past the first section and a rough outline for the
rest. I just didn't have the skill set to write it properly until
years later, when I tried one last time.
I still want to do the novelization, but there's been so much film
work that it's been hard to peel away the time.
jms