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CRIMEinBOOKS - January 2009

SERIAL KILLER ERIC EDGAR COOKE - ESTELLE BLACKBURN TALKS

January 1st 2009 02:14
'You all know the maxim Life is what happens when you’re making other plans?’ *Estelle Blackburn opened her address to Sisters in Crime with this question and had them riveted 'til the end and still wanting more. Estelle told how a chance remark by a dance partner set her on the track to writing a book and to becoming instrumental in proving the innocence of two men who had been sent to prison in the 1960s for murders committed by serial killer Eric Edgar Cooke. Estelle was working as a press secretary to a WA premier and spending all her spare time dancing when, one night she decided to go somewhere out of her normal track. *‘I saw a very sleazy, ugly, alcoholic fellow eyeing me from across the bar. I had a dance with him and he turned out to be the most magic dancer in the whole wide world. Not only did I overlook his sleaziness and his drunkenness, I danced with him all night and went back to that place every week, a long way out of town, to dance with him. I later discovered that Jim was a former state champion. Not long after I met Jim a strange thing happened. * A friend of mine came out from England for a working holiday and was quite clearly wrongfully charged with an incident and rang me from the lock-up -“Estelle, help get me out of here!” I rang Jim and said “I can’t come dancing tonight. A friend of mine’s been framed by the police” and Jim said “Don’t talk to me about being framed by the police. My brother was framed by the police and did 10 years in prison for a murder that Cooke did”. And that was the start of the story. * Perth in 1963 had a population of about 500,000. We were a very sleepy little big country town where nobody bothered to lock their doors or windows or take their keys out of the ignition of their cars. That was blasted apart on the Australia Day weekend of 1963 when five people were shot overnight. The shooter was a man we got to know as Eric Edgar Cooke. He was dubbed ‘The Nedlands Monster’ because his killings were always in and around the Nedlands area. He held Perth to ransom for seven and a half months. * It was a stifling hot summer, pre air-conditioning but we didn’t dare go out at night and we began to lock our doors and windows which we’d never done before. They had to bring in the big gun police from the eastern states - as we call you guys and we got support from the FBI and Scotland Yard as well but he was only caught, really, thanks to a miracle. * That first night he had used a stolen a rifle which he threw into the river. Then, in August, he stole another rifle but this time he hid it under a Geraldton wax bush and it was found by a 64 year old lady who went for a walk and decided to pick a sprig of Geraldton wax. I found the dear heart, aged 94, in a nursing home and she said she’d never known why she picked a sprig of Geraldton wax that day because she had a whole garden full of it. * Anyway, the police put the rifle back under the bush, tied it with 100lb fishing wire and kept a 24 hour vigil ‘til he came back for it. Cooke was caught and the dreadful era was over. He confessed to the 1963 murders and to other murders going back five years. The police accepted all of his confessions of murder and attempted murder as correct, except for the two where they already had their man. * John Button, a 19 year old, had already been convicted and sentenced to 10 years for manslaughter for running down his girlfriend after an argument. A 19 year old deaf-mute named Darryl Beamish had been sentenced to death - commuted to life imprisonment - for the brutal axe murder of a woman in 1961. When Cooke was caught, John Button and Darryl Beamish were serving time in Freemantle Prison. Their lawyers appealed, on the basis of a new confession but they lost the appeal. In total, John Button and Darryl beamish lost seven appeals in the 1960s. * Cooke was executed in 1964; the last person hanged in Western Australia. On the gallows he took the bible out of the Methodist minister’s hands and said “Once again I swear before Almighty God that I did kill those other two women” * Darryl did 15 years- a life sentence for murder. John Button did five of his 10 years. They always bore the stigma of being murderers. Always bore the weight of injustice. They had to hope that someone, sometime would find fresh evidence. And that was me, 30 years later. If it hadn’t been for those wrongful charges (and we did get them sorted out), I would have danced forever with Jim Button and never have heard about his brother. * Eric Edgar Cooke was born to a 19 year old violent alcoholic father caught in a shotgun marriage. He wasn’t ready to be a husband; wasn’t ready to be a father- especially to a disfigured child. Eric was born with a hare lip/cleft-palate (now called a cleft lip/cleft palate) and in those days it was quite a disfigurement. He beat that child physically and emotionally every day of his life. Beatings with fists, sticks, belts, saying things like “If it wasn’t for you, you ugly little bastard I wouldn’t have had to marry your mother.” And he also copped a terrible time at school. * Eric Edgar Cooke was just written off as evil. I don’t believe in evil birth, I think they are created. Eric Edgar Cooke wanted power over all those people who had laughed at him and made his life hell.' *Cooke married and had seven children and, whilst writing her book, Estelle got to know Sally Cooke very well. *'She really loved Eric and she said she felt that all he needed was the stability of love and a family life. But he turned against her, as psychopaths do, once the first baby was born. When they lose control of their women, that’s when they take it out on them. So only when her first child was born, not that long after the marriage, did she see the other side of him.' *Research for Estelle’s book took all of her time. *‘I was a journo with no legal training but I read every single newspaper article about these cases, every law report, every Hansard, went through old street directories. If I was going to find something new I first had to find out what was already known. Then I had to get into government files. I managed to get every file. I got Cooke’s legal file, prison file, medical file, mental file; and I interviewed two psychiatrists and a psychologist who’d dealt with him. But my biggest break was getting into the police files.' *Estelle arranged an appointment, through a secretary, with the Police Commissioner to discuss historical research. At the meeting she presented him with a full written description of what she intended to do. He responded: “You’re absolutely barking up the wrong alley. My guys never get it wrong. The best judges in the land have backed up my boys and you haven’t got a hope in hell.” *Two weeks later she got the okay to access police files. *‘I’m not allowed to photocopy but I’ve got the best shorthand thanks to journalism training. There were 9 boxes of murder files on Cooke sitting there and a poor old police officer gazing into space. I think they thought I was going to flip through them but I’m hunched over these files taking them down word for word. * I say to this guy - I call him Sarge - “I’m off to the court wine bar” and for some reason I said “I’m hanging out for a glass of red” * “Bring me back one will you, lovey?” says dear old Roy and just for a joke I bought him the biggest red I could find - a cask - and I said “Here, Sarge, have a red on me” He relaxed and wasn’t watching me quite as hawkeyed as he had been. Every day cost me a cask of red and we became the best of friends. Needless to say, I got into the Beamish file.'[the Beamish family later asked Estelle for help] *While Estelle was writing the book Cooke’s son Tony Cooke, who was by then the head of the Trades & Labour Council, was asked to be the subject of an Australian Story. A journalist phoned Estelle for information about Eric Edgar Cooke. This led to an Australian Story being made about Estelle which led to an offer of lawyers to take on John Button’s case, pro-bono. Beamish’s case followed. *‘The DPP fought it bitterly and immorally and unethically. They did not want to admit that they had got it wrong 30 years earlier. John Button was exonerated 39 years after his conviction and Darryl Beamish was exonerated 44 years after he had been convicted.'
*After the publication of Broken Lives Estelle pitched the idea to her publisher of writing a second book, believing that many people would be very interested in how Broken Lives came to be written. *‘The End of Innocence [the second book], took many drafts. I had to analyse myself and I had to decide how honest I was going to be. In the end I decided I had to be more honest than I would like to be. I’d sold my house, was sitting in a rented flat in the western suburbs writing about a serial killer who operated in the western suburbs of Perth in 1963.' *Estelle’s own life had taken a comparable turn. *‘I was an intelligent woman who had somehow managed to get herself caught in a violent relationship. I was trapped by a psychopath as surely as poor Sally Cooke had got trapped. Although I didn’t live with him, I spent the next three years trying to get out of it safely. Like the typical victim of domestic violence, I didn’t tell a soul. * I was ashamed, I was embarrassed, I was in fear of my life but I was already out there publicly. Had I been honest and taken out a restraining order it would have been very difficult for me to get about my professional work so I kept silent. None of my friends knew. Nobody knew. When I finally managed to escape he stalked me driving a taxi. He was a mechanic and he had a deal with taxi drivers to service their taxis overnight.' *Estelle wondered if her violent boyfriend could possibly be the Claremont killer. *‘In 1996 another serial killer manifested in exactly the same area and his first murder was on Australia Day, 33 years after Cooke and I thought: What an amazing parallel! The Claremont Killer has not been caught. Each of the three girls whom he murdered was drunk and had left a hotel in Claremont to get a taxi. So there was this parallel of the manifestation of another serial killer, the same as Cooke, and a violent fellow within my life and now I’m starting to wonder are they one and the same. I dobbed him in and the taskforce that was looking into the Claremont serial killer came out and interviewed me but they didn’t interview me properly. At that time they considered only that it was this one public servant. * The descriptions of Cooke in Broken Lives are of the guy that I was stuck with. He was very handsome. Very charming. Wonderful until he had trapped his mouse and then the cat played with it. He was very very similar to Cooke and even shared the same birthday.’ *Whether or not Estelle’s former boyfriend is the elusive Claremont killer, it is clear that this relationship provided insight into the workings of a psychopathic mind. Reading her book, it seems that Estelle was called to investigate and to reveal details about Eric Edgar Cooke’s brutal rampage. She spent a decade trying to get justice for John Button. *‘I think it has given hope to other wrongfully convicted people. They know that somewhere somebody might believe them and help them. I also think that tunnel-visioned police officers and over-zealous prosecutors might be aware that someone somewhere down the track- be it 30 or 40 years- might reveal their incompetence.’***



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