Eric Edgar Cooke
| Eric Edgar Cooke | |
|---|---|
 Cooke |
|
| Birth name: | Eric Edgar Cooke |
| Born: | February 25, 1931 |
| Location: | Victoria Park, Perth |
| Died: | October 26, 1964 (Fremantle Prison) |
| Cause of death: | Breaking of neck |
| Number of victims: | eight confirmed |
| Country where killings occurred: | Australia |
| States where killings occurred: | Perth, Western Australia |
| Span of killings: | January 30, 1959 through August 1963 |
| Date apprehended: | September 1, 1963 |
| Penalty: | capital punishment |
Eric Edgar Cooke (February 25, 1931–October 26, 1964) was an Australian serial killer and burglar. In 1963 he indiscriminately attacked 20 people, killing eight.[1]
Early life
Cooke had a cleft lip and was bullied as a child. As an adult, he married and had seven children, and was described as outwardly amenable.
Murders
He killed at random, running people over in the street or knocking on doors and shooting strangers. He was caught when the gun used to murder one of his victims, Shirley McLeod, was found, and police waited for Cooke to collect it. Cooke was convicted on the specimen charge of murdering John Lindsay Sturkey, one of Cooke's five Australia Day (1963) Shooting victims.[2]
Cooke was nicknamed "the Nedlands Monster", after the Perth suburb in which he murdered Sturkey.
Conviction and execution
Cooke was convicted of murder and sentenced to death on November 28, 1963, by the Perth Supreme Court. He was hanged at Fremantle Prison on October 26, 1964.
Cooke is buried at Fremantle Cemetery, on top of the remains of child killer Martha Rendell.
The wrong men
Two other Australians were convicted of crimes later attributed to Cooke:
- Darryl Beamish, a deaf mute convicted in 1959 for the murder of a wealthy woman from Melbourne. He served 15 years despite Cooke's 1963 confession to the crime.
- John Button, who was jailed for five years for manslaughter in the death of his girlfriend, a conviction that was quashed in 2002 after evidence proved Cooke was the killer.
In popular culture
A memoir — The Shark Net by Robert Drewe, which was later made into a movie — provides one author's impressions the effect the murders had on the Perth in that era. According to the book, more people bought dogs for security and locked back doors and garages that had never been secured before.
"The Nedlands Monster" also features in Tim Winton's 1991 novel Cloudstreet.
Estelle Blackburn spent six years writing the biographical story Broken Lives, about Cooke's life and criminal career.
References
- ^ Christian, Brett. "Police decoy used in killer hunt sting", Post Newspapers. Retrieved on 2006-09-21.
- ^ Blackburn, Estelle (2005). Broken lives. Hardie Grant. ISBN 174064073X.
Further reading
- Blackburn, Estelle (2005). Broken lives. Hardie Grant. ISBN 174064073X. (review)
External links
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
