Read Online Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly by Sue Bursztynski - Free Book Online
Authors: Sue Bursztynski
Tags: Children's Books, Education & Reference, Australia & Oceania, Children's eBooks, Law & Crime, Geography & Cultures, Explore the World
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ERIC COOKE
THE NEDLANDS MONSTER
I f you had lived in the city of Perth in the late 1950s and early 1960s, you would have felt quite safe. It was a small town. People didn’t bother to lock their doors. Nothing could possibly happen to you in such a peaceful place, you would have thought.
You would have been wrong.
Nobody really knows why Eric Cooke started killing people. Later, he said that he just wanted to hurt someone.
Was it because of his looks or his violent childhood? He was born with a deformed face – a cleft lip – which made him ugly. Other children bullied him at school. His father bashed him when he tried to protect his mother from his dad’s violent outbursts.
Was it because he kept having accidents at work, which might have damaged his brain, perhaps? We don’t know.
Whatever his problems, he was married, with seven children. Nobody would have dreamed this good husband and father was spending his nights killing people. Certainly not his wife.
Before he became a murderer, Eric Cooke had already spent time in jail, for burglary and starting fires. He had actually burned down a church because he was annoyed at not making it into the choir. He had burned down a theatre just because he felt like it.
In 1959, a woman called Jillian Brewer was murdered in her bed. She had been stabbed and hacked about the face. She hadn’t been robbed or raped. Someone, it seemed, just liked killing. This might have been one of Cooke’s first murders.
But Eric didn’t just stab his victims. Late one night in April 1961, a couple in a parked car saw a man about to shoot them. They managed to duck just in time to avoid being killed, though they both suffered wounds.
Perhaps Eric was annoyed that he had failed to kill that time. Only an hour later, a man called George Walmsley opened his door to a knock and was shot in the head.
Police coming to George’s house made such a noise that they woke up a neighbour. She went to chat about it with her lodger, a young student called John Sturkey. Poor John was dying from a bullet in his head.
In the morning, yet another shooting was reported. Luckily that victim, an accountant, had an operation and survived.
The last murder happened in August that year. A girl called Shirley McLeod was shot while she was babysitting.
But this was the beginning of the end for Eric. He made the mistake of leaving his .22 rifle hidden by the Canning River, where an elderly couple found it only a week later. Police took it away as evidence, replacing it with another gun of the same kind. Then they waited for him to come back to collect it. Two weeks later, he did, and they arrested him. He didn’t fight. He even showed them where he had hidden another gun.
At his trial, Cooke bragged about his career as a criminal, taking credit for several hundred crimes of different kinds, including theft and knocking people over with his car. He actually admitted to two murders of which he hadn’t been accused – the murder of Jillian Brewer and of a teenager called Rosemary Anderson, whom he had knocked over in his car. The judge didn’t believe him about those, because two other men, Douglas Beamish and John Button, were serving time for them. It wasn’t until years later that evidence showed he’d been telling the truth.
Either way, it wouldn’t have made any difference to Cooke, who was executed at Fremantle Prison in October 1964. He was the last person to hang in Western Australia.
DID YOU KNOW…?
In 1970, thief Joey Turner, who had stolen thousands of dollars from security company MSS, was arrested because he’d forgotten to take some of the stolen money out of his pockets when his wife washed his clothes. Joey tried to iron out the wet $2 notes, but hadn’t the patience to wait till they were dry. He spent some money at the souvenir shop of the Southern Cross Hotel in Melbourne. When the shop assistant took the still-damp money to the bank, the clerk got
ERIC COOKE
THE NEDLANDS MONSTER
I f you had lived in the city of Perth in the late 1950s and early 1960s, you would have felt quite safe. It was a small town. People didn’t bother to lock their doors. Nothing could possibly happen to you in such a peaceful place, you would have thought.
You would have been wrong.
Nobody really knows why Eric Cooke started killing people. Later, he said that he just wanted to hurt someone.
Was it because of his looks or his violent childhood? He was born with a deformed face – a cleft lip – which made him ugly. Other children bullied him at school. His father bashed him when he tried to protect his mother from his dad’s violent outbursts.
Was it because he kept having accidents at work, which might have damaged his brain, perhaps? We don’t know.
Whatever his problems, he was married, with seven children. Nobody would have dreamed this good husband and father was spending his nights killing people. Certainly not his wife.
Before he became a murderer, Eric Cooke had already spent time in jail, for burglary and starting fires. He had actually burned down a church because he was annoyed at not making it into the choir. He had burned down a theatre just because he felt like it.
In 1959, a woman called Jillian Brewer was murdered in her bed. She had been stabbed and hacked about the face. She hadn’t been robbed or raped. Someone, it seemed, just liked killing. This might have been one of Cooke’s first murders.
But Eric didn’t just stab his victims. Late one night in April 1961, a couple in a parked car saw a man about to shoot them. They managed to duck just in time to avoid being killed, though they both suffered wounds.
Perhaps Eric was annoyed that he had failed to kill that time. Only an hour later, a man called George Walmsley opened his door to a knock and was shot in the head.
Police coming to George’s house made such a noise that they woke up a neighbour. She went to chat about it with her lodger, a young student called John Sturkey. Poor John was dying from a bullet in his head.
In the morning, yet another shooting was reported. Luckily that victim, an accountant, had an operation and survived.
The last murder happened in August that year. A girl called Shirley McLeod was shot while she was babysitting.
But this was the beginning of the end for Eric. He made the mistake of leaving his .22 rifle hidden by the Canning River, where an elderly couple found it only a week later. Police took it away as evidence, replacing it with another gun of the same kind. Then they waited for him to come back to collect it. Two weeks later, he did, and they arrested him. He didn’t fight. He even showed them where he had hidden another gun.
At his trial, Cooke bragged about his career as a criminal, taking credit for several hundred crimes of different kinds, including theft and knocking people over with his car. He actually admitted to two murders of which he hadn’t been accused – the murder of Jillian Brewer and of a teenager called Rosemary Anderson, whom he had knocked over in his car. The judge didn’t believe him about those, because two other men, Douglas Beamish and John Button, were serving time for them. It wasn’t until years later that evidence showed he’d been telling the truth.
Either way, it wouldn’t have made any difference to Cooke, who was executed at Fremantle Prison in October 1964. He was the last person to hang in Western Australia.
DID YOU KNOW…?
In 1970, thief Joey Turner, who had stolen thousands of dollars from security company MSS, was arrested because he’d forgotten to take some of the stolen money out of his pockets when his wife washed his clothes. Joey tried to iron out the wet $2 notes, but hadn’t the patience to wait till they were dry. He spent some money at the souvenir shop of the Southern Cross Hotel in Melbourne. When the shop assistant took the still-damp money to the bank, the clerk got
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