THE NIGHT CALLER: ERIC EDGAR COOKE

Eric Edgar Cooke, or The Night Caller as he became known was born 25th February 1931 to an alcoholic and aggressive father, and overall dysfunctional family. He was the oldest and the only boy. He was physically and emotionally abused as a child. Eric had a prominent hare lip and a cleft palate; two features that rendered him deformed that his father hated him for. He had two operations to fix his face; one when he was three months old and another when he was three and a half years old. These operations improved his deformities but not a great deal, he was left with a misshaped jaw and a mumble in his speech.

Eric's parents married only due to the arrival of Eric, but his father, Thomas, was not ready for parenthood, especially to such a deformed child. This resulted in Eric being the subject to many alcoholic induced beatings and while his two younger sisters were subjected to his rage, Eric's were far worse. He would often be beaten for attempting to protect his mother and was frequently hospitalized for head injuries including suspected brain damage. The daily beatings that he received from his father started with his fists and graduated to his belt and sticks, while continuing to show nothing but neglect and emotional abuse towards his unwanted child.

Cooke tried to escape his torment through disassociation and fantasy, he sought to boost his low self esteem through his rage against the society that ostracized him. He sort out the power and respect that he never received by anyone around him, through violent acts which escalated into a life of aggression and later death.

No sooner had he started school, he became a prime target for ridicule and abuse. This was mainly due to his deformities and inabilities, the children would taunt and mimic his speech. A hungry and unwanted Eric described himself as the freak of the family, he was expelled in his first year for stealing. His education consisted of five different schools but was short lived as Cooke left school at the young age of 14. He joined the Scarborough Junior Surf Lifesaving Club at this age, and his desperation to fit in and be admired led him to steal a watch and have it engraved to look like an award. the message read: "To Cookie from the boys of the SJSLC". On the discovery of this theft, and suspicion now of other thefts in members lockers, Cooke was rejected by the club on the excuse of him having had several blackouts. He decided that he would get a job in order to support his family. However the semi-skilled jobs were not enough in his mind. He wanted more, to be a somebody. His plan was to become rich and he took to petty crimes such as stealing and vandalism. At the age of 18 he served 18 months in jail for burning down a church for rejecting his audition to join the church choir. However this was not the first time Cooke committed arson. When he was 17 he started setting fire to the flats he broke into. He smashed in a window to make it look like somebody had broken in, although the owner had kindly given him a key to look after the place. When they finally caught him they were sympathetic to his unfortunate upbringing. Even though he was watched closely through parole and he received a excellent report the psychiatrist merely labeled him as a liar beyond help. Cooke finally received some acceptance and somewhat of a social life when a minister offered to rehabilitate him. This mainly consisted of playing hockey. But with this small amount of acceptance he embraced bible classes. He stole from these new friends too and became seen as beyond help.

When he reached the age of 21, Cooke joined the Australian army, this could have been just what he needed. A new family in the army to keep some form of self worth and vent his aggression with focus and respect. He was discharged three months later after a background check showed that he had a juvenile record for theft, breaking and entering and arson.

Just one year later, aged 22, Cooke married on the 14th of October 1953 to a 19 year old waitress, at the Methodist church in Cannington. She was named Sarah (Sally) Lavin and they had seven children together. Even though Cooke had found and built himself a big family and seemed very happy he was far from settled. He could not forget his own upbringing and was still angry with the world. It would seem that the 'happy home' was too late to overcome the damage he had received as a child himself. After the couple had their first child Sally soon realised that the man she thought to be a good catch left her trapped by a cruel, violent, womanising husband. Despite the continuous attempts by friends and family encouraging Sally to leave him she was far too loyal, even after he was jailed for two years for crashing a stolen car when following a girlfriend to Bunbury just two months after Tony's birth.

Unlike most serial killers Cooke was random in his kills and to begin with his crimes seemed unrelated. His spree involved a series of hit and runs, stabbings and shootings. When he shot he would use various types of rifles, when he stabbed he would use scissors, knives and an axe. His behavior was deemed inconsistent and bizarre. With his methods being as random as his choice of victims, he had the city of Perth terrorized.

Several victims were shot when they returned home to find Cooke robbing their homes. Two were shot sleeping without their homes even being disturbed. One of them an accountant who was fatally shot by a single bullet to the head while sleeping in a near by flat, the other an 18-year-old student (John Sturky). Another was shot dead after merely answering a knock at the door. A couple were wounded in a parked car at Cottesloe. Cooke had no empathy for his victims. After stabbing one victim, Cooke got lemonade from the refrigerator and sat himself on their verandah drinking it. One of his other victims was strangled with the cord of their bedside lamp, used as an 'in the moment' style of weapon choice. Her dead body was then raped and dragged to the neighbor's lawn, where she was violated with an empty whiskey bottle that he then left cradled in her arms.

During the 1960s people in Australia often left their cars unlocked, sometimes with their keys still in the ignition. This made stealing cars possible for Cooke almost every night. He would often commit a hit and run before returning the cars to their owners, sometimes without the owners even being aware that the car had been taken at all. He ran down and injured 7 women in cars that he stole. In 1958 a woman names Nel Schneider was riding her push bike when Cooke drove strait into her. She rolled over the car while the bike became stuck in the grill. The bike only fell off when Cooke turned the corner. Under later questioning he stated "I just wanted to hurt someone and she was it for the night". Nel was left lying in a pool of blood but survived.

After Cooke spent two years hard labor for committing several 'peeping tom' and other minor offences he took to wearing women’s gloves while committing crimes to avoid leaving fingerprints. He kept these gloves hidden above the toilet at home and always wore a hat which he pulled over his face to disguise his disfigurement.

The police investigations included fingerprinting more than 30,000 males over the age of 12 and locating test- firing over 60,000. 22inch rifles. In August 1963 a rifle was found hidden in a Geraldton wax bush in Rookwood Avenue, Mount Pleasent. A ballistics test proved that the rifle had been used in the murder of Shirley Mc Leod.

The police set a trap by placing a similar yet inoperable rifle where the original one had been wound, tied up by fishing wire. They left it there, hidden and waiting to see if anyone came to collect it. Their patience paid off as 17 days later Cooke came to collect it and was apprehended on the spot.

To begin with Cooke only admitted to one murder that he could be connected to, the charge of murdering John Lindsey. This was one of his five Australia day shooting victims (1963). But after a talk with one of the guards in Fremantle prison he confessed to more. The guard told him "You're going to hang. Do you want to be dragged there like a dog or walk in there like a man?" Cooke then confessed to 22 acts of violent crimes that included 8 murders and 14 attempted murders. In Cookes' confession he demonstrated an exceptionally good memory and account of all his crimes in detail. Especially considering how long ago he had committed the offences. He confessed to 250 burglaries and was able to describe exactly what he took from each house and what each house looked like inside. This included the number and denominations of the coins he had stolen from each location and he could describe what paintings or even flowers that were in the houses. He was very smart and always left a small amount of money behind so they might not notice that they had anything stolen. He told detectives about one house that he folded some clothes back on the washing line as a decoy to escape. The police checked through the crime scene photos to see this to be true.

There were two wrongful convictions from Cooke’s crimes. These were Darryl Beamish for the murder of Jullian Brewer and John Button for the manslaughter of Rosemary Anderson. Cooke stated in his confession that he committed these offences. Button's appeal was heard first where West Australia Chief Justice Sir Albert Wolff called Cooke a "Villainous unscrupulous liar" after Cooke's testimony the vehicle he claimed he used to kill Anderson had an external steel sun visor. The judges did not believe that a body could be thrown "over the roof" without ripping the visor off. Wolff believed the confession was purely an attempt to prolong his own trial and the appeals of both innocent men were dismissed, before Beamish's defense was even heard.

Cooke pleaded not guilty on the grounds of insanity. However, the claim was dismissed after the director of the state of mental health services testified that he was sane and showed no sign of schizophrenia.

Cooke was convicted of willful murder on 28th November 1963 after a three-day trial by the jury in the supreme court of Western Australia before Justice Virtue. He had grounds for an appeal but turned it down, stating to his lawyer that he had killed people and deserved to pay for what he had done. He was sentenced to death and on death row he spent a lot of time reading his bible. He spoke often about his wife and children. But mainly he expressed much concern about Darryl Beamish and John Button and he went on hunger strike over not being believed about them being innocent. He also banged his head against the wall for a long time after his father visited. He joked when being weighed and measured for the executioner. He walked calmly to the gallows, saying he would pay his debt to society. Ten minutes before the sentence was carried out he swore on the bible that he had been the killer of Jillian Brewer and Rosemany Anderson.

Cooke was the last man to be hung in Fremantle prison in the state of Western Australia, 26th October 1964. He is buried in Fremantle cemetery, above the remains of child-killer, Martha Rendell, who was ironically, in 1909, the last woman to be hung in Western Australia.

John Button was jailed for 5 years for the manslaughter of his girlfriend, Rosemary Anderson, this was only terminated in 2002 after evidence proved Cooke was her killer. To prove his innocence a re-enactment was created of Anderson by crash test experts with the same Holden car Cooke stated he used and the Simca Aronde owned by Button. The dummy was thrown over the roof. They found that the visor flexed and never cracked. Buttons' success opened the appeal for Beamish.

Darryl Beamish was a deaf mute and was convicted in 1961 for the murder of Jillian Brewer in 1959. She was a wealthy woman from Melbourne. Brewer was Cookes' first murder. He killed her in a ferocious hatchet and scissor attack. But despite Cookes' 1963 confession, Beamish served 15 wrongful years for the murder and was only freed in 2005 after evidence pointed to Cooke being the rightful killer.

Beamish was granted a A$425,000 payment be the Western Australian government for this wrong doing in 2011.

Cooke had brought fear to the city of Perth and as a result many people bought dogs for security and started to lock doors and garages that had previously never been secured. For the people of Perth, Cooke will always be dubbed the Nedlands Monster.