Welcome to our final episode in Western Australia, for real this time. In Part Two of our discussion of Eric Edgar Cooke, we discuss Cooke’s final crimes, his trial and subsequent execution, and two of the many destroyed lives that Cooke left in his wake – John Button and Darryl Beamish, the two men who went to prison for crimes that Cooke had committed.

EPISODE NOTES:

Eric Edgar Cooke had unknowingly terrorised the people of Perth for years. People started locking their doors and coming home before dark because of the shootings on Australia Day, the robberies, the brutal stabbing murder of Pnena Berkman, not knowing that the criminal they were afraid of was all the same man.

The “power” that overcame Cooke, driving him to hurt people, came again and again, until finally he was captured after the murder of teenaged babysitter Shirley McLeod. Then came months of police trying to unravel crime after crime, trying to understand how one man could be capable of committing so many disparate crimes. From the moment he was captured, Cooke knew there was only one destination for him – the gallows.

For John Button and Darryl Beamish, however, the nightmare wouldn’t end until long after Cooke’s death. It wasn’t until the early 2000s, over fifty years since the crimes were committed, that Button and Beamish would get new appeals.

This episode would not have been possible without Broken Lives, by Estelle Blackburn. An unbelievably thorough dive into the story of Eric Cooke that was the catalyst for Button and Beamish’s appeals. Get it wherever you get books.

You can read/watch the SBS Insight about John Button’s case here

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/insight/at-19-i-was-charged-with-my-girlfriend-s-murder-a-crime-i-never-committed

You can listen to a way better podcast than ours, the ABC’s Wrongful, about Darryl Beamish here https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/earshot/wrongful-the-darryl-beamish-story/9065874

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