Killings
On December 30, 1950, Texan mechanic Lee Archer was driving his car near Lubbock, Texas, when he picked up Billy Cook who was hitch-hiking. Shortly afterward Cook robbed Archer of $100 at gunpoint and forced him into the trunk of his car. But the mechanic eventually escaped by forcing open the trunk with a tire iron before jumping out as Cook made a slow turn onto a secondary road.
After the car ran out of fuel on the highway between Claremore and Tulsa, Oklahoma, Cook posed again as a hitchhiker. This time, he was picked up by farmer Carl Mosser from Illinois who was en route to New Mexico with his wife, three children, and a dog. At gunpoint, Cook forced Mosser to drive around aimlessly for 72 hours. At one point, Mosser nearly overpowered Cook at a filling station near Wichita Falls, Texas but Cook was too strong for him. Mentally unstable and increasingly tired, Cook shot the entire family and their dog shortly afterward. He dumped their bodies in a mine shaft near Joplin, Missouri.
Cook then headed back to California after abandoning the Mosser car in Oklahoma. The vehicle was later discovered full of bullet holes and covered in blood. However, the receipt for Cook's gun was found in the car. Police now had a name for their suspect.
Just outside Blythe, California, a deputy sheriff named Homer Waldrip became suspicious of Cook and went to the motel where he'd earlier lived with a friend. Hoping to question the friend, he was instead taken by surprise when Cook himself jumped from behind the door and took Deputy Waldrip's revolver. Deputy Waldrip was taken hostage by the killer. In a manner similar to Mosser, Cook forced the deputy to drive around aimlessly. It was during this drive that Cook bragged about murdering the family from Illinois. After traveling more than 40 miles, Cook ordered the deputy to pull over the car and forced the officer to lie face down in a ditch. Cook then said he was going to shoot a bullet into the back of the deputy's head. But it did not happen. Instead Cook got back into the police car and drove away. Cook later told reporters when asked why he did not kill Deputy Waldrip that the Deputy's wife Cecilia, with whom he worked with for a short period of time in Blythe was " nice to him, treated him like a human being and had been nicer than anyone had ever been to him in his life "
Cook then kidnapped another motorist, Robert Dewey, from Seattle. Sometime later the traveling salesman tried to wrestle the gun from Cook but was wounded in the process. The car left the road and careened into the desert. Cook murdered Dewey with a shot to the head before dumping his body in a ditch.
By now, all law enforcement agencies throughout the U.S. Southwest were on the lookout for Cook, who had now returned to Blythe. He kidnapped two other men, James Burke and Forrest Damron, who were on a hunting trip. He forced them to drive across the Mexican border and on down to Santa Rosalia. Amazingly, in the town Cook was recognized by Santa Rosalia police chief Luis Parra, who simply walked up to Cook, snatched the .32 revolver from his belt, and placed him under arrest. Billy Cook was then returned to the border and handed over to waiting FBI agents.
Read more about this topic: Billy Cook (criminal)
Famous quotes containing the word killings:
“... there has never been a period in history when there have been necessary killings which has not been instantly followed by a period when there have been unnecessary killings.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“not that horror was not, not that the killings did not continue,
not that I thought there was to be no more despair,
but that as if transparent all disclosed
an otherness that was blessèd, that was bliss.
I saw Paradise in the dust of the street.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“‘I told him, Look at all those fightings and killings down there,
What’s the matter? Why don’t you put a stop to it?
‘I try, he said—That’s all he could do, he looked tired. He’s a bachelor so long, and he likes lentil soup.’”
—Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)