Murders
Cooke's killing spree involved a series of seemingly unrelated hit and runs, stabbings, stranglings and shootings. Victims were shot with several different rifles, stabbed with knives and scissors, and hit with an axe. Several were killed after waking as Cooke was robbing their homes; two were shot while sleeping without their homes being disturbed; and one was shot dead after answering a knock on the door. After stabbing one victim, Cooke got lemonade from the refrigerator and sat on the verandah drinking it. One victim was strangled to death with the cord from a bedside lamp, after which Cooke raped the corpse, dragged it to a neighbour’s lawn and sexually penetrated it with an empty whiskey bottle, which he left cradled in her arms.
During the early 1960s, people in Perth frequently left cars unlocked and/or with the keys in the ignition, which enabled Cooke to steal a car almost every night. He sometimes returned stolen vehicles without the owners becoming aware of the theft, including several cars involved in hit and runs.
The police investigation included fingerprinting more than 30,000 males over the age of 12, as well as locating and test-firing more than 60,000 .22 rifles.
Cooke was caught after a rifle was found hidden in a Geraldton Wax bush in Rookwood Avenue, Mount Pleasant in August 1963. Ballistic tests proved the gun had been used to murder Shirley McLeod. Police returned to the location and tied a similar rifle, rendered inoperable, to the bush with fishing line and constructing a hide in which they waited for him to return; Cooke did 17 days later.
Cooke confessed to several crimes, including eight murders and 14 attempted murders. He was convicted on a charge of murdering John Lindsay Sturkey, one of Cooke's five Australia Day (1963) shooting victims. In his confessions, Cooke demonstrated an exceptionally good memory for the details of his crimes irrespective of how long ago he had committed the offences. For example, he confessed to more than 250 burglaries and was able to detail exactly what he took, including the number and denominations of the coins he had stolen from each location.
Read more about this topic: Eric Edgar Cooke
Famous quotes containing the word murders:
“Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1935)
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
—John Adams (1735–1826)