Eric Edgar Cooke - People Wrongly Convicted of Cooke's Crimes

People Wrongly Convicted of Cooke's Crimes

Cooke's confessions appeared to exculpate two men who had already been tried separately, convicted and imprisoned for the killing of Jillian Macpherson Brewer (1959) and Rosemary Anderson (1963) respectively:

• Darryl Beamish, a deaf mute was convicted in 1961 of murdering Brewer;

• John Button was convicted of manslaughter, following the death of Anderson, his girlfriend.

Despite Cooke's 1963 confession, Beamish served 15 years, while Button was sentenced to ten years and served five.

The appeal court dismissed Button's initial appeal, even though Cooke had provided details that only a culprit could have known; in particular, the judges did not believe Cooke’s claim that Anderson’s body was thrown “over the roof” of an EJ Holden without damaging its sun visor, as Cooke claimed. Over subsequent decades, Button and his supporters – including journalist Estelle Blackburn – continued to press for a re-trial, a campaign that included a well-publicised 1998 simulated re-enactment of Anderson’s death, conducted by crash test experts, with both a Holden matching one believed to have been used by Cooke on the night in question, and a 1963 Simca Aronde like the car owned by Button, which were both driven at a crash test dummy. The dummy was thrown over the roof of the Holden, as Cooke had claimed and the damage sustained matched the records of a panelbeating business that had, in 1963, repaired the vehicle driven by Cooke. The experts concluded that a sun visor would likely have flexed when hit by a body and returned to its original shape, without significant damage (such as cracked paint).

Beamish's initial appeal was also dismissed because the court did not believe Cooke’s evidence. The prosecution claimed that his confessions were an attempt to prolong his own trial and the Chief Justice of Western Australia, Sir Albert Wolff (presiding) called Cooke a “villainous unscrupulous liar”.

In 2002, the Court of Criminal Appeal quashed Button's conviction. Button's success opened the way for an appeal by Darryl Beamish, who was acquitted in 2005. In both cases, the appeal judges found that the murders had probably been committed by Cooke.

On 2 June 2011, Beamish was granted a A$425,000 ex gratia payment by the Western Australian government.