Eric Edgar Cooke Australian serial killer Date of Birth: 25.02.1931 Country: Australia

Biography of Eric Edgar Cooke

Eric Edgar Cooke, an Australian serial killer, terrorized the city of Perth in Western Australia from 1959, committing 22 serious crimes, eight of which resulted in death. He was born on February 25, 1931 in Victoria Park, a southeastern suburb of Perth, and was the eldest of three children. Cooke's father showed no affection towards his eldest son and frequently subjected him to beatings, as he was an alcoholic. The young boy often became an innocent victim of his father's violence, as he would defend his mother, who also endured abuse from his father. Cooke also faced bullying at school due to his appearance, as his cleft lip and palate were constant objects of mockery from his classmates. Despite undergoing surgical operations, which were unsuccessful in correcting his physical deformities and speech impediment, Cooke was rejected by his peers and became socially isolated. In his teenage years, he began engaging in petty crimes and vandalizing neighboring properties. He spent 18 months in prison for setting a church on fire after being denied entry to a local choir.

At the age of 21, Cooke enlisted in the military but was discharged three months later when it was discovered that he had been repeatedly arrested for theft, burglary, and arson prior to joining the Armed Forces. A year later, on October 14, 1953, at the age of 22, Cooke married Sarah Lavin, a 19-year-old cleaner at the Methodist Church in Cannington. They later had seven children together. Although Cooke was happy in his marriage and enjoyed having a large family, he could not suppress his habit of wandering the streets every night and was arrested multiple times for "unhealthy curiosity" and other minor offenses, which eventually escalated into more serious crimes.

Cooke's series of strange murders terrorized Perth and varied in nature, including robberies, car thefts, stabbings, strangulations, and shootings. He was an atypical serial killer, as his crimes and methods were as random and diverse as his choice of victims. He used different firearms when he intended to kill by shooting. He applied various methods to different victims, using knives, scissors, or axes as weapons. He shot one victim when they opened the front door in response to a knock, while others were killed while waking up while he searched their homes. Two were shot while they slept. On one occasion, after stabbing a victim, the killer opened a bottle of soda found in the refrigerator and calmly sat on the porch, enjoying his drink. After raping the mistress of a house, Cooke strangled her with a lamp cord, then dragged her body onto a neighbor's lawn, where he further desecrated it using an empty whiskey bottle, which he then placed in her hands.

In the 1960s, it was common for people to leave their car keys in the ignition overnight, which Cooke took advantage of, stealing cars almost every night and returning them to their owners before the thefts were discovered. One day, a rifle was found hidden in the bushes. Ballistic testing revealed that a woman had been shot with this weapon, and her murder had remained unsolved. This led the police to develop a plan. The rifle was returned to its original hiding place, tied to a bush with fishing line, and a police surveillance team waited in ambush. They had to wait for weeks, but Cooke finally appeared and was arrested on the spot. Later, he confessed to numerous crimes, including 22 serious offenses (8 murders and 14 attempted murders). In his confessions, Cooke demonstrated an astonishing memory, recalling even the smallest details of his numerous crimes, regardless of how long ago they had occurred. For instance, he confessed to 250 thefts and could accurately describe everything he stole, including the exact amounts of money taken from each location.

On November 28, 1963, after a three-day trial at the Supreme Court of Western Australia, Edgar Cooke was found guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced to death. He became the last person in the state to be sentenced to death by hanging. Cooke was buried at Fremantle Cemetery, in the same location as Martha Rendell, a child murderer who was hanged in the prison of the same city in 1909. She was the last woman to be hanged in Western Australia.

After Cooke's sentencing, two other Australians were wrongly convicted of the murders that were later attributed to him, despite Cooke himself confessing to those crimes in 1963. It was not until 2002 and 2005 that these individuals were proven innocent, as additional investigations revealed that the executed Cooke was the actual perpetrator.