Show Notes
Eric Edgar Cooke terrorised the people of Perth for years, but they didn’t know it.
The people didn’t know that the nighttime prowler breaking into people’s homes and stealing money from purses while they slept, the peeping Tom who watched women getting changed and young couples getting busy, the maniac striking women down in deliberate hit-and-runs, the murderer of two young, well-known socialites, and the perpetrator of the Australia Day weekend massacre were all one person. How could they? What kind of a criminal commits such different crimes, with different MOs and no set victim type? Eric Edgar Cooke was a criminal unlike Perth had ever seen before.
EPISODE NOTES:
If Eric Edgar Cooke lived in the early days of criminology, his picture would have been used to model Lombroso's theory of the born criminal. He had a cleft palate and cleft lip, and the surgeries to correct these deformities left serious facial scaring and left him able to speak only in a mumble. In general, he looked like the guy you would have moved away from on the bus. Eric felt constantly rejected from society, and he wanted to strike back, and take back a little bit of the power that those beautiful, rich people held.
At first it was small – stealing pocket change to supplement his income from his manual labour job. Clumsy and accident-prone in his daily life, he realised that at night, sneaking around people’s houses, he was agile and untouchable. He would prowl the streets of Perth night after night, stealing small amounts of money left out, and watching beautiful girls sleeping in their beds.
Soon, that wasn’t enough. Cooke stole cars and began a series of hit-and-runs that were never linked together. Some of his victims died, some sustained life-long injuries. Still that didn’t satisfy him. He stabbed Pnena Berkman to death with a diver’s knife while she slept in her bed. Then he murdered Jillian Brewer with a hatchet. Still not enough. He went on a frenzied massacre on Australia Day, 1963, shooting at five people with a stolen .22 rifle. He got away with it all.
Police wouldn’t link these crimes together for a long ass time… not until after two innocent people were imprisoned for crimes Eric Cooke had committed.
Our main source this week was Estelle Blackburn’s Broken Lives, which discussed the life of Eric Cooke as well as John Button, one of the innocent men locked up for a crime Eric committed. We’ll get into John Button’s story more next episode. The book can be found here https://www.dymocks.com.au/book/broken-lives-by-estelle-blackburn-9781740640732
You can read an article Estelle Blackburn wrote for the West Australian here https://thewest.com.au/news/the-making-of-a-serial-killer-ng-ya-284009
Read more about Cooke on Murderpedia here https://murderpedia.org/male.C/c/cooke-eric-edgar.htm
You can read about Mark Berkman, the son of Pnena Berkman, and his story about finding out what happened to his mother as a result of the book here https://thewest.com.au/news/wa/angels-return-a-childhood-taken-by-violence-ng-ya-343689 If you like what we do please consider supporting us on PATREON Subscribe to the podcast on ITUNES, STITCHER, Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/murder-in-the-land-of-oz. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/murder-in-the-land-of-oz. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Murder in the Land of Oz
As the final installment of our First Nation's themed season, we are talking about January 26th. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/murder-in-the-land-of-oz. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/murder-in-the-land-of-oz. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
We are back after a (what turned into a much bigger than intended) break!
Whoops we covered another cult. Coming for ya, Jo Thornely. Chantelle McDougall, her six-year-old daughter Leela, her partner Simon Kadwill, and their housemate Tony Popic went missing in July of 2007. Simon was the leader of an internet-based doomsday cult, who believed that through death, a chosen few would ascend to a new plane of reality and usher in the new Aquarian age of existence. So you know, normal stuff. They told friends and family they were moving to Brazil, but their was no activity on their passports. Their disappearance left police stumped. Had they committed group suicide, or had they gone even further into isolation and completely segregated themselves from society? Our main sources this week were the coronial inquest completed in 2017. You know we love an inquest document! https://www.coronerscourt.wa.gov.au/_files/Felton,%20G;%20McDougall,%20C%20J%20and%20L;%20Popic,%20A%20K%20%20finding.pdf News articles about the case can be found here https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-06/cult-leader-simon-kadwell-inquest-begins-into-missing-family/9205656 and here https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/cult-leader-simon-kadwell-inquest-hears-police-failed-to-investigate-report-of-dead-flesh-smell/news-story/b828be6ad139699e509c94ce62bc5292 The website for Simon’s “work” can be accessed via the Wayback Machine here https://web.archive.org/web/20071103141354/http://www.thenewcall.org/book_sdp.htm Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/murder-in-the-land-of-oz. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/murder-in-the-land-of-oz. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Okay, yes, every show and their dog (or podcast cat) have covered this case. But we just had to jump on the bandwagon. You may be familiar with the murder of Dee Dee Blanchard from the documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest, or the hit TV show now on Hulu The Act, or just generally from having an internet connection at any point in time over the past four years. The internet is obsessed with this case, and for good reason – the horrific murder of Dee Dee Blanchard shocked the world, not because of the brutality of the crime – but because of the scale of the abuse that Dee Dee afflicted on Gypsy, her daughter, who she had raised to believe was sick with a whole medical textbook of illnesses. Once Dee Dee was dead, the truth came out – nothing was wrong with Gypsy. She was a victim of Munchausen by Proxy, and was horribly abused by the person who was meant to care for her most. EPISODE NOTES: Friends and neighbours looked at Dee Dee and Gypsy Rose Blanchard as a perfect mother-daughter pair. Dee Dee was dedicated to her sick daughter, and Gypsy was in turn loving and devoted to her mother. When Dee Dee was murdered in 2015, people were horrified. Who was going to take care of poor Gypsy now? But as the truth came out, and Gypsy – along with her boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn – was charged with her death, people were horrified to discover that Dee Dee was not what she seemed – and neither was Gypsy. Gypsy had every disease under the sun, from cancer to muscular dystrophy. She was confined to a wheelchair, had tubes all over her body, and had no hair and barely any teeth. She never properly attended school and was in and out of hospital constantly. But none of her ailments were real. Dee Dee was forcing Gypsy to be sick, lying to her about her real age, and physically and mentally abusing her to keep up the sickness routine, so that Dee Dee could keep reaping the benefits of having a sick child. While Gypsy and Nicholas Godejohn were both ultimately convicted of Dee Dee’s murder, many people believe that Gypsy acted in self-defence, and did what she had to do to escape from one of the most horrific situations of abuse conceivable. Read Michelle Dean's incredible longform article on the case here https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/michelledean/dee-dee-wanted-her-daughter-to-be-sick-gypsy-wanted-her-mom More info about the case can be found here https://www.yourtango.com/2019322839/who-nick-godejohn-new-details-gypsy-roses-boyfriend-man-murdered-dee-dee-blanchard?fbclid=IwAR0c95is1g2caWJ1wSQX9CobuA8rK30l_Z5BDjfW4AAdf-CpbE2IlcVH7kA Information about the case and also Munchausen by Proxy can be found here https://www.yourtango.com/2019322870/what-munchausen-syndrome-by-proxy-story-gypsy-rose-blanchard?fbclid=IwAR28fu87X_aWdA9iOnfoLHevQ_bfIyiMeabBSbHo-T2YajOWh8ey3vd7YKI For some info on Hulu's stunning new show The Act (this is not a sponsored episode but also – sponsor us, Hulu?) head here https://www.marieclaire.com.au/the-act-tv?fbclid=IwAR2Ohe3PFiupYeS2rfTO3Ux9LoluGAiYbzWQMNMiQJz8RCg5iwvChcyUMHM