Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 464 - The Night Caller: Eric Edgar Cooke

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

Eric Edgar Cooke, nicknamed the Night Caller and the Nedlands Monster, was a serial killer who terrorized Perth, Australia from 1958 to 1963. He was incredibly hard to catch, because his MO was to not have an MO. Sometimes he ran over women in a stolen car. Sometimes he shot women. Sometimes he shot men. Sometimes his crimes were sexually motivated, other times purely opportunistic. He attacked one victim with an axe, another with a knife. He strangled one victim, punched others, and once even knocked on someone's door and when they answered he shot them in the forehead. He was mayhem personified, and the last man to be hanged in Western Australia.Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch.

Are you afraid of being in prison for a crime you didn't commit? It's a terrifying thought, isn't it? In our modern world, many of us, probably are not. I know it still happens. There are always going to be some investigators who are crooked, lazy, racist, or just plain bad at their jobs. But even if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time with today's forensic technology, fingerprints, DNA samples, a digital footprint that includes cell phone call triangulation and GPS tracking, internet search histories, an abundance of security cameras, doorbell cameras, facial recognition software, and much more.

It seems likely that there would be some piece of evidence that would firmly declare you innocent and point to someone else, the person who actually did it. The act of say, finding a body, even if it was somebody close to you, doesn't necessarily make the police presume you're guilty. Not anymore. But this wasn't always the case. In the days of not so long ago, when forensic evidence collection was not nearly as robust as it is now, in the days before the near constant presence of cameras and nearly everyone

carrying a cell phone on them at all times, too often, being at the wrong place at the wrong time meant the wrong time meant the difference between freedom and years in prison or even the death penalty. In the early 1960s, two young men in Perth, Western Australia, John Button and Darryl Beamish were quickly and wrongfully found guilty of crimes committed by somebody else.

Darryl, who was a sex offender, was charged with the murder of socialite Jillian Brewer, a horrific slaughter that had taken place in Jillian's apartment. He was bullied into a confession, even though the real crimes he had committed had been nothing like what had happened to Jillian. She was literally hacked to pieces with an axe before the killer, a stranger to her, had fled and when the police found Daryl, they thought for whatever reason, even though his crimes had never been violent, that they had their man. Rosemary Anderson was the victim of a hit and run. One night following a

celebration of her boyfriend John Button's birthday, a car crashed into the 17-year-old girl and she would die later at the hospital. John, who'd been trying to make up with her following an argument at the birthday dinner they had, was charged with her murder after he made a confession to officers. We thought it was just too unlikely that someone else would have hit her with their car right after she and John had had a big argument. At the time these two men were found guilty, if you were a resident of Perth, their convictions made total sense. Two completely different crimes, confessions, completely different killers. Case closed. Nobody had any idea that one man was responsible for both of those crimes and for many

more seemingly unrelated crimes. Eric Edgar Cook had unwittingly developed an MO that would make him almost impossible to track down. And that MO was not having an MO. He was mayhem personified and he was as likely to shoplift from the grocery store as he was to break into your home and literally take a shit on your bed, or steal a pair of your panties, or shoot you in the face when you entered your front door after he knocked, or maybe bash you in the head while you slept, or set your sofa on fire. Dew just hated the world and liked to ruin people's days or their entire lives. A terrible childhood and probable brain damage left him angry and impulsive. His victims didn't share any

common characteristics except perhaps that he perceived them as wealthy and happy or attractive. Things Cook himself had never been. Throughout the 50s and into the 60s this angry deranged man, the Netherlands monster, the Nightcaller, would stalk the suburbs of Perth long after the sun had set. At first, it was just about stealing, taking things he could sell to either support his ever-growing family or his gambling and drinking and womanizing habits. Then, whenever he was about to be caught, he started knocking out his victims to get away.

Then he discovered he liked knocking them out. He liked dishing out pain, liked it more than stealing. And soon he'd use just about anything, a gun, a knife, even a car to cause it. The crazy true story of the nightcaller. Eric Edgar Cooke right here, right now on another diabolical true crime, monsters walk amongst us edition of Time Suck. Monsters walk amongst us edition of time suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to time suck Happy Monday and welcome or welcome back to the cult of the curious. I'm Dan Cummins, the Suckmaster dinosaur bone fan, science fan, empathy fan, STD fan, as in scared to death.

And you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod, hail Lucifina, praise be to good boy Bojangles and glory be to Triple M. God, I hope Michael motherfucking McDonald doesn't have syphilis. Right? Who has it besides your mom and your dad? Hope you're having a fantastic day. Recording this before last week's episode has dropped so nothing crazy to report. And you look great by the way. I like what you do with your hair and with your nipples. They look, I don't know, darker, thicker, nipple-er.

And I think that's great. Good for you. Hope you're enjoying them. I'll be releasing some animated clips on at Dan Cummins Comedy on both Instagram and on Facebook in the coming weeks of an old stand-up album. Maybe I'm the Problem. It came out in 2018. Why? Why now? Well, because a couple years ago I paid to have it animated by time sucker Thomas Royal. And he did a great job. He did a great job. And I want people to see his fucked up ridiculous animation work. Great job and I want people to see his fucked up ridiculous animation work. And then the full album animated will appear on the Bad Magic YouTube channel on August 22nd. Just for fun, you know, if you got some extra time, I hope you check it out.

Hope you like it. And now let's head into the completely foobarred world of the nightcaller. Eric Edgar Cooke. I really hope you're not listening to this one if you're walking alongside a road, you know late at night. Cars driving by. Oof, that's not gonna be a good combo. You will see why before we are done. Not much setup needed today. Pretty straightforward. The bulk of today's crazy ass story is going to be shared in the timeline. There we will take a look at Brutal Cook's origins beginning with his birth shortly followed by parents who stayed together only because mom got pregnant.

That reasoning just always seems to work out great for everyone involved doesn't it? It worked out fabulously for Cook's parents. Very, very loving. Not abusive at all, just functional marriage. We'll talk about Eric's childhood, the abuse he suffered at the hands of his miserable father, how he was bullied by other kids, then we'll follow him as he entered the working world, a place where he would experience a like fucking preposterous amount of accidents and subsequent hospital stays that just seemed cartoonishly silly. Like he was truly a Looney Tunes character brought to life.

Wile E. Coyote in the flesh, continually getting flattened, burnt up, trampled, only to be totally fine again just a few frames later. Finally, well it's absurd, finally we'll see how Cook descended into the life of crime that would ultimately get him caught. But not caught soon enough, not before he'd already killed a lot of people, wounded a bunch more, not before two other men would find themselves in prison for homicides that Cook had committed. Before all that, we'll get to know a little more about the setting of today's story. Perth, Australia. Perth was founded by Captain James Sterling, a British Royal Navy officer and colonial

administrator on Wadjuk Country, Southwest Australia, as the capital of the Swan River Colony on June 1st, 1829. Wadjuk country refers to the traditional lands of the Wadjuk people, an Australian Aboriginal group who lived in the area a long, long time before Captain Sterling and his buddies ever showed up. It encompasses a large area around Perth in Western Australia, including the Swan Coastal Plain. Shortly after Captain Sterling named his new capital, a capital named after Perthshire, Scotland, the first Swan River settlers arrived on the ships the Parmelia and the Sulphur. Back when Australia's settlements were almost exclusively for prisoners,

Perth was the first free settler colony in Australia established by private capital. There were still convicts though, and a lot of them. Regular settlers, they wanted to be like, like paid and shit for building everything a colony needed to survive. Fucking outrageous! People wanting money for work. So Britain sent convicts that were essentially slaves to do most of that initial work. Around 1850, convicts began to arrive in the colony in large numbers to build roads, provide other public infrastructure. In addition to doing a lot of construction, those inmates also did a fair amount of fucking. And by 1868, the total population of Perth was

17,000, with convicts outnumbering settlers 9,700 to 7,300. The ratio would soon change though, when abundant gold discoveries in the Calguili region, over 350 miles inland from Perth in the early 1890s, brought a new era of prosperity for the city and led to the construction of many impressive buildings, some of which are still around today. Amazing how many of the world's most opulent and impressive buildings and just cities have been built because of some shiny rock found in the ground that we humans long ago arbitrarily assigned exceptional value to.

Even though you can't stay alive eating gold, you know, can't digest it to cure what ails you, people have tried. Not the best shit to build shelter or clothes out of either, but we have long valued it above nearly all else. So so strange when you really think about it. We value oil a lot too, but at least it makes our equipment run. Perth became a major hub for miners heading to gold fields in the region and the Perth Mint was built to refine all that gold, sweet gold in 1899. By that point the

population swelled to around 60,000 and that population would almost double to 106,000 by 1915. It's growing like crazy. Along alongside all the new infrastructure representative government evolved in Western Australia in the second half of the 19th century and in 1901 Western Australia federated with the other Australian states to form the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia's first major step towards achieving true independence from Britain. Australia now had its own federal government while its colonies became its states, but the UK still controlled many aspects of

Australia's affairs. Australia's road to independence could be a whole suck into itself. I had no idea. It's taken a very long unorthodox road and is still part of the British Commonwealth today and recognizes the British Crown as its head of state. Largely ceremonial head of state. Still, Australia didn't really become independent until 1986 when the so-called Australia Act was passed. One in Great Britain and then a Mirror act essentially in Australia It's fucking crazy, right? I thought I thought Australia was a independent long before that the dual acts effectively ended the power of the UK Parliament to legislate for Australia and eliminated the possibility of appeals from

Australian state courts to the Privy Council in London the final step in Australia's constitutional evolution to full independence By the time Eric Edgar Cook will be born decades before all that in 1931, Perth was in a tough spot though, as most of the world was during the Great Depression. There was a massive amount of unemployment in the city of what was now somewhere around 150,000 people, which led to major riots, including one on St. George's Terrace, aka The Terrace, Perth's main street essentially, that involved thousands of unemployed men. Apparently one in four men in Perth were unemployed, comparable to the unemployment rate in the US, which peaked at 25% in 1933. That is so many people. The end of World War II would bring a

period of new prosperity though to Perth thanks to a huge influx of immigrants. A lot of immigration, legal and otherwise, does historically often equal economic prosperity for immigrants and non immigrants alike. More people can create more jobs and more opportunities for everybody actually and many studies have shown that having foreign neighbors reduces prejudice which makes it a lot harder for nefarious politicians to paint them as the boogeyman. Perth and other Australian cities thrive because of this, despite a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment at the time.

Between 1946 and 1970, approximately 240,000 primarily European immigrants settled in Perth prior to World War II. Only 3.5% of Perth's population came from a non-English speaking country. By the 1970s, that number grew to 21%. And there was work for all with the discovery of nickel, petroleum, bauxite, natural gas, and aluminum deposits all throughout the state. By 1950 the population had soared to 310,000, by 1960 it had climbed to 409,000, by 1970 611,000 people lived there. Explosive growth, a lot of new people come in, Some of these people will unfortunately be victims of the fucking nightcaller. Of course, not everyone thrives in periods of expansion like this and alongside Perth's wealthier suburbs.

The government built a number of state-run projects for affordable housing to alleviate the strain on dense inner-city poverty in areas like East Perth and Northbridge. And it was in the context of this rapid transition that Eric Edgar Cook would experience his most formative years. From a world defined by hardship, penny pinching, and stress during the Depression, to a world defined by nice houses, good jobs,

a promising future for legions of young people who are excited to have their own careers, houses, and families someday in the booming post-World War II city that has now grown to over 2.1 million people today. All of the different people living in Perth were all linked together. Neighborhoods stitched to neighborhoods by a new highway network built in the 1950s that included the opening of the Narrows Bridge crossing the Swan River.

Suddenly people in the area were a lot more connected. Even more new opportunities were to be found. And this new interconnectedness created more opportunities not just for jobs. It was much easier to commute across the ever-widening sea of suburbs but also for crime as well. With a lot more people and a lot more interconnectedness came a lot more anonymity. You could be in one highly populated place and quickly move to another without anybody noticing. And someone who didn't feel like their fortunes were rising along with the fortunes of so many others in the city that they were born in, you know, that person could grow bitter. They could feel like others were stealing their future

from them and they could stalk and hurt and kill their fellow Perthians and then be gone in an instant after doing what they'd done. And this is exactly what Eric Edgar Cook would do. And now let's meet this week's unhinged source of so much needless destruction and pain in today's Time Suck Timeline. Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a Time Suck Timeline. Time Suck Timeline. Eric Edgar Cook was born on February 25th, 1931 in of course Perth, Australia.

His parents were Vivian Thomas Cook and Christine Edgar. And Vivian, that was his dad. Had Eric been raised by two moms, instead of by a very abusive man named Vivian, and a woman who would not stand up to up to him to protect her kids well maybe he wouldn't have been so fucked up and kill people. Vivian Thomas Cook was born in 1911 in Northam in Western Australia a town at 95 kilometers or 50 miles away from Perth. Vivian or Snowy as he was commonly known became a fitter at J and E Ledger on Pier Street just over the railway line from the central city. It was a general engineering company with a foundry and a machine shop making mostly farming equipment. Snowy was known to his workmates as a big drinker with a lousy temper.

Awesome. And that didn't get any better when he met Christine Veronica Edgar, born in Scotland in 1909. This dude, as you will see, like so many other serial killer dads, had almost zero redeeming qualities. It's not clear what brought Christine over from Scotland, but she would soon have a reason to stay in Perth when she got pregnant. And as a result of the pregnancy, 21-year-old Christine and 19-year-old Snowy got married. And Snowy would almost immediately become disgusted with domestic life. And by all accounts, that disgust started with his first born son's arrival. Baby Eric required extra care. He was born with a hair lip and a cleft palate. Disfigurements that are somewhat easily corrected with surgery today, but

operations two months after Eric's birth only made a little improvement. And speech therapy later wouldn't have much of an effect either. Instead of receiving nurture and care, mostly violence would define Eric's early years. His father seemed to hate him. Though his parents would have two more children, both daughters, Vivian Lorraine, born the year after Eric in 1932, and a second girl who seems to have worked pretty hard to keep her name and exact date of birth out of the records associated with her serial killer brother, they would never be much of a family. When Snowy wasn't beating the fuck out of his kids, he was sending them to orphanages or foster homes or they were being taken from him. And then when his wife would bring them back home, he

beat him some more. And Eric was apparently by far Snowy's favorite target. He was regularly thrashed with his father's belt, sticks, and fists. Sometimes it was because Eric had done something wrong. He was in thrashed with his father's belt, sticks, and fists. Sometimes it was because Eric had done something wrong. He was in trouble often. But generally, it was due to nothing more than his mean-spirited father's temper. Sometimes little Eric even got his ass beat for trying to protect his mom from Daddy Vivian's beatings. In response, Eric learned early that it was best to make himself scarce.

Either by walking the streets around the little worker's cottage down the road from the factory or by literally hiding under his house And what a fun childhood memory to have hiding down in the fucking dirt Amidst the bugs and the rodents and maybe some snakes beneath your family home You know because you're terrified of receiving another beaten from dad up above His mom Christine would sometimes spend the night sleeping in the staff room at her job and her at the coma hotel Just to avoid going home getting beat by Vivian. Neighbors often felt sorry for Eric and would sometimes give him food. Several would recall that

he never looked them in the eye to thank them. Not because he was an ungrateful little man but because he kept his face lowered to hide the disfigurements that embarrassed him greatly. The ones that other kids and his dad mocked him for having. How fun. Soon Eric started lying and stealing. Small amounts. Nothing that would really bother anybody at first. Perhaps he did that at least sometimes because he was hungry. Perhaps he did it because he was angry at the world. Perhaps he just did it because he fucking liked it. Maybe a mixture of all that.

After only being enrolled in school for a grand total of eight months, when Eric was six, he was expelled from first grade at the Subiaco State School for stealing money from a teacher's purse. Expulsion for that seems extreme when you're talking about a six-year-old. And he was transferred to the Newcastle Street School. The children there were just as cruel to him as they'd been at his first school, teasing him for his appearance and the way he spoke, including his constant snuffling and sniffling due to chronic sinus trouble associated with his cleft palate. They constantly mocked him, humiliated him trying to ditch him. For example, they'd say they were going to catch tadpoles or play some game and sneak off in the other direction and laugh.

A typical cruel little kid shit. And sadly, the kids on the receiving end of it are often the kids getting fucked with at home. It would become a vicious combo of home life and school life for little Eric. The more Eric would be beaten at home, the more withdrawn and angry he would become, and the less inclined kids would be to let them in on their games. Following a brief interlude of peace in second grade for unknown reasons, maybe he had some especially protective teacher, Eric was tormented just about everywhere he went.

Highgate Primary School, Forest Street Primary School, Newcastle Street Junior Technical School. Despite this, despite a lot of time away from class because of various illnesses and accidents, he probably abused as well. He actually did well at his subjects, everything but math. Which is crazy because he repeatedly or reportedly, excuse me, suffered a number of serious head injuries as a kid. Sources don't state the specifics, but they were apparently bad enough to lead to numerous hospitalizations, recurrent headaches, even some blackouts. He was said to be very accident prone. And maybe some of his accidents were his dad's beatings actually. But you will see, away from his father, he does get in a fucking

preposterous amount of accidents, just on his own. Some sources speculate that his childhood head injuries led to brain damage. Despite his numerous head wounds, he did easily pass the eighth grade, but then as soon as he reached the minimum school leaving age of 14 in 1945, his dad pulled him out of school and sent him out to work. Way to go dad. Way to try and put his future before your present. Great job. Eric started his professional life in 1945 as a delivery boy for central provision stores in Newcastle Street, or on Newcastle Street rather, on the northern side of the city where his grandmother lived. At this point he lived with his parents at 31 Pitt Street in the suburb of Como. While Daddy Vivian had a job as a salesman

for the car firm, Sydney Atkinson, he spent most of his money at the Como and Hurlingham hotels, both on Canyon Highway, not far from their home. I think we can all imagine what he spent his money on there. Booze and women. Because of that, Christine had to scrape together whatever she could to provide for her three kids, so Eric handed over his paycheck to her to help. She'd give him a few shillings back for

pocket change, but since that wasn't enough to feed himself, Eric once again resorted to stealing. Both money and food. Right? So fucked up. He couldn't get enough food at home thanks to his pile of shit of a father. Too bad you don't have to pass a responsibility test before like your sperm or your eggs get activated. Wouldn't that be nice? I've never ever thought reproduction should be a basic human right. Just given to everybody. Makes no sense to me. Too many people like clearly should never have children. But I also don't trust other people to decide which people should be allowed to have kids necessarily. So what do you do? Eric is working full-time as a 14 year old. His wages were going to his sisters and his mom since dad was blowing his

paychecks on himself. At least as a teenager, Eric made some headway socializing in a way he hadn't been able to do in school when he was younger. He joined the Scarborough Junior Surf Life Saving Club where he actually made some friends. Friends who called him Cookie. A nickname he would keep for the rest of his life. And he so desperately wanted friends. He stole a watch and had it engraved to Cookie from the boys of the SJLSC, showing it to people saying it was for good service to the club, until he was found out and the watch

was returned to the owner. And that sucks. That's sad. The fuck's a stole a watch? Had it engraved to to himself as if it was a gift from his new friends, which maybe were more of acquaintances. He soon tried another way of making friends by joining the beach training club, kind of a lifeguard and training program. But since he was short and still suffered constant headaches and occasional blackouts and wasn't that strong, it didn't do well. Twice he had to

be pulled out of the water by other club members because he blacked out while swimming. So the club dismissed him over safety concerns. At least that was the official reason they gave. The real reason may have been that everybody's shit kept disappearing when he was around. Like their money and personal belongings. Ban from the beach training club did not keep young Eric out of the water like other boys in the area at the time. He got into cliff jumping. One time he tried to dive off a rock ledge into the Serpentine River 50 feet below and then ended up staggering out of the water semi-conscious. After four subsequent days of splitting headaches, he finally went to the Royal Perth Hospital for some tests.

Spine and chest x-rays revealed that nothing was broken, but while hospitalized he was treated for some sinus trouble and his head pain would continue. A month later he's back at the hospital with his suspected frontal lobe abscess now having fallen unconscious for three quarters of an hour. Besides his sinusitis x-rays showed a possible calcified blood clot under the lining of the tissue covering the brain. In February of 1947 Eric got a craniotomy, a craniotomy, it's a surgical procedure excuse me, that involves making an incision in the skull to access the brain where a entire section of the skull called a bone flap is temporarily

removed and then later replaced. Pretty, pretty serious operation. He was also given an encephalogram, aka an EEG, a test that measures electrical activity in the brain, but no abnormalities were detected. But clearly something serious was going on with his brain. Given how much work he had now missed, young Eric had to find a new job, took a seasonal position at a farm in Noggerup, a little town 225 kilometers or 140, excuse me, miles south of Perth. But there he got bit by one of Australia's

many venomous snakes, my God. Now he had to head back to the hospital. He was not even 16 years old yet. He's been through a ton of shit. Back in the city, he next found a job in the factory of Harris Scarf and Sandover. But it wasn't long before this incredibly accident and just illness prone 16 year old is back in the hospital again.

Because this time he got struck on the nose by a winch. Bust his nose. I think he gave him a concussion. August 25th, 1947, now 16-year-old Cook, or Cookie, started a new job with the Western Australian Government Railways as a hammer boy in the blacksmith's section of the workshop at Midland Junction. To the blacksmiths and sub-formin, he was just another young worker, a 16 year old kid that wasn't good at much, you know, but you know

wasn't good at much like a lot of other 16 year olds. But there was one strange thing that his co-workers would later remember about him. In the morning each worker was supposed to write out his lunch order on a brown paper bag, adding his name and number for easy identification of lunch bags when the pies and the pasties were delivered to the workshop. And Eric always signed his the same way with two words, dead giveaway.

Dead giveaway, dead giveaway. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. My favorite dot big testicles because we see this door every day. Every day. We eat real. No, I meant he signed his Miles. I fucking can't make it.

I said I fucking can't make it. Whoa! Easy on the profanity, Miles. It's a joke. No, he signed it Al Capone. Did he sign it Al Capone just as a weird joke, or was it some kind of wish fulfillment, right? Did Cookie want to be a career criminal? A kind of strong, hardened man that nobody fucked with. Especially not his dad, who continued to beat his mother and younger sisters, and often Eric as well, whenever he visited home.

Two months after Eric started at the factory, he tried to stop Daddy Vivian from drunkenly beating his mom, and his dad responded by punching him so fucking hard in the face that his head got smashed against a light switch on the wall with enough force to fracture his skull. That for sure scrambled his noodle and he already had a history of brain problems. Man, if you're the kind of man that punches their kid in the face for trying to stop you from hitting their mom, there's truly no fate too terrible for you. There was like literally nothing that could happen to you that would make me feel like, no, stop, don't hurt him. There was like literally nothing that could happen to you. It would make me feel like, no, stop, don't hurt him. Just go ahead and donate your body to science now.

Let your last act, you fucking walking just shit fucking pile, let your last act be noble. I mean, I do think I speak for most people when I say we all think it's best that you just exit the land of the living as fast as possible. As a result of this beating, Eric was hospitalized for a full three weeks. To a shame to admit he'd had a violent father, he said he'd been in a bar fight. It would be nine weeks before Eric was able to return to work.

My God. He lasted another month of this job before he was off again. It's insane. This time he was put on work at M'Scomp because now he badly burned his face with steam. Suff. Second degree burns on most of his face. Sweet Jesus, I told you his life was like that of a Looney Tunes character.

Just one insane injury after another, but he'll just keep bouncing back from them. Oh, my god. And we're not done. Not done with his injuries. Oh not even close During a shift at a new job just over two months later A blacksmith grabbed Eric tried to stick his head in a trow as Punishment for Eric's thrown carbide in some trow water Eric's head clanged against the side of the trow and he was knocked out for a

full ten minutes Led to it on three weeks of downtime Seven weeks after that less than two months later He jammed his right hand and to something so hard and abscess formed and he had to take a month off. He was back at work for a month after that month off. He had to take off another month of work because he badly jammed the thumb on his other hand. Now he starts to think about a different kind of career. A career where he could really be somebody. Somebody who could get the recognition and acclaim he'd always wanted.

On September 24, 1948, while Eric is off work with his injured left hand, he is somehow able to be healthy enough to join the army. He enlisted in the 16 to 28 battalion of the Citizens Military Forces, joining the non-commissioned officers class where he was promoted to Lance Corporal and he fucking loved it. Loved shooting especially. And at the rifle range, despite his many many injuries, he quickly proved he was a really good shot. Even when he was told that his speech impairment would prevent him from attaining higher rank, which sucks, he made I guess he was

pretty difficult to understand. he maintained his enthusiasm and attended training on a regular basis. Still not even 18 years old, by the way. Despite loving the military life, he is not ready to give up his life of crime. You know, after his initial military training is done, he enters the reserves. Outside a month, he drills. He's able to resume his civilian life as before. And now he becomes ready to take his crime to the next level. Breaking and entry. Well, before we enter this new phase of escalating criminal behavior, let's

take our first two Mitchell sponsor breaks. If you don't want to hear these ads, please send them to be a space alert on Patreon, get the entire catalog ad free, get episodes three days early and more. Thanks for listening to those ads. And now let's head to 1948 when young Cookie decides to break into somebody else's home. On Friday October 15th 1948 the slim 17 year old Eric Cook broke into a flat in Perth looking for

food and other items to steal. The flats owner John Berman was out giving Eric plenty of time to look around flat number 3 at 170 Adelaide Terrace. Eric uncovered a flashlight, a small traveling clock, and this would mark a turning point. Now his criminal acts would not be motivated by, you know, providing for himself, like for you know stealing food, just when you would do that just take food or money to buy food when he's a kid. But now he becomes motivated because he can take revenge on people who he feels are better off than he is. Before he left Berman's flat, he opened several bottles of wine, poured the contents over clothing in a linen cupboard,

just as a fuck you to this dude he had never met. You know, doing this out of nothing more than spite and anger. And that little act will eventually come back to haunt him. Detectives Owen Leitch and Max Blight will find fingerprints on the empty wine bottles and a thumbprint on the on the mantelpiece. They will be able to to connect to Eric later. There were no matching fingerprints on file at the moment but they figured this person would strike again and they were right. Three weeks later Eric broke into another flat in Adelaide Terrace, 3 Hampton Court. He broke a glass panel in the front door to get in, searched the flat for something to take but nothing called out to him except the prospect of destruction. He pulled all the clothes out of the wardrobe,

slashed the men's and women's clothing with the knife, and then went on to slash a pillow and a bedspread. Checking the fridge for food, he found some chocolate, which he fed to the goldfish in a bowl on top of the fridge, just to kill him. Then found a bottle of lighter fluid, started a fire, sitting there and watching it burn until the heat began to overpower. When the fire brigade arrived, he snuck out and then just walked home to Como. Still wasn't caught for this, not yet. Two weeks later, Eric took another jaunt, this time to the nearby apartment complex at Burtway Flats. There was nobody home in building number three, looking for a way in.

Cookie saw a side window he could open, but it was too high high so he found a box in a nearby warehouse and stood on it. The effort of getting into Philip Sharpe's flat was worth it for him. On the dressing table in the bedroom he found 20 shillings, an engagement ring, a wristwatch, and a fountain pen. Eric was excited to sell the jewelry but right as he was put into his pockets a woman saw him through the window. He dashed out but she followed him and afraid he'd be caught with incriminating evidence, he threw the jewelry into the Swan River and he gets away again. On New Year's Eve in 1948,

now Eric made his way into the city of Perth around 8 a.m. Went to watch a movie alone. Afterwards, he wandered around through the city, starting up on Mount Street Hill. He found that the windows of flat number 10 at 40 Mount Street were dark. He snuck in, looking around with his flashlight, but the only thing he could think to steal was some fruit. He took the fruit, used a candle by the bed to set fire to some cellophane in a drawer.

When the heat became too much from the burning drawer, he left and now watched the fire grow bigger from nearby King's Park. Just fucking destroying people's shit. Laura Watkins, a widow who lived in the flat with her son, returned at 12 45 a.m. from seeing in the New Year to find her bedroom fucking destroyed. Just engulfed in flames. And the perpetrator long gone. Gets away with that incident as well for the time being. And while it continues to avoid getting caught, things are pushing ahead for Eric's professional life. January 21st 1949, Cook, Cookie, for Eric's professional life. January 21st 1949, Cookie, who is about to turn 18 in a month, gets a new job with the Western Australian Government Railways and he's sent to East Perth Locomotive Shed to work there as a cleaner. And literally on his first day at the job,

he trips and falls down into an engine pit, badly hurts his back, and he gets sent back to Royal Perth Hospital again, admitted under neurosurgeon Ross Robinson. Dr. Robinson found that the young man's back was not fractured, but his abdominal injury required continued treatment. So the new cleaner was put on sick leave and paid workers compensation again. Around this time, Eric had finally had enough of his dad, moved in with his grandma,

and with some free time on his hands, he started exploring his new neighborhood. You know, he gets all his injuries, but he's never too fucked up to cause mayhem. And now he breaks into some more places. February 8th, 1949, he breaks into 113 Perry Street, just three blocks away from his grandma's house. He looked for something to eat, couldn't find anything, didn't steal nothing, fires

had become much more interesting to him, so he collected some clothing, put it into three heaps on the cement floor of the entryway, poured a bunch of kerosene on it. Then he lit the gas stove, hoping that the place was going to explode. It didn't. But poor Western Australia newspaper's proofreader, Harold Montefiore, arrived home at 11.30 pm to find his furniture and clothing on fire. The damage amounted to about 30 pounds, about $2,000 US dollars in today's money. The next day, the police found Eric's right and left thumbprints and right index fingerprint

on a bottle in Harold's home, but Cookie's still not in the system. And he was already looking for his next target. Ten days later he sees a handbag on a dressing table near an open window at 26 Sterling Street. It belonged to Nellie Haselby, or Haselby, and he snatched 32 pounds from it before he returned it neatly to the table. And then the following Friday was his 18th birthday and he celebrated by lighting a fire in a flat that belonged to Ernest Williams and his wife. Before the fire consumed the bedroom, however, he added a personal touch. This is new. He literally took a shit in a doll's bed in their home.

Actually, he took kind of like two shits. He shit underneath the pillow, a little tiny pillow, and then he put the pillow back and he shit some more on top of it. So, you know, he's an artist now. He's just mixing things up as he feels creatively inspired. He's clearly enjoying himself. And you know what? I do get wanting to shit on somebody else's stuff, because I've done that. But only if you have motive, even if it's a bad motive. When I was 16, I watched a friend climb up onto a neighbor's car. A neighbor he very much despised. And he literally just took a shit, just took a dump on top of this neighbor's car and then pissed on the door handles.

Was that a good thing to do? No. Of course not. We were juvenile delinquents. And the guy was probably right to hate my friend. It was also one of the funniest things I'd ever seen. Another time when I was a teen, a different friend of mine and myself, the two of us, we both shit into the same big plastic bag. Not at the same time, if you're curious, we

were not asked ass to ass. Then we walked over to some neighbor he hated his house and dumped the fresh shit out onto his doorstep and then we laughed a whole bunch. And then when I was 18, this is ridiculous, I've talked about this before I think but not for a long time. It was my last day working at a grocery store and I drew a picture of my boss who I didn't like on a paper plate. And then I took a shit on that picture. I went downstairs in the basement where no one else was around, took a shit on it, then brought up my plate of shit and hid it in his office.

And he didn't deserve that. But God, it felt satisfying. I was a pretty angry teen and Cookie, he was angrier. Life had shit on him a lot more than it had ever shit on me. And he wanted to pay that forward and shit on somebody else's stuff. A week later, Cookie would strike again. I don't know how much more he shits going forward. I'm guessing that wasn't his only shit, but it doesn't get talked about going forward.

Let's just pretend he shits on a bunch of people's stuff. A week later, he'll strike again. Unfortunately, though, he might not have gotten the chance to shit on anything this time. I wish this episode was mostly about him shitting on people's stuff. A serial shitter. It would be a fun road to go down. Cookie was familiar with the house at 55 Nass Street from delivering groceries there about two years before. One of the many little odd jobs he held too briefly to mention the timeline. Not even really an odd job, but you know, hey man, can I get your groceries for you?

Or I'll run and get them if you give me a pound, whatever, that kind of stuff. And after he snuck in the owner, Ivan Yelchik came downstairs, caught the 18 year old red-handed, hiding behind the bathroom door. Eric tried to give an excuse. He said he was drunk.

He meant to go to his house next door, but he went to the wrong house. Well, Ivan doesn't buy it because he fucking knows who lives next door and is not this idiot. And now he starts punching Eric until Eric... He gets punched often until Eric runs off and he drops his flashlight along the way. And this will lead to him finally getting caught by the police. On March 12, 1949, officers interview Eric at his grandma's house.

They evidently used Ivan's description of him, plus the fact that Eric had given Ivan his real first name to track him down. They wouldn't need to interview him for very long. The police quickly found all the evidence they needed. The clock he'd taken from the first place, the 32 pounds from the handbag, he still had that. Eric's fingerprints, they take those, find that they're all over these different burglaries, and they get Eric to confess. He tells police that he'd only gotten two workers' comp payments, and he was short on money given that he had handed the payments over to his mom.

He said he'd also given some of the money that he stole to the Red Cross because he's a regular fucking Robin Hood. He didn't give the money to the Red Cross. The police don't care why he has stolen stuff also. That's not how the law works. He's arrested, he's held in custody, and he will appear before a magistrate in the Children's Court on March 23rd, 1949, a month after his 18th birthday. Once the case is heard there, he's referred for trial in criminal court and after two months in custody, he appeared in criminal court May 24th, 1949, convicted on two charges of stealing, seven of breaking and entering, and four counts of

arson. They got him for all the shit I just went over. A psychiatric report commissioned during the trial recommended that Cookie be quote rescued from a life of crime or in incipient mental state of schizophrenia of which his antisocial conduct, his bizarre and somewhat fantastic reasoning and his emotional maladjustment may be merely early symptoms. But since there was no place in Australia at that time that could rescue you from both crime and schizophrenia, the report said he should just get a regular prison sentence and be given parole if he is willing quote to submit himself for further investigation and if necessary treatment. And so that's what happened. May 24th Chief Justice, the Chief Justice sentenced Eric Cook to three years jail time, accepting the report's suggestion to give the young man a chance to rehabilitate himself.

But the worst punishment for Eric had nothing to do with the criminal proceedings. It was his dismissal from the CMF, the Australian Army Reserve, a big source of pride for him. He wouldn't serve close to three years, was considered for release with probation after just three months, but with several conditions. Regular reporting to Mr. McKillip, his parole and probation officer, and voluntary admission to the Heathcote Psychiatric Hospital for Observation. And he agreed. At Heathcote, he is seen by psychiatrist Frank Pendergrast. Dr. Pendergrast wanted to follow up on some interesting information the young offender had given him when he first saw him during his brief incarceration previously in Fremantle Prison

Eric had apparently told him that he wasn't the mastermind behind his fires and break-ins that he was under the control of a 40 year old man who terrified him and Dr. Penegrast actually there's I said Penegrast earlier There's an R in it after the P. Dr. Penegrast quickly dismissed this as a bunch of bullshit Interesting that he had concocted that specific fantasy. September 30th, 1949. Cookie, still just 18, is now discharged from Heathcote and instructed to report to the Rehabilitation Service Center for Suitable Employment and Carpentry. That seems like a terrible choice for a dude who cannot stop hurting himself on the job. Since he was unable to get an apprenticeship now due to his age, he

agreed to his mother's suggestion and he took a different job at Playstow's where she worked instead and within two weeks he was employed at a confectionary factory as a store hand earning five pounds a week, giving two pounds to his mom and banking two bucks or about $140 today. Not bad for him. Australian currency, by the way, modeled after Britons until 1966. Pounds, shilling, and pence instead of the current dollars and change. Cookie would have more of a social life than he'd ever had before while making his candy. As part of the negotiations around his parole, the Reverend George Jenkins volunteered to help rehabilitate the

wayward youth by taking him into the fold of the South Perth Methodist Church. And Cookie loved Reverend Jenkins. He was a tough, manly dude, but also sympathetic and understanding. Jenkins too had missed out on having a positive father figure, only instead of being abusive, his dad had died suddenly of a heart attack after biking 30 miles and back to do a church service when Jenkins was eight. As a result, Jenkins had gone to work at at age 13 working at a menswear shop until he

became a preacher at the age 18. Cookie could relate to him and so he wound up regularly attending services and Bible studies even reading the Bible so much that it concerns his mother which cracks me up. Cookie are you sure you wouldn't rather be sitting files taking shits on strangers stuff instead of reading that book? You scaring me. I know my accent is terrible for us. The people at church too were more accepting than any other people. Cookie had been around before. They went out of their way to include him in social activities, you know tennis afternoons, hockey matches, movie nights,

tea parties, summer camps at Waterman's Beach. McKillip was pleased with his charges attitude towards probation and on October 21st he reported to the parole board that Cookie had visited him after finishing work, told him of his job and of joining the Methodist youth movement and he said quote, he is now determined to do the right thing by his mother and himself. General demeanor appears calm and clear and provided he continues as at present and keeps away from his former bad associates. I don't know that he had a bunch of bad associates. The indications are he will be alright.

Well, he will not be alright, obviously. Cookie Student expanded his Methodist circle beyond the Reverend Jenkins South Perth Church by attending the Tuesday tea and Bible study at the Central Methodist mission in the city and joining the Netherlands Methodist Church as well. He's really going hard. Netherlands is the western suburb of Perth. Cookies membership in this church on the corner of Princess Road and Bruce Street. Netherlands took him into an older affluent area of the western suburbs. This was an area he would come to like a lot. One that would earn him the moniker of the Netherlands monster. In Nedlands he would even make a close friend. Some girl who came from a well-to-do family in the suburb. She was much younger than him. Exact age not listed, but I guess they became

close confidants. All in all, things seemed to be going really well for Cookie Rider around this time. He had work, his mom's attention, his dad hadn't punched him in the head in a while, he enjoyed his religious training and his new, you know, Methodist social circle. But he was still young and desperate for approval, which led him to doing shit like engaging in, you know, risky daredevil behavior. A lot of us have been there. Like walking along the narrow top of the high damn wall at Mundaring Weir, a reservoir. And through his, excuse me, and though his external circumstances had changed, he was the same old Eric, still suffering, and though his external circumstances had changed,

he was the same old Eric, still suffering fainting spells that involved vomiting sometimes, still suffering headaches. Finally, he was admitted to a hospital observation ward for his head pains and Dr. Mercy Sadka checked out his skull again, finding no fresh fracture or no other abnormality, but some is going on. He's once more treated for a sinuitis and after a week in the hospital is discharged for further treatment at the ear nose and throat clinic. Again, clearly something's not right with his fucking brain. How much that will factor into his later violent behavior is

anybody's guess, but could have been what you know led to impulsive aggressive behavior and poor understanding the consequences. If you've listened to many episodes about serial killers you know that you know brain injuries, very common with him, especially frontal lobe injuries Not long after his latest hospital evaluation cookie got stung by stingray Of course, of course he did and then he developed appendicitis. Why not? Oh and a boil on his neck Along with something described in sources as an infected lump what is happening? Oh And he also had an operation have all his teeth removed and replaced by dentures.

Ah! I think we should get him gone. Can you think of anybody who has been injured and suffered from this many medical maladies by the age of 20? Like anybody else, I got it. At the end of June, 1951, now 20 year old Cookie, gets a new job as an orderly at the tuberculosis sanatorium in Bushtown, east of Perth called Wurulu.

Wanted to do nursing training but after just two weeks, wouldn't you know it? He had to be rushed to Royal Perth Hospital. It's like he's allergic to work. He's allergic to jobs. He had to be rushed to the hospital for an appendectomy. And he was in the hospital for another week. My god. Then he gets some good news. His parole is gonna end August 15th 1951 and soon he's back to work and he will hold on to this new job for you know a minute or two. The day after his 21st birthday, February 24th 1952, Cookie catches the train to Melbourne with money he'd saved from his brief employment in Werlew. He spent a week sightseeing in the big bright city, staying at Scott's hotel, and then,

god dang it, he fell down an open elevator shaft, then he bounced back up into some wiring and got electrocuted, then he fell back down to the bottom of the shaft that had quickly flooded with water full of piranhas, and they immediately attacked him. I got good this time! Uh, no, but that would track. Uh would track. After a week he went to the Central Methodist mission there to inquire about places to board, you know, to stay and was told about a woman named Mrs. Mack who had some rooms available and then he would stay the rest of the time with her in

the Dundas Road, Albert Park and work as a bench hand at the Carrie Timbers Company. He also enlisted in the Army in Melbourne again hoping they would not find out about the fact that he'd been discharged from the Army in Perth. He gets away with this for 14 weeks during which he does more basic training and where he again shown in weapons training. He becomes proficient with 303s, Bren guns, and Owen guns. With the 303 he can shoot a magazine to 10 rounds in something like 8 seconds and still hold incredible accuracy, I guess.

He would later say that this was the best time of his whole life. He loved the activities, the discipline, the companionship, the weapons. But then Captain Parson calls him in. And he's like, dude, you were already fucking thrown out of the Army. Like you can't be in the Army anymore. His ruse had been discovered and now he goes back west to Perth hanging his head in shame. Where angry and broke, he will resume his old breaking and entering ways. Back in Perth just before his 22nd birthday, Cookie is charged with breaking and entering with intent.

On February 19th, 1953, he had broken into the home of one of the South Perth Methodist church people that was his buddies and he stole a money box that belonged to the church. That motherfucker. Fingerprints from the crime scene would be matched with fingerprints from his police file and the loyal Methodists were shocked that somebody from their own community could do such a thing. So did he really care about church or was this just a grift? Two detectives from Victoria Park police station, Max

Baker and Gordon Mormon, they collected Cookie, took him to the station. Authorities gave him a second or fifth or tenth or however you want to call it chance, placing him on a 50 pound good behavior bond. Now for you again, Cookie took a job as a truck driver at their Metropolitan Markets in West Perth and it was there that he met a pretty wholesome waitress in the staff canteen. Sally Lavin was 17, five years younger than Cookie, and lived with her mom and sister in Rivervale. She'd come from Liverpool in England with her mom and two sisters in 1942 to escape the bombings during World War II, and they'd made their home in Perth ever since.

Sally and Eric met in July 1953. She was instantly charmed by him. She fell in love with Cookie's magnetic, self-assured personality. Or at least what came across to her as magnetic and self-assured. And her mom liked Eric's religious disposition. Clearly she didn't know that he had stole from the church he attended. For his part, Cookie introduced Sally to his social circle, then told them some shocking information. He said that he and Sally had to get married immediately. In that day and age, that could only mean one thing. The strict Methodists were surprised by Eric's behavior, but they accepted Sally and gave

her a traditional kitchen tea slash wedding shower. And with that, Eric, Edgar Cook, and Sally Lavin married in the Kennington Methodist Church November 14th, 1953 by the Reverend Prestige Lucas Sullivan. I don't know if prestige was like a religious title or his name. I think it was. For a second there I thought his name was Prestige. I was like that's a fucking great name for a reverend. Reverend Prestige! Reverend George Jenkins would have married them, Cookie's old mentor, except he had been sent to work in Albany on the south coast. Their marriage goes off without a hitch as far as we know. The couple has a son Michael Peter on May 11th 1954, meaning Sally was probably about three months pregnant at her wedding. The boy was born

with developmental delays that are not specified in sources. And then they'll have another son a year later. And they'll just keep pumping these kids out. Cookie enjoyed the love and security of family life. He wasn't beating his kids like his dad and his kids actually seemed to love him, but he wasn't real good on raising him. Wasn't real big on parental responsibility. And it wasn't long before he was wandering the streets again, looking for new crimes and new conquests.

In 1955, only two months after the birth of his second son, a new girl he had a crush on. Who knows how many of these women he had crushes on during all this. This girl was playing in a hockey tournament in Bunbury. He decided to follow her stealing a car for the two-hour drive south. He will steal so many cars going forward because it was common for people at the time just to not only leave their cars unlocked but just leave the keys in the ignition. He

would never make it in his stolen car to Bunbury. He rolled the car on the way managing to crawl out of a smash window. He's taken to Yarloup District Hospital for emergency treatment of a broken sternum, multiple face and knee injuries, and he is later transferred once again to Royal Perth Hospital where he is a frequent customer. Repairs to the car would cost £400. Cookie was charged with essentially driving recklessly and causing an accident with a stolen vehicle. And Dr. Prenagrast, Cookie's old psychiatrist, is called in to give a full report on his level of culpability.

And the doctor will write, he was given a chance to rehabilitate himself and a further chance in 1952. He is very plausible and plain as much as possible on sympathy for his disability I don't think this is any ground for psychiatric intervention as regards to the present charge. In other words he's not crazy he's just a manipulative dipshit. The Methodists for their part well they still supported their congregants maybe too much. One of Eric's friends was a lawyer and traveled to Perth to represent him,

but it wouldn't be enough to get him out of prison. September of 1955, Cookie, a father of two babies, is jailed for two years with hard labor for stealing that car. Also given a six month sentence to be served concurrently for breaking his personal bond on the 1953 conviction. The Justice Virtue said he was not disposed to leniency given Cook's record and his squandering of previous chances when he had been dealt with extremely leniently.

A Justice of the Peace who knew Cookie and his wife visited Sally offered to help her annul her marriage like get the fuck away from this guy telling her that she knew from experience that Cookie would never change. For her part, Sally was miserable, but she declined the offer. Cookie would never change. For her part, Sally was miserable, but she declined the offer. It felt like she couldn't desert him when he was down, and she believed he should be given a chance to change. Another chance. He shouldn't have. During her husband's imprisonment, she will manage raising their two sons on her own and will catch the bus to Fremantle Prison on visiting days, hoping things will get better when he gets released. That won't happen.

January 6, 1957, Cookie is scheduled to be released. He had studied in prison and now he planned on becoming a bookkeeper. Which to be clear will not happen. Remember he's never good at math. He will behave himself for a time though. Or at least managed to not get caught for whatever shady shit he might have been doing. By September of 1958, Cookie been out of jail for two years and his life had changed a lot. Sally had given birth to twins. They had four fucking kids now. Not named any of his kids because most are not named in sources.

And I don't feel confident about the sources that do name some of them. Despite his growing family, Cookie then, the fake Methodist, spent his Friday and Saturday nights out on the town, dressed in a suit, polished shoes, blowing money he shouldn't have blown, money he should have saved for his family. You know, instead he's out there cheating on his wife, having a great time. And also returning to his previous life of crime. For the first part of the night, he'll lead the life of a single man

going to pubs, movies, partying, meeting women, then he'll put on his gloves, slip away to find a target, a house to break into. The money he stole that his wife did not know about enabled him to keep living this high life, but it wasn't just about the money for him. He also sometimes would do shit like spending hours watching the inhabitants of homes go about their lives. Dressing, undressing, getting in the shower, cooking, talking, fucking. He especially loved to watch naked women. He's a bit of a bushwhacker now, it sounds like.

Right? Hiding in the bushes, beating his meat. Always watching women undress, which is not good. He often didn't get home until the early hours of the morning. Sometimes he'd be gone for a few days and his wife Sally was not allowed to ask any questions. I mean I guess she could have asked him but he was not gonna answer them. Sources never said that he was physically abusive to his wife like his dad was to his mom, but he definitely treated his wife and kids like shit in the sense of just frequently abandoning them, not being a good provider, being the

kind of dick that leaves for days at a time unexplained, acts like he shouldn't have to explain himself when he comes home. It's preposterous. Then on September 12, 1958, he is inspired apparently to commit a new kind of crime. That night, Cookie headed over to Hillview Terrace where he watched a 30-year-old woman named Nell Schneider riding her blue bike. Like an actual bike, not her body. And before we learn about what the night caller does to poor Nell, time for today's second in two mid-show sponsor breaks. Thank you for listening to those sponsors and now let's check back in with Nell Schneider. Cookie stopped his car to watch her. Nell had been in Perth for three years, having left her native country of Holland with her

husband and kids because of chronic post-war shortages there. Her 33-year-old husband Jan worked as a painter while she cared for their two small children. It was not the life they dreamed about, but they were determined to give it a shot. Back in Holland Jan had been a fine art technician and expert who trained at the Amsterdam Museum, who had been a technical assistant to the professor of art at Leiden University. Nell was an accomplished organist and an experienced bilingual office clerk. The two had met at a youth gospel camp in Belgium and decided together to sacrifice their careers for the possibility of a better life somewhere else. While Jan resigned

himself just to do him basic painting like house painting, Nell would use her talents at church playing as a reformed church's organist every Sunday. And that night, September 12, she had biked to choir practice. After it finished, she decided to go on to St. Joachim's, a little further down the way, to pay the rent for the choir's practice hall. Then she set off for home along Albany Highway and right into Hillview Terrace. As she reached the Collier Pine Plantation at Yarrow Road, she passed two brothers, Cliff and Fred Head. That's a pretty funny name, Fred

Head. Oh my gosh. They were talking about a Clark Gable movie they just watched and they weren't necessarily worried but the men knew there was a prowler in the neighborhood. A couple weeks before, 23 year old Fred Head, that's such a ridiculous name, had even heard a woman next door scream and run over and he had tackled a man peering into the window. He actually got on a few punches before the dude, almost certainly Cookie, ran off. Sometime after that 32 year old Cliff went to his car, get some cigarettes, found that it had been broken into. Then he saw someone quickly walking down the street and chased him, accosting a man he described as having a hair lip, obviously Cookie, who said he had been walking down

Mackie Street and he didn't know what Cliff was talking about. Weeks or so later, Cliff recognized that same son of a bitch walking slowly down the road. Cliff approached him again, asked him where he lived and what the fuck he was doing on Mackie Street. The man replied that he lived in Belmont and had been having a few drinks in the tavern around the corner. He just got lost. And Cliff basically told him to fuck off, stay out of the area. But he wouldn't. I like these guys. I like Cliff. He came back to the area September 12th, stole the car, pulled over to watch Nell cycle by. To him she didn't look like a young mom. He assumed she was some girl who'd been out on a

date with her boyfriend, drinking, dancing, having a great time, and that pissed him the fuck off. He assumed correctly that her life had been easier than his. And he hated that. The urge to mock people's lives that had been satiated by theft now transformed into an urge to hurt. And he raced after Nell, accelerating at the, I think I said Yara, I think it's Jara Road, Jara Road junction. The car roared as he bored down at her at full speed. He crashed into her

hard enough to toss her into the air while her bike got caught against his grill. Fred and Cliff heard the commotion, ran down the street, couldn't see anything in the darkness. Meanwhile, Joy and Mick Hurley, some other people around, saw a car speed past them with the bike attached to the grill at about 11 15 p.m. 45 minutes later, somebody finally finds Nell. 45 minutes later, a passing motorist saw her called an ambulance. Her husband Jan actually heard the ambulance but didn't think anything of it until two in the morning when he realized his wife was still not home. A police officer who showed up outside within the hour informed him that she had been hit by a car. He raced to the hospital where he saw Nell briefly bandaged and unconscious and was told

by doctors she might not make it. The police meanwhile were investigating, unsure if this was an accident or something darker. Early on Saturday morning, constables George Fancourt and Alf Gregson interviewed Jan and examined Nell's wrecked bicycle. They found what appeared to be the pattern of a vehicle bumper on it and scrape marks. Looked as if it had been jammed upright pushed along for quite some distance by the vehicle. They also found traces of light blue paint on the bicycle giving them the color of the car they were looking for and when they found an abandoned vehicle light blue and covered in scratch marks on the

front they knew it was the car that hit Nell. But they did know who had stolen it and who had driven it when Nell was hit. Nell lay in a deep coma for two weeks, barely hanging on despite grim odds. Then finally her eyes flooded open and she whispered, I want my children. Jane quickly handed over two-year-old Tony to her, overcome with gratitude that his wife had survived but was still touch and go. She needed another two weeks of monitoring by brain surgeons before she was allowed to go home. And though she recovered enough to go about her daily life,

she would be left with chronic post-traumatic temporal lobe epilepsy, which meant a lifetime of blackouts, seizures, and medication. Now was interviewed over a half century later in 2013 when she was 80 years old by the West Australian. And she said, I don't remember much. The first two years after cookie hit me, I had major seizures. Uh, I get plenty of minor seizures still in that same interview.

It was reported that Nell could no longer stand or walk unaided side effects of the medication she was still taking for the epilepsy that cook had inflicted on her, that motherfucker, any sympathy I felt towards Cookie because of his childhood, long gone. He knew all too well what it was like to be hurt, indiscriminately. If he needed to hurt somebody, he should have gotten some fucking balls and came for his dad. You know, bounce his sorry ass off the hood of a car. But instead he just hits this innocent woman. But also, dude's brain is fucking mush.

Two months later, Cookie's brain is fucking mush. Two months later, Cookie is back at it again. He'd been briefly worried about getting arrested. He blacked out on October 28th, 1958, and in his disoriented state, almost spilled the beans on himself. On that day, he was found unconscious at a bus station with bike clips, but no bike. He regained consciousness at the Royal Perth Hospital, a place he was super familiar with, of course.

Told his doctors the next day that he remembered leaving work and being in the gardens of government house. Told him he was concerned he might have committed some act that may lead to further jail time. For some reason, nobody followed up on this admission. And three days later, he was discharged with a note on his file that a Rorschach test given to him suggested he was a patient of average intelligence without serious psychopathology. Clearly that test didn't work. He'd gotten away with it. And now rather than return home and try to live a normal domestic law-abiding life that his wife Sally, who was pregnant yet again, or with her, he decided to try his luck and attack somebody new. Tuesday, November 25th, 1958, he heads to Applecross, another Perth suburb and a regular hunting ground for Cookie. Wandering down McLeod Road,

where a few houses were scattered in the bush, he noticed one house in particular that really caught his eye. 55 McLeod Road, fairly standard red brick and tile war service home, but it stood out to him because of the size of the property, full half acre, and a well-kept garden in the front. He was like, fuck these people in their garden. Cookie slunk close to the bushes as he closed it on the house to test the doors and windows, and he managed to sneak into a bedroom where a 15 year old girl was asleep and the 27 year old watched her sleep for a while because he's a creep. Eventually he slipped out of the room to pee.

Then he snuck back in, wanted to watch her some more, but now he accidentally banged the door closed and she woke up. So he hit her over the head hard with some kind of blunt object, ran out and escaped down the road. Lucy and Earn McLeod will wake up to their daughter Mary retching and mumbling, trying to tell them something. And then suddenly she passed out and since they didn't know what had happened, they would spend the next couple of days alternating between praying over her and getting her examined by doctors who finally discovered a skull fracture. As for what had happened though, nobody could tell.

Had she just had a seizure randomly, maybe a bad nightmare that caused her to jump out of bed and hit her head, she couldn't remember. And the family eventually decided it was just a strange accident and they moved on with their lives. They won't find out for years what really happened. Around this time, Cookie has a realization. He was now even worse than his dad, and he should get therapy immediately. Long-term therapy. And if he can't control his violent impulses, he needs to have himself committed to an inpatient psychiatric facility indefinitely. Ah, no, that wasn't it, of course. No, he realized that he really liked attacking women, even more than he liked to steal. And since the police only knew him as a petty thief, he felt it was unlikely they would

connect him to his violent attacks. After all, nobody had ever come after him for what he had done to Nell Schneider or to Mary McLeod. He felt like he was free to do whatever he wanted. And on December 27th, what he wanted to do was drive another stolen car and find a new victim. And he'll find Kathy Bellis. So let's meet her and actually her husband as well real quick. Phil Bellis was a West Australian but

after the war he had stayed in Melbourne with his 18 year old bride Kathleen, known as Kathy, settling into married life over there. He became a big part of Kathy's family circle. They agreed to name their first daughter after Kathy's mom Janet. They had another son, a boy named Philip after his dad. Then came a surprise. Phil's firm, Motor Spare Parts dealer, Joseph Lucas Australia, wanted him to transfer to Perth. Phil was pleased to go back to his home state with his mom, brother, and sister living there. Kathy was happy to, you know, experience something new, going on an adventure. Phil had left at the end of 1954, preparing for his family to arrive later and

giving Kathy one more Christmas at home. Kathy brought seven-year-old Janet and four-year-old Philip in January of 1955 and all of them will stay with Phil's mom while contractors build a new house in the suburb of Belmont for him. They'll spend a lot of time with Phil's sister Audrey and his brother and sister-in-law John and Coral but although Kathy likes you know her husband family, she doesn't like the city of Perth. She's used to a big cosmopolitan city, not what was still more of a big country town at that time. Most roads were buffeted on either side with big farms. There was no footpaths and streetlights. They had another child, Peter, in 1956, but she still hadn't

settled into life in Perth. When Christmas of 1958 came around, Kathy was once again sad to miss out on a Christmas back in Melbourne. Eleven year old Janet had gone with her aunt and uncle to Albany and to hang out with some cousins there and she was sad about that as well. On Boxing Day, Kathy and Phil relaxed quietly while the boys played with their new treasures. The next day they made for Leighton, a nearby beach, in their green van. Young Philip headed straight for the waves on his surfboard while toddler Peter stuck close to his parents. Slightly sunburnt, the family returned back to Belmont that afternoon. When they got back, Phil was surprised to see Eric Patman waiting for him. Eric and Kathy worked together. He owned the cafe where she waitressed and he came by every week to give her a ride to work on Sunday morning.

But it was Saturday. She wasn't scheduled to work. Eric explained he needed an extra person and then Kathy volunteered to help out. At the shop, she got to work quickly, serving milkshakes, sandwiches, ice cream, cigarettes, coffee. By the time the last customers left, it was 11 o'clock and Kathy headed to the bus stop on Williams Street. Wasn't long before a bus came to take her into the city, but then she had a long wait for her bus to Belmont.

When she reached her stop at Fullman Street, the road was deserted. Usually Phil would come to pick her up, but when Kathy hadn't appeared at the normal time, he went home worried about the boys being alone at the house for too long. Fuck, this sucks. Finding the flashlight she always carried in her handbag for walking in this unlit bushy suburb, Kathy set off into the darkness to walk home. Meanwhile, fucking Cookie is driving along Fulham Street in Belmont and he passes a bus traveling back towards him.

He wonders, I wonder if it had stopped, you know, dropped somebody off and he slows down in time to see a figure with the flashlight. Looks like a woman, an attractive woman. Makes you excited slash pissed off. He does a u-turn at the next cross street, drives back the way he'd come along Fulham Street to Homewood Street. Turned into it, quickly spotting the woman further up the road as she headed towards the intersection of Homewood and Gabriel Streets. Kathy here in the car thought it was Phil, turned to wave,

then realized, nope, that's not Phil's car, and fuck, that car's coming straight for me. She tries to run off the road into the field that runs alongside the road but she doesn't make it in time the car smashes into her and sends her fucking 60 feet through the air. 60 feet across the intersection of Belinda Avenue. Holy shit. As she now slipped in and out of consciousness the driver appeared above her and she begged him to help her but he instead started to laugh and then he sped off. He's a fucking maniac Then he left a stolen car to garage and he slipped off into the night Some people who live near the scene of the crime meanwhile heard an ungodly screeching ran outside

They find Kathy Bellas her legs splayed at an impossible horrific angle her pelvis clearly broken bloods oozing from her mouth They called ambulance and they send someone to her house to get her husband Phil. She is rushed into surgery, she had some metal embedded in her face, a badly fractured pelvis, two breaks in her leg, a shattered knee, a fracture at the base of her spine and a skull fracture. She will also survive, but she will be constantly in and out of operations for a full year. Anybody else amazed by what the human body can often endure? It is crazy, like one person can literally just just stumble fall down, hit their head on the

sidewalk and just die. No one even pushed them. They just tripped and they're dead. Another person can be launched 60 feet through the air after being hit by a speeding car and live. Eric and Sally's fifth child is born January 29th at the King Edward Memorial Hospital. A boy, after briefly seeing the new baby. Father of the year, Cookie. Walks from the hospital to the Wembley Hotel where he celebrates by himself with a few beers, hitting on some random ladies. Since Sally's mom had died, her stepdad and half-sister had moved in to live with them and so Eric had no childcare responsibilities. I mean, I mean he should have had. He did actually. But he was very happy to let

anybody but himself raise his kids. He's a piece of shit. He soon left the hotel's bar, put on a pair of gloves and started walking around. Found an eight-inch knife just in a bag on a bike. Took it. Thought what can I do with this? Kept walking. Wanted to find a window somewhere in West Perth to spy into. The young upper middle class people there didn't often lower their blinds so he could, you know, look in while they were naked. Sometimes you can watch him having sex. This excited him, but also of course made him angry. Why should they get to fucking homes nicer than his? Why should they get to fuck women more attractive than his wife? He found a Volkswagen with some keys inside, decided to take it for a spin to South Perth. He's pissed off now.

He's got a stolen car and ath. He's pissed off now. He's got a stolen car and a knife. And there he finds an apartment with the window open and easy entry. Better yet, a pretty woman is sleeping inside the bedroom. Her name is Nina Berkman and she worked at the David Jones department store. The 33-year-old came to Western Australia from Victoria with her 8-year-old son Mark after getting divorced four years prior and she was now dating a popular local Radio personality that night the two had gone out for dinner and they came home had sex

Then the radio personality left her sleeping naked around midnight. And now there's a very different man in her room He stuck around in her house for a while looking for apartment a while I'll look for something to steal before he headed back to the bedroom and then sees that she had just woken up. He quickly moves to try to silence her. This time stabbing with that knife he'd found. She fought back screaming, kicking, and clawing, ripping the skin around his mouth with her long nails. He had not expected that. He'd been punched a lot of times over the course of his life and you know fled after being punched. But he actually never really been in a fight. And he finally managed to plunge the knife into

her face. Then he managed a second strike around her heart. She screams, falls back limp. Later she will incredibly get back up. She'll be found the next morning in the hallway. She had struggled, tried to get help until her body finally gave out and she bled out and died. Cookie meanwhile ran out not bothering to close the door and drove away. Tossed the knife around Victoria Park then left the Volkswagen and headed home And this time he's worried. Not guilty over what he'd done of just killing this fucking single mom. No, he's just worried about his, you know, saving his own ass. When he brought his wife home from the hospital, remember he just had a baby boy three days later, he's not himself. His hair is shaggy, his beard's grown out, his clothes are rumpled, he's got deep scratches on

his face that had actually become infected. Took a long time to heal. He told his wife that their eldest child, Michael, had accidentally given him the scratches. Meanwhile, the police investigation into the murder he had committed, his first murder, they didn't have much to go on at the scene. Little blood under Ninus fingernails, long before DNA analysis was a thing,

and whatever the neighbors had heard of the horrific encounter. A couple people did mention a prowler in the area, a short man they'd seen pern into windows under a poof of thick dark hair and that was Cookie. But they didn't have like a real good description to give them like something for a composite sketch. By August of 1959, Cookie is ready to get back after it. After a brief period recovering from his wounds. His wife Sally is pregnant again.

They're six child now. They just fucking pump him out one after another and he wanted to get out of the house. So on the night of the eighth Cookie is prowling in the Netherlands, the area he knew his way around from his earlier association with the Netherlands Methodist Church and its youth group. This time he snuck into a student's apartment Alex Donkin, a 17 year old first-year nursing student who had uncharacteristically put aside her studies that night to hang out with some old friends. She was actually house-sitting at her sister's apartment in the Netherlands. It was nicer than her dorm. Cookie snuck in while she was asleep

and when she woke up he fucking bashes her in the head with a fire poker and then he hits her again when she's not fully unconscious. When her friends come to see her the next morning her face and hair covered in blood and she is wandering around in total daze. All she could remember was waking up around 3 in the morning and then falling asleep again. She had suffered a severe skull fracture that indicated she had been hit at least twice. As a result, she'll have a severe form of epilepsy for the rest of her life. And because of that, she will not be able to become a nurse.

This piece of shit. He's now killed one woman, permanently injured three others, and also fractured the skull of a fourth. Someone else cookie knew was recovering from a brutal attack at this time too. Christine, his mom. On May 30th, Daddy Vivian had tried to kill his mom, smashing her ribs until one pierced her lung. But still she would not report him. My god, and on June 19th, he will be given a two-year suspended sentence. Still Cookie does not have the fucking balls to confront the main reason he is so violent. You know, he'll fucking kill a random woman but he won't protect his

mom because he's a pathetic little turd of a man. December 19th 1955 now. This night Cookie's up to the same old shit. Heading out on the town in his finest clothes, then dipping out to Prowl. He started targeting wealthier and wealthier houses like some estates in Pepper Mcgrove, one of Perth's most desirable suburbs. Gillian McPherson Brewer was a resident of this upscale neighborhood. She was a glamorous socialite, heiress to the McRobertson confectionary fortune. Her arrival in Perth the year before at age 21 was marked by the following announcement in the

newspaper. Miss Brewer who worked with a leading firm of Melbourne architects has designed interior furnishing for a bank, insurance building and offices and supervised renovations of many Melbourne homes. Always interested in art, Miss Brewer originally intended to be an architect but thought that interior design was a more suitable occupation for a woman. My god, what a weird sign of the times. She really wanted to be an architect, but deep down, she knew her little lady brain could never compete with superior intellect of Australia's righteous patriarchs.

Those fucking hot hard father daddies with brains dripping with man juice. I don't know. Now she's 22 and happily settled in Perth engaged to be married in February. She had an adorable little French poodle Dior. A thriving social life. The previous night, December 19th, Cookie had crept over to Brockwood Flats. He'd already been there many times before. Even Robin Gillian's mom's apartment next door. God damn. This time, however, he made a pit stop before breaking in through the back door. He went to a garage a few houses away at Four Renown Avenue.

Simon Watson's open garage contained a hatchet, some golf clubs, and he grabbed the ax. And once he arrived, he saw Gillian and her fiance having sex. And that, of course, filled him with rage, right? He knew she would never willingly, she's beautiful, she's intelligent, she's sophisticated, she's never gonna fucking ugly creep like him. The fiance would leave around 1130, leaving Jillian naked and asleep and Cookie then goes in.

And he raised the hatchet with all his strength above Jillian's still sleeping form, then started chopping her ferociously, 12 to 13 times. Hacked away at her breasts, her genitals, her head. Fractured her skull, fractured her pubic bone, severed her windpipe, hit her hard enough to split the wooden handle of the axe head. So much fucking rage, and he still wasn't done. After he splits the handle, he goes and finds a pair of scissors, then comes back and just keeps stabbing her over and over again long after she's dead.

Finally he pulls a sheet up to her chin, places her left arm on a pillow, and slips away throwing the hatchet over the fence. When Jillian's body arrived at the morgue, the similarities to Nina Berkman's murder were immediately obvious. That made two brutal murders of sleeping women in 11 months. Very unusual for this place at this time. The authorities have no clue who is responsible. Five weeks later, January 25th, 1961, Cookie is arrested for loitering.

He's discovered by Senior Detective Maurice O'Hallerhan and Detective Brian Bull in Lathland Park. Yeah, Lathland Park. And the loitering charge brought a month's prison sentence because of his record. While he's back in Fremantle Prison, he was questioned about Gillian Brewer's death. Cookie denied having anything to do with Brewer's murder, and his wife Sally was never even questioned. Like, you know, was he home that night? None of that. Then Cookie's released a week before his daughter is born in early March. That's great.

And now he gets a job at Jay Krasnosteyn and co. delivering metal products around Perth and collecting scrap metal. And per usual there are a lot of times he will not work because of injuries or imprisonment. He'd only been home from his jail sentence for loitering for a few weeks when on March 15th he has another accident at work. He falls 12 feet knocking himself unconscious injuring his back putting on workman's comp again. Why couldn't any one of his many serious accidents just have killed him? Also another thought I shot I should probably keep to myself but I won't. Do you ever think when you hear about some stranger dying in some

accident just like on the news whatever some little you know article on your, you hear about some people dying in an accident or disaster, could be like an earthquake, just whatever, doesn't matter. Do you ever think maybe it was for the best? Hear me out. Like whenever random deaths are reported in the news, right, they're always portrayed as a tragedy. They never say anything like 18 people died in a tragic warehouse fire last night, but three of them were sex offenders. And another one really creeped out everybody who met him. Co-workers said he was low-key, had school shooter vibes. So I guess that fire was a bit less tragic, wasn't it? Tragic for 14 people. Kind of cool for the other four, if you look at it the right way. I don't know. Does thinking that make me rational? Fucked up? Or both? Three weeks

after his latest fall, Cookie is still alive and he's prowling again. Dude never let a near-death experience slow him down for long. He was stealthily going through houses in the South Perth, Como area, getting in through unlocked doors and windows. Way too many people left their fucking houses and cars unlocked. Creeping around looking for money, jewelry, or a woman. On the night of April 9th he finds a cream-colored Holden sedan, takes it, then heads in the direction of Baywater, another Perth suburb, actually Bay's water. With it he struck a 20-year-old woman named Glenis Peake, but had to veer at the last minute to avoid a tree so he just barely clipped her.

Still, blood was pouring down her face when she managed to run home where she said I've been hit by a car and he's broken my back and then she passed out. She was rushed to the hospital where we discovered her back was not broken but she did need a whole bunch of stitches for various other wounds. God the fuck is going on? Stealing cars and just running women down. Is that even scarier in a way than breaking in and bashing women you know or beating women to death for some of you? Because I mean you can lock your doors and windows you can install a security system You know, you can do a lot of things to make yourself feel more secure in your home

But can you just totally avoid just ever walking near moving vehicles? You know, can you ever avoid just walking on the side of the road on the sidewalk? Probably not It is pretty wild to think about how just at any time somebody driving by you could just swerve over, just fucking BAM! Just blast you. Just because the driver is a psychopath. Thank God this stuff almost never happens, but this is just crazy that it did happen. Unlike the other victims, Glenis knew immediately. It was deliberate and she wanted the press to hear her claim, but she couldn't identify the car that hit her and never saw the driver. Damn it.

Glen has also interviewed over 40 years later in 2013 when she's 72 and she said that she still at that point felt fear and anxiety every time she walked down the side of the road. She also revealed in 2013 that she knew this motherfucker. She said Cookie had stopped and given her a lift on several occasions prior to running her down. He was a nice guy, Glenis said. Every now and then he'd pick me up and take me to the station. Didn't talk much, and when he did it was all about his mentally handicapped son. He was very hard to understand because he had a hair lip. You'd never take him for a murderer.

God. May 13th, 1961. Just over a month later, Cookie's back on the saddle. 18-year-old Jill Connell is walking home now from her job at the counter of the London Milk Court bar in the center of Perth when a car drove beside her way too close for comfort. She did not see it then make a U-turn but she did see it when it was suddenly behind her again, veering over and onto the wrong side of the road. She did not have time to fully get out of the way before the car crashed into her. The car then got stuck in the sand shortly after it hit her

and she heard the man laughing as she jumped out and ran away. He just loves this. He just thinks it's funny. When witnesses found her there was a bone sticking out of her leg white in the moonlight but she was alive and conscious. Detectives interviewed her when she got out of surgery. Her last clear memories unfortunately were of being at work because she did also have a bad head wound. Not bloody, not fractured, but you know, concussed. She would not tell them anything and when they recovered the abandoned car, there were no fingerprints. So he gets away with this shit again. A week later, that crazy motherfucker steals a Chrysler Royal now, runs down three teenagers at the same time.

Georgia Pittman, Terese Zagamini and or Zagami and Maureen Rogers. The two older, you know a little bit larger girls, Maureen and Georgia are thrown up into the air, their legs crushed by the grill. Maureen gets stuck on the fucking hood and he drives up on the hill, up on this hill with her, then jerks the wheel to dump her out onto the street. All three will also survive. He is very bad at like killing people by hitting will also survive. He is very bad at like killing people by hitting them with vehicles. This is crazy though he has now ran over seven women and girls. Nell Snyder on her bike, Kathy Bellis walking

home, Glenis Peake walking home, Jill Connell also walking home and then now Georgia Pittman, Therese Sagamee and Maureen Rogers just out fucking dicking around together. Oh and he's also stabbed Nina Berkman to death with a knife in her bed, bashed Mary McCloud in the head in her bed, beat Jillian McPherson, Brewer to death with a fucking axe in her bed, and bashed Alex Duncan on the head with a fire poker. All in less than three years time. Just constant mayhem in addition to breaking in hundreds of places. Police investigation into the two most recent incidents will mark the first time Cookie's hit-and-runs have been connected, but they still haven't linked to with him.

They have no idea. So random. Backing up a bit. A 19 year old deaf mute metalworker named Darryl Raymond Beamish, heard about him in the cold open, had recently been charged with crimes of a minor sexual nature against young girls. They called it minor sexual nature. I think it's pretty serious. Over a period of six months, he had taken numerous four and five-year-old girls to a secluded spot and felt them up. He gets sentenced to seven months in jail, way too light, for clearly a serial sexual abuser.

Beamish is questioned on April 7, 1961, while awaiting the sentence for his convictions on the charges involving the girls. Detective Sergeant Owen Leitch and Detective Jack Daring questioned him through a sign language interpreter who taught at the deaf school or local school. Without his parents or a lawyer present, he confessed to killing Gillian Brewer through the interpreter that day, but his brain did not work real good as you'll see here soon. The woman cookie had bludgeoned with that hatchet as he confessed to killing. Also confessed in a written form the next day and again through an interpreter in prison on June 12th.

Two months later, June 16th, 1961, Beamish charged with the murder of Gillian Brewer. He will plead not guilty. He is tried before 62 year old Chief Justice Sir Albert Wolf who had risen through the prosecution ranks. The trial started August 7th, 1961, lasted only six days. And then the jury found Beamish guilty, but strongly recommended mercy on being told the verdict he wept and signed not guilty. And then on August 15th, he is sentenced to death. His appeals are rejected. He is moved to Fremantle Prison's death row. He does not understand why he is there, why he can't go to work, why he can't exercise with the other prisoners. 40 minutes after being placed in a condemned cell, he asked what work he's gonna be doing the next day.

He doesn't know what's going on. Waking early the next day, he wrote, I worried my mom and dad. Not realizing that he was on death row an hour later, he asked how many weeks I stay here. He's clearly intellectually impaired. A little later, he asked what the observing warder was writing and told the warder he was not guilty and the detective Leitch had teased him and fought with him. Still not realizing he'd been sentenced to death, he told the observing officer, quote, I will have Mary with Kay, five months, nice girl, she's 22. His death sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment with hard labor four months later. Like, what's going on here? More on him later in the timeline. Don't like that he was

paying the price for someone else's crimes, but also I gotta say, I don't mind a serial sexual abuser getting locked up for a lot longer than he would have been without, you know, taking that fall. And even if he is intellectually impaired, well, it doesn't fucking matter to the people being molested. You're not like, oh, you know what? That wasn't that bad that I was molested because he was intellectually impaired. So I'm not even gonna sweat it. No, it's still fucking super damaging. By March of 1962, Perth had grown from the town of Cookies childhood into a 500,000 ish people city with 49 sets of traffic lights sprinkled through the expanding road systems, tall buildings built all

being built all over the place, airports undergoing a big modernization process. In February, Cookie's wife Sally has a seventh child, a daughter, fucking condoms people! Birth control pills, vasectomies, tying of tubes. Even if he wasn't a serial killer, I just I fucking hate seeing people pump out kids they cannot afford and or do not want to take care of. March 3rd 1962, Labor Day in Western Australia. Cookie the night collar on the prowl again of course. Steals some towels from a line in the backyard in the Mosman Park area random. And then sneaks into a flat belonging to Anne Melvin.

A beautiful 23 year old she'd gone swimming that day. Then out for coffee with a friend. When the friend dropped her off she saw a man lingering around her apartment. She just moved in with her 18 year old sister, hadn't had a chance to put up curtains yet. Creeped out but not that bothered because around 4 45 a.m. she's laying there sleeping and Cookie, able to get into her house because she had not locked everything up, he puts one of those towels he'd stolen, which I guess wasn't so random, around her neck and chokes her until she's unconscious, but not dead.

He then pulls off her pajama pants in an attempt to begin sexually assaulting her, which is a first for him as far as we know. But a noise distracts him. He leaves to go check out what the noise was. When he comes back to the bedroom and is waking up, he now goes to the bathroom, gets her panty hose, uses those to tie her arms to the bed then goes outside to check again make sure they're alone in that short absence she's able to sit up and she starts to scream good on her fucking hell Nimrod cookie now gets freaked out he takes off he runs down the street at

top speed man she narrowly avoided being raped and murdered by a psychopath cookie will spend the rest of the year snooping, creeping, stealing when he can, but apparently no murders. On New Year's Eve, 1962, he'll assault a woman named Peggy Flurry, punching her in the eye so hard she'll need an operation to save her vision. God! Same night, Cookie rear ends a car of a 20 year old woman named Judy Craig. She stopped the car, saw a man get out and almost approached him. But then a man and a woman round in the corner came towards Judy, which sent Cookie back into

his car, and he fled the scene, and then dumped the stolen car he had used in a river. And then he'll behave himself for like a few weeks. Excuse me. January 26, 1963 is Australia Day, a day celebrating the birth of Australia as a British colony 175 years before. Cookie didn't give a shit about that. Just another long weekend for him. Earlier he'd taken some of his kids with him to do regular weekly shopping at a deli. He had his normal friendly chat with Gladys Holly as she put together their vegetable order. Worked a few hours in the shop for Gladys. He worked a few hours a week, excuse me, in the shop for Gladys and Percival Holly, emptying cartons and packing shelves.

He was such a hard worker, had such a big family that they kept employing him even though they knew he was a petty thief who sometimes stole from them. After the shopping, he played with the kids for a while, then left home at 1.30pm with no word of where he was going per usual. He walked to the bus stop, his own car was in the repair shop after he'd had an accident. So many fucking accidents! He'd had an accident. So many fucking accidents! He'd had an accident January 11th, while taking a girl home from Fair Lanes, this big residential and commercial complex.

He had driven the car through the front yard fence, my god, and caused 300 pounds worth of damage. Why does he have a driver's license? And who was that girl? What was he doing to her? You don't know. He caught a bus from another suburb Rivervale into the city leaving at Fair Lanes where he played his favorite game for most of the afternoon 10 pin bowling finishing at five o'clock he went to another favorite haunt the Mayfair theater theatrette I think is how you say it it was a small downstairs like a basement cinema on Hay Street showing continuous features. He sat there for an hour and a half watching the wildlife paradise,

blue angles, aces in the air, a bunch of shorts. 6 45 p.m. he caught a bus to South Perth to his parents house, staying with his mom for about a half an hour. I don't know if his dad was there. From there he followed his father's well-worn route to the Hurlingham hotel where he stopped for a drink before proceeding to the Como Hotel where he had another drink and then left about 8.30. Now it was dark enough for him to prowl. He walked around the corner along Norton Street past several unlit homes before picking five Norton Street, a solid gray house.

Slipping inside through the kitchen window, he opened a wardrobe to find a shotgun and a.22 rifle. Then he came across some.22 caliber bullets and some shotgun cartridges. He elected to take the bullets and the rifle, left the shotgun, then silently opened the door, walked out to commit an insane night of carnage. Also, the owners had been in the living room the entire time watching TV while he's stealing these guns. No clue. He snuck in and then walked out. He would keep prowling until he came across a house across the from a huge Anglican church St. Mary's. In the garage he finds a Holden, another car that he stole, started heading west passing mobs,

partying people, happily celebrating the holiday. When he reached Cuttasloe, yet another suburb of Perth, Cookie stopped on Grant Street. After wandering for a while he returned to the car car drove to Marine Parade Along the ocean front a short way drives there before turning on to Napier Street Then he spots a car with two people in it a parked car. He thinks there's something he wants to see Turns around the next corner on to Broome Street parks takes the rifle with him heads back towards the car He's not walking down the street, but you know kind of like walking walking through these hidden courts, or excuse me, hidden courts, tennis courts and shrubbery. Snuck across a scrubby vacant lot until he was opposite the car on the other side of the road. The interior light came on in this car, giving him a better look at the pair.

But then one of them noticed him. Attractive bartender Rowena Reeves was sitting in the back seat drinking pink champagne when she spots this fucking creep. Her and her husband, excuse me, her and her handsome boyfriend Nick August, creepy observer. Nick was the owner of a poultry business and he thought he knew who the son of a bitch was because Nick was married. Nick thought that his wife had arranged to send somebody to spy on him. So he got out of the car, threw the bottle at the stranger, yelled at him to piss off. Cookie then raises his rifle, squeezes the trigger, and the bullet grazes Nick's neck,

and then shatters Rowena's wrist. Nick now threw the car into reverse, as Cookie fired again, driving up John Street before Rowena reminded him that they needed to go to the hospital. At the hospital, Detective Frederick Clark took statements from the couple and examined Nick's vehicle. They had a lot of blood on the back seat and the floor. Dude is just trying to snipe strangers now. Back at the scene, Cookie is enraged. He had thought of himself as an expert shot, right? This

amazing rifleman, and yet he had missed. I mean, you know, he hit a wrist, but he wanted to shoot Nick in the head. Not skipping a beat, he gets back into his car, stops opposite a block of four flats at 124 Broom Street. There was a door open above the garage, the door open to a bedroom where a young man was sleeping, an easy target. So Cook just goes up there, points the rifle at his head, and fucking pulls the trigger. Ryan, we're a 29 year old account- accounting student who had left his door open to catch some breeze on a scorching day.

It's thrown into the air by the impact. He fell back across the bed his head hanging down to the side blood dripping onto the floor, but incredibly still alive. Man, for a bloodthirsty psychopath constantly on the prowl, I gotta say this piece of shit not great at killing people actually. Cookie left the apartment drove towards Perth now. Still wasn't done. He's having too much fun with his new gun, I guess Parked in another one of his favorite suburbs, Netherlands and stopped in front of a boarding house at 54 Vincent Street assuming that the young people who rented rooms there would have gone out to party or be asleep and He was right. They were asleep

Unlike so many others on Australia Day two students had decided not to go out or at least not to go out in the way that They were expected to go out. Or at least not to go out in the way that they were expected to go out. These were 20-year-old Scott McWilliam and 18-year-old John Sturkey. With Sturkey's girlfriend down with chicken pox at her parents' house in the city, these two nice young men had decided to pay her a quick visit. They'd brought her some food and then they hitchhiked back to the Netherlands. Then they went to bed early, woke up to chat, drank some milk. Then they went back to bed, John and the veranda, Scott in a downstairs bedroom.

Sometime between 2 and 3 in the morning, Cookie entered the veranda, raised his rifle, shot 18-year-old John Sturkey right in the forehead, and then fled the house. And he's still not done fucking around for the night. Holy shit. He left to the backyard, then headed over to Louise Street and into the driveway of 55 Louise, proceeding driveway of 55 Louise. Proceeding there to 51 Louise, he knocked on the door, waited for the light inside to come on. The front door opened and George Ormond Walmsley peered out in confusion. It's four in the morning.

Who is this person? What do they want? Cookie Ames fires, hits George in the forehead, right in the center. George's wife and daughter Sandra will hear the shot run downstairs to find their husband and father lying in the doorway, blood pouring out of his head and pulling on the ground. Cookie had already fled. He's finally fucking done after shooting five people. Jogged back to the car where he'd parked it at the corner of Princess Road and drove to Kings Park and to get rid of the ammunition. Justice getting light out. He drives back to Narrow's Bridge, throws the gun off the bridge into the river.

With the rifle safely where it will not be found, he then drives to 30 Carouse Street, puts the car back in the driveway, exactly as he had found it, and then walks home to Rivervale, feeling like he's just king shit. Goes to sleep feeling great. Meanwhile, Scott McWilliam woke up to gurgling sounds, finds his friend John Sturkey had been

shot at point-blank range, immediately calls an ambulance. John is still alive but he will be pronounced dead three minutes after arriving at Royal Perth Hospital where his killer you know had spent so much time. At that same time George Walmsley is getting picked up despite the frantic efforts of doctors at Royal Perth to save him he will die at 5 35 a.m Nobody came for gunshot victim Brian Weir until 7 a.m When he didn't turn up for his surf rescue boat training with the championship coming up Len Bath volunteered to drive over to his house and wake him and you know stumbles into a horrific scene

Brian is stiff grayish is breathing slow and heavy stumbles into a horrific scene. Brian is stiff, grayish, his breathing slow and heavy. Bath can only think he must have been in a fight, gotten terribly beaten up, horrified, not knowing quite what to do. He races back to the club rooms to tell the others. One of them knows about the overnight shootings from radio reports. All of them, three oarsmen, in the sweep then go back to the flat to see what's wrong with Brian, worried at what they will find. And they find that much of the left side of his head is gone, but he is still somehow alive.

He arrived at Royal Perth Hospital again just after 9 a.m. Going into emergency surgery immediately, neurosurgical resident Dr. Terrence McCarter will help neurosurgeon John Lachias in an eight-hour operation as Brian's family, his poor dad, his brother, his sister-in-law, their two kids, they wait. His fiancee, 23-year-old Mary Headland, will soon arrive from Adelaide, as well as Brian's younger sister Kay. And Brian will survive the operation. But then he'll be in a coma for the next six months. The police will be there around the clock in case his unknown attacker tries to come and finish him off.

Ready to catch anything if he regains consciousness and speaks. Mary is there too, planning on becoming a nurse so she can care for him. When Brian finally does emerge from his coma, his disabilities become readily clear, or immediately clear. He is paralyzed down one side, can't move his arms, can't walk, can't speak, blind in one eye, deaf in one ear. Fuck. In addition, the brain damage caused epileptic seizures. He will need full-time care for the rest of his life, which will not be long. He is moved to the former tuberculosis hospital at Werlew, where he will be kept for a long time before being moved to the Royal Perth Rehabilitation Hospital at Shenton Park. After a while, he manages to regain some control over his left hand and even manages to stand with crutches.

But constant pain in his legs then requires an operation to cut the tendons, meaning he will not be able to walk again. He is eventually put into a nursing home where he endures constant infections, grand mal seizures. And then he will eventually pass away at the home of peace a month before his 32nd birthday December 19th 1965. Fuck Eric Edgar Cooke so hard. This guy was murdered the night he was shot. It just took him an excruciating excruciatingly long time to die. Now let's return to 1963 to the day after the night that two lives were wiped out and one was effectively ended. Unsurprisingly people around Perth are terrified. The violence had been so

random. Seemed like anybody you know could be struck at any time. People felt like they had no choice but to turn their homes into fortresses right? They locked their doors and windows even in the sweltering heat. Batons, rifles, knives, dogs, cans of fly spray are flying off shelves and shelters right? There are few dare to go out at night, even fewer answer their doors. Police are inundated with calls reporting whatever weird noise anybody happens to hear outside that might seem suspicious to them. The public, they're pissed.

Not just whoever is doing this, but law enforcement now, the police are the only ones that can put an end to this terror. They want the terror to be ended right away. The pressure is on. But at this point, chief of the Criminal Investigation Bureau, Detective Inspector Sec Lamb is away. The boss, as he is called by his men, was taking some long overdue leave. Bad timing, but okay. Commissioner O'Brien, a 61-year-old former pharmacist who had been head of the force

for five years, appointed Detective Inspector Pat Hagen as acting. First-class Detective Sergeant William Henry John Nielsen, fuck that guy's long name, known as the Swede, that's better, was put in charge of the search. Other senior detectives were assigned each shooting with 40 extra police officers patrolling each and every night. They had two immediate suspects, both petty thieves, but both their stories checked out and they were released. They turned to finding the murder weapon and a breakthrough happened when a spent cartridge was found on Louise Street, showing how the murderer had proceeded from house to house. From the bullets recovered from the victims, the Texas were able to narrow down the

kind of gun, either a Lithgow or Winchester single-shot rifle. Police set about checking all 22 single-shot rifles licensed in Western Australia. They called for 75,000 registered rifles in the state to test-fire them. And they will test 60,000 guns, which is very impressive. They tested 60,000 rifles. Meanwhile, newspapers appealed to the public for info, offering hundreds of pounds in rewards and response. Calls come in about a light colored sedan witnessed near the scene in

Netherlands, a similar car seen being driven around without headlights and caught us slow. They were making progress, but the road to a suspect is bumpy one. For starters, victims, Rowena and Nick had been shot by the same gun as the others, but they were completely different victims, not single people sleeping in their beds, but an adulterous couple. Uh, police genuinely believed they had been shot by someone they knew and pressured them to give their assailant up, becoming frustrated when they said they had no

idea who'd want to try and murder them. I think I said Rowena, probably Rowena. They distrusted Nick so much that in the early hours of February 22nd 1963 a group of detectives took him back to the scene, going to the northwest corner of the Civic Center wall, eight to ten feet back from two white painted guide posts. Inspector Athel Wedd, Inspector Fred Douglas, Detective Sergeant Nielsen, Detectives John Dunn, Jim Patterson, and Brian Bull. They wait there until exactly the same time, 2.40 a.m. Nielsen brought a mop with a long handle.

Bull was given the task of standing in the spot pointed out by Nick August, 30 to 40 feet away. Bull raised the mop as though it was a gun and Bull found that he couldn't even see the outline of the parked car, let alone anything of its two occupants. Meaning to the detectives that Nick's statement was bullshit, that he was lying, he's covering something up. But Nick said that he had had his foot on the brake, the brake lights added to the car's visibility. The police rejected this, reported to Inspector Hagen that it was fairly obvious that this submission was made by August in an unconvincing effort to bolster up his story. They insisted that Nick was lying, protecting somebody

close to him to protect his reputation. Nick had already asked the police not to release his or Rowena's, or Rowena's, excuse me, name to the paper because they've been having an affair. Meanwhile, Rowena was unable to work for four months as a bartender because of her wrist injury and then to add to her troubles, the press hounded her. Their names had gotten out anyway. People are harassing her for being an adulteress, frightened because she had gotten a good look at the man and thought he might be coming back to get her. She is put under constant police protection with her two young sons. Ramona was also interviewed five decades later in 2013

when she was 90 years old and the last living witness to the Australia Day Rampage. She said one thing more than any other had haunted her about the attack for decades. She said he had a cruel mouth. He had a bad mouth, a rotten mouth. When she learned more about him after his eventual arrest, she said there wasn't one nice thing about that man.

Returning to 1963, while authorities still suspected Nick knew more than he was letting on, they wondered if there were other leads they should follow, such as connections to other murders. Going back a little, to Tuesday, January 29th, the Perth Coroner's Court completed its inquest into the 1959 murder of Nina Berkman. The inquest, opened on May 27th, 1959, had been adjourned for nearly four years. Coroner R.P. Rodriguez found that the 33-year-old Mrs. Berkman died at her flat in Millpoint Road, South Perth at 3 a.m. when she was stabbed in the nose and chest by an unknown person. Detective

Sergeant Burt Burroughs had told the court that he was satisfied that Mrs. Berkman's murder had no connection with the weekend shootings, said that no evidence had been obtained that would have enabled the police to charge anybody. So that goes nowhere. Meanwhile, on February 9th, 1963, two weeks after the shootings, Cookie is once again on his way to where the well-off people of Perth lived. He loved all the attention his shooting spree had gotten. He had waited until the police were preoccupied with a teenager who had shot a police officer and escaped by taking a taxi driver hostage to now resume his nightly hunts. And now the nightcaller back at it.

Starts out in South Perth in Como. After breaking into a house on Lenora Street, he wandered further along and stole a car, a Holden, his favorite vehicle. A Holden, by the way, was an Australian subsidiary of General Motors. They recently just went out of business in 2020. Anyway, Cookie drove across the Narrows Bridge sometime between 9 and 10 that night driving onto Stubbs Terrace, that main thoroughfare, where he came across a 20-year-old apprentice bootmaker named Doug Wilkie on a Vespa. A girl is on the back, her arms wrapped around Doug. Doug worried about the car suddenly riding his ass in a menacing way. He goes faster and faster. He pushes the Vespa to its maximum

speed. The car though keeps gaining on him until another car thankfully appears and now Cookie falls back. By the time that other car left Doug had lost him and man how lucky he must have felt to later realize he and his girlfriend nearly killed by the nightcaller. Cookie after this keeps hunting. There was always more people out on the street. That night one of them was Rosemary Anderson. God, this is so sad. She was a 17 year old girlfriend of a 19 year old named John Button. They went out for dinner that night to celebrate John's birthday and they'd had an argument. Rosemary had wanted to try some of John's fish and John told her no. And then just to be an instigator Rosemary had wanted to try some of John's fish, and John told her no. And then just to be an instigator,

John's brother Jimmy took some of John's fish while John was looking, and made John think that Rosemary took it, and as a result, John snapped at Rosemary. A fight ensued that escalated. Rosemary got up and left, and now John's running after her. Such a dumb thing to fight over,

but I can so see my younger self get into this exact same fight. Man, hanger it can be so real. Actually Lindsay and I's first fight as far as I can remember was over a cheeseburger. At this place oh my god it's in like West LA I think it's called like that the Apple something it's like on Pico or Olympic some old-timey little burger joint it's fucking delicious anyway we're sitting there I'm starving and I'm eating whatever, you know, I ordered and after she's done with what she ordered, she wants a bite of my hamburger, a cheeseburger, and I don't want to give her one. So stupid. Like I could have just given her a bite.

She just wanted to taste it, but I was so hungry. I was like, I need it. It's all mine. And oh my god, she got so upset. led to a whole fucking thing. So stupid. So yeah, so I can relate. Rosemary turns past the corner butcher shop. She's quickly walking along Hensman Road. John grabs his keys, starts his Simca. Simca was a French automaker, stopped making cars in 1970. He drives after her. Turning onto Hensman Road, he sees her walk on the on a footpath a few houses past a corner. He pulled alongside her, lowers the passenger window, begs her to get in. She will not. She's crying. She keeps walking. Resolute. John drives on. He keeps trying to keep her in his sight at least. He turns onto Nicholson

Road, cruises along slowly till he spots her again. They talk again. Please get in. She's still too pissed off. Nope. Fuck you. She ignores him. She walks on. With that, John stops the car, gets out, and has a smoke to try and calm down. He plans on going after her still, just not until she's had some time to cool down. He watches her walk under the railway line where the subway stop is while he smokes his cigarette. A couple minutes later, gets back in his car, drives after her where he'd seen her go, but now he can't find her. He's squinting around, looking in the darkness. His left headlight is askew, it's not helping him. He keeps going until he reaches the Kando Engineering Service, then he's driving past Shenton Park Station.

As he's driving past the station, something catches his eye in the sand over to his left. What looks like a bundle of clothes, lying there motionless. He's driven past it by the time it sinks in, that that is not a bundle of clothes lying there motionless. He's driven past it by the time it sinks in that that is not a bundle of clothes. That bundle looks a lot like what his girlfriend was wearing. That is his girlfriend. He slams on the brakes, jumps out, runs over, finds Rosemary covered in blood. She is still breathing but just barely. Refusing to accept what has happened John bends down, picks her up, staggers up with her weight, manages to get her into the front seat of his car, rushes her to Dr. Quinn Livin, a family friend.

Or yeah, Quinn, yeah, Quinn Livin. He barely notices that somebody has fallen him on the way, and it's not who you think. A 20 year old named Barry Hanson and his two friends had been out gambling that night. They came upon the scene before John had arrived. They thought, they saw Rosemary, they thought she was dead, and they stuck around wondering You know what to do then they see this man get out of a car pick her up They assume that this man 19 year old John is her killer Also assumed that John is the Australia Day weekend killer The perpetrator of the slain in the suburbs as he was known at the time before the press assigned a you know more clever moniker Now Hanson follows the Simca. One of his friends then identifies John

as Rosemary's boyfriend. He's like, okay, not the Australia Day weekend killer. It's John. By the time they get to the doctor's house, Hanson is actually leaping out of his car to help John carry Rosemary in. Dr. Quinn-Liven knows immediately Rosemary has suffered a traumatic wound to her head,

probably internal injuries to her chest as well. Her pulse is very fast. Her chest is quote dull on the right side. He said that he finds sand in her mouth, abrasions on her thighs, knees, hips. She's oozing blood from all kinds of places. He immediately calls for an ambulance. Rosemary is carried out on a stretcher and then Dr. Quinlivan asks John to wait until police come. John desperately wants to go with his girlfriend, but he does as he is told. Meanwhile, Constables Ron Wilson and Ivan Martinovich are on duty in the accident

inquiry section of the Perth traffic office when Dr. Quinlivan's call is received at 11.05 p.m. Second call comes in about the same time from Central Police, passing on a report from someone seeing a girl being placed in a car, registration number UKA547. Wilson called for a check on the owner of the vehicle and was given the name John Button. When police go to the doctor's house, John is relieved to see them. He easily answered Wilson's questions, given his name and address, then stumbled through his version of events, how he'd come across her motionless in the road, dragged her back to his car. Wilson assessed John with an experienced policeman's eye. The 34-year-old, a former carpenter, had been a constable for nearly 13 years, and his initial

period of service had been in Calgouli, where brawls and domestic abuse were common. And he noted that John seemed a little nervous, and he didn't find his story believable. So he went out to John's car, parked next to the doctor's car in the little small car park off the road, and he walks around it looking looking for clues and he thinks he finds some clues at the front of the car. The front of the car had been damaged specifically on the left hand side. He goes back to ask John how that had happened. John said he'd been involved in an accident in Perth a few weeks previously. That fucking sucks. Wilson used the doctor's phone now to call Perth CIB, speaks to Detective Bob Crowe.

While he waits for the detective to arrive, he calls the Subbiata Subiaco traffic office. So many words I'm not familiar with. It was confirmed that John Button had in fact reported an accident on St. George's Terrace a month before on January 7th, reporting that he had run into the back of another vehicle and sustained 25 pounds worth of damage to the grill and park light. His front headlight, I believe. But Wilson still did not believe him. Another detective was summoned to question John, Detective Jack Dearing. Dearing too was unconvinced. John now notices that something has changed, right? He realized these police officers, they're not trying to help him, you know, find Rosemary's,

you know, whoever hit her. They think that he is the guy who hit her. But he can't do anything about it. He's told to sit in the back seat of a cruiser beside Wilson while Dearing drives him back to the scene of the crime. By Shenton Park station, John then points out the bloodstained sand where he found his girlfriend. Wilson makes a chalk mark on the road, doesn't mark the actual place where John said she was lying. Then Wilson, Dearing, and John began to look for her shoes, find some of her belongings scattered along the road, find her sandals, a brush, lipstick, comb, and perfume. Afterwards, Dearing said they wanted John to come back to CIB headquarters. A ton of his voice made John think he didn't have a choice in the matter.

Had no idea he could have asked for his parents or a lawyer to be present. He's taken alone into an interrogation room by Dearing. John was at this point exhausted. He's numb. He's cold. He's shirtless for some reason. He's dehydrated. He needs a cigarette. Dearing is not letting up. He's asking John about the damage to the front of his car again, this time asking him how blood spots came to be on the front of his car. Unable to remember how he'd gotten Rosemary around to the passenger seat, John simply said no, which increased Dearing's suspicion, despite the fact that John's car showed no other signs of a collision with a person, you know, like smashed glass, bent bumper, knocked off license plate.

2 15 a.m. Dearing asked if John wanted to make a statement saying he was not obliged to do so. John agreed. After all, he's like, I don't have anything to hide. Meanwhile, Rosemary is taken to the hospital. While she looked terrible, the extent of her injuries were actually not as bad as they could have been. X-rays of her chest and hips showed no apparent fractures. Skull x-rays showed only a questionable small fracture in the occipital region. Dr. Alastair Turner started intravenous therapy. Actually, I think I said it right the first time. Intravenous therapy. I don't know why I added an extra syllable in there. Because I'm fucking me. Pumping two planks each of blood and serum into her within the hour. A nurse cleaned up her head wound, bandaged it, seemed like she's

gonna be okay. Thank God. Meanwhile at the police station, John is finishing his statements, but Dearing still doesn't believe it. The whole idea of an argument over some fish and chips sounded fucking ridiculous to him. 2.45 a.m. Dearing told his superior about his suspicions that he believed John was the driver of the car that hit her. He told the sergeant there were blood spots on the front of John's car. But he didn't think to tell the sergeant that the usual signs of a collision between a vehicle and a body were missing. Sergeant went out to look at the car and not having been told about that prior accident report from January 7th, he agreed, yeah, yeah, it does look like it hit a body. And so the interrogation continues,

with John half-dressed, tired, traumatized, no idea of his legal rights. He stumbled through another version of the story at 3.15 a.m. hoping Rosemary would wake up and tell the police the truth. But suddenly at the hospital, Rosemary stopped breathing. And just like that, she's gone. Detectives tell the news to John at the police station and he immediately vomits. With a 19-year-old's gusto, he now thought that nothing mattered anymore. Life was meaningless without Rosemary. He thought about how he was the one who snapped at her, so he might as well

have been the one who killed her. And he doesn't care what happens to him at this point. He comes back from the bathroom and between 340 and 430 a.m. the poor depressed anguished exhausted son of a bitch makes a full confession. He wrote, I decided to scare her. None of this is true. I decided to scare her by driving the car at her as close as possible. At the time I was doing about 35 miles per hour. Rosemary was walking on the left-hand side of the road close to the edge of the bitumen.

Before I realized what had happened I had hit her with the left hand side of the front of my car. When I hit her I felt a loud crunch. I carried her a few yards on the front of my vehicle. I stopped my car and got out. I saw Rosemary lying on the left hand side of the road level with the front door. She had a cut over her right eye and was bleeding. She was unconscious and not moving.

I opened the passenger side front door, laid the back of the front seat back, and then picked up Rosemary and lay her in the car. And with that, the investigation stopped. And John was informed he's gonna be charged with murder. Fucking crazy. Crazy he would make that confession, but the grief, the guilt, the despair he felt, it was just so intense. And he's being pressured, you know, by the law enforcement officers who were not informing him of his rights. I'm sure they're, you know, coached him like, oh you probably, you probably were driving, you know, right next to her, right? You're probably trying to scare her, right?

And he's just like, yeah, okay. And that becomes a confession, which, you know, does happen too often. This poor guy, he really didn't truly love her. Officers then, they give him a coat, two cigarettes, cup of tea. It's the first time anybody's been nice to him in hours. He has no idea that his parents have been trying to look for him for hours and won't know where he is until John finishes his confession and the police call his house. He then slept through all all Sunday. Slept through that night in a holding cell. His parents, Charlie and Lily, a bricklayer and a housekeeper, they decide that all they can do is find him the best lawyer. Lily goes to one of her clients, asks for some help with the money. She wants to hire Ken

Hatfield, considered the best attorney in all of Perth. On Monday morning, John is awoken and given a prisoner's uniform before being led to brief the police department on his confession. He's only told to answer the questions he was asked, or he's asked. He has no idea how guilty he looks, as though he has already been sentenced. Then he is taken into the fingerprinting room where his parents are waiting for him. Then he's led downstairs into the Perth police court. The CIB rooms were on an upstairs floor where magistrate Alan Smith remanded him to appear again in eight days. He's taken to Fremantle prison, where he'll be held in solitary confinement on death row, no less.

His trial date will be set for April 29th and with John in prison the heat is off of Cookie and he can go prowling again so he does. February 15th, not even a full week after he'd run down and killed Rosemary, the eighth woman that we know of him running over. Dressed smartly in his shiny gaybirdine pants and reefer jacket, Cookie leaves home at 7.30 pm, catches a bus to the city. He hoped the couples would be still feeling lovey-dovey after Valentine's Day and that he might be able to watch them. Fuck. For Lucy Madrill and Jennifer Hurst, the night held no such promises. They had to polish the floors of their apartment. The social worker and the school teacher had moved into a West Perth flat a few months prior, not knowing that the former residents had moved away because they had been worried

about a prowler. They kept the front door locked, but Lucy generally left the back door propped open for her pet Siamese cat Mudguts. On the night of February 15th, they finished their chores, then relaxed and read. Jennifer took a book to bed. Lucy stayed up in the lounge to read. Round 11, 24-year-old Lucy walked to Jennifer's room, said good night, and the two both went to sleep.

And the back door was left unlocked. Some hours later, Cookie walked in. He'd actually been inside their place before. God, he'd been in fucking every place. He felt like he'd been in every place in Perth. He had came in this place before just to steal a beer. Now he's coming back for something more valuable. Shining in his flashlight, he takes some money.

Then he comes across Lucy, sleeping on top of the covers in a flimsy nightie. He approaches her with violence, lust, both on his mind. But then she wakes up, reaches to grab something to defend herself. Cookie immediately hits her with his fist so hard it thrust her head against the wall, hurt his hand. She opened her mouth to scream. He grabbed her throat before the air reached her voice box. He then put her in a choke hold and with his arm wrapped tight around his neck, or her neck, excuse me, he dragged her out of the bedroom into the spare room. There, without waking up her roommate, he put her on a mattress, convinced she's almost dead.

But he had to make sure she would not again regain consciousness, so he looks for something to strangle her further with. He spots a cord from the table lamp, twists it around her neck, twists it again and again and again, holds it for several minutes just to make sure her further with. He spots a cord from the table lamp, twisted around her neck, twisted again and again and again, holds it for several minutes just to make sure she's gone. Then, now that she is in fact definitely dead, he proceeds to rape her corpse, quietly enough not to wake up her roommate, so he's a fucking necrophiliac now. Then without having to worry about blood stains or a trail, he drags her body through the back door, out and onto a neighbor's lawn, penetrates her vaginally again with an empty bottle he'd found because he's just a fucking absolute maniac. Then he stops and has a fight with Mudguts the cat, uh, who attacked him, scratched his hand until it bled. Hail Mudguts, even though you fucking started this, cat!

If it wasn't for your unlocked door! No, the cat tried. Too bad he wasn't capable of slashing this guy's throat. Bojangles doesn't want to admit it, but he is impressed with mud guts. The next morning, the Noble family wakes up early enough. There are some neighbors. For a road trip, they were taken. Jane Noble, the mom, looks out a window,

sees the body of a young naked woman face up with a bottle under her arm. There's a blue mark on her throat. She runs screaming to her house, calls for her daughters. Her husband then calls the police and soon the street is filled with detectives. Word gets out, once again, the people of Perth are terrified. The police had announced that there was no connection to the Australia Day shootings, which meant or was believed at the time that there were two serial killers on the loose now.

And the pandemonium that one deranged piece of shit is causing. The amount of terror this fucking creep is spreading is just unreal. Why couldn't he have died in one of those accidents? Meanwhile, defense attorney Ken Hatfield, hard at work developing his defense of the innocent and traumatized John Button. He first floated the idea of pleading guilty to a manslaughter charge, but John wasn't gonna do that. He would rather risk execution. He's thinking clearly now. Presenting the case for the crown was Ron Wilson, a top prosecutor renowned for his hard work and persistence. There would be a top team arguing both for and against John.

And on April 29th, John pled not guilty. The succession of witnesses for his trial began with Dr. Quinn-Liven, Dr. Turner from the Royal Perth Hospital, and the District Medal Officer, Dr. Pearson, who gave the results of the postmortem that Rosemary had died from a subarachnoid hemorrhage. But the big question was would John's statement be allowed into evidence? Right that initial statement he gave under duress at 10 a.m. On Thursday, May 2nd, Mr. Justice Negus gave his decision to allow the confession saying he could see no impropriety or unfairness in the manner in which any of the statements were obtained and that nothing that had happened was likely to result in an untrue admission.

And that does not bode well for John. But it's not the end of his case. Under question that day, Detective Dearing admitted that until being told Rosemary had died, John had not been told. He didn't need to answer questions. Nor had he been given any warning or caution about his statements being used as evidence against him. No one was there to advise John. He was not told he had the right to communicate with his parents. He was not told he had the right to an attorney. He was not told

that he had any rights. On Friday the courtroom would hear from John directly. He told the jury about how Dearing had said quote, I don't trust you, as the detective held a rifle which to him seemed like a threat. Then he described how he had just stopped caring about what happened to him after he heard that his beloved Rosemary was dead leading to that confession. He hadn't cared about his freedom just wanted it to stop. The week-long trial continued into Saturday the day spent on a closing address. What a fast-ass murder trial. Hatfield was the first to address the jury telling them no evidence could be presented that could show John was guilty,

emphasizing the lack of damage to John's car, consistent with hitting a ten stone, aka 140 pound girl. He pointed out that there was no damage at all that anyone could say had been caused recently, and there was no hair, fabric, threads, or particles of Rosemary Anderson's clothing on the car whatsoever, as there definitely should have been, you know, from an impact of a lethal magnitude. The tiny specks and smudges of blood were not consistent with impact with the body, but rather it had come from her blood-on-buttons body. As he swung around the front of the car in his urgency to get her to a doctor, Rosemary was hit by a car he said, just not this car. But then the prosecution had their last say. They affirmed that John's car had hit Rosemary and that since John had not

complained after he gave his statement, the statement proved genuine, it was too coincidental, they felt, that he had had an argument and then she had been hit by somebody else's car a few minutes later. And I gotta admit, if I'm on the jury, that argument does hold some weight with me. Right? Because I mean, what happened was just such a fucking crazy coincidence. The jury was released to deliberate around 4. At 8 12 p.m. the 12 members file back in and young John Button, right, after about four hours he climbs the stairs to face them. The foreman then says, not guilty. John starts to relax, his parents like sign, you know, all this emotions coming out, but then the fucking judge asks this guy to read it again and the

foreman coughs and corrects himself and goes guilty. What the fuck? How do you mess up that? How do you fucking read the word guilt? That is, oh, that poor bad. I hope that guy felt like an asshole. John left Fremantle prison for sentencing Monday, May 6th. Just before 10 30 a.m. he started upstairs into the courtroom and his pronouncement Justice Negus is speaking slowly saying, I feel that I cannot take a lenient view of what you have done The criminal code allows me to sentence you for a crime such as this to imprisonment with hard labor for life I suppose I must bear in mind all the things that have been said on your behalf and particularly the fact that you picked The girl up also that as Mr. Hatfield said you were under strong emotional strain But taking these things into consideration I would not be doing my duty if I did not impose

a substantial sentence. I sentenced you to imprisonment with hard labor for 10 years. He will be put into the mainstream prison population after that. Prisoner number 29050 is in cell 43 on C&D Landing, the first floor in the main division. But at least a friend of his, Fathers, who worked at the prison, will be able to get him into a carpentry shop there. The best place to work, I guess, because prisoners can make hot drinks over the fire, hide tobacco and some nooks and crannies. Other than that, every day will be the same bleak routine, working, marching back and

forth to the canteen for meals, lights out at 8pm. Since John had only been found guilty of manslaughter, his team decided not to appeal. Instead, he enrolls in math courses, electrical work, art classes while he's incarcerated. On the weekends, he plays chess and bridge and unbeknownst to John or anyone else, the real perpetrator, still stalking the streets of Perth. His more violent urges seemed tame for the time being, but he kept stealing money, kept breaking into nice houses to snatch whatever he could from dresses or purses, still peeping at windows, just doing all kinds of creepy shit pretty much every night. Sometimes he'll even get caught by kids who think that he's their dad or by the homeowners. One man let him go after warning him not to come around

his neighborhood anymore. That's crazy. You catch somebody in your house, you're like, I can't! Fucking you in my house! Holding my wife's knickers in your house, you're like, Oi cunt! Fuck you into my house! Holding my wife's knickers in your hand, you fucking rock spider! She'll bash you fucking head in. But I'm feeling generous today. So I'm just gonna give you a warning instead. But next time, I'll put you in the fucking debt! Now get on! Get on with ya!

Go on! That's crazy. Another gave up after Cookie said he was only trying to buy food for his kids. If somebody breaks into your house, who gives a fuck what they tell you? People lie all the time. Don't fucking fall for their pity party. Just call the police. Cookie getting away was so much, man. He's also doing some weird shit.

I mean, of course he is. He's a psychopath. He's got some brain damage. One evening at 5 o'clock, he walked into a house where the Thompson family lived. This family doesn't know. He walks, you know, right on by a 12 year old Neil playing in the laundry basket or with the laundry basket like he lived there. He continues into the kitchen where Neil's mom, Phyllis Thompson, is making dinner. She's of course shocked to be confronted by an uninvited strange man wearing a hat carrying a bag. Even more stunned and scared when the bold stranger asks if her husband is home.

That's not good. Then he puts his bag down, just starts asking questions about her kids. She wants to know how many kids she has. How old are they? Where do they go to school? She answers politely. Four kids, three boys and a girl, 19, 15, 12 and 10. When she finished telling him about his about the kids, he just picked up the bag he'd placed his feet and quietly walked off like he was just taking a survey or something. That's

so weird. I can't think of hearing about anybody else we've covered doing something quite you know exactly like that before. Cookie also started perving on people he knew like Shirley Hunt. A woman Cookie had known since he was a kid. Her husband Brian caught him peeking into their bedroom window one night and Shirley was like, oh gosh dang I don't know why Cookie would do that. What do you mean you don't fucking know why he would do that? He's because he wants to beat off to see you naked. Maybe he was planning on raping you later. Like there's no fucking good answer why somebody is peeping into your fucking bedroom window at night. Why a grown man is

looking into your bedroom window. It's not like he's what auditioning for the part of a peeping Tom in a local theater production. He just wants to you know get the character right. He's doing some research. What's he is he worried that you have skin cancer? He wants to check out your moles you know from the window while you're not paying attention. Around April, Cookie gets a new job or actually a new old job rather, working as a truck driver for the Kronstein Metal and Hardware merchants, a place he had quit about nine months prior. So many different jobs. So many different crimes. Just Cookie was pretty consistent with his inconsistency. June 15th, 1963, Cookie decides to break into another Netherlands flat. I mean, he's been breaking into places constantly.

He's probably been broken into a thousand places. This time, this place belongs to three students. Carmel Madeline Reed, Kathleen Ferguson, and Trish Murphy. All three thought it was safe since there was more single women in the apartments upstairs and also a couple next door. Carmel and Kathy, or maybe it's Carmel, had gone out for the night for separate 21st birthday parties actually. Trish went to bed early. Carmel got back around 2 45 a.m. went to bed locking all but one window and that one window would be enough. Two hours later she wakes up to the sound of some rustling. She sees a masked man for a second before he stabs her with the

steel tip of an umbrella. He's just fucking, I don't know, trying out different weapons just for the fun of it. Screaming she she pops out of bed Trish pops out of bed and they run to a neighbor's house and call the police it escaped but that same summer somebody else would not be so lucky August 10th 1963 Carl and Wendy Dowd are headed out for the night their regular babysitter was sick this is so crazy so a new one's coming a second year science student named Shirley MacLeod. Baby Mitchell was asleep. Shirley was at the table when the downs left for their party down the road. Confident it would just be an easy night. They lock all the doors except the one leading from the hallway to the top of the garage stairs. And the garage is also unlocked. Damn it.

And the night caller will of course figure this out. 18 year old Shirley puts on a record, takes her shoes off. She's not even supposed to be there. Only because another babysitter dropped out. This poor other babysitter as well. She gets to work on her homework. Cookie had left home that day at half past noon for some light gambling, sports watching.

Then he left the pub around 7.30 p.m. to give a friend a ride home because he's a great guy. After that he drove to the Cottesloe, one of his favorite suburbs around Perth. I don't know why I called it the Cotterslow. It's just Cotterslow. He was only half a mile from where he had shot those three people in January and where a lot of the residents were particularly still terrified and on the lookout, but that doesn't bother him. Probably excites him. After stealing himself another rifle from a house there, apparently fucking no one in Australia

around this time just locked up their homes or their guns or their cars. They did no one locked up anything and he proceeded towards the city along a sterling highway. He got out of his car at one point to shoot a woman chasing her dog through the rain just because he thought it'd be fun but he couldn't get a good visual so he gave up. Cookie then walked north along Wavell Road then on a whim changed his mind walked back towards the river, walks by a house on the corner of Menorah Road, finds an unlocked garage, walks through the garage up the stairs,

door at the top of the stairs also unlocked. In the hallway, he can now see a young woman sitting on the couch in the lounge, listening to music. Her head's lowered, she's concentrating on her books, or maybe sleeping, he can't tell, but she doesn't notice him, and it doesn't matter to him. He just quietly raises his rifle, aims at her head like he's hunting a deer, doesn't want to spoil any of the meat, and he fires. When the dowels get

home around two in the morning they're in good spirits but then Carl goes into the lounge sees their teenage babysitter sitting with her head slumped to one side and then he sees blood on her clothes and a bullet hole in her head. Her pen was still eerily being held upright in her hand. Holy shit. Now thinks the killer might still be in the house. He runs into the bedroom, grabs Wendy and baby Mitchell, locks them in a room, then creeps out, phones the police, then calls a friend to take Wendy and the baby to their house. Next day while Cook takes his or Cookie takes his family for a Sunday drive, the police are come in the Dowd's house and this time they find something.

One fingerprint. Doesn't match to anybody in the family, their friends or their guests and not to any workmen or delivery people. Could it belong to the killer? Yes. Not wanting to let the moment slip away from them, the police don't only pursue this lead. The hunt continues in all directions with Perth's detective force organized into two 12-hour shifts focused on tracking down the killer

leaving only suburban detectives to do general work. A squad of 50 detectives works through the suburbs of Nedlands and Delkieth interviewing more than 8,000 residents. Then on August 16th less than a week from Cookies at most recent shooting there will be another breakthrough. 84 year old William Keener and his wife find the rifle, cookie is stolen while out on a walk. He didn't throw it in a river this time. They left it where it was, but they called the police.

Well done. And the police come and collect it. And it is quickly identified as the gun used to kill Shirley MacLeod. And that's not the only police activity that day. Just that morning, the CIB decided they would take the fingerprints of all men between the ages of 14 and 60 in the entire Perth metro area. Beginning in the Netherlands and Cottsloe.

Fuck yeah bro. Teams of police start early in the morning going from house to house taking fingerprints. Finishing at 7pm. Those who are not home are asked to go to the Claremont police station. As for the gun, it belongs to Garak Agnew, a successful company director, former Olympic swimmer who lived at 17 Pierce Street in Cottesloe. He'd reported it missing three days prior. And now the police realized that this gun was not disposed of, it was hidden. And if the murderer planned on coming back for it, that meant they could set a trap. A Looney Tunes kind of trap. could set a trap. A Looney Tunes kind of trap. How do you do? Oh, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Coyote. Wile E. Coyote.

They put the rifle, I love those cartoons, they put the rifle back in the exact spot that it had been found, fasting it firmly with a hundred pound fishing line. A lookout is set up in the garden of the house opposite with police watching it all hours of the day. I would love it if their plan was to like, when the guy goes to grab it, just slowly reel it in a little bit. And then when he goes to grab it again, slowly reel it in a little bit, and just keep doing that until he catches up with you at the fishing pole. It was a bleak, wet August day. The police stood in almost constant rain to watch the bank opposite day and night.

They borrowed an SAS Army tent, slung it across a pole, creating a camouflaged pup tent that they erected each night to give them some shelter from the rain. Each in turn had a break in the tent while the other would keep his eyes, ears, and nerves strained. And this goes on for days. And on August 31st, the miserable job went to constables Pete Skiin, Peter Skiin, and excuse me, Bill Hawker. Cookie, meanwhile, spending that night prowling,

of course he is, breaking into houses like he almost always did. And he came back for that rifle. At 1.15 or so, he saw that the lights were out near the lot where he had stashed the gun, so he decided to make his move. Bill Hawker sees Cookie's car pull up to the street near where the rifle is. He wakes up Peter Skiin who thinks whoever is driving has just come to have a late-night makeout session

with his girl, but then he sees a lone man get out of the car and in his gut he's like, this is our guy. Hawker knew he had to act quickly and as the man bent down to grab the rifle they're like, ah! They start reeling it in. No, they didn't do that, but he's not able to take it. Hawker, he leaps the fence, bounds down the sandy embankment with ski in just seconds behind him. Both men are able to tackle a shocked Cookie to the ground and handcuff him. The nightcaller, the Nedlands monster has finally been caught. Well, well, the boy has talent. Then Hawker went to a neighbor's house and asked us and asked to use the phone. To the CIB he reported we've had a visitor.

Cookie meanwhile is mumbling incoherently clutching his pencil flashlight. He's wearing women's gloves and a pair of has a pair of panties in his pocket. Of course he does. And the top pocket of his jacket he's got part of a newspaper social column from July 12th. He'd underlined an article about a wedding on August 31st and written an address over it with three more addresses, some with phone numbers in the margin. He looks guilty as fuck. He's been casing places. Once brought to police headquarters, he acts strangely. Of course he does. He's Eric Edgar Cooke. Cooke is a long way from normal. Usually calm and assured, during his past arrests, he is nervously chatty this time,

telling them about the number of houses he had broken into that night. He freely admitted that the the 22 pounds on him was what he had taken from some people but he won't say shit about any murders. He denies having been near Shirley McLeod the night she had died the night she was shot with the gun he'd come back to grab. He said he had just seen that gun early that week and you know wanted to take it and sell it. His interrogation continues to Sunday morning which is Father's Day. The Cook children had woken up early, hidden a gift for their dad in a sort of Father's Day scavenger hunt that he does not deserve. When there was a knock on the door at

eight they excitedly opened the door but it is a detective, not their frequently absent father. And then the detective informs Cook's wife Sally that her husband is being charged with the murder of Shirley MacLeod. However, by Tuesday, all the police had were confessions of burglaries and car thefts, not to murder. They wanted more. They strongly suspected from the use of the gun and the shots to the forehead that he

was responsible for the Australia Day shootings as well. Detectives spent the day driving him to houses where the killings had taken place. And finally, a detective told him he knew he was going to be put to death right? Like you know that right? So are you gonna die like a sniveling no responsibility taking coward or are you gonna at least admit what you've done and die like a fucking man? And incredibly this tactic works and Cookie starts confessing. I love it. He proceeded to take detectives on an expansive tour of his movements over Australia Day weekend showing them the cars he had stolen, how he had climbed into houses and more. His memory for the devious acts he had committed was extraordinary.

He named 30 burglaries specifically, but admitted to entering over 250 homes, sometimes with the intent to do harm. And I think a lot of those homes he had entered numerous times, and I bet he entered way more than that. So many over the years. He confessed to assaulting women in their beds, to beating them before he took off, then doing it again just days or weeks later. At the end of it they wanted to know what I imagine you want to know, what I wanted to know, like why? Why would you do that? And he just kept saying, quote, I just wanted to hurt somebody. Late on September 3rd, he was formally charged with the

murders of John Lindsay Sturkey and George Orman Walmsley, the attempted murder of Nicholas August, and the unlawful wounding of Rowena Reeves. He made his first confessions to the nighttime assaults September 10th, then wrote out a formal confession September 14th. Police slowly began to track down these women, some of whom did not know they'd even been assaulted. They had no memory of the assaults thanks to their head wounds. They thought, right, like we talked before, that he's maybe, you know, had fallen and just hit their head in the middle of the night. Now police are informing them,

no, that you were attacked by the nightcaller. That's fucking wild. Before moving forward now, let's back up a few days to September 10th. That day, Cookie would say something surprising. That there were two crimes he had committed that other people were currently in prison for. The murders of Jillian Brewer and Rosemary Anderson.

And you know what? Good on him for at least doing that. He didn't have to. I don't think most of these serial killer dirtbags would. With that, on September 20th, Cookie is transferred from the police lockup in Perth to Fremantle Prison and you will never believe who will now represent him, Ken Hatfield. Same dude who represented John Button, the framed boyfriend of Rosemary Anderson. A man still in prison for that murder. Cookie's legal defense

was provided through the Western Australia Law Society, which offered free legal representation to people that needed it. Ken thought Cookie was an underdog and he agreed to take his case on. Okay, no part of me really understands that, but whatever. Now let's fast forward a bit. October 26, 1963, Cookie charged with two of the four other murders he confessed to. The murders are Constance, Lucy Madrill, and Nina Berkman. By this point, Ken Hatfield is working diligently on his case, and he had of course discovered that Cookie had admitted to killing Rosemary Anderson. Hatfield is excited for his other client's prospective release, but lawyers for the government

refuse to confirm that Cookie has made and then withdrawn this confession. They pretended like it never happened. And soon Hatfield will have to focus entirely on Cookie's trial. November 25, 1963, Cookie stood trial for the murder of John Sturkey in the Supreme Court of Western Australia before justice, virtue and a jury. Represented by Hatfield and Desmond Heenan, Cookie pled not guilty by reason of insanity. His lawyers claimed he had schizophrenia, but this claim was dismissed after the director of the State Mental Health Services testified no, he is sane actually.

Weird as fuck, manipulative, evil, no regard for the suffering of others, an absolute trash, horrible human being, but sane. After a three-day trial, it only took the jury of eight men and women one hour and five minutes to reach their verdict of guilty. And on November 27, Cookie is sentenced to death by hanging. And his other charges are now held in abeyance, aka suspension. He doesn't need to be found guilty of anything else at the moment since it looks like he's gonna die. But that doesn't mean the investigators work is over. It's now time for lawyers to work on freeing the two men who've been put in jail for Cookies crimes, right? Darryl Beamish, John Button, Bart Cockalis, interesting name, who had consulted on the Button case, visited Cookie on December 2nd, 1963, and surprisingly got Cookie to make a full confession

about the Anderson murder. The next day, Kakalus made the necessary arrangements, going back to Fremantle Prison to see Button, get his signature, and lodged in a notice of application for extension of time within which to appeal and notice of application for leave to appeal. Jesus Christ, that's a lot of words. He requested a new trial on the grounds of fresh evidence and a hearing was set for February through April of 1964 in tandem with Darrell Beamish's similar application regarding his conviction for the murder of Gillian Brewer. January 15th 1964, Cookie experiences some

tragedy himself. His eldest son dies. Nine-year-old Michael, who was developmentally delayed, had been in weekend care with the foster family and he had drowned. And I feel compelled to say that had Cookie not been such a piece of shit, his son wouldn't have needed to be placed in foster care and he would have still been alive. Cookie now said he wanted to be buried with his son's ashes, even refusing an appeal to expedite his hanging. But ironically, his confessions to additional murders had extended the time before his execution. He had to stick around to sign documents related to the new trials, like an affidavit for Button's

appeal, February 11. Button's appeal would begin February 27 with Beamish's appeal following shortly thereafter. Cookie will be taken from Fremantle to testify at both. The problem, however, is making a serial killer, petty thief, and peeping Tom into a reliable witness. He'd already confessed and retracted once. The media didn't help either. It reported all the crimes Cookie confessed to, the assaults, the thefts, the break-ins, which made Cookie seem like a liar instead of a very prolific criminal. Meanwhile, John was eagerly awaiting the court's decision, which was set for May 22nd. First

sign wasn't good. Beamish's appeal was dismissed. Then so was Buttons. The judges did not believe Cookie. Man, can you believe that shit? You get framed for somebody else's murder. You go to prison. Then they catch that down.

You're like, okay, finally. He confesses. You're like, oh my God, yes. He confesses he did in fact commit the murder you were framed for. And then the judge is like,, no I don't buy it. How hopeless are you gonna feel regarding your future now? John's parents in Hatfield, they vow to keep fighting, lodging an appeal with the ultimate authority, the high court. That process will begin in September of 1964, but then the high court also rejects this appeal.

And almost immediately also rejects Beamish's appeal. So both these guys are just fucking screwed still. Meanwhile, October 14th, the state government announces that Cookie's execution will go ahead on October 26th. And with that, Cookie will be hanged. October 26th, 1964 at Fremantle Prison. They didn't fuck around back then. Once you were found guilty of a serious crime, there was no decade plus of appeals. They were like, let's fucking go! Come on! Dude is arrested August 31st, 1963. 14 months later, he's at the end of a rope. Cookie had a last visit from his mom and sister, his wife Sally,

who had her request to be able to bury his body, refused by the state. The Reverend Jenkins, his old mentor, visited him several times over the course of his final days, prayed with him 18 years after first taking him in at the Methodist church. Reverend Jenkins, man, a lot more capacity for forgiveness in his heart than I do. Cookie's last meal is steak, eggs, chips, peaches, and cream, and plum pudding, after which he laid down and listened to the radio. And I'm glad they didn't have music streaming back then. Like imagine being minutes away from being executed. And all you want to hear is your favorite song just one last time.

But all you have is a radio, right? Like you love A Hard Day's Night. You just want to hear it one more time. You're listening to Perth's top hit station. You only have four minutes before they're going to walk you to the Hangman's Noose. You're like, come on, just fucking play it just one more time. It's so big. Yeah, that's just the tip.

DJ Iceberg. Iceberg. Good evening, Western Australia. That was a new one from Roy Orbison, Pretty Woman. We've had a lot of requests today for a hard day's night from those heart-stopping boys from Liverpool, the Beatles. And we'll be playing that just a moment here on 98.1 FM Peace Spot Hot 100, Perth and Western Australia number one hit radio station.

Right after, Circus Clown Kaleibe Sweet by the Big Ten Boys. Oh yeah! No! After listening to whatever he listened to on the radio, I hope it was nothing but commercials. Cookie was led to the gallows where 10 minutes before the sentence was carried out, Cookie swore in the Bible that he had in fact killed both Jillian Brewer and Rosemary Anderson. You know, those two women whose murders led to two men going to prison for killings they did not commit. Then his executioner led him up the steps, put the hood over his face, stepped back off the platform, took out the pins and the trap door swung open. Seconds later, Cookies dead.

Much kinder end than the ones he had dished out. I don't know what his final words were. I don't know if those recorded anywhere. He's the last person to be executed by the state of Western Australia now. He is buried in Fremantle Cemetery above the remains of child killer Martha Rendell who in 1909 became the last woman to be hanged in Fremantle Cemetery above the remains of child killer Martha Rendell who in 1909 became the last woman to be hanged in Fremantle Prison. June 16th 1965 John Button is transferred to a minimum security prison at Keysbrook. There he'll study welding, work as a carpenter, and keep to himself. He will continue to express remorse for what happened the night Rosemary died and also, you know, talk about how he didn't do it because he didn't, and he is not released. He will not be released because he was found innocent, at least.

He is released on parole December 20th, 1967 after spent nearly five years in prison. He visited Rosemary's grave alone the very next day. He'll eventually find work as a welder. He'll spend his free time ballroom dancing, but he has difficulty readjusting to normal life. Luckily, the director of his dancing club, Alan Butcher, asks a young woman there named Helen Featherstone to look after John. He's having a tough time and she will do more than look after him. She will fall in love with him. John and Helen will get married in 1968. John will turn to religion to help him understand what had happened to him. In 1995, he'll become an ordained, ruling elder of the Westminster Presbyterian Church. His final appeal will finally get underway in August of 2000. He'd been free for over 30 years, of course, but he

wanted recognition that he'd been falsely imprisoned. The judges reversed their decision and John Button's record is finally cleared. As of at least as recently as last year, the then 80-year- old was working closely with Western Australian Innocence Project, motivated to help others who had been wrongfully convicted find justice and freedom. He'd also written a book titled Why Me Lord? about his struggle with understanding how God could permit such an injustice to occur. He now spends most of his time with his wife and their five grandchildren. So, you know, I'm glad things worked out for him later. Darrell Beamish would serve 15 years for murder he did not commit.

He would be formally acquitted in 2005. Then on June 2, 2011, he is granted a $425,000 payment by the Western Australian government as a sort of sorry for ruining your life check. I'm sure that made up for everything, right? I mean, I mean, you'd spend 15 years of your life in prison to get sure that made up for everything, right? I mean, you'd spend 15 years of your life in prison to get $425,000, wouldn't you? Not sure where Beamish is today, hopefully not feeling up more little girls. No one should go to prison for murder. They did not commit, but also, ah, I don't love him. And now let's get out of today's timeline. of today's timeline.

Eric Edgar Cooke, also known as the Nightcaller and the Nedlins Monster was one of Australia's most notorious and unsettling serial killers. His violent crimes shocked Perth for five years during a time largely defined by optimism for a new age of expansion and interconnectedness, affluence, and stability from September 12th, 1958 when he hit Nell Schneider on her bike to August 10th, 1963 when he shot 18-year-old Shirley MacLeod while she studied in the house where she was babysitting. Cookie, as he was known, grew up lower middle class, was a frequent punching bag for his alcoholic father, Vivian. Never trust a man up lower middle class, was a frequent punching bag for his alcoholic father Vivian.

Never trust a man named Vivian. He was a frequent target of bullying, particularly related to his facial deformities with his hair, lip, and cleft palate that were never surgically corrected. He never felt connected to the affluence and interconnectedness he was surrounded by. Despite finding community through religion and even a wife, Sarah, with whom he would have seven children, he always felt like an outsider. And though he began as a petty thief, those long simmering feelings would ultimately bleed over into much more violent outbursts. Between 1959 and 1963, Cookie murdered at least eight people. Nine of Berkman, Gillian McPherson Brewer, John Lindsay Sturkey, George Orman Walmsley,

Rosemary Anderson, Lucy Madrill, Shirley McCloud, then Brian Weir, whose agonizing death took years. Also tried to kill 14 other people, mainly women, by either hitting them with a fucking car, shooting them, stabbing them, bashing them in the head while they slept. Unlike many serial killers we've talked about here before who follow, you know, patterns or target a specific type of victim, Cookie's attacks were just wildly inconsistent. You know, and two of his victims never received violence at his hands. Darryl Beamish and John Button, both convicted for his crimes. They would both serve prison sentences even after Cookie was caught and confessed since

I guess the Australian justice system really did not like to admit when it fucked up. Hopefully that has changed. His randomness made him an especially difficult killer to capture, but he was ultimately caught returning to grab the gun that had been used to kill teenage babysitter Shirley MacLeod. Finally convicted of the murder of 18-year-old John Sturkey, who he shot in the forehead just for the fuck of it, during his infamous Australia Day rampage when he shot five people. Cookie was quickly hanged for that crime at Fremantle Prison, October 26, 1964, becoming the last person to be executed by the state

in Western Australia. The night caller was silenced. And what can we learn from this tale? Well, lock up your guns. Put them in a safe for fuck's sake. And lock your car up. Don't leave the keys in the ignition. Crazy that people used to do that on a regular basis.

Lock your doors, lock your windows. I don't care if your neighborhood is safe, right? Is it really that hard? Does it really take that much time to unlock it when you need to, you know, use it again later? No, it doesn't. So shut the fuck up and lock it. And don't beat your kids. Don't beat your wife in front of your kids. You know, do it when no one else can see, like a classy gentleman. That's absurd. Don't beat your wife. Don't beat your husband. Right? Don't go around beating anybody unless they're trying to beat or molest or rape somebody else. Then of course, by all means, well, crack their fucking skulls.

Beat them to death. Don't pick on people with disfigurements. That's pathetic. And don't peep on people from the bushes unless they know and it's a fun role play because maybe that's pretty hot. Hail, Lusifena. And don't shit on people's stuff unless they deserve it. That's fun. That's funny. Now let's head to the takeaways. Number one, Eric Edgar Cooke. Frequently known as Cookie. It's kind of weird to call him Cookie, I guess. It's like it's such a like silly little name. Doesn't fit a killer.

Oh Cookie! Cookie stop it! Oh Cookie put the axe down! But Cookie was born Perth, Australia, February 12th. Why'd I say 12th? February 25th. Those numbers aren't even close. 1931. Nicknamed the Nightcaller and the Netherlands monster, he stalked the city of Perth in the 1950s. Well at the very end of the 1950s, beginning of 1960s. Graduated from stealing to breaking and entering to committing assaults to murder. He would commit over 20 violent crimes, eight of which resulted in deaths during a five year violent crime spree that lasted from 1958 to 1963.

Number two, two men would go to prison for Cookie's crimes. The first was Darryl Beamish, convicted of the axe murder of socialite Jill Brewer. Second is John Button, teen convicted of murdering his girlfriend, Rosemary Anderson, after police elicited a false confession. And then neither would be released when Cookie confessed multiple times that he was the actual killer because he was seen as an unreliable witness. Number three, in August 1963, Eric Edgar Cook caught by some uh, fucking loony tune scheme to tie a fishing line to a gun he had hidden and to see if they could lure him out and it worked. After being convicted of the murder of John Sturkey, Cook was sentenced to hang and he would be executed October 26, 1964. Number four, so many people living in Perth in

the 60s left their cars unlocked with the keys and the ignition. Very insane that there weren't more car thefts or that you would even expect to find your car outside when you got up in the morning. Number five new info we talked about one person who made Perth infamous in the 60s. What about somebody who made it famous that same decade? You may know that Perth is known as the city of light but do you know why? It's because February 20th 1962 astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth in the Friendship 7 spacecraft. On this mission, Glenn flew over Perth and the people of Perth turned on their lights to acknowledge his mission. Glenn reported his observation back and with that the City of Light was born. The city repeated that act as Glenn passed overhead on the space shuttle over three

or excuse me over three decades later in 1998 and that's very cool. Also deceased actor legend Heath Ledger was from Perth and so was the band Tame Impala. Finally the second to last blockbuster video store in the world was open in Perth all the way until 2019. Good on Perth. I could go on. I watched a lot of videos and it looks like a super cool place to live. Time Shack Top 5 Takeaways The nightcaller, Eric, Edgar, Cook, that never wants to roll off the tongue. It's weird to have Eric and then Edgar.

Has been sucked. Whoa! Ha! Ha! Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for all their help making Time Suck. Thanks to Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsay Cummins, for giving me the space to create every week.

Thanks to Logan Keith, helping to publish this episode. Design and merch for the store. There's always new stuff at badmagicproductions.com. Thanks to Sophie Evans for her initial research. Thanks to the all-seeing eyes moderating the Cult of the Curious private Facebook page. The Mod Squad making sure Discord keeps running smooth. And everyone over on the Time Suck subreddit and Bad Magic subreddit. And now let's head on over to this week's Time Sucker updates. Also this episode again recorded by last week's,

excuse me, recorded before last week's episode was released. So, guessing next week's updates might be a bit more intense, but keeping it light this week. Updates, get your Time Sucker updates. First up, murder nerd, Dan Hayes, sending an update to Bojangles at timesuckpodcast.com with the subject line of, You left out some info on Lucky Luciano's release from prison, and then they wrote, Dear Suckmaster, I really enjoyed the Murder Inc. suck that I finished listening to yesterday.

I'm a nerd about Mafia history and you did a great job covering a very complicated topic. Especially loved listening to your mushmouth trying to pronounce all the italian names. Oh my god As well as the great nicknames. I mean one dude was really called the artichoke king I figured dan had to have made that one up. Nope real guy awesome episode. I know I love that nickname, too It's just so not tough We got uh, we got fucking my fucking Monty Knuckles Pavarotti, we got fucking Jimmy Shotgun Lucero, and we got Bobby the Artichoke King. This is weird. However, I was still a little disappointed that you didn't go into

depth about how Charles Lucky Luciano got out of prison. It's a well-known fact that Lucky was working with the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA during World War II, and for his help he was released. The rumor is it started with the sinking of the SS Normandy, which was a French luxury liner being refitted into a US troop transport ship, excuse me, that was going to be named the USS Lafayette. On February 9th, 1942 in New York Harbor, the ship caught fire and sank. The official story was a welding accident made the ship catch fire, but the U.S. government was terrified of sabotage potentially by foreign spies along the East Coast waterfronts. Long story short, government officials got in touch with low-level mafia members who

ran the ports union members. Word got up to Luciano. He agreed to get the mafia to protect the ports for some favors in return. Story also says that when the U.S. was planning to invade Sicily in Operation Husky, Luciano got mafia members who had recently left Sicily just prior to the outbreak of the war to assist the army with maps, where to land on the beaches, and further info. It was said that Luciano even volunteered to go and be a linguist with the army when they invaded. The mafia hated Mussolini because he had executed many mafia members

during his time in charge of Italy. Once the war was over and Luciano had followed through with his promise to help the US military, Thomas Dewey commuted his sense. But Luciano did not know he was going to be deported and he always felt like he'd been double crossed for that. Sorry, not sorry for the length, three out of five stars. Thanks for reviving my mafia history nerddom, Dan Hayes, Prescott Valley, Arizona. Dan, thanks for sharing that additional info.

Yeah, there were so many characters in that episode. I struggled with how much time to dedicate to each one. Lucky he should really be given his own episode. Just so much there. Crazy how powerful he became. And crazy that for all he did, he worked out being able to spend the last years of his life as a free man. Another crazy bit of a Luciano trivia, he died at the airport in Naples

Italy at the age of 64. He was meeting a Hollywood producer, Chobis, about a film based on his life. Supposedly had he lived he would have been arrested by a team of Italian law enforcement officers who had followed him to the airport for drug smuggling charges that could have put him away for the rest of his life. But he had the meeting, guy leaves, has a heart attack, he dies, and you know, never has to go back to prison. And also, dude never quit being a gangster. Now another update about animal acupuncture.

It's a weird sentence, but here we are. New age for a parent, Nick Niber, wrote in with the subject line of animal acupuncture yo Dan animal acupuncture is legit a little over a month ago my poodle was shaking and hunched over weird when I came home from work he's typically full of the energy of a puppy and mountain bikes and skis with me despite being almost 9 penny penny pooper is about almost 9 now too and still like a puppy gotta hope it continues for a while anyway I deduced he was having severe back pain, gave him CBD in his meals which

significantly helped the symptoms, then found an acupuncturist in the area. The chiropractor was booked up, not joking, and got him to see her within a few days. Literally night and day difference. I was able to see the effects of the CBD wear off before his meals, the shaking, the cautiousness and walking, general sadness, etc. We saw the acupuncturist early afternoon and the breakfast before that was the last time I gave him CBD. He was in an entire, like a whole new dog after one treatment. Say what you will about energy medicine but he knows when he's going to the vet and vehemently resists. It was as if we were

walking into a new friend's house when we went to the acupuncturist. He was a bit antsy as we talked but chilled out completely when she got down to palpate him and then needle him. My former wife is an acupuncturist as well and so he's had needles before but never to treat something specific. I'm still a bit in shock now when I think about the drastic change that took place. I like to think that animals are great test subjects for these kinds of medicine as they don't bring any biases with them going into treatment.

They're just there for it. I think a big factor to some of these alternative medicines therapies is the mental, emotional, spiritual states of the patient and practitioner. And maybe that's why some people think they're kooky. I don't know, but I do know that Chinese medicine can be powerful. That's all.

Thanks, Nick. Nick, I love this. You sound like a great guy and that's fucking crazy. And you do bring up such a good point, right? A placebo effect isn't going to work with the dog. They're not going to think as they walk in, they're like, acupuncture, get the fuck out of here with your hippie bullshit. Oh, you put some crystals on me. All right.

They're not also going to think some version of this is the only thing that'll help me. My chakras are off and the aura of this acupuncturist is pure. No, they just show up. I'm not even joking. This message single-handedly has made me a lot more open to try an acupuncture for myself and for the dogs if they need it. Now this is awesome. Thanks for sharing that. Truly praiseable jangles and so glad your poodle is feeling like a puppy again That's so nice. Finally hopelessly lost meat sack hunt Westbrook wrote in with the subject line of University of Cosmic Intelligence episode response And this is kind of a bummer of an email, but I'm gonna read it Hi Dan and team. My name is hunt

I'm writing today to provide some unfortunate news in the most recentI episode, you floated the idea that many people likely got into some weird internet cultures during the pandemic and social isolation times. I am writing to confirm that, sadly, I am one of those victims. You see, in 2020, when everyone else was stuck at home eating snacks, social distancing, playing copious amounts of video games, I may or may not have been included in these groups as well. I learned that my local parks were going to remain open. Lo and behold, this is where my deep spiral began, as I noticed my parks had metal baskets for the sport of disc golf. Once I purchased a few regulation plastic circles to throw at said metal targets, I truly

never returned to my old self. I began playing at least one round a day. If it wasn't on the course, I was watching old professional disc golf coverage. I was ordering a new disc once a week because I was certain that new disc would unlock some hidden talent I had not yet discovered. And even now, five years later, I constantly find myself trying to get more distance on my forehands and increase my putting percentage from inside 33 feet. find myself trying to get more distance on my forehands and increase my putting percentage from inside 33 feet. Do I still watch professional disc golf every weekend? Yeah, I do. I'm addicted. Not only has this addiction put a strain on my personal productivity, it's also put a strain on my marriage. Imagine being my wife having to say,

and it's kind of hard to read, imagine being my wife and having to say, yes, honey, your form looks fine. At least twice a day. I show her my backhand from our living room. Or her devastation when, you know, I brought a portable basket for the backyard because, quote, it's bound to help my putting stroke. Hell, we even took an eight hour road trip to United States disc golf championships as spectators. All the while she remains strong. She sees my connection with nature and trees and things How can one human love outdoors so much?

But failed to show me the affection necessary for a healthy marriage or something like that I don't remember what she was saying because I was trying to determine if I'm generating enough spin for maximum distance on my hyzer flips I'm writing this as a PSA for anyone out there. The cult of disc golf is real. It is damaging. It's dangerous. And for anyone else listening who was sucked deep into a niche hobby or sport during the pandemic,

I can assure you, you are not alone. Your family members who are likely victims of similar torture to what my wife has experienced are not alone. You are seen and your experiences will not be diminished by society. Love the pot, three out of five stars wouldn't change a thing. Sincerely, Hunt, likely in the woods throwing plastic. Hunt, first off, I think it's very brave of you to be this vulnerable with us. Good for you for being able to publicly share something so deeply personal and troubling. I'm not going to lie, I feel bad for your wife. Sounds like you put her through a lot. It's never easy to lose a partner.

And it has to hurt a little extra when you lose them to frisbee golf. Also, I fucking wish I had more time to play frisbee golf. It's so fun. It is so fun. I've only played it a few times. Oh my god. I totally see why people It is so fun. I've only played it a few times. Oh my god. I totally see why people get sucked into it. I really do. And it's funny. I don't care at all about regular golf, but Frisbee golf? Hell yeah. I kind of put it in the same basic category of just like, you know, uh, I don't know, fuck around games like bowling, miniature golf. I love stuff like

that. Also love Ultimate Frisbee. Sounds like you made one of the best pandemic choices possible. Keep flinging, Hunt. You keep flinging your fucking heart out. You follow your bliss. Hail Nimrod. Thanks Time Suckers. I needed that. We all did. Well, thank you for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast.

Please rate and review this show if you haven't already. Unless you hate it, then just, you know, I don't know, just fucking sneak podcast. Please rate and review this show if you haven't already, unless you hate it, then just you know I don't know just fucking sneak out. Please thank you. Please don't run over strangers this week. Don't smash them in the head while they're sleeping. Don't stab them. Don't bash them with an axe. Don't strangle and rape them. Don't steal their stuff. Don't shoot on their stuff. Don't shoot them. Just you know, just enjoy your summer. Keep on sucking. Hey, hey, um, for, hey, just for a second, now that we're alone.

Have you ever shit on something just to fuck with somebody else, like their bed or like their doorstep, like on top of their car? Have you ever shit into the water in the back of their toilet instead of in the bowl so they just can't find it for a while? Have you ever been some like a fecal terrorist? If you have, please send in an email sharing details of your literally dirty deeds to Bojangles at TimeSuckPodcast.com

Do it. Ask to remain anonymous. Share your shit. It's probably the best way to redeem yourself, you dirty little piggy.