Broken Lives

Broken Lives by Estelle Blackburn chronicles the chilling story of Eric Edgar Cooke, the last man to be executed in Western Australia. Between 1958 and his capture in September 1963, Cooke committed a series of 22 murders and attempted murders that transformed Perth from a friendly big country town into a city overshadowed by suspicion and fear.

Cooke's dangerous fantasies and delusions led him to perpetrate a series of heinous crimes, including theft, deliberate hit-and-runs, and vicious attacks on women in their beds. His terrifying spree included murder through shooting, stabbing, and strangling. The chaos and devastation left in his wake resulted in the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of two innocent men.

Journalist Estelle Blackburn embarked on a six-year-long investigation, driven by a commitment to uncover the truth. Broken Lives is the award-winning, compelling, and thought-provoking result of Blackburn's relentless search. In this book, Blackburn illuminates the life of Cooke, a social misfit with a sinister urge to harm others, and shares the narratives of the many lives he impacted.

The book also critically examines the police investigation and uncovers the inner workings of the judicial system of that era. As part of her investigations, Blackburn presented new evidence in Broken Lives, leading to ground-breaking legal outcomes. Her work paved the way for new appeals before Western Australia's Court of Criminal Appeal for John Button and Darryl Beamish, resulting in Button's exoneration of manslaughter in 2002. The updated edition reveals that Beamish was also exonerated of wilful murder in 2005.