Eric Edgar Cooke

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considered as another homicide and was still pretty organized because of how little there was for evidence. His victim selection was anybody really; he would kill anyone he saw when he walked into random houses hoping the victim was sleeping. He always wanted to either surprise the victim or kill them when they weren’t paying attention. His motivation was to feel like he was in power it seemed and wanted people to be scared. The crime scene dynamics were that he usually killed or attacked people with a gun as towards the end of his killings. He always tried to shoot the victims in the head because he thought it would be an instant death.

Criminal Profile

Cooke was an in his lower thirties because of his ability to get away quickly. He had physical problems to his face that could have lead him to go on this murderous rampage. He was clean-shaven and had an average amount of black or brown hair. He must have worked during the day or was busy doing something else because all his murders were during the night. He was known as a petty theft, and stole people’s cars during the night when he committed the murders and brought those vehicles but to the house it belonged to. He already had a criminal record when he burned down a church when he was fourteen-years-old. He never looked back at his crimes even though he remembered them vividly when he was caught.

Investigation

Throughout the investigation, they had no idea who was committing the crime. They had undercover police officers roam the streets of Perth in hoping to catch the criminal. When more murders had taken place they then began to take every man that was over the age of twelve’s fingerprints were taken in order to point out who the suspect was. They received over 30,000 people and still no match. The police also looked for people who owned the same .22 rifle and test fired them to see if it matched the one that was used at the crime scene. When there was still no match they basically waiting for another crime to happen to see if there would be new evidence.

Apprehension

When a couple was walking around bushes in open land, a gun was found that matched the murder of Shirley. The ballistic tests matched with what was found at the scene of Shirley’s murder. They still did not know who the murder was but, the returned the rifle back to the scene where they found it and tied a string around it and had police stand by for when Cooke would come pick it up. Cooke ended up coming back for the rifle seventeen days after and got arrested right on the spot. When he was arrested he confessed to twenty-two violent crimes and many other petty thefts. He had said he committed over two hundred other crimes such as car theft, burglary, breaking and entering, and arson. He also showed where he dropped the other rifle over the bridge into the nearby water source. He told information on every crime he ever committed and it took police over three weeks to write out all the crimes. The police then ending up stopping all the investigations involving Cooke and sent him onto death row. He was also the last known man to be hung in Australia on October 26, 1964 at the age of thirty-three. At the date of execution, he also stated that he committed two other murders that the police already had apprehended the suspects. The two men that were convicted for those murders ended up exculpating those men.