Latest / Real Crime with Adam Shand / Five Years for a Crime He Didn’t Commit | John Button

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Five Years for a Crime He Didn’t Commit | John Button · Real Crime with Adam Shand

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Approache production.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: This episode contains discussion of suicide and self harm.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Real Crime with Adam Shand. I'm your host
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Adam Shand. In nineteen sixty three, perthman John Button was
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: wrongly convicted of the killing of his girlfriend, Rosemary Anderson.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: In Perth Today, a youth was arrested and charged with
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: wilfully murdering a young girl. On the night Rosemary died,
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: she and Button were playing cards when they had an argument,
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Andison stormed out and Button later found her lying critically
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: injured by the side of the road. He drove her
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: to a doctor's surgery, but she later died.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: From her injuries.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Under intense pressure from police, which included physical assault, John
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Button confessed to the hit and run murder. He was
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: eventually convicted of manslaughter and spent the next five years
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: in prison. Despite maintaining his innocence and protesting his conviction
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: for years, he was released in December nineteen sixty seven.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Throughout his incarceration, police had a confession from a serial killer,
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Eric Edgar Cook, that he killed Anderson.
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: Admissions from serial killer Eric Edgar Cook were recorded but ignored.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: However, he was not taken seriously. Cook confessed numerous times
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: to murdering Rosemary Anderson, including a gallow's confession just fifteen
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: minutes before being executed on the twenty sixth of October
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: nineteen sixty four.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: He revealed the dark power inside his head that pushed
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: him to unspeakable acts.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: John spent the next three decades living with the stain
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: of his wrongful conviction and trying to prove his innocence.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: In two thousand and two, after.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: A public campaign by a journalist Estelle Blackburn, the Court
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: of Criminal Appeal quashed Button's conviction, rely on fresh evidence
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: that included testimony from vehicle crash experts.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: The Cook was most likely the culprit.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: The Western Australian Government has approved a four hundred and
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: sixty thousand dollars ex gratia payment to John Button in
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: recognition of the serious injustice he suffered.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Now eighty one, John Button has received only poultry compensation
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: for his ordeal and has dedicated himself to helping others
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: wrongly convicted. And it's my pleasure to welcome John Button
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: to the Real Crime Studio. Good afternoon, John, Oh, good afternoon, Adam.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Thanks for your time today. What an amazing story. It's
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: like something out of a film, except you were living it. Well,
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: that's feel like, yes it is. What else can you say?
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: It's amazing. It could have done two things. It could
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: have sent me off to an early grave of it
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: could have made me as a man, So I decided
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: to take the latter and fight it until I succeed. Yeah,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: and you've dedicated yourself to helping others rather than dwelling
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: on the injury that was done to you. How much
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: compensation have you been paid for this wrongful conviction?
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: Well, the government paid me four hundred thousand plus sixty
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: thousand for expenses. But the problem with that was, even
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: though the WA government wanted it to give me a
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: good life for the next twenty years after receiving it,
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: the federal government, through Center Link, deemed any money that
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: I drew out that they'd reduced our pension, my wife
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: and my age pension.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: So every time we.
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: Drew one thousand dollars out of the bank, they deducted
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: eight hundred dollars a month off our pension. So our
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: only option was to try and use up all the
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: money as quickly as possible on not actually necessary things,
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: but on whatever we could to get rid of it,
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: whilst we would have lost the lot right.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: I mean when you look at payments being made to
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: other people who were wrongly convicted, like Lindy Chamberlain, she
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: was paid one point two million in the early nineties.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Kathleen Folbig in New South Wales, it was accused of
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: killing her children wrongly and then released, she was paid
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: two million, and that's been called a travesty. So really,
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: you capt five years and a highly qualified payment was
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: all you got.
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: It was I had the assurance for Attorney General then
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: Jim McGinty when he told me, he said, John, this,
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: this state owes you in excess of fifteen million dollars
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: to what they've done to you, but you're not going
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: to get it. So I had to be happy we've
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: got a head because there is no law by which
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: you can claim anything. They do not have to give
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: you anything whatsoever. They don't even have to give you
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: an apology. The letter that comes with the payment, the
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: excursive payment, says it's only symbolic in nature and it
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: does not constitute any form of wrongdoing on their behalf.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: So even after my johnovation, my son to the Commissioner
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: of Police and said, now that my father's been fully exonomated,
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: well at least apologize. And they wrote back and said,
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: we've got nothing to apologize for.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: Even though they had Cook's confession in their keeping four
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: years and let you stay in prison all that time.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, surely there's a trauma that goes with that
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: that it's hard to recover from.
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: Well you think so, and twenty years ago I would
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: absolutely agree with you. But as I said, I decided
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: to find a way out of it. I was not
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: going to let it beat me. In fact, this started
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: back in Femanal Prison. I used to look out of
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: my cell each night across over the other side of
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: the wall Femanal Prison wall, there was.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: A monument up on a hill with a light on it.
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: They used to look at that every night and say,
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: one day, I'm going to stand there and look back
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: and say I beat you. And I did the first
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: part I got out, So I've had that attitude. I
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: was never going to let them win. But more than that,
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: I wasn't going to allow myself to be angry or upset.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: I'd lost enough time as it was.
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: I was not going to lose another minute of my
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: life to anger or anything negative. So even though I
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: fight and keep fighting, I do so with a happy heart.
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: I refuse to allow it to draw me down.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: It's fantastic When people look at these stories that begin
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: with a forced confession, they find it hard to understand
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: or even believe that someone will confess to a crime
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: they haven't done.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Take us back to that.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Night and the circumstances which led to you to make
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: that decision.
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: Well, I suppose it really starts with me finding those
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: from his body on the edge of the road. It
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: had that argument, a simple little argument was nothing. She'd
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: just got up said okay, I'm going home. She didn't
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: mention the sund bad. You can come down and see
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: me tomorrow. So it wasn't sort of it's over. But
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: I still didn't want to walk in home in the dark.
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: So when I caught up with her, well, when I
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: found her, she was lying on the side of the road,
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: about four meters off the edge of the road. She
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: had a cut above a right eye that was bleeding profusely.
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: She was unconscious. I picked her up, and from that
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: moment I thought, oh God, don't let anything happen. To you,
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: you know, please wake up. So that was my whole thought.
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: It was about her. I rushed off to the doctor's surgery.
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: I remember doing about eighty five miles an hour to
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: get there as fast as I could, and then the
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: doctor called an ambulance. She was taken off. I waited
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: for the police. The police came down. Now from that moment,
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: the police walked past my car and the front of
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: my car was damaged. The grill was damaged. They saw
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: what appeared to be spots of blood on the bonnet.
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: When they said what happened, I said, we had an argument. Well,
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: that detects it. That solved the whole case into five seconds.
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: The problem was the damage to the front of my car.
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: I'd run into another vehicle a month earlier, and all
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: that damage was through that. The blood on the car
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: would eye when I picked raise me up, had blood
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: all over me, and I put blood on the car.
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: And yes, we had the argument, but I did what
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: I'd always been brought up to do. I've got to
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: obey the authorities and work with them, do whatever I
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: could to help them. So I went back to the
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: station with them. On the way, we stopped off at
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: where I found her. I pointed out where she was
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: laying on the road with the blood, and I pointed
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: out to them the pool of blood in the sand
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: about four meters off the edge of the road. So
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: we went back to the station. They wrote out a
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: very quick, simple statement. We had the argument. I found.
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: He took it to the doctor's surgery, and I remember
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: the detective looking at it and putting it down, said
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: we don't want that, we want a confession. Why did
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: you do it? It was that point I thought, my god,
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: what is this? I never known place like this? Always friends,
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: So you asked the time from all directions from I
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: couldn't understand it. I just turned nineteen on that day.
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: I was beginning to panic and worry, and as well
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: as buying about raise mey, wanting to get away to
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: see her. I was very confused. They kept throwing these
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: questions at me for hours. So why did you do it?
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: Must have been you look at the damage of the car,
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: blood on the car of coursed it with you.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Did you mean to knock it down?
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: And after a few hours of this I suddenly felt
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: a couple of sharp punches. I can't remember just much
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: about that. I do remember being under the table and
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: they called me out and put me back in the chair,
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: and not been a very brave person, I thought, how
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: can I get out of this? I want this to stop.
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: And I said very quickly, how's raised me? And I said, oh,
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: she's dead. She died a couple of hours ago. Well,
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: at that point my world collapse. We planned to get
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: married on the eighteenth birthday, which worked all our lives out,
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: everything was set furtherantastic future, and all of a sudden,
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: with those few words, my life had gone. I didn't care.
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: I just wanted to get out of there. And I said, oh, right,
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: whatever you like. I don't care. Just right, I'll sign
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: whatever you want me to sign. So they wrote out
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: of confession, I turn humorous now. But when I wroted out,
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: they said to me, and you were doing forty five
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: miles an hour, and I stopped there because the speed
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: limits thirty five and I didn't want to recard good speeding,
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: so I asked them if they could offer that to
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: thirty five. I know it's that humorous now, but at
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: the time it was important. Well, it shows your frame
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: of mind at that moment. You were confused and the.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Gravity of the situation is not necessarily landing with you.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: It isn't.
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: My whole thought was that they could not do anything
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: if I hadn't committed the time, A confession meant nothing
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: because so it's not guilty, I would not be convicted.
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: So a confession got me out of there and it
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: didn't worry me. So they wrote out the confession.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: I signed it.
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: They charged me with wilfel murder. But this is what
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: the problem started at that point. To see, after charge
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: with will for murder, they got their traffic examiner, Trevor Condrean,
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: a young policeman. He went down examined my car and
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: after two hours he came back to them and he
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: said this car hadn't hit anybody. And as Trevor told
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: me forty years later, when he told them that, they
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: turned under him and said, Trevor, if you want a
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: job here Monday morning, you better say it has because
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: we've got the chat his confess.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: So admitually he didn't say in court that my car
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: hadn't hit anyone, but he didn't either say that it had,
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: so it just gave it basically poured and.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: That should have given you the benefit of the doubt. Well,
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: that's right, but he.
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: Was told by the prosecution that he wasn't qualified to
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: say anything in courts, which so he never. But after
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: that the police must have read my confession again, part
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: of the confession that they wrote out, and that they
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: voted all that. I just signed it, they said, and
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: she came up on the bondot of the car, said yes,
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: and she rolled off onto the edge of the road,
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: level with the front door. And these are the exact words.
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: And I said yes. The problem was and they realized
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: after they charged me, was the pool of blood in
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: the sand was four meters from the edge of the road. Ah,
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: they had a problem with the confession. By ten o'clock
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: that morning, when it was light, which light, they sent
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: the photographer town to take a photo of the blood.
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: The photograph of the blood, the police photograph for the blood,
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: showed it six inches away from the edge of the road.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: How did it get there?
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: However, two days later seven witnesses turned up and said,
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: we saw him three or four meters from the edge
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: of the road, and he walked back to the car
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: with raise me. So to get round that problem, they
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: then rote to the clown prosecutor with a hand up
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: brief and said, this is what we want you to
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: tell the jury if this problem with the blood arises.
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: He picture up from the edge of the road where
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: his confessioncy she was. He was carrying it to the
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: railroad line. Put him on the railroad fact for training
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: to run over her. When he gets three or four
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: minutes from the each of the void, all the witnesses
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: turn up. He turns around and walks back to the car.
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: That was their explanation for that. Now there was one
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: witness that was actually got there before I got there,
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: The first witness on the scene. He saw versus body,
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: but he drove up, did a U turn and came back,
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: and by then I just arrived and he saw me
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: get out of the car, run over to a pick
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: up and bring him back to the car. He sat
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: in it with a clam witness. But he sat in
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: court the whole tile, but was never called to give evidence.
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: And we never knew you were being comprehensively fitted up
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: with this. They were finding evidence to fit their case.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Theory.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: The only suspect.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: Let's go with this, And of course the stakes are
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: really high willful murder.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Back in those days carried the death penalty.
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: It did ten members of the jury when they walk
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: out the jewelry room, I heard later wanted to hang me.
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: Let's hang him. Two members. David was one chair pick.
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: He was a penet beaker, and he knew by the
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: damage of the car. He said, there's this car is anyone?
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: And the other woman a young woman. He agreed with him,
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: and it was only those two that made the others
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: bring the charge back to man's daughter.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: What's it like?
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, I believe there was a dramatic moment where
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: your counsel came into your cell and basically hoisted you
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: up by your neck and said, listen, John, this is serious.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: You could get hung for this. Did you do it
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: or did you not?
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: Well, the thing was he asked me why did I
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: sign the confession and said they've got no evidence whatsoever,
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: only your confession. Why did you sign it? And the
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: moment I said, well, that started beating me up. He
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: stopped me, and I only remember he started with I
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: didn't understand the words of his usion. He said, as
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: an officer of the court, that free me a bit.
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: I've been an officer of the court. But then he
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: went on say, I must at all times and struct
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: you to be truthful and honest. He said, However, John,
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: people these days, in this even nineteen sixties three will
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: never believe that the police do things like that. And
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: if you tried to tell them they did that, they're
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: immediately going to call you a liar. And if you're
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: lying about that, it means you're lying about everything, and
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: they'll hang you.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: He said.
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: I won't ask you in court what happened. I won't
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: force you in that situation, but if you are asked,
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: I think very carefully before speaking. Of course, the prosecution
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: did ask and I had to say no. They just
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: put me under duress. I just could not. And again
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: with blood, I could not mention that the blood had
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: been moved because that would be calling them liars, and
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: I could hang.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: You'd have to wonder who this lawyer's working for. It's
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: not you. Well, it was being honest.
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: I just imagine if I'd said the police to try
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: to beat me up, they wouldn't have believed me. And
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: then about the blood, if they told the jewelry that
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: I was I picked for up to put take her
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: out down to the railroad line, put on the railroad track.
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: They certainly would have hanged me. So it's just as
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: well I didn't speak out at least, I'm alike.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Well, that's interesting, isn't it?
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: Because the truth was going to hang you, which is
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: a bizarre situation. What does that say about Perth in
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: nineteen sixty three and the relationships between the legal profession.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: And police and the establishment, if you like, exactly the
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: same as that says today?
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: Nothing has to They've brought in a few safeguards, one
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: with video interviews, but every now and again you'll have
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: a pleaseman get up and they say, oh, we found
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: out afterwards that the video wasn't working, and they'll be
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: told naughty, naughty, don't do it again. So whatever we
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: put in place to try and solve the problems, they
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: managed to side step them.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: So nothing changed.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: But the most important piece of evidence came from Eric
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: Edgar Cook, the serial killer, who had also confessed. At
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: what point did you learn that Cook said that he'd
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: done it?
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: Well, it was about six months after I'd been sentenced,
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: So I was in prison and I heard it over
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: the news and I really thought, Wow, I'd better forget
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: me things together.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: They're coming up in five minutes the door let me out.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: That's right. So I did think that, but it didn't happen.
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: But what I was to find out was that from
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: the moment he got picked up, he said, okay, you've
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: got me. Now I'll confess that all the times I've
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: committed and I think it was about one hundred and
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: ninety eight, including rapes and murders and assaults and everything,
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: also including seven other girls who had run down with
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: cars and identical situations over the last five years. So
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: it was his modus operendi. But nobody wanted well, they
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: couldn't believe him. My lawyer Ken Hatfield back in sixty
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: three said to the PENMI then David Brand afterwards was convicted.
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: He said, you know, this young boy's innocent, and the
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: reply was, oh, yeah, we all know he's innocent, but
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: it would be political suicide to let him out.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: So you're fighting a system you can't.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: You really were, and to make matters worse for you personally,
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: Rosemarie Anderson's family believed you did it.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Well. The police went and told them what I'd done.
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: Now to the police know that to get an accused
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: offside with the jury is to throw in something sexual
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: that really makes women on the jury or hate their cure.
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: And so what they said that we're playing cards and
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: I tried to get fresh with her and I touched
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: her things like that.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: This went to the family.
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: Well, hell, a parent, if you hear from the police
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: who never lie, this person had done this to your daughter,
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: I can quite understand why they hated me so Unfortunately
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: it burned their lives, their whole lives. The agonized over this.
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: They never got over it until we actually had a
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: meeting together once in two thousand and two. We got
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: together and on the ABC we had a meeting and
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: they conceded then that Akay will accept that you didn't
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: run it down. But her mother could not get past
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: the point saying, Okay, John, you never run it down,
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: but you took her out that night and you never
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: bought her home, So you're justice guilty. So it saddens
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: me to think that not only of those we died,
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: but they died as well to all this.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: And I can see how that would weigh on your conscience.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: You're a good man, you had no criminal background. You
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: know this would have weighed on your conscience that and
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: you know, pardon me for saying it, But strictly speaking
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: that was true. You hadn't brought her home, and this
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: had happened, And I admit that I am guilty of
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: that absolutely, but not her murder. And you spent five years.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: You get out in December nineteen sixty seven. Life looking
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: like for you then.
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: It's strange for have k your mind works. There's a
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: famous pupe. Well it isn't the famous poem because nobody
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: knows that, but there's so fantastic lines in it. It's
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: a letter to a thene of in prison, and the
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: two lines, the first two lines of the last verse
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: over stone walls do not a prison, make nor iron
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: bars a cage. And it's not the same walls the
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: iron bars that locked doors. The prison is in your mind,
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: and your mind can do strange things, and your mind
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: torments you and drives you crazy. So when I got out,
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: I really thought I was going to come out five
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: minutes after I went in, I'd go straight back to
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: all my friends, which that's out doing all the things
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: we used to do. Life would just pick up a
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: few minutes after it finished. And it took me months
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: and months to accept that that was never going to happen.
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: I could not accept that my life gone. Those year,
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: those five years of my youth had gone. I couldn't
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: get them back. I couldn't accept it. I just refused
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: to accept it for years. And that's being crazed, depressions,
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: in hospital, under psychiatric care, at everything, to the point
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: that I desperately wanted to live, but I didn't know
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: how to.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: I couldn't find a way out of this.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: You were trapped in this kind of prison of the mind,
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: as you say, and were there times where you might
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: have been contemplated self harm?
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: I contemplated a lot of times trying to avoid itself
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: self harm. I didn't want to, but I couldn't see
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: any other way out of it. And it was only
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: a turn of events I Helen, my wife, asked that
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: if she could go down and spend a weekend with
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: her relatives down south on a farm and leave me
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: at home on my own, just for a couple of nights.
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: So that was on the Friday night, and I got
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: so upset. On the Friday night I came to the
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: first of two brilliant ideas that men can have. Actually,
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: the first billion idea is when you're in pain, mental pain,
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: you know, and depression that when you're asleep you feel nothing.
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: Problem solved, take a few sleeping tablets to go to sleep.
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: So I took half a dozen. Got a bit worried
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: than because I mean taking antidubessants all day, and I
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: rang up at the hospital. I said, listen that I
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: was too scared to save what I'd done. But I said,
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: I've got some sleeping tablets here, and it says take
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: six at night. I think, I said, what do you
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: want to kill yourself?
• 22:39
  Speaker 5: Now?
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: I had a problem, and that's when I came up
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: with my second greatest idea of my whole life was.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: If you don't want to sleep, hop in the car.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: I go for a drive with the window down. That
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: was a candle.
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: I got about fifty miles out of per the other
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: side of the Yantia, flying along a country baden almost ninety,
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: fell asleep at the wheel, hit a white post, wake up,
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: fell asleep a second time, hit another white poke, slow learner,
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: kept driving, fell asleep a third time. But when I
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: wake up this time, my body's shaking, and I went
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: to open my eyes. I'm flying over a freshly plowed
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: paddock about eighty ninety k is an hour, and all
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: I heard in my head was something said turn left,
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: and I did and I came meetiately to an embankment.
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: I shot up this bank. When finished up on the road,
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: frote down a bit, pulled off, fell asleep in the
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: car the next day, set deep aut lunchtime. When I
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: wake up, the car was covered in dirt, white paint
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: on the bumpers, and I thought, John, you've got to
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: make a decision here. You've got to change your life
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: or you're not going to live any longer.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: This was just a warning. So it was that point
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: I had to change.
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: So that's when I started thinking about I've really got
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: to do something and look at this whole life differently.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because the exoneration became a driving force for you.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: By the late nineties, you'd written your own story. When
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: you were writing it, as we've said, Rosemary's family didn't
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: believe that you were the killer, and I guess a
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: lot of people in Perth, it's a small town, would
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: have felt the same way. Yes, really up against it
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: at this point, and so you put pen to paper.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: How therapeutic and cathartic was.
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: That I would recommend it to anyone that has problems,
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: and they're internalizing it all the time, externalize it, get
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: it out of you, put it on paper, look at
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: it and it is it's fantastic. You can look at
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: it poply, objectively. And I did, and I wrote and
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: vote for years, seven eight, nine years. I wrote everything
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: down and books and that everything I could think of.
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: I finally finished ninety one almost take this book sort
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: of thing just about fish. I really wanted a final
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: chapter to finish it off with. Was this time my
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: daughter came. She's fifteen, and she had had an invitation
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: to the Bible Society.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: And you're just a general meeting the Bible Society.
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: And we told her again, nasty parents, would you ever
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: to tell someone to go to an AGM?
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: But then she said, will you come with me?
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: Oh?
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: No, that we did. It was going to be a meeting.
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: There was going to be a guest speaker there, and
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: we went along and after the meeting, I thought, I'll
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: leave before the guest speaker gets up, because we've had
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: enough at this. We'll go home. And we're halfway out
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: the chair and Helen pulls me back and says, John,
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: you know this man? And I looked at the invitation again,
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: I thought, of course I know this man. I couldn't
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: understand why I hadn't realized that I hadn't known him.
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: So listen to the speech. The first there at the
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: bottom of the stage when he stepped down and I said,
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: mister Wilson, Yes, sir, would I'll may be correcting saying
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: Crown Prosecutor nineteen sixty three said you would. I said,
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: we've met before, Sir. He said that we have your name,
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: he said, he said, oh, John, I'm sorry, how are you?
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: Here was the man that, as a young man had
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: almost fallen to the floor and begged the jury to
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: hang me. But here was the man that I loved
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: like a brother. I wanted to talk to him. I
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: wanted to tell him that I now I had a
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: wonderful life, family, things were just so great, and I
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: couldn't go as far as thanking him for what he did,
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: but I wanted him to know that he was part
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: of what I was today.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: So we met up.
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: siRNA Wilson came to our place to for afternoon tea.
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: We did all that, and that year my son was
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: about to have a degree from Murder University science degree
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: and of course, Sahonda Wilson as the vice chancellor, he's
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: the one that hands out the degrees on stage. When
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: my son lined up with a hundred other people, finding
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: marched up to him instead of just shaking hands taking
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: the degree of walking off, Sorondal stopped him and spoke
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: to him for two to three minutes and finished up saying,
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: will you ask your parents and yourself if you will
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: be my guests upstairs for supper after this?
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Now we didn't just do that once.
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: Two years later, the same thing happened again when my
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: son God has led me degree, and again we were
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: invited as his guests, which I thought was interesting.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, And I'm sure you're far too well mannered to
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: probably ask this, but I think i'd be asking him, Well,
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: thanks for the invitation, but I've got a question for you.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: I know you're doing a job there when you're begging
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: the jury to hang me, but did you really think
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: I did it? And what about the confession from Cook?
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: I know it's but you know we I did ask
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: him once, did he believe in the end justifies the means?
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: And he said absolutely not. But everybody believes in that.
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: If you believe in something and you really what no
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: have somewhere to get to. You're justified that it doesn't
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: of what you do.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: I don't blame him for what we all do it
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: he just I think the saddest thing is there's two
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: menut in my life that I actually admire.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: One is Trevor Condon, the traffic inspector, even.
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: Though it was forty years later, almost forty years later,
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: he tried on my shoulder when he asked him if
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: he could appear at my appeal in my defense and
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: told the truth. In tears, he said, John, if I'd
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: only told the whole truth at your trial, you would
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: never gone to jail. How can you forgive me? And
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: I said, Trevor, I don't have tea. You've just done
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: it now for yourself. It was always there for you
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: to do. I admire him because here was a man
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: that came forward and said, I'm sorry, I got it wrong,
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: let me put it right.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: The other person was Eric Cook.
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: Eric Cook on the gallows again basically said John, I
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: got it wrong, let me put it right.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: When he took.
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: The Bible out of the hands of the minister at
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: the gallows and he said, as God is my witness.
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: I'm guilty of the murder of Roseby Anderson. He was
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: a man that he was saying to me, John, I
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: got it wrong. I'm trying to put it right. The
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: last thing in his mind, on his everything, not his wife,
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: his children, was putting this wrong. Right. I admire these
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: two men because what other person, politician, police commissioner, has
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: ever done that for anyone, no one. It's possibly the
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: hardest thing in the world to do. So I'm sorry
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: that Sir Ronald couldn't do that. If you read his book,
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: his memoirs, he has asked that question, do you think
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: John Button was guilty? And even though he admitted to me,
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry, and he made me his guests and everything
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: in his book, he still couldn't think himself to tell
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: his reader, his public that it made a mistake.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: He said in his book.
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: Yes, he's good, and I feel sorry that he couldn't
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: do what these other two men were able to do.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: Yes, you were sacrificed on the al of expediency. The
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: court wanted to move on, But the Bible says that
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: God moves in mysterious ways, and it's clear that faith
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: was a really important element for you to not be
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: mired in bitterness and ruin the rest of your life.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is.
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: You know, the biggest word in the Bible forgiveness. I
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: don't know whether you know this, the word forgiveness. I mean,
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: it's used a lot in the New Testament, which is
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: written in Greek, and the Greek word for forgiveness.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: What it means forgiveness.
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: A producer is to loose, to let go of, to
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: get rid of, to cast off, to divorce from, separate from.
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: And it's not about anger, bitterness, negativity. So when you
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: say I forgive, you don't have to put a name
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: at the end of that is a full sentence.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I forgive. It's about you.
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: Everyone's I pardon Aka, I pardon John, Jill, Jack, whatever,
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: But I.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: Forgive it totally do we do.
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: And you've got to get rid of that anger, that business,
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: because it only destroys you everybody else. And like I said,
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: I've lost enough time without losing it one more minute.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: So I refuse to be angry or bitter or anything.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: I won't do that.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: And you made that amazing journey of forgiveness. You did
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: marry at a family and so forth. And I guess
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: some people would say that's enough, and you can move
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: on quietly and not make any more noise. But then
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: Estelle Blackburn comes along. How did she enter your life?
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: Well after I wrote my little book and I had
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: this final chapter with Sir Odor Wilson, I thought, that's
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: the chapter.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: I've finished my little book. Off.
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: I sent it to the publishers, and they sent it
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: back about January ninety two. If the first paragraph had
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: all these attributes, better than most wonderful job.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: And I got finished with the word but.
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, don't take any notice of what we've said. What
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: I really meant to say is John, there's so many
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: questions he round I haven't answered. The reader's going to
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: be baffled to know why what's going on? Can you
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: take it back, rewrite it if you want to Enderbot,
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: we'll have another look. And I WoT in my office
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: and I stopped. I've been writing for seven eight nine years.
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: Everything I knew was in that book. I knew nothing else.
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: I didn't know the answers. But I raised my hands
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: up in the air. I said, God, if you want
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: this book written, you better do something. And the phone
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: made I will have read. I looked up and said God,
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: that was good.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: But the apologizice. But the phone call was from my brother.
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: I hadn't seen my brother for years, and he rang
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: me up and he said, John, did you say years
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: ago you were writing a book. I said yeah, Why
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: he said, well, I was out dancing with a young
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: woman last night and I told her about your case
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: and she'd like to come and see you. So a
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: week I do for the style blackburn't And now she's
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: the premiest PESS secretary. She's an investigative journalist. If you
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: know it's still she has access. She she's a wonderful person.
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: Everybody loves her and if she wants something, they would
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: gladly let her habit. The police a few years after
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: this put an order out and that we're never ever
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: going to let anybody into our police file.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: The in they passed the law.
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: Over here banning anybody from talking to jury members about
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: a child. There's a law nowt because as still so,
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: she saw what I'd written, said John, I want to
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: write this book. But then she said, John, I can't
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: write a book about your innocence because no one's going
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: to believe a guilty person trying to say is innocent.
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: They'll laugh, I got to write a book that Prouce
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: ever Cook is guilty first, then they'll believe in your innocence.
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: And as you see read the book, she absolutely did.
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: He has pooved beyond doubt that he was guilty. I mean,
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: even just a small little thing. Cook wrote to his lawyer,
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: worried that I might take my anger out on his
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: family because him having killed Rosebary. If you think about that,
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: he wouldn't do that if I was guilty, would he?
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: If I were guilty, I'll be thanking him for trying
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: to get me out of jail. For him to write
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: to a concerned that I might take just a little
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: thing that proves he's guilty.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: He told them me that.
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: He then rows me down in the car, then pressed
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: his car into a tree in King's Park, which has
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: about three million trees in King's Park. So the police saying, right,
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: hop in the car, take us to the tree is
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: spashed into, and he did.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: But they still wouldn't believe him.
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: Where this car was passed into it was only a
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: couple of kilometers away from Roseby was locked down and
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: about the same time half an hour later, but they
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: still wouldn't believe him. Even though he'd run down seven
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: other girls in exactly the same way. They still wouldn't
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: believe him. So they say, fighting a system, not fight
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: fighting the truth.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: Correct, And you had a Stell, but you also had
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: a very good barrister. Tom Percy QC was then Casey.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: These days it's a tough little nugget. Yes, And I
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: don't think he was so concerned about going up against
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: the system, shall we say? I think he's got a
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: very forthright manner about him. But I think he was
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: just the right advocate for.
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: You, Absolutely brilliant man him and Is offsided Jonathan Davies
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: together and they took it on to Bono as Stelle.
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: I believe the story was that Aestell got in touch
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: with Tom and said, Tom, I've got a case here
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: that's book worth a million dollars.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: Says, I mean, I'll do it.
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: What do you want me to do? He said, does
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: want patch? We want you to do it for nothing.
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: He stopped, but he did read the book and then
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: he came back and said, yes, I want to do
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: this case. The Turkists will do this case for nothing.
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: I mean a brilliant team. They worked together, the whole
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: team of it very involved and very This has a
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: little side issue. Tom and Josh have their own little band,
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: the Gang of Tea, which called as They've play in
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: pubs are Irish pubs, and he even wrote a song.
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: We've got to take another look at Eric Cook. I
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: think Tom's a bass player in that band. And I
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: think I mean he actually grew up in a pub
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: in the outback. I think his family was from the bushes,
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: cal Gooley exactly. So he was a knock about character
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: and he understood he wasn't a silver spoon boy. And
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: I think he understood still does injustice. What do you
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: think was the tipping point in the appeal that tipped
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: the scales towards your innocence? Well, I've got to bring
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: in another cavicter of that, Christian from the post. Cbo Posy,
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: the owner and editor of sacopag Bett saw this. He
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: wanted to get involved, but he realized that all the
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: evidence against Eeric Cook wasn't fresh evidence. We could not
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: get it in to court on all the evidence still
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: brought up. We needed fresh evidence, and fresh evidence is
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: evidence that's never been brought up before, has never even
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: been known of before, or able to be brought up,
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: so it's a pretty high bar. So he went around
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: the world seeking the world leading person on pedestrian versus
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: vehicle accidents. Back in the sixties, there was no such
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: thing as a science.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Said that.
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: Judge Negas in my case told the jury that, oh,
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: members's jury, we all know that a car hit somebody.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Anything could happen, from a little scratch to a write off.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: So there was no science to it.
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: But in the nineteen eighties of America they produced a
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: science of cars hitting pedestrians.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: And it's repeatable.
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: A particular car hidden an a particular person will always
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: produce a particular result. And Brett went around the world
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: and he found Rusty hate over them Texas America, who
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: was the world leading authority on him, and Brett paid
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: tens of thousands of dollars out of his own pocket
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: to bring him over with a dummy to set up
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: tests in the Claremont show Grounds and it all filmed, documented,
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: and then for Rusty to come back at the appeal
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: with the facts. And Rusty pointed out exactly the facts.
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: They could not have happened because if a Simka had
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: hit Roseby, this is the damage that would have happened.
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: The whole bonnet would have been caved in. Then the
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: wouldn't have been a mark on the grill, which is
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: totally different to my car. But when he did the
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: crash test with the holden, the same holden as Eric
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: stole and hit it with the damage to that car
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: was exactly what happened in the test. And the big
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: point was Eric Cook in the statement said Roseby came
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: up on the bonnet, came under the windshield sunbiser, got
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: caught there for a second and then then was released.
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: And the police said, well, that's a lie because if
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: he'd gone under them and got caught, it would have
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: the sun visor off. In the test, that's exactly what happens.
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: You went under the sun visor and was released, and
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: the sun visor wasn't damaged and it flipped back into
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: place without any damage. So it's just pretty beyond doubt
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: that Eric was killing the truth.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: Amazing, amazing, and so that was incredibly good evidence and
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: tremendous work on your behalf.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: The conviction is quashed. That moment. Was it all you
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: dreamt of thought about? Well? It was.
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: It was bittersweet, I mean, but our whole lives, forty
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: years of our lives been working towards this one point.
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: And if I go back to an incident where it
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: also had it in that court room when the jury
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: returned with their verdict, and you know how it goes
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: the members of the jury. Have you reached a verdict?
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: Where have you honor? Say you it's John Button guilty
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: or not guilty? Not guilty of honor? Oh my god,
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: I'm out of it. I'm going home. I'm fair, I'm
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: not going to hang. I felt my neck and thought,
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: I'm going to live. I'm gonna live. I looked to
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: the back door and I thought, can I hop over
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: the dock and can I run to the door? Now,
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: I better wait until the judge tells me I can go.
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: And I turned back and the clerk, of course, continued
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: with is that the verdict of you all?
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: On?
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: The foreman said, I'm totally sorry, I'm made a mistake.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: We find him guilty. My goodness. So that's where it
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: starts from.
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: And so to get up to the appeal and exonerated,
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: I had to wait at least fifteen seconds, and as
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: he changed his fine but overjoyed. But the problem with
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: that was that what was I going to do with
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: my life now it was over.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: My life was over. I had nothing, And.
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: It was then I thought, we've got to start up
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: an innocent project in wa.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: We got together and got together with a Stell.
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: And Tom and Joff and all the team and reporters
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: and everybody kind of work out how we could do it.
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: We even had then whether all from Griffith University in
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: Queensland where they have an innocent project, come over to
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: tell us how to do it. We had many a
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: meal at the pub and talked about it.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: And after three months I said to Jonathan, I said, Johnny,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: we get in anyway.
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: He said, John, everybody wants it, we all need it,
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: We desperately want it, but no one's got the time
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: to put into it.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: And I said, well, okay, I'll do it. How the
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: hell was I going to do it?
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: But at that time I was working with our family
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: whose son was in jail of being convicted of a
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: Merveley had committed. And after his conviction they came to
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: me terverly upset, said John, we know that you want
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: to set up an innocent project. If we set up
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: it for you, will you make this your first case?
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: Now? I did nothing.
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: I don't want to say I started it, but I didn't.
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: They did it, this whole family. The father tad his office.
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: His secretary, Maria was organized in how to set up
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: corporations and bodies, tax and everything, you know, contracts and constitutions,
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: so she did all of that. The young man's girlfriend
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: was a wizard. Put them together a legal brief and
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: between them they I just stood there and wrote a
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: cup of coffee. Did very little, but they got it
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: up and money, which was fantastic, and we did. We
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: went back with Malcolm mccuska to took on the case
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: and we won at the appeal, got them out. They
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: all continued working within us and project. To the point
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: a few years later after that was that we realized
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: that we had all these cases, but we didn't have
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: people that could spend enough time and would imagine that
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: to read through transcripts and files and statements, you's got
• 42:55
  Speaker 4: to spend days and days and days, and people didn't
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: have that time. So they went and saw Pam Henry
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: at Edith Town University and straight to her. It's now
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: being run out of the university here under the Cellinger
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: Justice commissioned traject to something and I spent my eavy
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: Wednesday up there with the students working with them. I
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: get people call me, what help, what can I do?
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: And I take it up to the to the university
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: and they start looking at these cases and I did
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: the running around picking up the files and whatever. So
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: we're working on quite a few cases still. So that
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: gave me a lie forget so that that's my whole life.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Fantastic.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: And you were saying earlier that you think the same
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: culture that ended up with you being wrongfully convicted still exists.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: Oh it does.
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: It's there's a case not so long ago A chap
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: was convicted of murdering his girlfriend just out of pertin.
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: I think he did twelve years before we started. Well,
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: another team actually started looking into it and what they
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: found on which they got hold of the video. The
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: police video searched his house. Now, one of the things
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: that they convicted them on was he had a packet
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: of cigarette sitting on his table in his house with
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: her blood on it. When they got the video, they
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: also got all the photographs that were taken at the
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: World abou at the same time the video showed the
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: cigarette packet, the photographs didn't, so how did that cigarette
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: packet get there. They also had a knife there with
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: her blood on it, the murder weapon. But when they
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: checked the post bottom and they found out that the
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: length of the knife was only half the length of
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: the staff wound. Then they found a few other things
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: that weren't there when they did a complete search of
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: the place with hundreds of people. But it suddenly turned
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: up the day after, So he got off again. Please
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: please just planting evidence so blatant. So it still happened.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: Right, And I wasn't neglected to mention your contribution in
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: getting another Roney convicted person, Darryl Beamish, his conviction quashed.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: What happened there, Well, Derell was a it was.
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: A twenty one year old youth at the time, I
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: think it was twenty one at the time, deaf and dumb.
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: He'd been picked up for a few minor little Lloyds
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: thing and just messing around little charges. So when they
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: found this woman murdered that, then the book would flats
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: in Clermont lived about that area, so he was one
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: of the Jews they went and checked up on. Now
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: what they did and I turned out after from and
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: that they wrote out a confession full confession. It was
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: deaf and dumb, and they gave it to him and
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: indicated that they wanted him to copy this onto another
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: piece of paper and sign it. Now he had an
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: interpreter there which he never said anything what he was doing,
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: and he just did what he was told to do.
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: He wrote copy this confession on bit of paper and
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: signed it. Charged with her murder, sentence to death. Luckily
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: it was commuted because they felt sorry for him. He's
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: deaf and dumb, but he fills up serving fifteen years
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: in jail. But because they believed Eric Cooker in my
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: case that they had to believe him because he confessed
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: to that one as well. He confessed to murdering Julian
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: Veruer as well as Ragie Anderson, so they had to
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: accept that confession as well. So after I over released
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: Tom Percy came out of court after my exonerations are well,
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: means you've just got to.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: Do beamish now. Amazing John, And you know it's I've
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: got to say that your story is a testament to
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: the power of faith. First, gratitude and forgiveness for what
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: you've been through. Your spirit is so light, and your
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: attitude of the world is so, I mean, wow, I'm
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: really blown away by that.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: Well, I've got a.
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: Wonderful wife out with Would you believe she's carried me
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: all these years she went back to work. She used
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: to come out to try and get me to work.
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: I was sady pressed, I couldn't work. It's a big player.
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: And I'd be working on a building site on my
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: own and she'd come out to work with me with
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: the children, put them in a playpen on the slab,
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: and she'd labor for me all day long, come home
• 47:27
  Speaker 4: at night to cook and wash an iron and all that.
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: Fingers bleeding day after day, week after week. Findly she
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: wake up and said, I'm going to get a full
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: time job at a ossice. But then she did, and
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: she was the breadwinner for many, many years, and she's
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: carrying me all the way through up until now. So
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: it's been wonderful having that people have supported me. But
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: I spend a lot of my time now going around
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: schools and talking to Year nine's vainly on the justice system,
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: discavages of justice.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: But one thing I have to point out to them.
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: It's so important that even though what I'm going to
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: tell them might make them think that we have a
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: shocking system, shocking police force and courts and everything. We haven't.
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: We've got a good system, one of the best in
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: the world. We've got a fantastic police force. We've got
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: everything going for us. But they need our respect and
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: support to do the job we want them to do.
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's better enough than being hated by the
• 48:23
  Speaker 4: bad guys. At the moment, they've been hated by the
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: good guys. We can't have that. If we want them
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: to do the job properly, we've got to support them,
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: respect them, give them.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: All the tools they need to do that.
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: And unfortunately, you're right, we'll find one or two people,
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: unfortunately high up that will come up the system. But
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: don't take that out on the police force and the
• 48:46
  Speaker 4: system and everything it isn't then the whole fault comes
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: back to us. Everybody over eighteen. We're the ones that
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: too apathetic. We don't want to get involved. Oh well,
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: I haven't got time. I'm feel sorry it's for them,
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: but no, I've got my.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: Li to live. We're the ones that could change it
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: and they win.
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: Well, that's right, John, I mean, the police force is
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: just the community in a uniform doing what they would
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: otherwise do so. You're absolutely right and your attitude is admirable.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: John.
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for sharing your story. It has
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: so much to offer people. I guess there's one piece
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: of advice you'd give people when questioned by the police,
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: have your lawyer there, and don't sign anything.
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: Absolutely your name, you've addressed your age, and please, sir,
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: may I have someone with me before they say anything else.
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: But always remember the please sir respect. That's the way,
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: all right. Thank you, John, Thank you. That was John
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: Button there.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: It is an incredible story of faith and persistence and perseverance.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: And I guess when you have those sort of qualities,
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: people do come to you, like as Still Blackburn and
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: Tom Percy and even Edgar Cook a remarkable story. If
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: you are in that situation, get a good lawyer. That's
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: the first advice I'd give you. But if you can
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: help solve a crime, always call crime Stoppers one and
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: hound A triple three, triple zero, or if you don't
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: trust the police, you can always email me Adam Shanner
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: writer at gmail dot com.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: This has been Adam Shanfer Urukon. Thank you for listening.
• 50:31
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• 50:34
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• 50:37
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