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The Night Caller - Eric Cooke · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

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Dispression. Nineteen thirty Perth, Western Australia, a young, unmarried couple sat
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with the decision to make Vivian Cook, a local shop assistant, and his
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girlfriend, Christine Edgar, a young woman originally from Scotland, had found out
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that Christine was pregnant. Times. Being what they were, both Vivian and
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Christine felt like their hands were taped and quickly got married so that their child
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would not be born out of wedlock. But their marriage was far from a
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match made in heaven. Vivian had a mean and violent streak, and when
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his first child, Eric Edgar Cook, came into the world in February nineteen
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thirty one, that violent streak only grew worse. Vivian was known to drink
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heavily, and when he drank, he often beat his wife, Christine.
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When Eric became old enough to start to try to protect his mother from his
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father, he beat Eric as well. Christine took to sleeping in the staff
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room in her workplace to try to avoid going home to her husband, and
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even though he was still only a child, Eric took to the streets to
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do the exact same thing avoid his father. He sometimes chose to sleep under
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the house, or just stayed up all night walking around the neighborhood so that
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he didn't have to go home. But to say that Eric chose to stay
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out on the streets isn't entirely accurate either. He'd been born with the cleft
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lip, which had left him with a speech impediment and a slight disfiguration on
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his face even after two surgeries. The other children in his school in the
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neighborhood bullied Eric because of these differences, meaning that Eric had no friends and
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nowhere to go when he was out of the house, avoiding his father.
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Occasionally he'd be picked up or dropped off in an orphanage or foster home,
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but he'd always find himself back at the same crossroads, risk getting beaten up
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at home or rough it on the streets. The difficult situation at home and
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the constant bullying at school turned Eric into a quiet and withdrawn child. He
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did well enough in his lessons, but emotionally he was becoming more and more
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unstable, and he became prone to angry outbursts. As he grew, so
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did the severity and the results of Vivian's beatings, and Eric was often hospitalized
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for head injuries. Unfortunately, the side effects of those injuries also seemed to
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linger. Even after Eric had been discharged. He became clumsy and unstable on
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his feet, which led to even more accidents outside of the ones from the
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beatings. He then started complaining about severe headaches and sometimes even blacking out,
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leading some people to believe that Eric had undiagnosed brain damage. Others argued that
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his growing number of accidents were actually result of his repressed desire to take his
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own life. When he was only fourteen, Eric left school so he could
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start working to help support this family. Vivian often drank away the money that
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they earned, so Christine would find extra work cooking and cleaning around the neighborhood,
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but she still had mouths to feed at home. She and Vivian had
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two more children after Eric realizing that his mother needed financial help with the siblings,
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Eric found a job as a delivery boy at a local store. He'd
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then hand over his weekly pay to his mother to help keep the household going,
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but none of that actually addressed the main problem at home his father.
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By the age of seventeen, Eric was spending more and more nights out on
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the streets to avoid Vivian and getting into more and more trouble. He tested
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the waters with petty crimes and vandalism, but he got into things deep when
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he burned down a local church. He'd auditioned to join the church's choir,
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and after they turned him down, he came back in the middle of the
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night and set the church on fire. He was arrested and served eighteen months
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in jail for his brush with revenge, but instead of setting Eric straight,
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this stint behind bars only seemed to drive him further in the wrong direction.
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He began saving the newspaper clippings from articles about his crimes. These not only
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served as some sort of trophy for Eric, but he also used them in
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a misguided attempt to connect with people. He'd showed them off and brag about
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his crimes, and then he didn't seem to understand why people weren't lining up
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to be his friend. Afterward, his crimes began to escalate further. Now
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instead of vandalism and arson, Eric had moved on to breaking and entering and
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larsen. He'd sneak into people's houses in the middle of the night, usually
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stealing anything he thought had any value, but sometimes he broke in just to
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make a point. If someone had wronged him, Eric would break into their
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home and damage the property, usually either their clothing or their furniture, as
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an act of revenge. It wasn't difficult for the police to track down who
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was behind these breeze of break ins, especially when Eric often bragged about the
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crimes to people that he hardly knew. Fingerprints placed him at even more crime
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scenes, and Eric was sentenced to three years in prison. Released at the
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age of twenty one, Eric had now grown into a young man. He
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was short and slight, with dark, wavy hair. He still had a
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slightly disfigured mouth and speech impediment, but he'd also finally found the place that
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he wanted to be. Eric joined the army. He did well and quickly
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began to rise up the ranks to lance corporal, but his past came back
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to haunt him. A background check uncovered Eric's criminal record, and Eric was
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discharged. A year later, he met nineteen year old Sarah Lavin and quickly
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tied the knot together. They went on to have seven children, but somehow
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his turn of luck was too little, too late for Eric's journey in life.
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By day, Eric played the role of a family man, but by
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night he returned to the familiar hunting ground of the streets. He stole cars,
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and because many people during the fifties and sixties in Australia often left their
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keys in the ignition, Eric sometimes brought the stolen cars right back to where
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he'd found them. Car owners would wake up the next morning to find their
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cars parked exactly where they left him, unaware that Eric had taken them for
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joy ride during the night. Eric was only caught after he'd been involved in
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a crash in nineteen fifty five. The crash had been so severe that Eric
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needed to be taken to the hospital, and it was there that his long
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spree of car theft and joy riding came to an end. He was sentenced
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to two years of hard labor, but it was only after this stint behind
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bars that Eric realized that he'd been making things easy for investigators. After that,
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he took to wearing gloves whenever he was involved in criminal activity, and
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when he was released early around Christmas of nineteen fifty six, Eric got right
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back to work. The break ins, thefts, arsons and revenge all continued,
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but unfortunately for many in Australia. Eric's crimes graduated to another level again.
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In the early hours of January twenty seventh, nineteen sixty three, a
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suburb of Perth woke up to the sound of gunshots. A couple sitting in
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a parked car managed to get away from the unknown shooter and survived their wounds,
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but the same could not be said for the other victims that day,
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A man asleep in a nearby apartment was killed by a single gunshot wound to
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the head. An eighteen year old student asleep on the porch of a boarding
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house was also killed by a single gunshot wound to the head. A retired
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grocer answered the front door of his house only the next street over and was
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also killed with a single gunshot wound to the head. Perth fell into a
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deep panic. Residents strengthened the security around their homes by replacing locks and buying
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dogs. But this particular killer was very familiar with the streets, and he'd
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been paying attention to how police investigators worked. Now, instead of following the
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same mo and bragging about his crimes, Eric kept switching things up and covering
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his tracks. But maybe most importantly, he kept quiet. Instead, he
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found new ways to flaunt his crimes to the world. After stabbing one of
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his victims, he tested fate by stopping to drink a lemonade on the victim's
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porch. Another time, he strangled a victim with a cord from a bedside
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lamp before sexually assaulting the victim's remains. He then stripped them and dragged the
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body outside onto a neighbor's lawn, where he penetrated them with an empty whiskey
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bottle. When he finally left the scene, he placed that bottle between the
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victim's arms. For years, his crimes went unchecked. In fact, the
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police ended up tying two of his murders to two other suspects, and Eric
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was left to rome free. It was only after the murder of another eighteen
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year old student, who died from a single gunshot wound to the head,
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that the authorities honed in on Eric. They discovered the murder weapon, which
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had been ditched near the crime scene, but instead of picking it up and
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collecting it as evidence, the police replaced it with a decoy weapon and waited.
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Eric eventually showed up, trying to hide the evidence, but instead he'd
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ended up handing himself over to the investigators. At first, Eric tried to
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play things cool and claimed to have nothing to do with this bree of murders
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that had now lasted for four years. Annoyed and frustrated with Eric's constant denials,
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a detective named Max Baker told Eric quote, cookie, you're going to
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hang, There's no doubt about it. You've got a wife and kids.
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Think of them, and then think about whether you're going to be dragged to
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the gallows like a mongrel dog, or you're going to go there like a
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man. The message seemed to hit home. After that, it was like
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this seal had been broken, and Eric confessed to everything. He recounted the
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murders, his arsons, and even went into great detail on over two hundred
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counts of theft. He even confessed to two of the killings that had been
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attributed to two other men, although the jury is still out on whether he
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really committed those himself or was bragging in an attempt to impress people and make
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friends again. But regardless, Eric soon found himself in court, where his
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defense lawyers argued not guilty by reason of insanity. They claimed that Eric had
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schizophrenia and given his long history of head injuries and possible brain damage, they
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could have been on to something. The director of the State Mental Health Services,
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however, testified that Eric was sane, and the state refused to let
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Eric be seen by independent psychiatrists. As far as the courts were concerned,
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Eric was sane, and he was found guilty of murder, his sentence to
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be hanged by the neck until dead. Eric refused to appeal the verdict and
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his sentence was carried out about a year later in October nineteen sixty four.
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He was the last person to be hanged in Western Australia before they later outlawed
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the death penalty. That's ten minute murder for today, brief and binge able
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