The Night Caller - Eric Cooke

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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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