Broken Lives

For nearly five years, from 1958 until his arrest in 1963, a man named Eric Cooke terrorised the Western Australian capital of Perth. His crimes ranged from theft and reckless hit-and-run attacks to brutal assaults on women in their own beds and several murders carried out with a gun, a knife and bare hands. The city, once friendly and relaxed, grew fearful and suspicious. Two men who had done nothing wrong ended up behind bars for crimes Cooke had committed. The journalist Estelle Blackburn began a long investigation to find the truth. This book follows her inquiry into Cooke's life, the lives of his victims, the police work and the courts of the time.