Eric Edgar Cooke

Introduction

Eric Edgar Cooke is a serial killer that was located on the western side of Australia. He terrorized the city of Perth (Western Australia) by committing a total of twenty-two violent crimes, that caused eight deaths in total. His deadly crimes ranged from 1958 to 1963 when he finally got caught when trying to recover one of his weapons. He was every type of criminal in the book, he stole from, burned down, killed, raped and brutally injured his victims. He used many weapons in the crimes he committed, 2 different rifles, knife, scissors, hatchet, hands, and others materials that were found in the house.

He was the eldest and only son of three by his father Vivian and his wife Christian. Eric was known to be a disappointment to his father due to physical disabilities and was also bullied in school for these as well. He had what is known as a hare lip and a cleft palate that created a very hostile environment for himself as he was the one to be made fun of. Eric was a victim of his father’s abusive alcoholic addiction. His father would come home drunk and for no reason just beat up both his son and wife. His father was a very violent man when he became drunk.

Eric attended five total schools and ended up dropping out at the age of fourteen. He went on to join the Permanent Military Forces but later dismissed within three months because of prior convictions of theft and arson. A year later he found a nineteen-year-old waitress named Sarah Lavin who became his wife. He had seven children total but that still didn’t keep him away from his crime addiction.

Profiling Inputs

Focusing on Eric Edgar Cooke’s last and final murder, the crime scene was a house that was being babysat by a nineteen-year-old college student. The crime took place on the second level of the two story home. This crime took place in the winter therefore the babysitter was sitting next to the heater upstairs sitting room. The babysitter was sitting on the couch studying for one of her classes and listening to music at the same time. Her body had looked like she fell asleep sitting up but looking closer there was a bullet hole straight through the middle of her forehead. There is no weapon at the crime scene and the bullet didn’t match anything that the killer had used before. But police see this as the killer was trying to change weapons to throw the police off his trail.

In other murder cases that Cooke was involved he used weapons that were already in the house that he left there for police to discover. But as he begins to evolve he begins using aa .22 rifle and shoots people in the head. When he notices police linking the other murders together he then changes weapon again to a different type of .22 rifle to confuse the police.

The victim in this particular case was Shirley McLeod who was 18 at the time she was murdered. Not a lot of information on her background, but when she was killed she was studying for a class. Knowing this, she would be considered a student in a nearby school. She came from a home of two loving parents and known to be a very nice girl in the neighborhood. She was last seen in August 1963 probably on a weekend night.

The only forensic information that was left in this particular case was the bullet casing for the gun that was used at the crime. That gun was different then the other murders that Cooke committed but the victim was killed the same way as the other gunned down victims. The cause of a death was a single shot to the forehead that killed her instantly.

The police report had stated that this was the same as the other murders that had taken place and it was the same man. Police saw that the individual want through the back door that was unlocked. He entered the house pretty late that night because Shirley had fallen asleep from studying. The crime was reported by the owners of the house that came home that night from their outing. The neighborhood was a part of Perth and this city was seen as a very innocent city. People of Perth before the murders left doors unlocked, keys in their cars and typically felt safe in their city and neighbor.

Decision Process Models

The homicide was a quick thrill as when Cooke took a shot at Shirley and he ran away shortly after. He saw killing someone as something to do and was a craving type of thought process. He had a period of time before he killed or tried to kill again. Shirley’s risk was to be in a house to babysit and forgetting to lock all the doors. The offender risk was he saw lights on and not seeing the victim until he walked up the stairs. Even though see was sleeping he walked up the stairs that could have made a noise. Some escalation was if people would hear the gun go off and seeing him flee from the crime. The crime must have taken place after dinner and before midnight due to the fact that it was dark outside and she was tired and went to sleep. The location of the crime was in a house that was located inside the city of Perth.

Crime Assessment

This particular crime classification was