National Centre of Biography; Biography Workshop with Estelle Blackburn OAM

Estelle Blackburn, author of Broken Lives (1998) and The end of innocence (2007), will speak about her experiences of writing a biography of a serial killer, Eric Edgar Cooke (1931 – 1964). (http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cooke-eric-edgar-9817) Cooke, who terrorized 1960s Perth with a series of random murders, was the last man to be executed in Western Australia. His crimes were widely characterized as signalling the ‘end of innocence’ for this isolated capital city, the citizens of which had exalted in the image of Perth as a large country town, free from the crime and social problems of other cities. Two men, Darryl Beamish and John Button, were wrongly imprisoned for murders that were probably committed by Cooke. Blackburn will discuss how her unfunded, determined sleuthing unearthed fresh evidence that prompted the WA Attorney General to allow the men new appeals, after they had previously lost a combined total of seven appeals. Estelle Blackburn OAM is a former Perth journalist who now works for the NSW Minister for Health. Broken Lives won her a Walkley award in 2001 and the Western Australian Premier’s book prize for non-fiction in 1999.