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Broken Lives | Broken Lives Reviews | The End of Innocence
Additional Work | References in Publications | Television Shows
Broken Lives - The book that exposed miscarriage of justice in Perth in the ‘60s and led to two wrongfully-convicted killers being exonerated four decades later.
Published by Hardie Grant Books, Melbourne (2001), previously by Stellar Publications 1998.
John Button and Darryl Beamish had lost all hope of proving their innocence until Estelle, a journalist with no legal training, came along and tenaciously searched out the truth.
Never giving up, she sleuthed and wrote the book over six years, then continued to campaign and work with lawyers and other volunteers over a further seven years to ensure Button and Beamish won the new Appeals her revelations gained for them.
John Button’s 1963 manslaughter conviction was overturned in February 2002, and Darryl Beamish’s 1961 wilful murder conviction was overturned in April 2005.
Never before in Australia has such long-standing convictions been overturned.
Both men – then 19-year-old youths – came close to execution. Beamish was condemned to death, but it was commuted to life imprisonment and he served 15 years. Button’s jury convicted him of the lesser crime of manslaughter and he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment with hard labour.
Estelle’s 13-year justice crusade for justice won her is an Order of Australia for community service through investigative journalism, and the prestigious national Walkley Award for the Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism.
She also won WA’s Clarion Award for the most outstanding contribution to the profession and the Perth Press Club award for sustained excellence in journalism. She was named as one of Lotterywest’s 25 most inspirational Western Australians in Scoop Magazine last year.
Broken Lives won the national Ned Kelly Award for Best True Crime book and the WA Premier’s Award for non-fiction.
It reveals for the first time, the full life and crimes of Eric Edgar Cooke – including 12 assaults and attempted murders that the police didn’t want anyone to know about. They covered them up, never making a public announcement that Cooke had committed these along with the two other assaults and murders.
Reviews of Broken Lives
Random, incomprehensible violence…unspeakable crimes…a peeping Tom crouching excitedly at bedroom windows and lovers’ cars…Blackburn’s meticulous reconstruction of these frightening times is a masterly piece of work – and definitely not for bedtime reading…step by step she has uncovered the terrible details of Cooke’s murders…an outstanding work of investigative journalism.
Reg Harrison, The Australian
A painstakingly researched book that throws new light on Cooke’s crimes and points to what may be one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Australia…Blackburn’s image of Perth in the 1960s and her account of the impact of Cooke’s reign of terror is compelling…that the story she tells is true….makes an extraordinary story.
Kelly Ryan, Herald Sun
Graphic and gripping…magnificent…one of the greatest works I have ever read on crime, courts and police…amazed at the detail…the Australian literary equivalent of In Cold Blood (Truman Capote) and Executioner’s Song (Normal Mailer). Estelle Blackburn is one hell of a brilliant author.
Ken Pedersen, Innisfail Advocate
Brilliant reconstruction of the crimes of Perth’s hare-lipped serial killer…this six-year reinvestigation leaves no room to doubt that Darryl Beamish did 15 years for a murder committed by Cooke in 1959 and that John Button did five years for a 1963 murder by Cooke. Why do the guilty get off while innocent people such as Beamish, Button and Lindy Chamberlain go to prison?
Evan Whitton, The Australian
Broken Lives is compulsive and fascinating reading.
Susan Hewitt, Sound Telegraph
The End of Innocence - Estelle Blackburn’s Memoir
Estelle
has recorded why and how she went about her extraordinary work of
investigative journalism, Broken Lives, in her memoir The End of Innocence, launched
at this year’s Sydney Writers Festival in June 2007.
In a review in The West Australian, Neale Prior said: “Rarely has a piece of journalism had the impact as that of Estelle Blackburn’s book Broken Lives….it brought into sharp relief what many of us had suspected for years: all was not well in the WA police force and in the State’s justice system.” He said the book should be standard issue at the WA Police Academy ‘so young police officers know the damage they can do when they rely on a dodgy confession to charge someone.’
The End of Innocence begins
John Button and Darryl Beamish sat in the yards of Fremantle Prison, watching a flurry of pigeons rise from the gallows roof. Although the two men couldn’t hear the crash of the trap doors inside, the birds’ startled fluttering told them of the very instant the extreme penalty of the law had been carried out on the condemned man.
At that moment, Button and Beamish remembered how close they had come to such a fate. Button had been taken off Death Row five months earlier by the jury that returned the verdict of manslaughter over his capital wilful murder charge; Beamish’s 1961 wilful murder death sentence had been commuted by the State government. The two youths realised at that moment there would be no reprieve on their sentences. The noose that had just killed prisoner 21649 had also killed any hope Button and Beamish had of proving they were innocent. Button faced ten years with hard labour, and Beamish was incarcerated for life.
Eric Edgar Cooke was executed at 8 a.m. on Monday 26 October 1964, in the last act of capital punishment in Western Australia. He had confessed to twenty-two violent crimes — eight murders and fourteen attempted murders and assaults — during a five-year period between September 1958 and September 1963.
The detectives refused to accept two of these twenty-two confessions. They declared Cooke was lying when he voluntarily confessed in intricate detail to the 1963 hit-run murder of John Button’s seventeen-year-old girlfriend Rosemary Anderson, and in similarly accurate detail to the 1959 axe murder of Jillian Brewer, a 22-year-old heiress from Melbourne.
When Cooke was captured, John Button and Darryl Beamish had already been convicted of these murders. Each of the nineteen-year olds had confessed during long, terrifying police interviews held in the absence of parents or lawyers. But both claimed their innocence from the moment the detectives allowed their parents access to them, and pleaded not guilty, insisting that their confessions had been concocted by the detectives and signed only because of verbal and physical harassment.
After Cooke’s revelations, Button and Beamish appealed, requesting new trials at which juries could consider Cooke’s confessions as well as their own. But these appeals were dismissed. In 1964, the judges of the Court of Criminal Appeal of Western Australia and then the High Court of Australia also refused to allow juries to decide the veracity of the confessions, taking it upon themselves to decide that Cooke was lying. Beamish lost a further appeal to the Privy Council in London in 1965.
With every legal avenue exhausted, Button and Beamish served their prison terms until paroled. They carried on with their lives in Perth, both marrying. But they wanted their names cleared. Darryl Beamish, a deaf mute, gave up after the loss of five appeals. John Button persisted in his efforts to have his case re-opened, requesting files from authorities and pleading with various Premiers, but in vain.
Three decades later, their hope was renewed when a fateful meeting stirred my curiosity and set me on a course of investigation that turned into a crusade.
It took me six and a half years to research and write the book, Broken Lives. It was first published in November 1998, with invaluable editing and guidance from Zoltan Kovacs and generous financial and other support from Bret Christian OAM, and contained enough fresh evidence to move the government of Western Australia to grant new appeals to both John Button and Darryl Beamish — almost four decades after their former appeals.
Barrister Tom Percy QC and solicitor Jonathan Davies volunteered to
act pro bono for both men.
John Button’s case was heard before the Court of Criminal Appeal
in May 2001, before Chief Justice David Malcolm, Justice Henry Wallwork
and Justice Neville Owen.
Bret and I assisted the legal team, which also included Bill Chestnutt,
Gaetan Von Der Becken and Frank Voon, with help from John and Helen
Button, their daughter, Naomi, and Gordon Shattock.
As well as the fresh evidence revealed in Broken Lives, another important
witness appeared: the WA Police Force’s fatal accident vehicle
examiner, Trevor Condren, who had examined Button’s car in the
police yard in 1963. Another key witness was international crash reconstructionist
Rusty Haight, whose trips to Perth, scientific testing and evidence
were a crucial contribution by Bret to John Button’s successful
appeal.
On 25 February 2002, John Button was exonerated. His 1963 conviction of the manslaughter of Rosemary Anderson was quashed by the Court of Criminal Appeal in what Chief Justice David Malcolm described as a miscarriage of justice. From the age of nineteen to fifty-eight, John Button had lived his life as a convicted killer. Now, thirty-nine years later, his name was cleared.
The case made legal history on two counts: it was the longest-standing
conviction in Australia to be overturned, and it was the first time
propensity evidence was accepted by an Australian court.
In 2003, the government of Western Australia acknowledged the injustice
wrought on John Button with an ex-gratia compensation payment of $460,000.
Darryl Beamish’s new appeal, his sixth, was heard in the Court of Criminal Appeal in October 2004, before Justices Chris Steytler, Christine Wheeler and Carmel McClure. Tom Percy QC and now-barrister Jonathan Davies acted pro bono, with the legal assistance of Frank Voon, Michael Dawson and Katie White, a major effort by Bret Christian and help from myself.
On 1 April 2005, Darryl Beamish was exonerated. His 1961 conviction
of the wilful murder of Jillian Brewer was quashed by the Court of
Criminal Appeal, which said there had been a substantial miscarriage
of justice. It was forty-four years after his wrongful conviction
and death sentence.
The journey to justice has been long and harrowing for both these
innocent men and their families. It’s very likely they would
never have reached this goal had fate not crossed our paths.
This is my story. It’s the story of a thirteen-year journey that exposed injustice and led to John Button and Darryl Beamish being exonerated. It began with a jive with a stranger on a warm Thursday night in November 1991 …
Additional Work
Australian Story
Chapter titled Dancing With Strangers on the filming
Off the Record of Australian Story’s episodes Dancing with Strangers and Murder He Wrote (ABC Books, November 2007)
The WA Bikie Wars
An 8,000-word chapter in Bombs Guns and Knives; Violent Crime in Australia, edited by Malcolm Brown (New Holland Publishers September 2000)
Righting Wrongs
A 6,000-word chapter in Journalism: Investigation & Research, edited by Stephen Tanner (Pearson Education Australia October 2002)
The Story of Broken Lives
A 5,000-word article published in HQ Magazine March 2001. Winner Magazine Publishers’ Association 2001 Story of the Year, finalist in the Walkley Awards for magazine feature writing 2001.
Broken Lives condensed
in Encounters, published by Readers Digest in Australia and New Zealand, November 2002
References in Other Publications
Serial Killers
by Paul B. Kidd (Pan MacMillan 2000), as footnote to chapter on Cooke page 117. Includes: “The complete story of the ordeal of John Button……can be found in Estelle Blackburn’s superbly researched, award-winning Broken Lives.”
Bombs, Guns and Knives
edited by Malcolm Brown (New Holland Publishers 2000), in chapter on Jaidyn Leskie, page 200, referring to the Button and Beamish convictions: “…following some brilliant sleuthing by enterprising journalist Estelle Blackburn, those convictions have been thrown into doubt and are now subject to review.”
What Happened to Freeda Hayes
by Robin Bowles (Pan MacMillan 2002), page 260: “…..Estelle is a multi-award-winning former journalist and government press secretary turned investigative writer. She spent six years of her life proving the innocence of a man called John Button, who had been jailed for the murder of his girlfriend forty years before. Although another man, Eric Cooke, had confessed to the crime before he was executed (in the last hanging in Western Australia), John Button was sentenced to ten years in jail. At the time of our night at Burswood, he was still fighting to clear his name, with the help of Estelle and a team of lawyers whom she had cajoled into assisting him pro bono….”
Journalism: Investigation & Research
edited by Stephen Tanner (Pearson Education Australia 2002), references in Chapter 15 Investigative journalism and ethics – a slippery slide rule by Suellen Tapsall and Gail Phillips, including page 308: …”Blackburn…spent the next 10 years sifting through all the available evidence, speaking to witnesses, discovering new evidence overlooked in the initial police investigation, and putting together an argument in her book Broken Lives, which convinced the government to allow an appeal against the original guilty verdict. Blackburn embarked on a true crusade during which she put her professional and personal life on hold, made use of her multiple personal and journalistic networks, and persuaded, cajoled and pestered those whose cooperation was essential to revealing the whole story…..”
Rough Justice
by Robin Bowles, Five-Mile Press 2007, Chapter 6 titled Rough Justice in the Wild West, the John Button Story
The Conviction of the Innocent
by Chester Porter QC, Random House Australia, 2007, Button and Beamish injustices of the 1960s finally overturned referred to on page 15 and later pages.
Television Shows
Dancing With Strangers,
ABC’s Australian Story, October 1998, one-hour special
Dead Man Talking
60 Minutes, Ch. 9, February 1999
Murder He Wrote
ABC’s Australian Story, July 2002, two episodes
Dueling Confessions
Forensic Files USA, 2003
Before You Leap
ABC’s Australian Story, October 2007, two episodes
