The Blood

In 2009, I wrote to the Corruption and Crime Commission to request that they investigate my wrongful arrest and conviction, based on the few facts I had discovered. I assumed they would uncover the remaining facts that had been hidden for 45 years.

This is their reply:

In the above notes, the commission stated quite truthfully that I DID state in court that the police were right when they said I pointed out the position of the blood as being 12 inches (300mm) from the edge of the road.

In court, I also, when asked by the prosecution, if the police had in any way assaulted me, I said NO.

Let me explain

After being remanded to death row the day after Rosemary died, my lawyer, Ken Hatfield, who was noted as being the best criminal lawyer in Perth, came to see me.

John, he said, why did you sign that confession? There is absolutely no other evidence against you.

I explained how they started to beat me up and when I asked how Rosemary was, their reply was “Oh, she’s dead, she died a couple of hours ago” Coupled with the beating, and now knowing that I also had died with Rosemary; I had nothing to live for, I told them to write whatever they liked and I would sign it.

Mr Hatfield stopped me immediately.

John, as an officer of the court, I would not, and could not, instruct you to lie in the witness box.  However, in this day and age, no jury member would ever believe that the police would ever do anything like that. They will immediately class you as a liar, and if you lie about that, you will lie about anything, and they WILL hang you. I won’t ask you in court how the police treated you so I will not put you in an impossible position. However, if the prosecution asks, think very carefully before you answer.

The prosecution did ask, So, to save my life, I had to say that the police did not assault me. But more, when I was asked where the blood was that I had pointed out to the police, II had to agree with the police so as not to call them liars in front of the jury. On top of that, I did not think the position of the blood was significant.

30 years later, when reading the appeal books for the first time, I noticed the evidence of Constable Wilson, where he stated that the large pool of blood I pointed out was 12 inches off the roadway. I wondered why he would say that, as I had taken him to a spot about 4 metres from the edge of the road. Again, I didn’t see the significance, but when I read my confession, the enormity of that fact became apparent. 

It hit me. For my confession to be true (and it had to be, as it was all the evidence they had for them to get a conviction, it depended on the jury believing the confession), to do that, the prosecutor had to satisfy a basic fact.  THE BLOOD AND BODY MUST BE AT THE SAME SPOT. You can’t have a body bleeding into the sand, which is 4 metres away. THE BODY AND THE BLOOD MUST BE AT THE SAME SPOT, and that spot must be where my confession puts it because they can’t get another confession.

Just hours later, at dawn, the police photographer was sent to the crime scene to take a picture of the blood.

They would have thought they had covered all bases, but two days later, 7 witnesses appeared and stated that they had seen me with Rosemary in my arms, 3 or 4 metres from the edge of the road. Now they had a bigger problem. They had the body and the blood next to the road, but the witnesses saw me 4 meters away.

How they solved it.

Detective John Wiley, who was the officer who beat me up, wrote to the prosecutor, in a hand-up brief, to explain the discrepancy in the position of the blood.

If I had told the truth in court, the jury would have hanged me. For they would have been told that not only did I run her down, but then I was going to put her body on the railway line for a train to run over her.

The significance today, having been completely exonerated, and Eric Cooke being accepted by the court as Rosemary’s killer, is that what loving boyfriend would even contemplate taking his beloved to the railway line, to be run over by a train.

Working backwards, I could only have been walking back to my car with Rosemary in my arms after picking her up from where she was lying, profusely bleeding into the sand. Therefore, the blood must have been 4 meters from the edge of the road. It’s obvious that the police moved it, and the officers are lying.

Next Week I ask LIA to advise me.