Forensic Files - Season 8, Episode 36 - Dueling Confessions - Full Episode | Forensic Files

a teenage girl in australia was found dead on the side of a road her boyfriend became the prime suspect
eventually he confessed to her murder but so did another man who was telling the truth
[Music] it took 40 years a writer and a pedestrian crash reconstructionist to finally uncover the truth
[Music] the city of perth sits on the western coast of the vast continent of australia
it's a modern example of the industrious but laid-back aussie lifestyle where beaches barbecuing and sport are
critically important [Music] in 1963 the city was smaller but not that different
perth had been a sleepy little hollow just a beautiful little town where you'd never thought of any sort of crime or
murder very innocent very secure at that time john button was a teenager in love with 17 year old rosemary
anderson very quiet a bit headstrong at times but very enjoyable company-wise on john's 19th birthday
rosemary stopped over at john's house to celebrate john's little brother was also there
[Music] the three teens spent the night watching television while they were eating the fish and
chips john watching tv saw a hand come across for his piece of fish yelled at the person thinking it was his
little brother but it was rosemary she got upset she stormed off and said that was over she was walking home
[Music] button said he got into his car and drove alongside her apologizing and trying to convince her to get into the
car so he could drive her home she'd done that once before and after he stopped for a little while
and after a five minute walk on her own she cooled down he thought she would do that again
so he watched as rosemary walked under a railway overpass and around the corner i sat there i smoked a cigarette
and just in those two or three minutes she was out of sight john claimed he drove after rosemary and
found her face down on the side of the road unconscious bruised and bleeding so without thinking i just put it
straight in the car and washed it straight off to her family doctor dr alastair turner treated rosemary that
night she had severe injuries where she was scraped down the road to her face and to her lips and
her blood pressure was very unstable going up and down as she was losing blood into abdominal organs and
so on really i don't think she ever had any chance of survival when the police arrived they noticed a
dent on the front of john's car and they also noticed fresh blood john was interrogated for several hours
there was the accusations why did you knock it down we know it was you that knocked her down of course it was you
look at the front of the car it's damaged you had an argument it must have been you
eventually button confessed to hitting his girlfriend with his car in his written confession he admitted
the couple's argument was over something more than a piece of fish they wrote down that i tried to get fish
with rosemary but i tried to try to come on to her and and she refused my advances and that's
what caused the argument when rosemary refused to get in the car button said he got angry and tried to
scare her so he sped towards her intending to stop but lost control of the car and inadvertently hit her
prosecutors had all they needed for a conviction [Applause] [Music] just a few hours after he confessed to
killing his girlfriend with his car john button recanted he now said his confession was coerced
and that police hit him during the interrogation and i think was after about four hours
of questioning that i received a quick punch to the stomach which put me underneath the table
they pulled me out and set me back in the chair again and i realized at that point that they weren't
going to let me out of here until they got a confession and the way they were going was just going
to get more and more physical buttons said the body damage on his car happened a few weeks earlier and that
rosemary's blood dripped onto the front bumper when he picked her up to take her
to the hospital [Applause] trevor condren examined the car at the request of the local police
if this car had struck a pedestrian i would have expected to find damage to the bonnet
like such as dented bonnet drag marks scrape marks but john button went on trial for murder
and his earlier confession made it an open and shut case the jury deliberated for six hours
before returning to the courtroom with their verdict [Music] members of the jury how do you find the
accused guilty or not guilty not guilty your honor i'm thinking i'm going home could i go now could i run for the door
and i decided well i better not i've got to wait until the judge tells me i can go so i turn back to the joke
oh terribly sorry your honor i made a mistake we find him guilty the judge had to say guilty of what
guilty of manslaughter a manslaughter verdict meant john button's life had been spared but he was
sentenced to 10 years of hard labor in fremantle prison the police succeeded in the jury thinking he was a terrible
young man trying to have sex with that beautiful young girl i've heard that that's what the foreman of the jury said
hang the bastard trying to have sex with that beautiful young girl why did i sign that confession why did
they force me into it why why do we have that argument with my girlfriend fremantle prison was a relic from
victorian times with no plumbing heating or air conditioning you locked up a cell with nothing but a
mattress on the floor a rubber bucket in the corner a plastic plate and a wooden
spoon a very simple little argument over just a small bit of fish that's all all that it
it started with seven months later another man arrived at fremantle prison to await his execution
[Music] eric edgar cook had been convicted of killing a young man in cold blood he had also confessed to other acts of
random violence well cook confessed to eight murders and about 12 home invasions in which women
were attacked in their beds but that wasn't all incredibly cook also said that he
was the one who killed rosemary anderson cook said he intentionally ran her down
when she was walking on the side of the road [Music] for john button it was an answer to his prayers
as soon as my lawyer came in and told me of this confession i believe then well this is it i'm free
it's only a matter of time [Music] and for the first time button recalled seeing cook's car pass
him when he was looking for rosemary that night what i didn't realize at that very
moment as it's turned out driving past on the other side of the railroad line at that moment was eric
cook but there were problems with cook's confession [Music] police took cook to the scene of
rosemary anderson's murder and asked him to identify where the incident took place
cook pointed to the wrong spot police didn't believe cook's story so the court denied john button's appeal
what should have happened is that the court of criminal appeals should award a retrial of john button
at which eric cook would be the star witness button clung to hope until the day it disappeared
along with the birds gathered on the roof of the prison gallows they all of a sudden just fly off into
the air as the trap door is released and you know just by that that a person's been hanged
eric edgar cook was executed i knew that once eric was hanged that was the end of any chance i had of being
released [Music] the minister attending cook's execution said cook took the bible from his hands
and again confessed to rosemary's murder but it was of no help to john button it would take years before he'd get
another chance to prove his innocence after serving five years of a 10-year sentence john button was released from
prison for good behavior the first thing he did was visit rosemary anderson's grave
he was out of prison physically but not out of prison emotionally he led his life with a big sign over his head
convicted killer and a big rock in his heart injustice button eventually got married had two
children found a job and battled a serious depression i desperately wanted to live but the
heartache and the pain of living with the injustice which was so intense that i knew that i just
wasn't going to make it that i'd finish up doing something foolish it was seven years
after i was released i did do something foolish in desperation button took an overdose
of sleeping pills got into his car and drove off a steep embankment at a hundred miles an hour
miraculously he survived from that point on my life changed completely um and a couple of things that i asked of this
this god that had watched over me was would he would he would he give me back a life and would he give me justice in
my lifetime he wrote to government officials looking for a way to clear his name
with no luck he even tried writing a book but no publisher would touch it i remember standing there with the
rejection slip in my hand and i raised my hands up and i said god if you want this book written you better do
something in the phone rank it was my father bringing me up to uh just to mention that he'd been out
dancing with the young lady last night and he told her about the injustice he wanted and she wanted to meet me
the call was about estelle blackburn a journalist and the former government press secretary she was intrigued by the
case and agreed to help investigate button's story i had the skills and the doors that were
slammed shut in his face opened for me i had the networks and the contacts i could get the files and everything that
he needed i knew how to research i was playing a detective i was investigating a 30 year old murder trying to find
fresh evidence blackburn wasn't entirely convinced that button was innocent she had serious
doubts about eric cook's credibility now i lived through the cook era i knew cook didn't run down girls cook shot
people and later we learned that he stabbed and strangled as well but he certainly didn't run down girls
but in the files of button's 1964 appeal estelle found something surprising something that had not been widely
reported 30 years earlier six women had survived hit and run car crashes and eric cook had confessed to
being the driver in each of them each woman's story was eerily similar to rosemary's
young women on dark isolated roads run down by a stolen car estelle eventually wrote her own book
about john button's case and she too had problems finding a publisher that is until she asked her friend a
local newspaper publisher for help when brett christian read the manuscript he agreed to personally finance the
publication of blackburn's book having met john i realized it was just not possible for him to have done it it
and it didn't seem the physics didn't seem right to me either christian also questioned the lack of
damage to the front of button's car the police were trying to say that john's little lightweight french simca
had hit a girl hard enough to kill her and yet there was only there was really no discernible damage on it didn't add
up simply didn't add up but could science back up his suspicions the answer to that question would come
from the world's smartest crash test dummy estelle blackburn's book convinced many
that john button was innocent and that serial killer eric cook was the one who killed rosemary anderson
without a uh a legal verdict i saw classed as a killer a convicted killer his only hope of overturning the verdict
was to find new or fresh evidence in this 37 year old case fresh evidence at law in this
jurisdiction is evidence which was not available at the time of the trial which obviously didn't feature at the
time of the trial and which could not with reasonable diligence have been available at the trial
publisher brett christian believes so strongly in button's innocence that he searched all over the world for an
expert in the new field of forensics called pedestrian crash reconstruction [Music]
in texas he found rusty hate a former policeman and one of the most respected crash reconstructionists in the field
accident reconstruction is an effort to explain how a crash a car crash happened
we use a lot of common sense some elementary applied physics and more common sense
and try to piece together the objective information we have for a given car crash
to make some sense of it to sort out how things happened when hate first looked at photographs
taken of john button's car after the accident he didn't believe there was damage consistent with the fatal
collision rosemary anderson the girl that was hit by a car was hit in the in the range of 30 to 40
miles an hour and that leaves you know that kind of contact with the body leaves
distinctive marks on a car and there were none of those marks on the car that i saw photos of nothing
even close the mark would be on the hood because of the way a body moves when hit at that
speed i think you can envision you know person as a struck by a car basically wrapping or or bending onto
the to the front of the car the technical term we use when we're describing the trajectory is a wrap
trajectory where the force applied on the body is below the body's center of mass and so the body is going to bend
usually about the waist and that's going to leave some sort of mark in the hood but in an appeals court hate would need
more than just an opinion he would need hard forensic proof for that he needed to perform pedestrian crash
tests on a 1963 simca brand car a model that by this time was 35 years old despite the age
brett christian found three usable cars he also found a 1963 holden the model eric cook said he was driving when he
killed rosemary anderson cook's version is that he drives up behind her and hits her from behind
a biomedical dummy was used to mimic the reactions of rosemary's body hate suspended it by a fishing line that
breaks on impact the police didn't accept eric cook's version of the crash because the
exterior sun visor on his car wasn't damaged as one would expect when hate's test car struck the dummy
from behind it rolled onto the hood and over the roof just as eric cook had claimed
but i was focused on the visor i was focused on the alignment and then i looked at the visor and and i remember
seeing the visor bend when the dummy hit it and it sent a cold chill in my back i
thought ah no this is not good it can't be good but the visor had snapped back into
shape with no damage this explained why eric cook's visor showed no damage when police inspected
it they actually flex that's what this this visor had done when the body hit it so
now all of a sudden what was kind of a tense moment became hey we've done it so the dummy did exactly what cook said it
was just a moment of wow this is it we've done it and the dummy landed face down
consistent with how john button found rosemary's body but the tests on john button's car the
simca were even more persuasive we found marking at the leading edge of the hood and more important we found a
big dent a big depression in the hood where the dummy had come down and basically smacked its head on the hood
whether we hit it on the right more in the center or on the left it just didn't matter
there was no similar damage to buttons car and each time the dummy landed on its
back inconsistent with the injuries on the front of rosemary's body rusty hate concluded that john button
did not kill rosemary anderson so with estelle's research and with with hate's evidence we were able to
show both of those things i it must have been cook and b it could not have been button you can't
get a much stronger case than that this was enough to convince three judges on the supreme court of west australia
that the verdict must be regarded as unsafe and unsatisfactory on the ground that there has been a miscarriage of
justice [Music] [Applause] [Music] we went back and corrected a wrong and we did it with an appropriate use of of
of the forensic evidence but also a liberal use of good investigative techniques that
didn't come from the police that came from basically laypeople i think it makes us all a little bit
more aware of the fallibility of the system and have a little bit more faith that can be rectified and that it is
possible it's the advance of science that's only just been made possible and the
recognition of that branch of science that is motor vehicle crash reconstruction
that i would say beyond any doubt put the seal of success on john button's case [Music]
[Music] [Music] you

When Rosemary Anderson is found dead on the side of the road, her boyfriend becomes the prime suspect. He eventually confessed to her murder, but so did another man: serial killer Eric Edgar Cooke.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

#truecrime #forensicfiles #fullepisodes Click here to watch full episodes from Forensic Files - Season 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gAB0hcY3Z0&list=PLC4mqmKvz1IbdnLKfCt8--pOV0xEpMIP5 Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

John Button was wrongfully convicted of murder; new evidence proved his innocence after decades of struggle.

Key points

The Confession. John Button confesses to hitting his girlfriend, but later recants, claiming coercion.
The Second Confession. Eric Edgar Cook confesses to the murder of Rosemary Anderson, complicating the case.
Forensic Breakthrough. Crash reconstructionists prove John Button could not have killed Rosemary Anderson.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Who was telling the truth?

0:16WatchDec 16, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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