found it easy to steal cars at night and sometimes returned stolen vehicles without the owners becoming aware of the theft. In September 1955, after having crashed a car and requiring hospitalisation, Cooke was sentenced to two years hard labour on a charge of unlawful use of a motor vehicle; he was ultimately released from Fremantle Prison just prior to Christmas, 1956. After his release, he took to wearing gloves while committing crimes, in order to avoid leaving fingerprints, which had been his undoing in relation to his prior breaking and entering convictions. Murder spree Cooke's four-year killing spree involved a series of seemingly unrelated hit-and-runs, stabbings, strangulations, and shootings. Victims were shot with different rifles, stabbed with knives and scissors, hit with cars, and beaten with an axe. Several were killed after waking up as Cooke was robbing their homes, two were shot while sleeping without their homes being disturbed, and one was shot dead after answering to a ringing doorbell. After stabbing one victim, Cooke got lemonade from the refrigerator and sat on the verandah drinking it. One victim was strangled to death with the cord from a bedside lamp, after which Cooke raped the corpse, disrobed and dragged it to a neighbour's lawn, then sexually penetrated it with an empty whisky bottle, which he then left cradled in the victim's arms. Cooke's murder victims were Pnena (Penny) Berkman, Jillian McPherson Brewer, John Lindsay Sturkey, George Ormond Walmsley, Rosemary Anderson, Constance Lucy Madrill, and Shirley Martha McLeod. Another victim, Brian Vincent Weir, ultimately died as a result of permanent injury three years after having been shot by Cooke. As the crimes were opportunistic and used varying methods, and Cooke's victims shared no obvious common traits, it was not understood that all these crimes were being perpetrated by one individual killer. In fact, two of the murders—the deaths of Jillian Brewer and Rosemary Anderson—were attributed to other men, who were wrongfully convicted of those crimes. Investigation The police investigation included fingerprinting more than 30,000 males over the age of 12, as well as locating and test-firing more than 60,000 .22 rifles. After a rifle was found hidden in a Geraldton wax bush on Rookwood Street, Mount Pleasant, in August 1963, ballistic tests proved the gun had been used in the McLeod murder. Police returned to the location and tied a similar rifle, rendered inoperable, to the bush with fishing