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a teenage girl in australia was found
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dead on the side of a road
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her boyfriend became the prime suspect
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eventually he confessed to her murder
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but
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so did another man
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who was telling the truth
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[Music]
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it took 40 years a writer and a
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pedestrian crash reconstructionist to
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finally uncover the truth
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[Music]
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the city of perth sits on the western
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coast of the vast continent of australia
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it's a modern example of the industrious
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but laid-back aussie lifestyle
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where beaches barbecuing and sport are
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critically important
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[Music]
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in 1963 the city was smaller but not
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that different
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perth had been a sleepy little hollow
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just a beautiful little town where you'd
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never thought of any sort of crime or
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murder very innocent very secure
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at that time john button was a teenager
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in love with 17 year old rosemary
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anderson
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very quiet a bit headstrong at times but
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very enjoyable
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company-wise
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on john's 19th birthday
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rosemary stopped over at john's house to
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celebrate
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john's little brother was also there
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[Music]
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the three teens spent the night watching
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television
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while they were eating the fish and
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chips john watching tv saw a hand come
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across for his piece of fish
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yelled at the person thinking it was his
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little brother but it was rosemary
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she got upset she stormed off and said
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that was over she was walking home
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[Music]
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button said he got into his car and
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drove alongside her apologizing and
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trying to convince her to get into the
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car so he could drive her home
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she'd done that once before
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and after he stopped for a little while
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and after a five minute walk on her own
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she cooled down he thought she would do
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that again
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so he watched as rosemary walked under a
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railway overpass and around the corner
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i sat there i smoked a cigarette
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and just in those two or three minutes
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she was
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out of sight
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john claimed he drove after rosemary and
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found her face down on the side of the
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road unconscious bruised and bleeding
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so without thinking i just put it
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straight in the car and washed it
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straight off to her family doctor
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dr alastair turner treated rosemary that
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night
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she had severe
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injuries where she was scraped down the
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road to her face and to her lips and
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her blood pressure was very
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unstable going up and down as she was
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losing blood into abdominal organs and
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so on
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really i don't think she ever had any
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chance of survival
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when the police arrived they noticed a
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dent on the front of john's car
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and they also noticed
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fresh blood
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john was interrogated for several hours
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there was the accusations why did you
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knock it down we know it was you that
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knocked her down of course it was you
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look at the front of the car it's
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damaged you had an argument it must have
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been you
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eventually button confessed to hitting
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his girlfriend with his car
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in his written confession he admitted
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the couple's argument was over something
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more than a piece of fish
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they wrote down that i tried to get fish
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with rosemary
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but i tried to try to come on to her and
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and she refused my advances and that's
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what caused the argument
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when rosemary refused to get in the car
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button said he got angry and tried to
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scare her so he sped towards her
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intending to stop but lost control of
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the car and inadvertently hit her
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prosecutors had all they needed for a
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conviction
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[Applause]
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[Music]
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just a few hours after he confessed to
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killing his girlfriend with his car
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john button recanted
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he now said his confession was coerced
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and that police hit him during the
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interrogation
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and i think was after about four hours
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of questioning that i received a quick
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punch to the stomach which
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put me underneath the table
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they pulled me out and
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set me back in the chair again and i
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realized at that point that they weren't
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going to let me out of here until they
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got a confession
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and
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the way they were going was just going
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to get more and more physical
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buttons said the body damage on his car
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happened a few weeks earlier and that
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rosemary's blood dripped onto the front
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bumper when he picked her up to take her
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to the hospital
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[Applause]
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trevor condren examined the car at the
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request of the local police
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if this car had struck a pedestrian i
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would have expected to find
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damage to the bonnet
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like such as dented bonnet
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drag marks scrape marks
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but john button went on trial for murder
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and his earlier confession made it an
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open and shut case
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the jury deliberated for six hours
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before returning to the courtroom with
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their verdict
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[Music]
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members of the jury how do you find the
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accused guilty or not guilty not guilty
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your honor
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i'm thinking i'm going home
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could i go now could i run for the door
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and i decided well i better not i've got
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to wait until the judge tells me i can
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go so i turn back to the joke
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oh terribly sorry your honor i made a
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mistake
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we find him guilty
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the judge had to say guilty of what
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guilty of manslaughter
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a manslaughter verdict meant john
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button's life had been spared but he was
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sentenced to 10 years of hard labor in
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fremantle prison the police succeeded in
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the jury thinking he was a terrible
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young man trying to have sex with that
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beautiful young girl i've heard that
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that's what the foreman of the jury said
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hang the bastard trying to have sex with
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that beautiful young girl
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why did i sign that confession why did
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they force me into it why why do we have
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that argument with my girlfriend
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fremantle prison was a relic from
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victorian times with no plumbing heating
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or air conditioning
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you locked up a cell with nothing but a
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mattress on the floor a rubber bucket in
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the corner a plastic plate and a wooden
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spoon a very simple little argument over
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just a small bit of fish
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that's all
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all that it
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it started with
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seven months later
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another man arrived at fremantle prison
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to await his execution
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[Music]
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eric edgar cook had been convicted of
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killing a young man in cold blood
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he had also confessed to other acts of
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random violence
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well cook confessed to eight murders and
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about 12 home invasions in which women
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were attacked in their beds
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but that wasn't all
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incredibly
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cook also said that he
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was the one who killed rosemary anderson
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cook said he intentionally ran her down
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when she was walking on the side of the
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road
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[Music]
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for john button
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it was an answer to his prayers
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as soon as my lawyer came in and told me
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of this confession
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i believe then well this is it i'm free
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it's only a matter of time
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[Music]
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and for the first time
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button recalled seeing cook's car pass
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him when he was looking for rosemary
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that night
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what i didn't realize at that very
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moment as it's turned out
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driving past on the other side of the
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railroad line at that moment was eric
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cook
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but there were problems with cook's
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confession
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[Music]
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police took cook to the scene of
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rosemary anderson's murder and asked him
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to identify where the incident took
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place
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cook pointed to the wrong spot
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police didn't believe cook's story
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so the court denied john button's appeal
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what should have happened is that the
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court of criminal appeals should award a
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retrial of john button
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at which eric cook would be the star
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witness
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button clung to hope
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until the day it disappeared
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along with the birds gathered on the
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roof of the prison gallows
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they all of a sudden just fly off into
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the air as the trap door is released and
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you know just by that that
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a person's been hanged
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eric edgar cook
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was executed
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i knew that once eric was hanged that
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was the end of any chance i had of being
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released
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[Music]
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the minister attending cook's execution
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said cook took the bible from his hands
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and again confessed to rosemary's murder
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but it was of no help to john button
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it would take years before he'd get
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another chance to prove his innocence
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after serving five years of a 10-year
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sentence john button was released from
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prison for good behavior
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the first thing he did
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was visit rosemary anderson's grave
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he was out of prison physically but not
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out of prison emotionally he led his
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life with a big sign over his head
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convicted killer and a big rock in his
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heart injustice
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button eventually got married had two
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children found a job
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and battled a serious depression
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i desperately wanted to live but the
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heartache and the pain
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of living with the injustice which was
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so intense that i knew that i just
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wasn't going to make it that i'd finish
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up doing something foolish
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it was
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seven years
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after i was released i did do something
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foolish
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in desperation button took an overdose
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of sleeping pills got into his car and
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drove off a steep embankment at a
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hundred miles an hour
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miraculously
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he survived
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from that point on my life changed
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completely
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um
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and
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a couple of things that i asked of this
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this god that had watched over me was
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would he would he would he give me back
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a life and would he give me justice in
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my lifetime
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he wrote to government officials looking
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for a way to clear his name
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with no luck
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he even tried writing a book
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but no publisher would touch it i
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remember standing there with the
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rejection slip in my hand and i raised
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my hands up and i said god if you want
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this book written you better do
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something
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in the phone rank
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it was my father bringing me up to uh
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just to mention that he'd been out
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dancing with the young lady last night
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and he told her about the injustice he
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wanted and she wanted to meet me
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the call was about estelle blackburn a
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journalist and the former government
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press secretary she was intrigued by the
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case and agreed to help investigate
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button's story
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i had the skills and the doors that were
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slammed shut in his face opened for me i
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had the networks and the contacts i
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could get the files and everything that
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he needed i knew how to research i was
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playing a detective i was investigating
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a 30 year old murder trying to find
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fresh evidence
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blackburn wasn't entirely convinced that
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button was innocent she had serious
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doubts about eric cook's credibility
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now i lived through the cook era i knew
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cook didn't run down girls cook shot
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people and later we learned that he
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stabbed and strangled as well but he
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certainly didn't run down girls
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but in the files of button's 1964 appeal
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estelle found something surprising
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something that had not been widely
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reported 30 years earlier
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six women had survived hit and run car
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crashes and eric cook had confessed to
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being the driver in each of them
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each woman's story was eerily similar to
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rosemary's
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young women on dark isolated roads run
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down by a stolen car
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estelle eventually wrote her own book
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about john button's case
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and she too had problems finding a
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publisher
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that is until she asked her friend a
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local newspaper publisher for help
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when brett christian read the manuscript
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he agreed to personally finance the
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publication of blackburn's book
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having met john i realized it was just
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not possible for him to have done it it
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and it didn't seem the physics didn't
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seem right to me either
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christian also questioned the lack of
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damage to the front of button's car
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the police were trying to say that
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john's little lightweight french simca
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had hit a girl hard enough to kill her
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and yet there was only there was really
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no discernible damage on it didn't add
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up simply didn't add up
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but could science back up his suspicions
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the answer to that question would come
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from the world's smartest crash test
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dummy
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estelle blackburn's book convinced many
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that john button was innocent and that
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serial killer eric cook was the one who
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killed rosemary anderson
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without a uh a legal verdict i saw
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classed as a killer a convicted killer
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his only hope of overturning the verdict
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was to find new or fresh evidence in
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this 37 year old case
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fresh evidence at law in this
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jurisdiction is evidence which was not
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available at the time of the trial
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which obviously didn't feature at the
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time of the trial and which could not
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with reasonable diligence have been
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available at the trial
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publisher brett christian believes so
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strongly in button's innocence that he
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searched all over the world for an
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expert in the new field of forensics
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called
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pedestrian crash reconstruction
00:16:01
[Music]
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in texas he found rusty hate a former
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policeman and one of the most respected
00:16:08
crash reconstructionists in the field
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accident reconstruction is an effort to
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explain how a crash a car crash happened
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we use a lot of common sense
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some elementary applied physics and
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more common sense
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and try to piece together the objective
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information we have for a given car
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crash
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to make some sense of it to sort out
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how things happened
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when hate first looked at photographs
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taken of john button's car after the
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accident he didn't believe there was
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damage consistent with the fatal
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collision
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rosemary anderson the girl that was hit
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by a car
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was hit in the in the range of 30 to 40
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miles an hour and
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that leaves you know that kind of
00:16:52
contact with the body leaves
00:16:54
distinctive marks on a car and there
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were none of those marks on
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the car that i saw photos of nothing
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even close
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the mark would be on the hood because of
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the way a body moves when hit at that
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speed
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i think you can envision you know person
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as a struck by a car
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basically wrapping or or bending onto
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the to the front of the car
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the technical term we use when we're
00:17:17
describing the trajectory is a wrap
00:17:19
trajectory where the force applied on
00:17:21
the body is below the body's center of
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mass and so the body is going to bend
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usually about the waist and that's going
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to leave some sort of mark in the hood
00:17:32
but in an appeals court hate would need
00:17:34
more than just an opinion
00:17:36
he would need hard forensic proof
00:17:40
for that
00:17:41
he needed to perform pedestrian crash
00:17:44
tests on a 1963 simca brand car
00:17:48
a model that by this time was 35 years
00:17:52
old
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despite the age
00:17:56
brett christian found
00:17:58
three usable cars
00:18:00
he also found a 1963 holden the model
00:18:04
eric cook said he was driving when he
00:18:07
killed rosemary anderson
00:18:09
cook's version is that he drives up
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behind her and hits her from behind
00:18:14
a biomedical dummy was used to mimic the
00:18:17
reactions of rosemary's body
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hate suspended it by a fishing line that
00:18:23
breaks on impact
00:18:25
the police didn't accept eric cook's
00:18:27
version of the crash because the
00:18:29
exterior sun visor on his car wasn't
00:18:32
damaged as one would expect
00:18:35
when hate's test car struck the dummy
00:18:37
from behind it rolled onto the hood and
00:18:40
over the roof just as eric cook had
00:18:43
claimed
00:18:44
but i was focused on the visor i was
00:18:47
focused on the alignment and then i
00:18:48
looked at the visor and and i remember
00:18:50
seeing the visor bend when the dummy hit
00:18:52
it and it sent a cold chill in my back i
00:18:54
thought ah no this is not good it can't
00:18:56
be good
00:18:57
but the visor had snapped back into
00:18:59
shape with no damage
00:19:02
this explained why eric cook's visor
00:19:04
showed no damage when police inspected
00:19:07
it
00:19:08
they actually flex that's what this this
00:19:10
visor had done when the body hit it so
00:19:12
now all of a sudden what was kind of a
00:19:14
tense moment became hey we've done it so
00:19:17
the dummy did exactly what cook said it
00:19:20
was just a moment of wow this is it
00:19:23
we've done it
00:19:25
and the dummy landed face down
00:19:28
consistent with how john button found
00:19:31
rosemary's body
00:19:34
but the tests on john button's car the
00:19:37
simca were even more persuasive
00:19:40
we found marking at the leading edge of
00:19:42
the hood and more important we found a
00:19:44
big dent a big depression in the hood
00:19:46
where the dummy had come down and
00:19:48
basically smacked its head on the hood
00:19:51
whether we hit it on the right more in
00:19:52
the center or on the left it just didn't
00:19:54
matter
00:19:55
there was no similar damage to buttons
00:19:58
car
00:19:59
and each time the dummy landed on its
00:20:02
back
00:20:03
inconsistent with the injuries on the
00:20:05
front of rosemary's body
00:20:09
rusty hate concluded that john button
00:20:11
did not kill rosemary anderson
00:20:15
so with estelle's research
00:20:17
and with
00:20:18
with hate's evidence we were able to
00:20:20
show both of those things i it must have
00:20:22
been cook
00:20:24
and b
00:20:25
it could not have been button you can't
00:20:26
get a much stronger case than that
00:20:30
this was enough to convince three judges
00:20:32
on the supreme court of west australia
00:20:35
that the verdict must be regarded as
00:20:37
unsafe and unsatisfactory on the ground
00:20:40
that there has been a miscarriage of
00:20:42
justice
00:20:43
[Music]
00:20:44
[Applause]
00:20:45
[Music]
00:20:47
we went back and corrected a wrong and
00:20:50
we did it with an appropriate use of of
00:20:54
of the forensic evidence but also a
00:20:56
liberal use of
00:20:58
good investigative techniques that
00:21:00
didn't come from the police that came
00:21:02
from basically laypeople
00:21:04
i think it makes us all a little bit
00:21:06
more aware of the fallibility of the
00:21:08
system and have a little bit more faith
00:21:10
that can be rectified and that it is
00:21:12
possible
00:21:13
it's the advance of science that's only
00:21:15
just been made possible and the
00:21:17
recognition of that branch of science
00:21:19
that is motor vehicle crash
00:21:21
reconstruction
00:21:23
that i would say beyond any doubt put
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the seal
00:21:26
of success on john button's case
00:21:29
[Music]
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[Music]
00:21:58
[Music]
00:22:11
you
