Robert Raymond Cook

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Robert Raymond Cook or Bobby Cook was a Canadian murderer convicted of the slaying of his family in Stettler, Alberta. He became the last man to be legally executed in Alberta.^[1]

[edit] Overview

In 1959, police discovered Raymond and Daisy May Cook and their five children shot and bludgeoned to death in the garage of their Stettler home, marking the most gruesome mass murder in the province's history. Evidence led police to the Cook's eldest son, Robert Raymond, who had been released from prison only days before the crime.

It took 18 months and two trials for Cook to be convicted of the murder of his father, stepmother and five siblings, for which he was sentenced to death. Shortly after the sentence was handed down, Cook escaped custody, but was found several days later, hiding in a straw stack. At midnight, on November 14, 1960, he was led from his cell in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, to the execution chamber. He was pronounced dead at 00:18, and would be the last person to be hanged in the province.

The case has been the subject of a scholarly review, The Work of Justice by Jack Pecover, as well as a 2000 play, The End of the Rope by Aaron Coates, which was funded by Young Canada Works and written using archival documents from the Legal Archives Society of Alberta.^[2] The play was performed in the courtroom where the original trial had taken place, and one performance was attended by then-attorney David P. McNaughton, now a provincial judge.^[3]

[edit] Further reading

• Jack Pecover (1996). The Work of Justice: The Trials of Robert Raymond Cook : the Story of the Last Man Hanged in Alberta. Wolf Willow Press. ISBN 1550564234. 

[edit] References