‘WHY I CONFESSED TO MURDER'

JOHN BUTTON SPENT 39 YEARS TRYING TO CLEAR HIS NAME AFTER BEING COERCED INTO SAYING HE KILLED HIS GIRLFRIEND

- Kylie Walters

Waking up on his 19th birthday on February 9, 1963, John Button didn’t think life could get any better. He had a gorgeous girlfriend, Rosemary Anderson, 17, whom he was planning to propose to on her 18th birthday, his own car and a job as a brickie’s apprentice. But the next day, he found himself at Fremantle Prison awaiting trial after he’d confessed to her murder.

“I was madly in love with Rosemary,” Button, whose story has been made into four-part docuseries After the Night, tells WHO. “She brought me so much happiness. I would never have hurt her.”

Anderson had been a victim of a vicious serial killer named Eric Edgar Cooke. The “Night Caller”, as he became known, stalked the sleepy suburbs of Perth for five years, committing a violent spree of acts that left eight people dead through random shootings, stabbings and hit and runs. On the night Cooke ran Anderson down, she and Button had gotten into an argument that saw her storm out of the house. Following behind in his car, Button tried to coax her in, before deciding to pull over to give her a couple of minutes to cool off. “It only took two minutes. But our whole world changed,” he explains.