Estelle Blackburn


Estelle Blackburn is an Australian journalist who has played a crucial role in the review of some controversial criminal cases in Western Australia.

Early life

Born in Perth, to Margaret Mercer Blackburn and George Everard Blackburn, and younger sister to Dr Gregory Blackburn, Estelle Blackburn spent her pre-school years in Northam, Western Australia.
In 1956, her father's employment as a personnel manager with AMP Limited required the family to return to Perth where she attended Floreat Primary School in 1956 and Presbyterian Ladies' College Primary School from 1957 to 1961. She then attended and completed high school at Methodist Ladies' College, Perth, from 1962 to 1967, obtaining a Western Australian High School Leaving Certificate with distinctions in the subjects English and Music.

Education and early career

When unsuccessful in her initial application for a journalism cadetship with West Australian Newspapers she was offered a position with the company as a clerk in the newspaper library which she occupied for three months. In 1968, she gained a Commonwealth government scholarship to attend the University of Western Australia as a full-time student. She succeeded in entering the journalism cadetship program in 1969. While working for WA Newspapers, she completed a Bachelor of Arts degree part-time with a double major in psychology and anthropology, progressing from general news and minor features to coverage of the proceedings of the WA state parliament.
In 1974, she travelled to Europe contributing some articles to Western Australian journals as a freelance correspondent. In 1980, she returned to Perth and joined the ABC as a radio and television reporter. In 1985, she was invited to apply for a position in the media office of the WA government as the media advisor to the minister for police and local government, Jeff Carr, and later Gordon Hill. In 1990, she became junior media advisor in the office of the premier of Western Australia, Carmen Lawrence, until the defeat of the Lawrence government in 1993.

Author

''Broken Lives''

's brother, who met Blackburn at a dance in November 1991, claimed his older brother had been framed for a murder committed by Eric Cooke. Though skeptical Blackburn met John Button in February 1992. After hearing his testimony and reading the appeal books kept from his previous court actions, decided that his case would be an appropriate topic for a book.
During the following ten years this project became a combined exercise in authorship and citizen advocacy which led to the re-opening of the cases of both Button and Darryl Beamish and the quashing of their long-standing convictions. The key discovery in the revision of the case histories was that Eric Cooke had been a multiple-method killer. His offences show a significant deviation from the pattern generally accepted as the orthodox serial killer template which holds that such killers target the same type of victim in the same way, impelled by the same underlying motive. Police at the time didn't make public Cooke's deviation from this.
Following the initial publication of Broken Lives in 1998, Blackburn became the recipient of a number of awards, the most significant being the Medal of the Order of Australia and a Walkley Award. Renewed public interest in the cases led to several appearances in the electronic media, including two on ABC Television's high-profile programme, Australian Story, in 1998 'Dancing with Strangers' and 2002 'Murder He Wrote' and on USA's Forensic Files 'Dueling Confessions'. This increased media profile afforded an opportunity to engage in paid public speaking and invitations to contribute to true-crime anthologies.
Blackburn assisted in preparation of the appeal cases for John Button and Darryl Beamish, and acted as media liaison for the defence team. In 2002, the conviction of John Button for manslaughter was quashed; in 2005, Darryl Beamish's wilful murder conviction was quashed.

The End of Innocence

In 2007, Blackburn's next book, The End of Innocence, was published. A partial autobiography, it revisited the topics covered in Broken Lives and told the story of the investigation which produced it. This work contained a background story of Blackburn's own experience of violence at the time of writing her first book. This attracted media attention and led to further appearances on radio and television programmes.

Awards

Blackburn has received the following awards and honours: