The Night Caller Revisits the True Story of an Aussie Serial Killer: Watch the Trailer

The Night Caller Updates: In the early 1960s, a string of seemingly random murders shook the sleepy coastal city of Perth, Australia, to its core.

The killings — shootings, stabbings, hit-and-runs, stranglings — ultimately claimed eight lives; others survived and were scarred for life. Three men were arrested for the crimes and were all convicted.

But only one of them was responsible: Eric Edgar Cooke, aka “The Night Caller,” a married father of seven with a cleft palate and speech impediment who’s gone down as one of Australia’s most prolific serial killers.

In the early 1960s, Perth was a sunny, peaceful and innocent city, until suddenly devastated by a spate of horrific, disparate, seemingly senseless killings, which local police failed to connect and attribute to one man until it was far too late with tragic consequences.

His story, and the collateral damage he left behind among his victims, including the wrongly imprisoned John Button and Darryl Beamish, the citizens of Perth and a maligned police force, is recounted in “The Night Caller.” The gripping four-part docuseries from filmmaker Thomas Meadmore premieres Tuesday on Sundance Now.

It depicts and explores a killer’s harrowing legacy – of tragedy, grief, responsibility, and redemption – as seen through the eyes of a filmmaker returning to his childhood home in Perth Australia, and spending time with those closest to the killer and his victims, whose lives he altered irrevocably.

The Night Caller: What Creator and Director has to say?

Creator and director Thomas Meadmore commented “I’ve returned to Australia, the place where I was brought up, to examine an urban legend that shaped my parents’ existence, and thus me too, in ways I hadn’t realized until I shared time with those most deeply affected by Cooke and explored how the trauma of these events still live on in these people, as well as the broader community today.

The team at Abacus, EQ Media, and Salon Pictures have been extraordinary support and I can’t wait to share it all with you.”

With unprecedented access to the killer’s wife and the two men wrongly convicted of his crimes, this is a series about the devastating aftermath of serial murder, and how his victims, which include his wife and those wrongly convicted of his crimes, have come together through grief and injustice, in the pursuit of closure and redemption, which includes finally holding the police to account.

Produced by EQ Media Group and Salon Pictures.