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Questions still remain, was he guilty?
https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/albertas-last-hanged-man
“Robert Raymond Cook, the last person to die by capital punishment in Alberta, protested his innocence in the deaths of seven members of his own family until the day he went to the gallows. On the 60th anniversary of his death, we revisit the case and look at why the intrigue and debate about the case live on....
......Over the years, the story of the Cook family killings and the last man hanged in Alberta has been told and retold, well beyond classrooms and libraries in Stettler.
It has been featured in newspapers and books, a documentary and even a play.
MacNaughton’s daughter, retired Red Deer lawyer Pamela MacNaughton, is herself in the process of going through thousands of pages of transcripts from the trials.
She hopes to produce a podcast series to explore what she has learned, including testimony from the medical examiner and other witnesses that changed over time, the lack of forensic evidence and problems with the timeline proposed by the prosecution.
“I quite frankly don’t see how he could have done it,” she said. “I don’t think there’s been a real in-depth investigation of this, so I’m going to give it a go.”
If she does turn something up, it could fulfil a prediction Cook himself made in the final stanza of a poem found in his cell after he was executed, in which he professed his innocence.
When I sent for my lawyer he just shook his head
Justice will only come long after you’re dead.
So you people of the world take note,
It’s murder when the innocent die at the end of a rope.....”
https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/albertas-last-hanged-man
“Robert Raymond Cook, the last person to die by capital punishment in Alberta, protested his innocence in the deaths of seven members of his own family until the day he went to the gallows. On the 60th anniversary of his death, we revisit the case and look at why the intrigue and debate about the case live on....
......Over the years, the story of the Cook family killings and the last man hanged in Alberta has been told and retold, well beyond classrooms and libraries in Stettler.
It has been featured in newspapers and books, a documentary and even a play.
MacNaughton’s daughter, retired Red Deer lawyer Pamela MacNaughton, is herself in the process of going through thousands of pages of transcripts from the trials.
She hopes to produce a podcast series to explore what she has learned, including testimony from the medical examiner and other witnesses that changed over time, the lack of forensic evidence and problems with the timeline proposed by the prosecution.
“I quite frankly don’t see how he could have done it,” she said. “I don’t think there’s been a real in-depth investigation of this, so I’m going to give it a go.”
If she does turn something up, it could fulfil a prediction Cook himself made in the final stanza of a poem found in his cell after he was executed, in which he professed his innocence.
When I sent for my lawyer he just shook his head
Justice will only come long after you’re dead.
So you people of the world take note,
It’s murder when the innocent die at the end of a rope.....”
