Australia Australia - Jenny Cook, 29, Townsville, Qld, 19 Jan 2009

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marlywings

marlywings

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November 30, 2013

TOWNSVILLE woman Jenny Lee Cook was quirky and fun, had an infectious laugh, and was conquering milestones from a young age.

Her mother Lorraine Pullen recalled her daughter, with a big grin on her face, climbing to the top of a step ladder before she was 18 months old.

"Her first attempt at putting on makeup (she was) about two - eye shadow, rouge and lipstick, and plenty of it. Like face painting," Mrs Pullen said.

Jenny learned to ride motorbikes at four, enjoyed horse riding and loved her Boxer dog, Nikeisha.

In happier times, Jenny and husband Paul Cook would often be seen walking Nikeisha around the streets of Douglas in the evenings.

But on January 19, 2009, something "bizarre and unusual" occurred at their immaculate home.

http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/news/how-did-jenny-cook-die/story-fnjfzs4b-1226771779492

Media, Facts, Timeline and Maps
 
From reading the MSM articles, it's obvious that Jenny's parents have never given up lobbying for her.

Hopefully examining it here on WS hopes to keep the case alive too.

Justice for Jenny.
 
On the day of her death, Mr Cook, a former prison officer, came home but could not find his wife.

He sent her a text message at 7.38pm but heard her phone in the house, and noticed a knife missing from the knife block.

He found her body lying on a large sheet of plywood, with a sheet or bandage covering her face, and a large knife, wrapped in string and secured with tape, wedged between a security screen and a window.

No suicide note was located and an autopsy found she died from a wound to her chest.

http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/news/how-did-jenny-cook-die/story-fnjfzs4b-1226771779492

Bizarre and unusual, indeed. How many suicides cover their own faces...

Thanks Marly for this thread and all the other Aussie cases you've posted up. You're a treasure. :heart:
 
Coroner Jane Bentley has criticised the police for destroying the knife before it was fingerprinted and not verifying the movements of Ms Cook's husband.

The coroner has delivered an open finding, saying she is unable to determine whether or not Ms Cook committed suicide or was murdered.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-...en-finding-in-townsville-womans-death/5140900

Woah - destroying the knife.. before it was fingerprinted? I am pretty sure that is NOT standard police procedure? Why on earth would they do such a thing? Especially if her face was covered.. and with the unusual nature of how the knife was found (I am assuming it was fixed in place in the window grill, so it would seem she ran herself onto the knife rather than stabbing herself with it..). VERY strange indeed.

My first thought there was - did the husband have friends among those police.
 
Yup - how suspicious is this case??!!:facepalm:
 
Just some comments on what's been presented in the "Knife Edge" article linked above (reposting link: http://www.smh.com.au/national/knife-edge-20140714-3bvp7.html )


It's a quiet Monday night in Townsville and an ambulance radio crackles to life in the car park of the far north Queensland city's main hospital.

It's a Code 1A: a woman in her early 30s has suffered an apparent cardiac arrest. Lights flashing, siren on, the two paramedics on board, Robert Haydon and Chris O'Connor, accelerate through the thinning evening traffic, hoping to find the woman still alive.

( -- why cardiac arrest? did hubby NOT see the blood? he later says he saw blood 'around her mouth' - but not on her chest, as was evident to the paramedics?)

She's wearing shorts, runners, and a sun hat. Strangely, what looks like a section of a sheet has been wrapped around the back of her head, partly obscuring her face, and a bathrobe tie is secured around her throat.


( -- wtf...)

"She never told me she even thought about killing herself," Cook would later tell detectives, not even raising the possibility that she may have met with foul play.

( -- despite the weirdness of it all --- I highly recommend a read of this article, for the rest of what can only be described as a monumental amount of suspicious stuff pointing to Paul Cook as his wife's killer. It's a LOT. Including a fudged alibi. Too much to repost here.)

Less than two days after the death, the Sheerwater Parade house is cleared of being a crime scene and Cook is allowed access to potentially important evidentiary exhibits such as the plywood board, still lying in the backyard. There is no dusting for fingerprints on the knife, no DNA test of the board, no search of the house for traces of the string or tape used to wedge the knife into the wall and no follow-through on Cook's alibi.

Shortly after her death, Cook cashed in Jenny Lee's WorkCover settlement and superannuation, which along with the sale of the Sheerwater Parade house, amounted to about $800,000.


--- Crazy stuff. So there's a *very* strange sort of suicide, in a troubled marriage with a financial motive for murder apparent, as well as strong rumours of an affair. And two days later, Cook is allowed access to the crime scene. The knife is thrown away, unexamined.. No wonder the coroner is calling for a police enquiry!!!

Good on her parents for not giving up. Whatever happened to Jenny, I hope there's a new investigation soon, and the truth is discovered...
 
Thankyou Isis and Ausgirl, this is horribly interesting. I think it needs everyone here,
all our WSers to go through all this *advertiser censored*:loveyou:
 
I'd be interested to know if any of the same police worked on this case as worked on the Arnold / Leahy case many years before.
 
Somebody has slipped up somewhere haven't they, her poor parents.
 
There are many glaringly obvious things about this that arouse suspicion. I haven't read the full autopy report yet but already it's screaming out.

The most obvious thing is the wound. It pointed downwards. Which means it occurred from above her. The knife is pointing downward in the photo. It would be nearly impossible for Jenny to impale herself on it, if it were sticking straight out, yes, I'd believe it but not at that angle. She would have had to force herself upward onto it.

The sheet and bathrobe sash around her head OVER a sunhat!!??

Lying on her side - would she have fallen that way? I don't think so. If he got close enough to see bleeding from the mouth, he would have seen the pool of blood on the board and the chest wound. The board itself is odd, that she happened to land on it even more so. Could have been used to move her and prevent necessity of cleaning up.

Tape and string used to keep the knife wedged, no sign of it anywhere in the house.

PC saw the knife missing, THEN unstacked the dishwasher?

He turned all the lights on, including the outside spotlight, yet when paramedics arrived, there were no exterior lights on?

The Paramedics and Police noted the knife immediately but PC didn't?

He wasn't waiting for them to arrive which is what the 000 dispatch usually tell you to do.

As someone else mentioned, why call it in as cardiac arrest?

Off to read more!
 
This is a shocker. It sounds like NO forensic work was done. How tight are cops and prison guards?
 
Okay, here's something I noticed.. in the police diagram of the crime scene given in the "Knife Edge" article, it shows Jenny facing -away- from the gate (where the police came in) and toward the back yard/back of the house. Her husband made it clear he noticed no blood on her chest, only on her mouth (she inhaled her own blood). If he entered that side yard NOT from the gate but from the back yard/house (and he did, this is supported by his statements) he SHOULD have been able to clearly see the blood on her. But he didn't? The ambulance first being called to a heart attack.. Cook 'not seeing' the chest wound.. a whole heap of stuff truly doesn't add up.

How this was not eye-achingly obvious to the cops is beyond me.

Also, I am having a tiny bit of trouble picturing this whole cloth-around-her-head thing. Jenny was wearing a floppy white hat and shorts, like she was out gardening a bit... around her head (and over the hat) was a "fitted sheet" (like a hooded cape?) that was both under her body and still around her head when she was found. Keeping this in place (somehow?) was a bathrobe tie (aka the "white bandage") tied around her head? I think? and also somehow draped or tied around her throat. Bonnet-style? Some other perspectives on what this actually might have looked like, precisely, would be great. Even better, some ideas of what that might be all about, from both a suicide angle and a murder angle - both are making no sense to me right now.

Why a woman with plenty of pills in the house would opt for this elaborate, painful way to die.. I cannot fathom at all. But if she was staged, sheet and all, what was the purpose in it?

One thing about the knife angle though -- I can see how a person's body weight might drag the angle of the knife downwards as they fell.
 
BatWoman said:
This is a shocker. It sounds like NO forensic work was done. How tight are cops and prison guards?
Click to expand...

Ow, now that is what I thought....its a shock to see this neglect after seeing the brilliant work for Allison Dickie.
 
From the coroners report I don't understand the lack of blood or splatter
 
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