Robert Raymond Cook

Months before the murders, Cook was hit in the head with a lead pipe while serving time for breaking and entering and car theft. After this incident, he was noted as becoming more quick-tempered.[2]

On June 28, 1959, police discovered Raymond Cook, 53, his wife, 37-year-old Daisy Cook and their 5 children: Gerald, 9, Patrick William, 8, Christopher Fred, 7, Kathy, 5, and Linda Mae, 3, dead.[3] The adults had been shot while the children had been bludgeoned to death. The bodies were found in the grease pit of their garage in Stettler, Alberta. Raymond Cook's son by his first marriage, Robert Cook, had been arrested in Stettler the day before and charged with obtaining goods under false pretenses, after he had traded the family's 1958 Chevrolet station wagon for a '59 Impala convertible. Inside the trunk, the police found birth certificates, insurance policies, Raymond Cook's marriage certificate, and the report cards of the children. Robert also had a suitcase with four sets of children's pajamas, new bed sheets and a photo album with pictures of his Daisy.[4] When the officers asked Robert where his parents were, he repeatedly changed his story. At one point, he claimed that his father had given him $4,100 and the family had moved to British Columbia. However, the best friend of Raymond Cook said he knew nothing about this plan.

Robert was arrested for the murders, and despite being implicated in the deaths of all of his family members, was only charged with the murder of his father in order to speed up the trial process.

At just after midnight on July 11, 1959, Cook escaped from the Ponoka Mental Institution he was detained in, for a psychiatric assessment, after he had been denied permission to attend the funerals of the family members he had killed, and was found several days later hiding at a pig farm near Bashaw, Alberta. It took two trials and just under 16 months for Cook to be convicted of murder, where he maintained his innocence up until his execution.[5]

While awaiting his execution at the Fort Saskatchewan Provincial Gaol, Robert authored a poem as part of a last-minute plea for clemency sent to the Solicitor General of Canada, and Prime Minister John G. Diefenbaker.[6]

I sit here in my death cell, I know not why,
  For the evidence proved me innocent, and that is no lie
Seven members of my family, murdered to date,
  The jury on a guess would make it number eight,
Was it planned that way or was it just fate.
  My lawyers family threatened with the same,
What reason can there be for such a dirty game,
  The judge directed, pay no heed and reject that lead,
Pay no heed to another one, pay no heed to the shirt and gun,
  Close your eyes, you need not see,
Two places at once I could not be,
  So I ask you is it strange that I am sentenced to the noose.
While my family's killer is on the loose.

  He wiped up his finger prints, all traces of his crime,
Putting a stained suit under the mattress, no doubt he knew it was mine
  His purpose clear to see the murder of the missing member without fear of the fine

Time he would gain and safe he would be
  So I ask you is it strange that I am sentenced to the noose
While my family's killer is on the loose.

  My family's funeral I wanted to attend,
I had to escape and sealed my own fate in the end.
  If my loved ones saw, and wondered why I was not there,
I pray God told them of the hounds and the hare.
  They hounded me by day, they hounded me by night
Blood hounds and helicopters, oh, what a sight.
  Out to murder, armed and dangerous they said,
That is so funny, I'll laugh till I am dead.
  So I ask you is it strange that I am sentenced to the noose.
While my family's killer is on the loose.

  I've heard of justice, but where can it be,
I looked in the dictionary, behold! there it is to see.
  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.

Cook was sent to the gallows at the Fort Saskatchewan Provincial Gaol at midnight, November 14, 1960, and pronounced dead at 12:19 AM on November 15, 1960. The case has been the subject of several books and two plays.[7][8]

• Jack Pecover (1996). The Work of Justice: The Trials of Robert Raymond Cook : the Story of the Last Man Hanged in Alberta. Wolf Willow Press. ISBN 1-55056-423-4.

• Frank W. Anderson (2008) The Robert Cook Murder Case, Gopher Books, ISBN 9780921969204
• Betty Jane Hegerat (2011) The Boy, Oolichan Books, ISBN 9780889822757

• "R. vs. Robert Raymond Cook" The Legal Archives Society of Alberta 14 July 2010
• "The Last Hanging: Docudrama on Gruesome Stettler Murders" The Red Deer Advocate 5 December 2008 14 July 2010