Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme
Pauline Yvonne Parker was born illegitimately on May 26, 1938 at Christchurch, New Zealand and was her bored with her life at 31 Gloucester Street until she met Juliet Marion Hulme. Recently arrived from England, Hulme had been born in Blackheath, London on October 28, 1938. Her father was the physicist Dr. Henry Hulme. The two girls became close friends but their friendship spilled over into physical passion and they consummated their affair and “enacted how the saints would make love”. They “scribbled in exercise book effusions which they called novels, spent a good deal of time in each other’s beds”. Both sets of parents tried to break up the relationship seeing it as unhealthy.
Eventually, Hulme’s father made plans to move to south Africa, having discovered his wife was having an affair. Parker wanted to accompany her friend but her mother, Honora, forbade it. The girls decided to kill 45-year-old Honora Parker. On 22 June they put half a brick into a stocking and in Victoria Park in Christchurch, Hulme dropped an ornamental stone so that Mrs. Parker would bend over to pick it up and then Parker and Hulme repeatedly smashed the woman about the head with the brick. They ran to a teashop at 3:30pm where they said, “Please help us. Mommy has been hurt; covered with blood” before adding that Mrs. Parker had fallen and banged her head and “it kelp bumping and banging”. When the police found the body it had 45 wounds on the head; they arrested the girls.
Pauline Parker had kept a diary of her affair and in it were references to “moidering” her mother. Parker and Hulme went on triaal on august 23, 1954 fur muder in Christchurch and were found guilty on August 29. Both were sentenced to be detained at her Majesty’s Pleasure. They were each released in 1958. A condition of their release was that they were never to meet or contact each other again. Both moved to Great Britain. Parker became a devout Catholic, changed her name to Hillary Nathan and lived in the small village of Hoo near Strood, Kent where she ran a children’s riding school. Hulme moved to the USA where she became a Mormon before settling in Portmahomack, Scotland, with her mother. She changed her name to Anne Perry and is a very successful crime novelist. her first novel, The Cater Street Hangman, was published in 1979.
Their story was made into the film Heavenly Creatures in 1994. Melanie Lynskey played Pauline and Kate Winslet as Juliet.
This is one freaking and horrible crime. But the lives that they’ve lead after that horrifying crime is really different from what happened. Well, I never knew that this has been adapted into a film. It must be a good portrayal especially that it was starred by Kate Winslet. Thanks for sharing this buddy!
Juliet Hulme ( Anne Perry ) and Pauline Parker ( Hilary Nathan )were suffering from extreme psychic stress and emotional trauma at the time the matricide was committed.
They were in the category of, diminished responsibility or/and temporary insanity.
If the case were heard today, I feel that would be the verdict of any reasonable jury, with a proviso that they be given the help they needed as young adolescent girls.
Carl Rosel
That’s merely your amateur opinion, of course, and not fact. Peter Graham, assistant lawyer to Brian McLelland, Juliet Hulme’s defense lawyers states that if the trial happened today, based on the law regarding insanity pleas, Parker and Hulme would get exactly the same sentence. Are you simply ignoring his 30+ years of legal experience and his familiarity with the Parker-Hulme case, and his vast array of legal qualifications?