I never knew that about her, for some reason they don’t put it on the bio on the books :-)
Yes interesting that she now writes about murders. I wonder why she only got five years. I’d actually like to know more about that!
In June 1954, at the age of 15, Hulme and her best friend Pauline Parker murdered Parker’s mother, Honorah Rieper.[3] Hulme’s parents were in the process of separating and she was supposed to go to South Africa to stay with a relative. The two teenage friends, who had created a complicated fantasy life together populated with famous actors such as James Mason and Orson Welles, did not want to be separated.
On 22 June 1954, the girls and Honorah Rieper went for a walk in Victoria Park in their hometown of Christchurch. On an isolated path Hulme dropped an ornamental stone so that Rieper would lean over to retrieve it. Parker had planned to hit her mother with half a brick wrapped in a stocking. The girls presumed that one blow would kill her but it took more than 20.[4]
Parker and Hulme stood trial in Christchurch in 1954 and were found guilty on 29 August that year. As they were too young to be considered for the death penalty under New Zealand law at the time, they were convicted and sentenced to be “detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure”. In practice they were detained at the discretion of the Minister of Justice. They were released separately five years later.
Parker and Hulme are not believed to have had any contact since the trial.[5]
The events formed the basis for the 1994 film Heavenly Creatures, in which Melanie Lynskey portrayed a teenage Pauline Parker and Kate Winslet the teenaged Juliet Hulme. At the time of the film’s release, it was not generally known that mystery author “Anne Perry” was Juliet Hulme, whose identity was made public some months after the film’s release. Although some presumed Hulme and Parker’s relationship to be sexual, Perry stated in 2006 that, while the relationship was obsessive, the two “were never lesbians”.[5]
....I didn’t know that either