Anne Perry, teen murderer-turned crime writer, dies at 84

Anne Perry in 2001. Photo / Getty Images

Best-selling crime author Anne Perry, originally known as Juliet Hulme, has died in the US at the age of 84.

As a teenager, she was found guilty of aiding in the murder of her friend’s mother in Christchurch’s Port Hills, a crime that inspired Peter Jackson’s movie Heavenly Creatures.

Pauline Parker, 16, and Juliet Hulme, 15, were two friends who planned to murder Honorah Parker, Pauline’s mother, because they thought she would keep them apart by not allowing her daughter to accompany Juliet when she left the country with her parents.

On the afternoon of June 22, 1954, the girls convinced Honorah to accompany them on a trip to Victoria Park in Christchurch’s Port Hills. They bashed her to death by striking her more than 20 times with a half-brick concealed inside a sock down a remote lane.

The girls were detained on suspicion of murder and put on trial in Christchurch at the Supreme Court of New Zealand in a case that captivated the entire country.

Their plan to kill Honorah was carefully outlined in Pauline’s diary and following a police investigation the girls were quickly arrested.

Shock over the crime spread around the country and the world as media converged on Christchurch for the trial at the Supreme Court of New Zealand.

They were found guilty despite their not-guilty pleas and remanded into different jails.

They were free to begin new lives with new identities after serving 5 and a half years in prison, in November 1959.

Hulme, now Anne Perry, lived in the United States for a while before returning to England. In 1968, she joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Perry then moved back to the UK and published her first book in 1979 while residing in a remote Scottish community.

Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures. Photo / Supplied

She later rose to fame as a best-selling novelist and relocated back to the US to work on the film adaptations of some of her more than 100 works, which were later translated into a dozen different languages and sold tens of millions of copies.

Jackson’s 1994 Academy Award-nominated film Heavenly Creatures, which starred Kate Winslet as Juliet and Kiwi actress Melanie Lynskey as Pauline Parker, dramatised the girls’ crime.

Pauline Parker, who changed her name to Hilary Nathan, converted to Catholicism and relocated to Scotland, was never able to get in touch with her again. She also never went back to New Zealand.