How villagers rallied round 'Heavenly Creatures' killer

Convicted killer Juliet Hulme says residents of a remote Scottish village rallied around her when she was "outed" by the Peter Jackson movie, Heavenly Creatures.

Hulme, now better known as crime writer Anne Perry, said she hoped her past as one of Christchurch's "gymslip murderers" would stay secret when she moved 20 years ago to Portmahomack, a fishing village an hour's drive from Inverness.

Hulme, at 15, helped friend Pauline Parker bash Parker's mother Honore to death with a brick in Christchurch in 1954.

The pair were convicted of murder and Hulme spent nearly six years in a high-security jail, before changing her identity to Anne Perry and moving back to Britain.

Perry, now 67, told Britain's Times newspaper that when she was "outed" in 1994, she resolved to leave Portmahomack if villagers didn't want to have anything more to do with her, but the town rallied around.

"If you don't lie, don't make excuses, don't blame anybody else ... people seem to respect you. I was so relieved when they wanted me to stay."

On Perry's release from prison in 1959, her father gave her £8000 to buy a run-down cottage in Suffolk, which she renovated.

On moving to Scotland, Perry bought a two-bedroom cottage in 1985. She moved to the adjacent stone barn in 1989. It is now worth £750,000 ($2 million).

Her first novel, The Cater Street Hangman, came out in 1979, but she has since had about 50 books published.

Perry, who became a Mormon, and Parker, who now lives in Kent and is a devout Catholic, were banned from contacting each other again.

- NZPA