PAULINE PARKER DIES IN ORKNEY

Pauline Parker, convicted with schoolfriend Juliet Hulme of murdering her mother in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1954, has died in Orkney. Parker lived under the name Hilary Nathan in later life. She ran a riding stable on the island of Burray and later lived in Kirkwall. Neighbours and friends knew her as a quiet, religious woman.

Parker and Hulme met at Christchurch Girls’ Secondary school and shared an interest in fiction and imaginary worlds, according to author Peter Graham. The court heard that Hulme’s parents planned to move to South Africa, raising the prospect that the girls would be separated. The girls believed Parker’s mother, Honorah Parker, stood in their way. They lured her to a park and beat her to death with a brick inside a stocking. Their defence argued insanity, but the court convicted both of murder.

Parker and Hulme served five years in separate prisons before their release in 1960. They took new identities and left New Zealand, and the court ordered them never to meet again. Hulme became the crime writer Anne Perry and died in 2023. Peter Jackson’s film Heavenly Creatures depicted the case, with Kate Winslet playing Hulme, Melanie Lynskey playing Parker and Sarah Peirse playing her mother; accounts date its release to 1994 or 1995. Jackson said in a 1995 interview: “We wanted to understand more about Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme, and what made them become friends.”