Heavenly Creatures? Juliet Hulm and Pauline Parker

Pauline Parker at 16 was dark and dumpy with cold brown eyes. Walking with a limp due to a case of osteomyelitis made her unable to participate in sports. Her friend Juliet Hulm owned a horse, so let her friend ride it. Pauline desperately wanted her parents to buy her her own horse, but her

family didn’t have the same kind of money that Juliet’s did. She lived in an inner-city home that served as a rooming house. Her parents were not married, and her father managed a fish shop. To keep herself busy, Pauline wrote novels and operas, an unusual hobby for a girl of 16.

Juliet Hulm was a 15 years old beauty, tall and sophisticated, but also moody, scowling, and strong-willed. She was the daughter of a university rector and lived in a large, stately home. The girls’ home lives couldn’t be any more different.

In 1953, Juliet was put into a hospital for tuberculosis for four months; during this time, Pauline wrote to her every day, and Juliet found these letters to be her lifeline. Juliet could quote classic poets, enjoyed classical music and sculpting in clay. She also shared an interest with her friend in writing. She was discharged but was not considered cured. Both girls romanticized being sick.

Pauline worshipped her friend Juliet. She was a beautiful girl, and Pauline wanted to spend all her time with her friend, and Juliet felt the same way too. They talked about each other all the time, which concerned their parents. Their concern grew when the girls’ grades began to go down.

The parents also worried about the girls’ relationship. The girls seemed to be unusually attached to each other. They were frantic if they couldn’t see each other.

Against her parents’ wishes and encouraged by Juliet, Pauline bought a horse.  How she paid for it in unknown. When her parents found out, they felt if they confronted her she would have a fit. So, they stayed quiet.

Soon, Juliet suddenly lost interest in horses and sold her horse to her family’s house guest, Walter Perry. She had a reason to want/need money.

Juliet had found her mother and Perry in bed together. Her father found out and went to England, leaving Juliet with her mother. Her mother and Perry would later marry after the Hulms divorced. It is interesting that later when Juliet wanted to change her name, she chose the last name Perry, the surname of the man who broke up her parents’ marriage. 

Juliet’s father found out that the girls were planning to go to America and sell their movie scripts to Hollywood, so he called the Parkers, telling them he had a solution to their mutual problem. He was moving away from New Zealand to South Africa and taking Juliet with him. The Parkers were thrilled…. Pauline not so much.

Juliet insisted that her friend Pauline had to come with them, but her father said an emphatic NO. They then went to Honora Parker, Pauline’s mother, but she said NO, too. The girls saw Honora as their real barricade to their being together, so they began to plot her murder.

On Jun 22, 1954 at 3 p.m., a grey day, Honora, Juliet, and Pauline went for a walk after having snacks at a kiosk in Victoria Park. Juliet went ahead and scattered colorful painted rocks on the ground. Pauline stayed with her mother and then drew her mother’s attention to the colorful rocks on the ground. When Honora bent over to pick up one of the rocks, the girls, who had made a weapon out of a piece of brick inside a stocking, swung the weapon and hit Honora over and over on the head. Both girls took turns. In total, there were 24 separate wounds.

The girls, covered in Pauline’s mother’s blood and crying hysterically, returned to the kiosk and said, “It’s Mummy! She’s dead!” They told Mrs. Ritchie, who worked at the kiosk, that they tried to pick up and carry Honora, but she was too heavy. They hoped that story explained why they had so much blood on them.

Mrs. Ritchie called her husband to go look for Honora and sent the girls to clean themselves. She overheard the girls giggling and laughing while they washed Honora’s blood off themselves.

When Mr. Ritchie arrived, he found Honora under a tree with 45 wounds.

Three weeks later, the girls were arrested and held over for trial. Their trial would be the O.J. of its time. The real question was not, did they do it? But were they sane when they did it?

Of course, the prosecutor said they were sane. He called them “dirty-minded girls.” He said their motive was that Honora refused to let Pauline go to South Africa with Juliet. The sad part of this was that even by killing Honora they still would have not gotten to go together. Juliet’s father would never have allowed that either.

The prosecution highlighted the girls’ intense devotion to each other and the amount of time the girls spent together in each other’s beds although there is no real evidence of a sexual relationship between the girls.

The two girls seemed very detached during the trail. Pauline wore a hat that shielded her face, and Juliet wore a paisley scarf.  Juliet would occasionally talk to Pauline, but Pauline would just nod in response.

Juliet’s father, Dr. Hulm, left the country with his son, and with Honora in her grave, Pauline’s father, Mr. Parker and Juliet’s mother, Mrs. Hulm were left to confront the press day in and day out during the trial.

Mrs. Hulm testified that because her daughter was sick so much of the time, Pauline would come over and keep her company. This, she hoped, would explain the times the girls were seen in the same bed.

The girls were both evaluated by Dr. Reginald Medicott, and he testified that Juliet lived in a fantasy world with Pauline. They both worshipped the god Pan (ruled over nature and pasturelands) and lived in what they called the 4^th world, their version of Heaven where they could go at any time they wanted. Both girls felt that what they had done was correct, after all, Mrs. Parker was trying to separate the girls, and that would not do.  Pauline was only remorseful because she claimed that her mother

haunted her in her dreams.

. Pauline’s diary was the nail in the girls’ coffins. In the diary she wrote, in the January before the murder, that she hoped she would get TB too. She chronicled their various ideas of what they would do if they ran away to America/ One of their ideas were that they both would become prostitutes and would make a lot of money.

The diary also said that on April 30^th, Pauline told Juliet that she was going to kill her mother. In May, the girls began to shoplift to get money for their trip to America.

The doctor was asked if the girls knew what the penalty was for what they had done. When she heard the question, Juliet answered by drawing her finger across her neck and Pauline looked at her and smiled.

The doctor finally said that the girls where insane, folie d deux, a madness shared by two people. He said the two had superiority complexes. He had initially thought they were homosexuals and should be separated, but he changed his mind before the trial commenced.

But, the Crown’s psychiatrist, Dr. Stalliworth said they were NOT insane; they had a clear plan, knew it was wrong and executed the plan exactly. He also said there was no doubt they were homosexuals. The prosecutor said,” these girls are not incurably insane. They are incurably bad.”

The jury took just two and a half hours to come to a verdict. The girls returned to the courtroom to hear their fate, laughing and giggling, smiling with a look of disdain on their faces.  When the guilty verdict was read, both sat calmly and indifferently. They were immediately sentenced to an indeterminate time at her majesty’s pleasure. 

Pauline was sent to Arohata Borstal prison near Wellington while Juliet when to Mount Eden, which was used to hang prisoners.

Pauline used her time well in prison by graduating from high school while Juliet was introduced to the sewing machine and knitting and spent her time writing and studying languages. She rarely talked about the murder, only saying she did it for Pauline. Both girls only served five years.

When Juliet was released from prison, she initially went to England then to America for a while, and then disappeared.

In 1984, a film about Pauline and Juliet’s crime was made into a film, Heavenly Creatures. A journalist named Lin Ferguson tracked Juliet down and found out that she had changed her name to Anne Perry and now was a Scottish based, very popular crime novelist with more than 100 books to her credit. When found, Juliet (to avoid confusion, I will continue to call them by their original names) admitted who she was. All she would say was that she had made peace with what she did. She believed that if she had not helped her friend, she would have killed herself.

Two years later, another journalist, Chris Cook, found Pauline. She was called Hilary Nathan. She had gone to college when she was released and earned a B.A. degree. Additionally, she went to New Zealand Library School. She was considered mysterious and secretive by her fellow classmates. She was purposely absent on the day of the class photo. She had never married (Juliet was unmarried, also). She lived in Kent by the time the journalist found her and was quite reclusive. Her only real interaction with people was the children she taught to horseback ride. Unlike Juliet, Pauline did not want to talk. Her older sister Wendy said Pauline was sorry for what she had done; it was just a situation that got out of hand. She spent most of her time in prayer. She didn’t have a radio or television and had not had any contact with Juliet since their last day in court.

It boggles my mind that these two girls were so enthralled with each other that they killed one of their mothers to avoid being taken away from each other, but they both were able to walk out of the courthouse right after they were sentenced and never saw or talked to each other again? There is such a disconnect to this story. These two girls never thought the rules and regulations of the world applied to them, so why would they suddenly obey the judge when he said part of their punishment was they never see each other again