From yesterday's Writer's Almanac:
It's the birthday of convicted murderer and best-selling
detective novelist Anne Perry, born Juliet Hulme in London (1938). She had
tuberculosis, and her doctor said she wouldn't survive another winter in
England, so she was sent away to live in the Bahamas, and then South Africa.
She rejoined her family when she was 13, after her father -- a well-known
physicist -- got a job as a president of a university in Christchurch, New
Zealand. She became close friends with a classmate, Pauline Parker, who also struggled
with health issues. When Juliet was confined to a sanatorium for several
months, she exchanged daily letters with Pauline. They created an elaborate
fantasy world together; they were both working on novels, which they were
convinced were brilliant. They planned to run away to New York together, find
publishers for their novels, and then make them into Hollywood movies -- they
would be actresses and they would handpick famous actors to star in their
films.
Then Juliet's parents decided to leave the country and take
their daughter to South Africa. The two girls were absolutely devastated and
begged for Pauline to move to South Africa too. Juliet's parents thought the
girls needed to be separated, but they said all right, as long as it was OK
with the Parkers -- knowing full well they would never consent. Sure enough,
Pauline Parker's mother refused. The teenage girls decided that Pauline's
mother was the only thing ruining their lives, and that the only way to solve
everything would be to kill her. So they did, inviting her to go on a walk in
the park and then bashing her head with a brick tied in a stocking. When the
girls returned to the teahouse where they had eaten lunch, they were covered in
blood, and quickly arrested. Juliet was 15 years old, and Pauline 16.
The brutal murder shocked the country, and the two girls
were given a high-profile trial. The prosecution read extracts of Pauline's
diary, in which the girls coldly planned the murder. They were each sentenced
to an indefinite prison sentence, and were released separately about five years
later under the condition they never contact each other.
The girl who had been Juliet Hulme changed her name to Anne
Perry. She converted to Mormonism, and settled in a remote Scottish village
with her mother. In 1978, she published a murder mystery called The Cater
Street Hangman, set in Victorian England. She expanded the book into a series,
and then wrote another detective series. For decades, no one knew that Anne
Perry and Juliet Hulme were one in the same. Then, in 1994, the Parker-Hulme
murder case became the inspiration for the film Heavenly Creatures, starring
Kate Winslet as Juliet. A reporter was writing a story about the film and
discovered that not only was Juliet Hulme still alive, she was a best-selling,
world-famous writer named Anne Perry. She writes for 12 hours a day, and she
has written more than 50 novels, which have sold more than 25 million copies.
Perry said of her writing: "It is vital for me to go on
exploring moral matters."
