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Thursday June 8 2017 13
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Hollywood beckons Parker-Hulme killer
Internationally
acclaimed crime
writer Anne Perry
was once known as
Juliet Hulme, one
half of Christchurch’s
most infamous
murder duo. She is
now off to Hollywood
SHE’S BEST known in
Christchurch for one of the
city’s most infamous murders
– the Parker-Hulme case – the
teenager who killed her best
friend’s mother and sparked the
story for Peter Jackson’s Heavenly
Creatures.
But in Britain, Anne Perry,
who she changed her name to,
is a multi-million selling crime
novelist.
Now, she’s left her Scottish
Highland idyll and has moved to
Hollywood in her quest to have
more of her novels adapted for
television, Britain’s Daily Mail
has reported.
Perry, who has been dubbed
the “queen of Victorian crime”
and has sold more than 25 million
books worldwide.
“I’ll miss the views and I’ll
miss my gardens,” said the
78-year-old, as she reminisces
about Tyrn Vawr, her four-bedroom
property on the outskirts
of the peaceful Easter Ross fishing
village of Portmahomack in
the Scottish Highlands.
“Fortunately, it’s all in my
mind and in photographs, so I
can go back any time I want.”
Perry moved into Tyrn Vawr a
quarter of a century ago and has
written most of her books there.
But in Christchurch she is
remembered for the shocking
murder of friend Pauline Parker’s
mother, Honora Parker, in 1954.
With Pauline, her school
friend at Christchurch Girls
High School, Honora was lured
SPACIOUS: Anne Perry’s house has been converted from the remains of an old barn. Italian chandeliers hang from the ceiling.
to the Port Hills near Victoria
park, where they bashed her
over the head with a brick in a
stocking.
Both girls were jailed for five
years. They were considered too
young for the death penalty.
Hulme disappeared from New
Zealand after her release.
In 1994, Peter Jackson
turned the story into the
film Heavenly Creatures and
Kate Winslet played Hulme’s
character.
Perry has said of her part in
the killing that she “made a profoundly
wrong decision”.
Having been told that she
INFAMOUS:
Anne Perry,
formerly
Juliet Hulme
(right), is
selling her
Scottish
Highlands
home.
would be going to live in South
Africa, and with Parker’s mother
standing in the way of the two
teenagers both moving there,
she feared Parker would take
her own life “and it would be my
fault”.
Perry told The Daily Mail: “I
was guilty and it was the right
place for me to be,” she said of
the jail sentence.
Upon release, Perry took various
jobs and for a time lived in
the United States, before settling
in Portmahomack.
She published her first book
under the name Anne Perry in
1979.
It was The Cater Street Hangman,
the first in her Inspector
Pitt series, which two decades
later was turned into an ITV
television movie starring Keeley
Hawes.
Perry, who has written more
than 50 novels and who published
the 32nd Inspector Pitt
story last year, has done most
of her work while living at the
Scottish home, which she is particularly
attached to because she
built it herself – practically from
scratch.
It is now on sale for offers over
£440,000 (NZ$790,000).
Originally, she explains, “it
was a wreck next door to the
house I was living in. I heard
they had got planning permission
to make it into a shop that
would mend motor-cycles and
lawnmowers and I thought: ‘Not
next to me you don’t’.
“So I bought it in self-defence
and then I looked at the ruins
and thought it would make a
marvellous house.”
In the course of her writing
career in Scotland, Perry spent
most of her time at work in her
special study, which has windows
on three sides.
The contemporary look of the
property belies the fact that it has
been converted from the remains
of an old barn.
Built in the shape of an H, the
property has a spacious kitchen,
library and sun room, and a
conservatory that looks out on
to a courtyard with a pond and
water feature.
Upstairs, there are views of the
Scottish Highlands.
“You can see five counties,”
Perry explains: “Caithness,
Sutherland, Ross, Invernessshire,
and Moray.”
The dining room is capable of
seating 20 people and a pair of
Italian chandeliers hang from
the ceiling in the grand hall.
A keen lover of wildlife, Perry
has sought to protect the beautiful
surroundings she has enjoyed
for future generations by buying
up a neighbouring 7ha field and
creating a trust to ensure it isn’t
built on.
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