In 1954, two teenage girls murdered a mother in a Christchurch park, setting in motion one of the most disturbing criminal cases in New Zealand history. Now Pauline Parker has died aged 88, closing the final living chapter of a tragedy that became a worldwide fascination and left an enduring question about friendship, obsession, responsibility and the possibility of redemption
Report by eLocal | 24 October 2026
For more than seven decades, the names Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme have occupied a dark and extraordinary place in New Zealand's criminal history.
Their crime was committed in Christchurch in 1954, when two teenage schoolgirls murdered Parker's mother, Honorah, after their families sought to separate them.
It was a killing that shocked the country, not only because of its brutality, but because of the young ages of the perpetrators and the unsettling story of an intense friendship that appeared to have crossed the boundary between imagination and reality.
Now, the last surviving participant in that crime has died.
According to reporting by RNZ, citing the Scottish newspaper The Orcadian, Pauline Parker died this month at the age of 88 in retirement accommodation in Kirkwall, in Scotland's Orkney Islands.
She had spent much of her adult life under the name Hilary Nathan, far from the Christchurch streets where her childhood, her friendship with Juliet Hulme and the murder that changed their lives became inseparably linked.
Her death comes three years after that of Hulme, who later achieved international success as crime novelist Anne Perry and died in 2023, aged 84.
Two Girls Who Found Refuge in Each Other
Pauline Parker, known as Pauline Rieper during her school years, grew up in Christchurch in a family whose circumstances were far removed from the privilege associated with Juliet Hulme.
Her father, Bert Rieper, managed a fish shop in Colombo Street, while her mother worked as a secretary. Their family home in Gloucester Street also operated as a boarding house.
According to author Peter Graham, who researched the case extensively for his 2011 book, Pauline experienced considerable hardship during childhood.
She had suffered from osteomyelitis, a serious bone infection that required lengthy hospitalisation and left lasting physical scars.
At school, she was regarded as something of an outsider.
Juliet Hulme had also experienced childhood illness, including respiratory problems that restricted her participation in physical activities.
Their shared inability to take part in sport helped bring the girls together.
Both were intelligent, imaginative and fascinated by stories, fictional characters and worlds they could create beyond the constraints of everyday life.
What began as companionship developed into an exceptionally close friendship.
For two girls who had experienced illness and social isolation, their imaginary world offered a place where they could exercise control over circumstances that often seemed beyond their control.
But the intensity of their attachment increasingly concerned their families.
The Decision That Led to Murder
The tragedy unfolded when the girls' parents sought to separate them.
Pauline's relationship with her mother had become strained, and the prospect of losing her friendship with Juliet intensified the conflict.
The girls developed a plan to kill Honorah Parker.
On 22 June 1954, they accompanied her to Victoria Park in Christchurch.
During the outing, the teenagers attacked Honorah and beat her to death.
The murder was initially presented as an accident, but investigators uncovered evidence that contradicted that explanation.
The subsequent trial exposed the girls' elaborate imaginary world and the extraordinary intensity of their relationship.
Their defence argued that their shared fantasies had contributed to a distorted understanding of morality and responsibility.
The jury was not persuaded.
Both girls were convicted of murder.
The victim was Honorah Parker, also known as Honorah Rieper, a working mother whose life was taken by her own daughter and her daughter's closest friend.
While the public fascination has often centred on the teenagers, it is important not to lose sight of the woman whose death was the central tragedy.
Five Years in Prison, Then Separate Lives
Because of their ages, Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme were not sentenced to death.
Instead, they were imprisoned separately.
Both served approximately five years before being released under arrangements that required them to establish new lives.
They did not resume their childhood friendship.
For Pauline, the years that followed were marked by privacy and a determination to remain outside public attention.
She eventually settled in Scotland's Orkney Islands, living under the name Hilary Nathan.
Some British reporting indicates that she worked with horses at a stable before retiring.
Her later life remained largely unknown to the New Zealand public.
That privacy stood in striking contrast to the international recognition achieved by Juliet Hulme.
Juliet Hulme Became Anne Perry
Following her release, Juliet Hulme adopted the name Anne Perry.
She eventually became a successful novelist, writing historical detective fiction that attracted readers around the world.
Her books, including the Thomas Pitt and William Monk series, established her reputation as a prominent crime writer.
For many years, much of her readership was unaware of her involvement in the Christchurch murder.
That changed when the story returned to international attention during the making of Peter Jackson's 1994 film Heavenly Creatures.
The film starred Kate Winslet as Juliet Hulme, Melanie Lynskey as Pauline Parker and Sarah Peirse as Honorah Parker.
It introduced a new generation to the events of 1954 and became one of the defining films of Jackson's early career.
The revelation of Anne Perry's identity also raised difficult questions about whether a person convicted of a terrible crime in adolescence could ever fully escape public judgement.
Perry died in 2023, aged 84.
With Pauline Parker's death, both teenagers at the centre of the case are now gone.
The Film That Brought the Story Back to Life
Heavenly Creatures remains one of the most internationally recognised films based on a New Zealand crime.
Rather than presenting the murder solely as a police investigation, Jackson's film explored the psychological and emotional world of the two girls.
Its portrayal of their friendship, elaborate fantasies and growing alienation from their families brought a deeply unsettling intimacy to the story.
The film also prompted renewed discussion about the extent to which the girls' imaginative lives contributed to their actions.
But artistic interpretation and criminal responsibility are different matters.
The teenagers' fantasies may help explain aspects of their thinking, but they do not diminish the reality of the deliberate killing or the suffering inflicted upon Honorah and her family.
The case remains a reminder of the danger of allowing the extraordinary circumstances surrounding a crime to overshadow its victim.
Can Someone Ever Escape Their Worst Act?
Pauline Parker's death raises a question that extends beyond the details of the 1954 murder.
What does society owe to a person who commits a terrible crime as a teenager, serves the sentence imposed by the justice system and then lives for decades without further known offending?
The Parker-Hulme case presents that question in unusually stark terms.
The girls were convicted of murder at an age when their emotional development was still incomplete.
They were punished under the law and subsequently released.
They went on to live separate adult lives, apparently without returning to violent crime.
Yet the seriousness of their offence meant that public interest never entirely disappeared.
For the victim's family, the passage of time could not undo the loss of Honorah Parker.
For the two offenders, the crime became a permanent part of their identities, even when they lived under different names.
The justice system's decision to release them reflected the possibility that young offenders could eventually return to society.
Whether the public was prepared to grant them the same opportunity was another matter.
The distinction between legal punishment, personal remorse, rehabilitation and public forgiveness remains one of the most difficult questions in criminal justice.
The Woman Behind the Infamous Name
Much of what is known about Pauline Parker's later life comes from accounts gathered by researchers, journalists and people who encountered her after she left New Zealand.
She appears to have sought an ordinary existence, away from the notoriety of her adolescence.
Unlike Juliet Hulme, whose literary career placed her in the public eye, Pauline did not become a prominent public figure.
Her life in Orkney was largely private.
The report of her death in retirement housing in Kirkwall offers only a brief glimpse into her final years.
It does not establish what she thought about the murder in later life, whether she experienced remorse or how she privately understood the events that had defined her youth.
Those questions should not be answered through speculation.
The available evidence tells us that she lived for decades beyond the crime, adopted another identity and avoided public attention.
Anything more personal belongs to a history that may never be fully known.
A Christchurch Tragedy That Never Disappeared
The Parker-Hulme murder has endured in New Zealand's collective memory because it challenged assumptions about childhood, family life and the capacity for violence.
The perpetrators were not hardened adult criminals.
They were schoolgirls whose friendship developed within familiar suburban surroundings.
Their victim was a mother attempting to manage a difficult family situation.
The events unfolded in a public park in a city that, like much of New Zealand in the 1950s, regarded itself as relatively safe and orderly.
The case exposed the fragility of those assumptions.
It also became an enduring subject for historians, psychologists, filmmakers and writers attempting to understand how two young people could arrive at such a destructive decision.
But there are limits to what any reconstruction can establish.
No explanation can entirely resolve the contradiction between the girls' imaginative lives and the deliberate violence they committed.
The Final Chapter
Pauline Parker's death in Scotland closes the lives of the two people whose actions made the Parker-Hulme case internationally notorious.
Juliet Hulme died as Anne Perry, an established novelist whose literary achievements coexisted with the knowledge of her childhood conviction.
Pauline Parker died as Hilary Nathan, having spent much of her adult life away from the public attention that followed the case.
Their lives took profoundly different directions after their release.
But both remained connected to the events of 22 June 1954.
Seventy-two years later, the story still carries a difficult lesson about the consequences of obsession, the limits of rehabilitation and the enduring impact of violence on families and communities.
And at its centre remains Honorah Parker, whose death transformed an ordinary Christchurch family tragedy into one of New Zealand's most enduring criminal cases.
The two teenagers who killed her have now both died.
The consequences of what happened in Victoria Park remain part of New Zealand's history.
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