Mary Elizabeth Naugleby Mary Elizabeth Naugle
First published in November/December, 2007, Volume 4, Issue 4, The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies.
In July of 1954, a New Zealand man booked passage for England with his young son. He had recently lost his job as rector at Canterbury University College, his wife had left him for another man, and his 15-year-old daughter was about to stand trial for murder. Reporters ran him to ground onboard, with no place to run. He kept his statement brief and struggled to protect his son and himself from attention for the rest of the voyage. Yet, he was the lucky one. He was about to escape. Reporters would try with no success to track him once the guilty verdict was handed down. And when the story made the headlines again fifty years later to haunt his ex-wife and daughter, he would be dead.
But this is not the story of Henry Hulme. It is a story of the unlucky ones: the victim, Nora Parker, and her killers, daughter Pauline and Juliet Hulme. Nora was dead because the two girls believed she was all that stood in their way of boarding the ship with Henry. They still believed it the day they were pronounced guilty. They also believed that because of their actions they would never be parted. Incredibly, headlines proclaimed that “Smiling, They Faced the Murder Charge”:
(Features) Two schoolgirls in bobbysocks sat in a high-walled dock of the Supreme Court in Christchurch, New Zealand, last week and listened as charges of murder were read out to them.
They smiled and whispered to each other as witnesses described how the mother of one had been battered to death with a brick, and they smothered giggles with their hands as evidence piled on evidence to point the finger at them as the world’s most terrifying schoolgirls.
For the two girls, Pauline Parker, 16, and Juliet Hulme, 15, were on trial for the murder of Pauline’s mother, Honora Mary Parker (known as Mrs. Rieper), wife of a Christchurch fish-shop proprietor. . . .
Their own counsel admitted that it was clear beyond dispute that they killed her. The vital issue was the question of their sanity or otherwise.
And it all happened in Christchurch, New Zealand’s quietest, staidest, most Victorian-English city-a city founded by colonists selected by the Anglican Church, a cathedral city of bicycles, lace and old ivy.
To many people, both in New Zealand and the world, the murder of Honora Parker was the crime of the century.
There had been teenage murders before, but never one planned so carefully, so precisely—and against such a fantastic background.
There was no riddle in the fact that a woman had been bashed brutally to death. The riddle lay in the two girls sitting so calmly in the box.
Were they two characters who might have stepped out of a page of St. Trinian’s—two bland and angelic-looking schoolgirls in tunics who had suddenly decided, ‘Let’s murder mother’? Or did it go further than that?1
The jury found them sane. Undoubtedly, according to law they both were. Yet, two doctors (Medlicott and Bennett) testified to their insanity. As it happened, the guilty verdict did not cost them much. Their sentence was detainment “at Her Majesty’s pleasure,” a pleasure that was to last only five years. A finding of insanity might have bought them three more years of freedom. That is all. The question of their sanity remains a compelling one, if only because the facts of the case beg for some explanation, some reason why the two did what they did. Dr. Francis O. Bennett, for the defence, maintained that they “were not sane then, are not sane now and never will be sane.”2 Prosecutor A. W. Brown, on the strength of the findings of the three physicians for the Crown, countered that, “They are not incurably insane but incurably bad.”3 The one thing agreed upon by both sides, that the girls’ alienation from society was permanent, is also the one thing later events would disprove. Certainly, the behavior of the two in the courtroom—smug, indifferent, even amused—promised little hope of a change for the better. Nonetheless, once Parker and Hulme were separated they did express remorse for their actions and became law-biding members of society. In fact, as early as December 10 that same year, the press would report that Hulme regretted her actions.4
If they were not incurably bad or incurably insane, just what were they?
The best insight into the case probably comes from records of the girls before time or conscience could meddle with memory. The case is unique in that we have not only the copious notes from their initial police statements and psychiatric interviews, but also, most valuable of all, transcriptions of Pauline’s diaries. Unfortunately, the original diaries have been destroyed, but a large portion was transcribed for the court record and for Medlicott’s study of the case. These transcriptions provide invaluable insight into the world created by Parker and Hulme.
First, some background on the two. Parker and Hulme have always been presented as polar opposites, a photograph and its negative. The approach rather simplifies the analysis, though it sometimes muddies the truth. Even Medlicott gives in to this neat formula in his case study, which describes them almost as female versions of Laurel and Hardy:
Of the two girls, Pauline P. is a dark, rather sulky looking but not unattractive girl of stocky build, who had her sixteenth birthday one month previously; while Juliet H. is a tall, willowy, frail, attractive blonde with large blue eyes. She is five months younger than Pauline.5
Yet, at the time, Pauline was the frailer of the two. Her diary entry for February 13, 1954, mentions her weight as seven stone, equivalent to 98 pounds. Her weight did not probably go up after that. Many years later, Hulme would refer to her friend as “wasting away” in the weeks before the crime and showing signs of bulimia.
Their upbringings were certainly very different. While Pauline’s life had been quite provincial—she had never been abroad and had no passport—Juliet had grown up first in London, then in the Bahamas. She had suffered bomb shock after being caught in an air raid at age two, then had been sent to the Bahamas to recover after a lengthy and acute case of pneumonia. Juliet was reunited with her family in New Zealand after a thirteen-month separation. However, Medlicott tells us (probably on Hilda Hulme’s authority) that “On being reunited with her mother she was. . . dramatically over-dependent and it was very difficult to fit her into the family group.”6 (How bitter those words would have sounded to a young girl.)
She was promptly packed off to a private school, where Juliet was so unhappy that “on advice” (we aren’t told whose) she was finally brought home and enrolled in the local girls’ school in Christchurch. Pauline seems to have been blind to the cold upbringing Juliet had received. Instead, she was dazzled by Juliet’s world on the fringe of Canterbury University College, where her father served as rector. The beautifully landscaped Ilam, where the Hulmes lived, must have made her own home look pokey indeed.
Neither of Pauline’s parents were college educated. Pauline’s father was company manager for a fishery. Her mother, Nora, took in boarders. Pauline clearly aspired to a more sophisticated world, twice in the diaries priding herself on fooling strangers with an affected Oxford accent. Still, she was well cared for in a home described as “comfortable” and “stable.” Nora was the disciplinarian, but her punishment was never physical. Reading between the lines of the diary, we find a mother whose concern for her child was heartbreakingly attentive. In the entry mentioning her weight, Pauline says her mother has forbidden her to see Juliet until she gained a stone and grown “more cheerful.” This prohibition seems to be given merely as an incentive to end an alarming weight loss and disturbance of mood. Nora’s genuine concern for Pauline merely prompts the chilling first appearance in the diary of the question “Why could not Mother die?”7
Though their backgrounds were widely divergent, both girls shared similar health and social problems. Like Juliet, Pauline had spent much of her childhood battling serious illness. Just before turning five, Pauline was admitted to the hospital with severe osteomyelitis of the leg. She was in hospital for nine months and then readmitted for surgery two years later. The condition was extremely painful and was said to be Pauline’s earliest memory. Pauline was excused from active sports in after years, as undoubtedly was Juliet. It may be that their alliance was forged during their exiles in gym class. However it was forged, their friendship seems to have been the first close one for both. Pauline said that,
she had always liked being by herself ever since she could remember, and as a small child would shut herself off in a room with her dolls. She had never had firm and lasting friendships on account of ruining all her friendships with outbursts of temper. Seven years ago she had played for some time a fantasy game with one friend in which they dressed up and imagined they had a secret staircase at a nearby museum. This friendship, she said, would not have lasted had they not quickly become separated by circumstances.8
When Juliet was three,
she developed tantrums when crossed. From then on she appears to have been an excitable, self-willed, demanding child intolerant of criticism. She was precocious, sensitive, full of fantasy and found it difficult to stop play-acting games, and liked to remain a fairy or some other fantasy creature long after her playmates had become bored with the game.9
Ironically, Nora Parker even confided to Hilda Hulme “that she was pleased at the friendship because Pauline had been a lonely child with difficulty in making friends.”10 The friendship began in June or July of 1952, about six months before the first diary entry. The hysterical edge to the friendship did not appear until August, when
the two girls went for a bicycle ride into the country where they stopped by some light bush, removed their outer clothing and ran among the bushes ecstatically. They were so ecstatic that they went home leaving these clothes behind them. When talking about this episode Pauline said that previously they had just been friends but after this there was an indissoluble bond between them. It would seem that two unusual kindred spirits had come together. From then on they began to build up and share a rich fantasy life.11
The girls shared a passion for writing that soon revolved around the fantasy world they created, a violent world cobbled together from their imaginations and the lush period dramas so popular in films at the time. Had their world not been so violent and exclusive, it would have been charming.
When Medlicott speaks of periods of normalcy (the January vacation of 1953), it appears that he equates abnormalcy with homosexual feelings and creative writing:
During January, while she was staying in the country with some friends and did not see Juliet, her behaviour appeared to have been normal. She showed a healthy interest in an older boy and the normal jealousy of a young girl to a rival. There was little talk of writing or fictional characters. She returned home with good intentions of doing well at school.12
The first part of that equation is largely due to the psychiatric wisdom of the time that homosexuality led to paranoia. The second part, which appears to follow the same dictum against feminine creativity, is concerned with a genuinely dangerous trend in thinking:
gradually the substance of their writing changed from the not unusual highly imaginative outpourings of adolescents to an increasingly morbid preoccupation with evil. They quickly became a self- sufficient unit, more and more self-bolstering, less and less dependent on others, and the scene was set for a break with society and its morality. They became increasingly conceited and arrogant and set themselves above the common masses. Pauline became disdainful of her less socially prominent family and was moody and withdrawn in her own home.13
The relationship, homosexual or not, had become a folie a deux first expressed in a frenzy of obsessive writing. Granted, Medlicott was able to read with the knowledge of the scene each line would lead to. One cannot read Pauline’s words now without envisioning Nora’s battered body.
It is hard to know how seriously one would have taken the fantasy before the crime. She and Juliet were little more than children, after all, and so much of what they wrote was so puerile. Their stories mixed mayhem with an amusing patois of archaisms and schoolyard slang.
For example, their favorite antihero character, Diello, casually remarks,
‘Barton . . . silly bounder . . . tried to shoot me, and I have a terrible temper when roused and I am afraid I broke his back and put him in the mere . . . (stupid blighter). And Linker . . . poor fellow . . . you know I really quite liked him . . . is now . . . alack! . . . in the mere with Barton.’14
The inside cover of Pauline’s diary contains a chart of “The Saints,” a litany of film stars and pop opera stars that would be roughly analogous to a fansite devoted to American Idol contestants today. Each saint was assigned the exotic tag of a pronoun printed in all caps. For example, Mario Lanza (aka “Poor Mario”) became “HE.” James Mason (aka “The James”) was “HIM.” Orson Welles (identified only by his famous movie and radio persona of Harry Lime) was Harry III, or “IT.” James Mason appears obliquely a second time in the list as Rupert of Hentzau (his villainous character in Prisoner of Zenda), or “WHO.” The girls seem to have had a weakness for evil already, favoring as they did Mason’s villain and Welles’ Harry Lime.15 At least the Lime they swooned for was the less thoroughly evil rogue of the radio—they had not yet seen the screen Lime who calculated from the vantage point of a Ferris wheel how many dots (people) more or less we could do without in the world—“free of income tax, old man” (The Third Man). The Lime of the series, a prequel, was, like the girls themselves, still in training.
In these early months, Pauline and Juliet celebrated the lives of their personal “saints” and constructed a fantasy kingdom peopled by saintly lookalikes who had violent whim-led lives. They play-acted and wrote down these stories, which they told each other were artistic triumphs. By March 18, 1953, they had done such a thorough job of building each other up that Pauline could write: “We have decided how sad it is for other people that they cannot appreciate our genius. But we hope the book will help them to do so a little, though no one could fully appreciate us.”16 This determination was swiftly followed by what was to be known as the “Port Levy Incident,” recounted in the diary as a revelation the two received while on holiday with the Hulme family at Port Levy Easter weekend. For the first time, Pauline records hallucinatory events as real:
Today Juliet and I found the key to the 4th World. We realise now that we have had it in our possession for about 6 months but we only realized it on the day of the death of Christ. We saw a gateway through the clouds. We sat on the edge of the path and looked down the hill out over the bay. The island looked beautiful. The sea was blue. Everything was full of peace and bliss. We then realized we had the key. We now know that we are not genii, as we thought. We have an extra part of our brain which can appreciate the 4th World. Only about 10 people have it. When we die we will go to the 4th World, but meanwhile on two days every year we may use the key and look in to that beautiful world which we have been lucky enough to be allowed to know of, on this Day of Finding the Key to the Way through the Clouds.17
The genii reference is meant to be the plural of genius, not something out of the Arabian Nights. Even without the djinn, the story is extravagant enough. An edited version would be touching, even endearing. Anyone who has read Anne of Green Gables (1908) can see a hint of Anne Shirley in the passage, even down to the dramatically named place and day, reminiscent of Anne’s renaming of every cranny on Green Gables Farm, from the Haunted Wood to the Lake of Shining Waters. Anne, too, relishes antique dramas and morbid tales. However, Anne pulls back from macabre excess in the chapter “A Good Imagination Gone Wrong,” when her own stories make her too afraid to take a shortcut through the familiar Haunted Wood. Anne never finds an extra portion in her brain. Her imagination always leads her to embrace others, not exclude them. One might add that Marilla is never found belly up at the end of a cowpath.
Pauline and Juliet had very little use now for others than themselves. Pauline does seem to have enjoyed being accepted as part of the Hulme family. She writes with some pride on the Port Levy weekend, “Mrs. Hulme did my hair. She calls me her foster daughter.” And again, on April 23, “Mrs. Hulme says she wished I was her daughter too.”18 This desire for a place in the family also appears in the rambling paean to herself and Juliet found in the back of the diary and possibly written around the same time:
THE ONES THAT I WORSHIP
There are living among(st) two dutiful daughters
Of a man who possesses two beautiful daughters
The most glorious beings in creation;
They’d be the pride and joy of any nation.
You cannot know, nor (yet) try to guess,
The sweet soothingness of their caress.
The outstanding genius of this pair
Is understood by few, they are so rare.
Compared with these two, every man is a fool.
The world is most honoured that they should deign to rule,
And above us these Goddesses reign on high.
I worship the power of these lovely two
With that adoring love known to so few.
‘Tis indeed a miracle, one must feel,
That two such heavenly creatures are real.
Both sets of eyes, though different far, hold many mysteries strange.
Impassively they watch the race of man decay and change.
Hatred burning bright in the brown eyes, with enemies for fuel,
Icy scorn glitters in the grey eyes, contemptuous and cruel.
Why are men such fools they will not realize
The wisdom that is hidden behind those strange eyes?
And these wonderful people are you and I.19
This poem demonstrates the most exalted aspect of the fantasy. The girls are not just genii; they are now gods. And they permit their fantasy characters even freer rein than before.
Within a month (May 15), tuberculosis was found on Juliet’s lung, a discovery that would send her to the sanatorium: “Poor Giulietta! It is only now I realise how fond I am of her. I nearly fainted when I heard. I had a terrible job not to cry. It would be wonderful if I could get tuberculosis, too.”20 The following entry displays a drastic mood swing, from “I spent a wretched night” to “We have decided we are the most incredible optimists.”21 That optimism would be pressed into service during Juliet’s three-month confinement in the sanatorium through a fevered exchange of letters in the personas of two of their costume drama characters, Charles and Deborah (a name for Juliet that Pauline gradually began to favor). Great as Pauline’s enthusiasm was, Juliet’s was probably greater still because of the extreme loneliness of the hospital stay, made worse by the departure of both parents on a previously planned trip back to England. Her sense of rejection and abandonment must have been acute.
In Juliet’s absence, Pauline began a brief and rather half-hearted affair with one of Nora’s boarders. However, Pauline’s feelings for Juliet continued to grow. When Juliet was released from the sanatorium on September 9, Pauline writes, “It was wonderful returning with Juliet. . . . it was as if she had never been away. . . . I believe I could fall in love with Juliet.”22 The Hulmes took note of increased intensity to the relationship. Fearing the possibility that it had taken on lesbian overtones, they referred Nora to their friend Dr. Bennett, a step they eschewed for their own daughter. Nora, who appears to have been as concerned over Pauline’s weight loss as over her sexual orientation, took their advice. The “interview was not a success. Pauline would answer only ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ Pauline said her mother frequently nagged at her, her only friend was Juliet and she thought other girls silly. He could not get beyond that.”23
Pauline’s New Year’s resolution was the morbid “Eat drink and be merry for to-morrow you may be dead.”24 Later in the month they would speculate how much they could charge as prostitutes while celebrating “He’s Day” with cake. By February 13, Nora had given the ultimatum of weight gain or discontinued visits. This is when Pauline first wished her dead. Strangely enough, even though they had just in December referred her to Dr. Bennett, she wrote the following about Hilda and Henry Hulme: “[the] Hulmes sympathise with me and it is nice to feel that adults realize what Mother is. Dr. Hulme is going to do something about it I think.”25 One wonders whether Pauline was already growing delusional about the Hulmes, or if the two were simply taking the path of least resistance by making sympathetic noises in response to her complaints.
A month later Nora removed her from school, a removal the diary claims was precisely what Pauline wanted. The April 10 entry mentions a meeting between Nora and Miss Stewart, headmistress of the school. Was she hoping to return Pauline to the school next term? One imagines a mother desperately trying to do the right thing for her child, not the monster Pauline says “did not see why she should keep a horrid child like me [in school a moment longer]. . . .”26 Removal from school was probably a threat Nora never expected to make good, but by the end of April Pauline was enrolled at Digby’s Commercial College. The girls had by then begun devising an ambitious plan to “get to New York together, where they would find someone to publish their books and then they would go to Hollywood where they expected to be hailed as actresses.”27 They were greatly bolstered by the fact that “We are so brilliantly clever, there probably isn’t anything we couldn’t do.”28 They intended to fund the expedition by money raised by shoplifting and burglary. To prime themselves for the task ahead they wrote out all the Commandments so they could break them. So far, there was no specific plan for murder, no intended victim.
The April 23 entry records a major eruption in the Hulme household. Juliet had discovered her mother in the room of the occupant of their upstairs flat, Walter Perry. According to Hilda’s statement she was there on an errand of mercy, bringing tea to the ill Perry. The diary presents a more lurid discovery. (The considerate landlady would file for divorce and marry the patient once the trial was over.) Pauline relishes the scene, recounting the discovery and subsequent confession, which makes her feel “wildly happy and rather queer.”29 By the following day her mood had shifted to dejection. The ban on visits to Ilam apparently lifted,
I biked out to Ilam and nearly froze on the way. Deborah was still in bed when I arrived and did not get up until some time afterwards. . . .Then Dr Hulme came upstairs and asked us to come into the lounge to have a talk with him. He said we must tell him everything about our going to America so we told him as much as that we wanted [illegible] for acting characters to act each part. He was both hope-giving and depressing. We talked for a long time and then Deborah and I were near tears by the time it was over. The outcome was somewhat vague. What is to be the future now? We may all be going to South Africa and Italy and dozens of other places or not at all. We none of us know where we are and a good deal depends on chance.30
The following day comes the news,
Dr and Mrs Hulme are going to divorce. The shock is too great to have penetrated in my mind yet. It is so incredible. Poor Father. Mrs Hulme was sweet and Dr Hulme absolutely kind and understanding . . . Deborah and I spent the day soaring between hell and heaven . . . Such a huge amount has happened that we do not know where we are. Dr Hulme is the noblest and most wonderful person I have ever known of. But one thing, Deborah and I are sticking [to] through everything (We sink or swim together).31
By Wednesday, the 28th, Pauline has laid the blame for all her sorrows on Nora and begun considering murder as a solution:
I felt rather tired to-day, but fortunately the time at Digby’s went rather quickly. Mother went out this afternoon so Deborah and I bathed for some time. However I felt thoroughly depressed afterwards—and even quite seriously considered committing suicide. Life seemed so much not worth the living and death such an easy way out. Anger against Mother boiled up inside me, as it is she who is one of the main obstacles in my path. Suddenly a means of ridding myself of this obstacle occurred to me. If she were to die . . . I spent the evening writing and managed to finish my chapter.32
Notable in these entries are the wild swings of mood and allegiance. The Hulme family breakup is presented as an adventure and a tragedy by turns. Henry Hulme is the object of pity and admiration, the sweet Hilda Hulme is still the object of her affections, and poor Nora is simply an object: an obstacle to rid herself of. “Poor Father,” of course being Henry, was even poorer than the girls realized, having just lost his position at the university to departmental politics. So a move would have been in the works anyway. All that was to be determined was how to distribute the various Hulmes in the upheaval. We can be certain that none of those plans would have included Pauline. As recorded in the Police Notes of Hilda Hulme’s statement:
When it was decided that Dr Hulme was to return to England he was to take Juliet as far as South Africa with him. Juliet pressed her parents to allow Pauline Parker to accompany her but they explained that it was quite out of the question.33
It is hard to imagine how the Hulmes could have failed to make their refusal clear. Yet whether the refusal was too subtle, or the girls were simply determined to maintain their original scenario, they would persist in the conviction that only Nora stood in their way. May 1st Pauline writes that Hilda “made a lovely remark. She said Won’t it be wonderful when we are all back in England. Do you think you will like England Gina. I was delighted . . .”34 Was this scene complete fantasy, down to Hilda’s calling Pauline “Gina,” Juliet’s pet name for her? Was Hilda humoring her? For that matter, the statement flies in the face of the facts Pauline already knew—that the Hulmes were breaking up and would never “all” be back in England. Regardless of how the scene really played out, Pauline believed the Hulmes intended their adopted daughter to go along.
As in all good fairy tales, Pauline had only one dragon to slay. Pauline seized upon this idea and went at it with a will. The prosecution had a clear case for premeditation and for understanding of consequences with remarks such as this:
I did not tell Deborah of my plans for removing Mother. I have made no [illegible. definite plans?] yet as the last fate I wish to meet is one in Borstal. I am trying to think of some way. I do not [illegible. want?] to go to too much trouble, but I want it to appear either a natural or an accidental death.35
At this point Pauline is still alone in her plans. She clearly wishes to avoid prison by staging an accident, and most chilling, she callously wishes to avoid going to too much trouble. These words would hurt her case immeasurably a few months later.
As the day of the murder approached, the entries become more and more manic. Pauline takes pride in that mania and even gives it the name of madness:
We went to sleep at 4:30 tomorrow morning after talking all night. We were discussing at first how we sometimes had a strange feeling that we had done what we were doing before. We realized why this was, and why Deborah and I have such extraordinary telepathy, and why people treat us and look at us the way they do, and why we behave as we do. It is because we are MAD. We are both stark, staring, raving mad. There is definitely no doubt about it and we are thrilled by the thought. . . . We have discussed it fully. Dr Hulme is MAD, as MAD as a March hare. We are feeling thrilled and scared by the thought.36
The theme is reverted to again June 7 (“We rose realising how mad we are. Dr. Hulme knows and he is mad, too . . .”), and June 9 (“I was feeling particularly mad today. I raved quite a lot at Digby’s and terrified the girl next to me . . .”).37 Surely, Pauline was not feigning madness for the police who would be reading these entries two weeks later. Therefore, these entries present a conundrum. Does a madwoman recognize her madness? Does a sane one boast of it?
The final entries are not only more manic, they are now quite openly sexual. Whether the relationship had just taken a sexual turn or whether mania had simply loosened Pauline’s pen is anyone’s guess.
Pauline recounts several nights like the following:
1954, June 11 (Fri). . . . . Eventually we enacted how each Saint would make love in bed, only doing the first seven as it was 7:30 a.m. by then. We felt exhausted and very satisfied…
1954, June 13 (Sun). . . . .We spent a hectic night going through the Saints. It was wonderful! Heavenly! Beautiful! and Ours! We felt very satisfied indeed. We have now learned the peace of the thing called Bliss, the joy of the thing called Sin.38
This aspect of the case fuelled two forms of homophobia: the belief that homosexuality was a symptom of paranoid insanity and the belief that the practice led to all sorts of depravity and vice. Oddly enough, the homophobia seems to have been manifested most in the girls themselves, who would confess to murder but not to lesbianism. Even in recent interviews, Juliet denied that aspect of the relationship.
Perhaps they were that innocent. Or perhaps they were merely outraged to learn that they had not invented the practice. Either way, it is not the orientation that matters here. What matters is the obsession and unreality that had taken over their lives.
By June 19, Pauline could discuss the murder they were so eagerly planning in the most casual and callous terms:
We practically finished our books to-day and our main Ike (stet) for the day was to moider Mother. This notion is not a new one, but this time it is a definite plan which we intend to carry out. We have worked it out carefully and are both thrilled by the idea. Naturally we feel a trifle nervous, but the pleasure of anticipation is great. I shall not write the plan down here as I shall write it up when we carry it out (I hope).39
. . . I was picked up at 2 p.m. I have been very sweet and good. I have worked out a little more of our plan for moidering mother. Peculiarly enough, I have no qualms of conscience.40
The murder is thrilling by this time. Even more than a means to an end, it has become an adventure. They have begun to refer to it in movie gangster terms as a “moider.” The concluding entries of the 21st and morning of the 22nd take on an air of unreality and chilling relish:
I rose late and helped Mother vigorously this morning. Deborah rang and we decided to use a rock in a stocking rather than a sand-bag. We discussed the moider fully. I feel very keyed up, as though I were planning a surprise party. Mother has fallen in with everything beautifully and the happy event is to take place tomorrow afternoon. So next time I write in this diary Mother will be dead. How odd—yet how pleasing. I have discussed various odd saints w her today as I thought it would be interesting to have her opinion. She loathes That & It. I washed my hair this afternoon. I came to bed at 1/4 to 9.
The Day of The Happy Event.
I am writing a little of this up in the morning before the death. I felt very excited and ‘The night before Christmasish’ last night. I did not have pleasant dreams though. I am about to rise.41
Most jarring of all are the references to the surprise party/Christmas Eve anticipation she feels. The words sum up her lost but unmourned innocence. There were no more entries. Police did catch Pauline trying to pass a note to Juliet at the police station. The note was briefly intercepted by an officer, but regained and destroyed by Pauline. We have what he could reconstruct of the note. The reconstruction sounds quite genuine:
The detective stated that the note commenced with a reference to Pauline finding herself in an unexpected place. She then made reference to having committed her ‘moider’. She then went on to write about the treatment she had received: ‘All the H-s have been wonderfully kind and sympathetic. Anyone would think I’ve been good. I’ve had a pleasant time with the police talking 19 to the dozen and behaving as though I hadn’t a care in the world.’ There were then several sentences he couldn’t remember but the final sentence was: ‘I haven’t had a chance to talk to Deborah properly but I am taking the blame for everything.’42
Juliet is rumored to have had a diary that she managed to destroy. Given her passion for writing, the rumor seems likely. Incredibly enough, Hilda sent Walter to the dry cleaners with the blood-spattered coats when the girls came home from Victoria Park.43 If bloodstained coats could be carried out of Ilam, a diary would have been easy to dispose of. Since Pauline was at Ilam, she was unable to destroy her own. Juliet’s diary would have enhanced our understanding of the crime. The single perspective given by Pauline’s diary skews our view of their motive. In after years Juliet would refer to her actions as a debt of honor to Pauline. However, given Juliet’s insecurities regarding family, it seems likely that she was as desperate as Pauline to stay together. Juliet’s family was falling apart. She was to be removed to an aunt’s in South Africa—an upheaval that would have been intolerable. She may have clung to Pauline as the one fixed point in her life. And she may have embraced the absurd idea that the tragedy could be averted somehow by slaying one dragon.
As for the murder itself, the forensic evidence shows a killing that was neither well planned nor neat. The girls’ imagination was so suffused with Hollywood notions of murder that they expected to fell Nora with a single blow of their homemade blackjack. She would then obligingly drop down next to a likely rock. They probably also expected it to be relatively bloodless. Instead, the coroner found
45 discernible injuries on the body, (head, neck, face and hands), 24 of them being lacerated wounds on the face and head. . . .The fractures of the skull indicated that the victim’s head was most probably immobilized on the ground when the force was applied.44
The bruising on the neck indicated that she was held down by the neck while being beaten about the head. Nora had lost a shoe and a lower plate in the struggle. Her mouth was blocked by vomit, probably brought up by convulsions. Bleeding was so extensive she “was almost completely ex-sanguinated.”45 Her body was found on a clay trail. Although there were treacherous rocky trails at the park, this was not one of them. After the killing, Pauline and Juliet burst into the tearoom at the entrance to the park, covered with blood, “agitated, breathless and gasping, both speaking together. . . . ‘Please can somebody help us? Mummy has been hurt.’ ”46
Their initial story was that Nora had slipped and struck her head on a rock. They claimed that her “head kept banging,”47 that they tried to carry her back but were unable to. The two were taken back to Ilam, where they were bathed and sedated. When questioned that evening, Pauline retracted the story as soon as she was told she was under suspicion.
Pauline’s final statement was laconic and unemotional. She tried to shoulder all responsibility. Juliet took longer to give a confession, but when she did, it was lengthy and tinged with an hysterical edge. The scenario that emerged was that, while on a walk with Nora at Victoria Park, Juliet had dropped a pretty pink stone on the path along the way. Pauline pointed out the stone to Nora on the way back, slugging her with a brick stuffed stocking when Nora bent down to examine it. When Nora’s skull proved harder than expected, Juliet joined in to finish the job. Amazingly, Juliet kept the pink stone—perhaps as a souvenir.
Pauline appeared to have no conscious remorse about her actions. She remarked that it was obvious “That I think I am wonderful. I do seriously think I’m wonderful. There’s nothing about ourselves we don’t approve of.” Medlicott did find evidence “that some part of her personality at least was protesting,” noting her bad dreams the night before the murder and a hallucinated child’s voice protesting, “She couldn’t die.” Those qualms seemed to manifest in dreams later, as well:
On one visit she informed the writer that if she went to sleep on her right side she had dreams about her mother: ‘ . . . that I only hurt her and hadn’t killed her. In these dreams she comes back and she’s rather nice.’ She added defiantly ‘I turn on to my left side.’48
The truth of Nora’s being an innocent victim, who was even “rather nice” was apparently too terrible to bear. It may or may not be significant that when Pauline turned away from the nagging reality of her mother, she quite literally turned from what was right to what was sinister.
Both girls, when asked by Dr. Bennett, had no regrets. When asked if they expected to meet the dead woman in the afterlife, they thought “that Pauline’s mother would be in ‘heaven’ but that they would go to ‘paradise.’”49 Juliet justified matters by saying, “The day we killed her she seemed to know and she didn’t seem to bear us any grudge.”50
After all, “The best people are those who fight against all obstacles in pursuit of happiness,” she exulted.51 The “best people,” however, were too brilliant to conform to the legal definition of sanity. Their sense of pride would not allow them to profess ignorance of right and wrong. Juliet proclaimed, “I would have to be an absolute moron not to know that murder was against the law.”52 Though not absolute morons, they did have a remarkable blind spot when it came to the consequences they must face. Medlicott would later remark,
They were not concerned about the outcome of their trial, and could not appreciate at any time that the likely outcome was their permanent separation. When this was pointed out to them they simply said that as they had committed the murder to remain together no one would be so illogical as to separate them.53
That self-destructive arrogance, used by the prosecution to prove feigned insanity, could of course also be deemed proof of the diagnosis presented by Dr. Medlicott.
His diagnosis was one of “paranoia of the exalted type” (that is, paranoia that is grandiose, not persecutory) in folie simultanee, or simultaneous delusions. Medlicott found “no evidence of either of these girls imposing their ideas on the other,” and had “no doubt that they developed their psychoses simultaneously.” In support of his findings, Medlicott cites Bleuler’s description of paranoia, which might have been written about this case. Bleuler writes that paranoiacs lose sight of others when in the grip of obsession, until “their own cause is so very much the only. . . sacred thing in the world, that a few lies and acts of violence. . . are furthered and sanctified by the great purpose.” 54
Parker and Hulme may not have stepped into the “Fourth World,” but they certainly could have stepped out of the pages of a textbook on delusional behavior. It seems that the very thing they were willing to kill for was also the root of their madness. And the murder that madness inspired led to the permanent separation they so desperately wanted to prevent. The “Fourth World” they felt so privileged to glimpse was only the destructive false fire of their imaginations, good imaginations gone terribly, terribly wrong.
Postscript
A sad and unintended by-product to the film Heavenly Creatures, the 1994 New Zealand film about the case directed by Peter Jackson, was the exposure of the real Parker and Hulme in their new identities by reporters. Hulme turned out to be successful mystery writer Anne Perry, who as a public figure tried to do damage control through interviews—with mixed results. Parker, who was not discovered until 1997, took the name of Hilary Nathan.
Endnotes
1 “Smiling, They Faced the Murder Charge—New Zealand’s Two Girls from the ‘Fourth World’,” Sydney Sun-Herald, 29 August 1954: 29, “7.6.2, The Verdict and Beyond,” Fourth World—The Heavenly Creatures Website, ed. Adam Abrams, February 1996, Canada, 12 October 2007 <http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/2194/>.
2 “Insanity Plea at N.Z. Murder Trial,” Sydney Morning Herald, Friday, 27 August 1954, “7.6.1, The Trial,” Fourth World—The Heavenly Creatures Website, ed. Adam Abrams, February 1996, Canada, 12 October 2007 <http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/2194/>.
3 “Thrill Killers, 2 Teen-Age Girls Guilty of Murder,” The Oakland Tribune, Saturday, 28 August 1954: 2, “7.6.2, The Verdict and Beyond,” Fourth World—The Heavenly Creatures Website, ed. Adam Abrams, February 1996, Canada, 12 October 2007 <http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/2194/>.
4 “7.3.2, Timeline,” Fourth World—The Heavenly Creatures Website, ed. Adam Abrams, February 1996, Canada, 12 October 2007 <http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/2194/>.
5 “7.8.1 Medlicott, R.W., 1955,” Fourth World—The Heavenly Creatures Website, ed. Adam Abrams, February 1996, Canada, 12 October 2007 <http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/2194/>.
6 Ibid.
7 “7.4.3, Diaries, Saturday, 13 February 1954,” Fourth World—The Heavenly Creatures Website, ed. Adam Abrams, February 1996, Canada, 12 October 2007 <http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/2194/>.
8 “7.8.1, Medlicott, R.W., 1955.”
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 “7.4.3. Diaries.”
16 “7.4.3, Diaries, Wednesday, 18 March 1953.”
17 “7.4.3, Diaries, Friday, 3 April 1953.”
18 “7.4.3, Diaries, Tuesday, 6 April 1954, Friday, 23 April 1954.”
19 Pauline used no stanza breaks and her poem was also largely unpunctuated. This version is based on news articles and is presented for clarity purposes only. “7.4.2, Poetry,” Fourth World—The Heavenly Creatures Website, ed. Adam Abrams, February 1996, Canada, 12 October 2007 <http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/2194/>.
20 “7.4.3, Diaries, Friday, 15 May 1953.”
21 “7.4.3, Diaries, Saturday, 16 May 1953.”
22 “7.4.3, Diaries, Wednesday, 9 September 1953.”
23 “Insanity Plea at N.Z. Murder Trial,” Sydney Morning Herald, Friday, 27 August 1954, “7.6.1, The Trial,” Fourth World—The Heavenly Creatures Website, ed. Adam Abrams, February 1996, Canada, 12 October 2007 <http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/2194/>.
24 “7.4.3, Diaries, Friday, 1 January 1954.”
25 “7.4.3, Diaries, Saturday, 13 February 1954.”
26 “7.4.3, Diaries, 14 March 1954.”
27 “7.8.1, Medlicott, R.W., 1955.”
28 “7.4.3, Diaries, Saturday, 10 April 1954.”
29 “7.4.3, Diaries, 23 April 1954.”
30 “7.4.3, Diaries, Friday, 24 April 1954.”
31 “7.4.3, Diaries, Saturday, 25 April 1954.”
32 “7.4.3, Diaries, Wednesday, 28 April 1954.”
33 “7.5.4, Statements and Testimony,” Fourth World—The Heavenly Creatures Website, ed. Adam Abrams, February 1996, Canada, 12 October 2007 <http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/2194/>.
34 “7.4.3, Diaries, Saturday, 1 May 1954.”
35 “7.4.3, Diaries, Thursday, 29 April 1954.”
36 “7.4.3, Diaries, 6 June 1954.”
37 “7.4.3, Diaries, Monday, 7 June 1954, Wednesday, 9 June 1954.”
38 “7.4.3, Diaries, Friday, 11 June 1954, Sunday, 13 June 1954.”
39 “7.8.1, Medlicott, 1955.”
40 “7.4.3, Diaries, Sunday, 20 June 1954.”
41 “7.4.3, Diaries, Monday, 21 June 1954, Tuesday, 22 June 1954.”
42 “7.8.1, Medlicott, R.W., 1955.”
43 “7.5.4, Hilda Marion Hulme’s Statement,” Fourth World—The Heavenly Creatures Website, ed. Adam Abrams, February 1996, Canada, 12 October 2007 <http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/2194/>.
44 “7.2, Forensic Report, Basic Facts,” Fourth World—The Heavenly Creatures Website, ed. Adam Abrams, February 1996, Canada, 12 October 2007 <http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/2194/>.
45 “7.2, Basic Facts,” Fourth World—The Heavenly Creatures Website, ed. Adam Abrams, February 1996, Canada, 12 October 2007 <http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/2194/>.
46 “7.5.1, Agnes Ritchie Testimony,” Fourth World—The Heavenly Creatures Website, ed. Adam Abrams, February 1996, Canada, 12 October 2007 <http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/2194/>.
47 “7.5.6, Pauline Parker Statement,” Fourth World—The Heavenly Creatures Website, ed. Adam Abrams, February 1996, Canada, 12 October 2007 <http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/2194/>.
48 “7.8.1 Medlicott, R.W., 1955.”
49 “Alleged Murder of Mother: Girls’ ‘Night Orgies,” Manchester Guardian 27 August 1954: 7, “7.6.1, The Trial,” Fourth World—The Heavenly Creatures Website, ed. Adam Abrams, February 1996, Canada, 12 October 2007 <http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/2194/>.
50 “Teenagers On Trial Called ‘Dirty-Minded’,” Sydney Morning Herald, 27 August 1954, “7.6.1, The Trial,” Fourth World—The Heavenly Creatures Website, ed. Adam Abrams, February 1996, Canada, 12 October 2007 <http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/2194/>.
51 “7.8.1, Medlicott, R.W., 1955.”
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid.
