PAULINE PARKER, New-Zealandic murderess, born; A woman from Christchurch, New Zealand who, together with her friend Juliet Hume, murdered her mother, Honora Parker, on June 22nd 1954.

It is believed that the two girls killed Honora because Juliet and her father were leaving shortly for South Africa and, though Pauline wanted to accompany them, her mother forbade it. According to their own accounts, Pauline and Juliet were devoted friends who collaborated on a series of adventure novels which they hoped would be bought by a Hollywood studio and made into epic films.

The girls’ friendship was documented in detail by Pauline in a series of diaries during her teenage years. During their friendship, the girls invented their own personal religion, with its own ideas on morality. They rejected Christianity and worshiped their own saints, envisioning a parallel dimension called “The Fourth World,” essentially their version of Heaven. The Fourth World was a place that they felt they were already able to enter occasionally, during moments of spiritual enlightenment. By Pauline’s account, they had achieved this spiritual enlightenment due to their friendship. Eventually, the girls formulated a plan to flee to Hollywood.

Shortly prior to this, Juliet had discovered her mother was having an affair and her parents were separating. This devastated Juliet as well as Pauline, who, due to having spent so much time with the Hulmes, thought of Juliet’s parents as her own. Both girls were unaware of the fact that both sets of parents were collaborating at the time in an effort to separate the girls, viewing their close friendship as potentially unhealthy or homosexual (which, in 1950’s, was thought of both as a crime and a mental illness). The girls’ story was made into a film, Heavenly Creatures, by Lord of the Rings producer-director Peter Jackson, in 1994. Pauline was played by Melanie Lynskey and Juliet by Kate Winslet. Hulme went on to be a widely read author of murder mysteries and detective novels — several of which were turned into movies — under the name “Anne Perry”. Perry died in 2023.