The world of letters mourns today the death of the British writer Anne Perry, who died at the age of 84 in Los Angeles, as confirmed by her French publisher. Her death has reawakened among her readers her personal story, as dark as her Victorian-era detective novels. A secret that she managed to keep for decades but that her fame ended up revealing: she killed the mother of her best friend with her bricks when she was a teenager.
It happened in 1954. At that time her name was Juliet Hulme and she lived in New Zealand with Pauline Parker, her best friend. That year, Hulme’s parents announce that they are moving abroad and the 15-year-old hopes that she can take Parker with her, but her mother, Honora Mary Parker, refuses.
The two teenagers did not accept the refusal and killed her. A murder that left the country speechless and forced Juliet to change her identity to that of Anne Perry. The press then raised whether there was a relationship between the young women, but the writer herself took it upon herself to deny it years later. Due to age, they escaped the death penalty although they spent several years in prison.
Ever since the story picked up in the 1990s, Perry has always called for it to be judged “for who I am now, rather than who I was then,” as he told The Guardian in 2003. These gruesome Events were taken to the cinema by the hand of Peter Jackson in the film Heavenly Creatures, with Kate Winslet as the protagonist.
But the knowledge of his personal life came after the fact. Before, a gap was achieved between the public and critics with the series of novels that revolves around the characters of Thomas Pitt and William Monk. The total of his work has led him to sell more than 25 million books worldwide.
