Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century

by Peter Graham

  Medlicott’s opinion was that the girls were suffering from paranoia of the exalted type in the setting of folie à deux. Paranoia, he explained, was a relatively rare form of insanity. It was difficult to diagnose because paranoiacs appeared lucid while harbouring weird delusions, often for years, without their closest relatives realising. The delusions were usually unfounded feelings of persecution, but in this case they were fantastically inflated opinions of genius, uniqueness, literary talent and great beauty, accompanied by an exultation of mood and sense of grandeur. Folie à deux referred to delusions shared by two, or sometimes more, people. In most cases the communicated insanity was folie imposée, the result of the influence of a stronger character on a weaker one. The present case, in his view, was an even rarer form, folie simultanée, with each girl developing psychoses simul­taneously and “resonating” the delusions of the other back and forth. There was no evidence, he thought, that either girl imposedher ideas on the other. Conscious, perhaps, of the eyes of Hilda on him, Medlicott would not admit Juliet may have been the dominant one.

  Each girl, he observed, had suffered a good deal of ill health in early childhood. At the age of five or six, Pauline had had osteo­myelitis. Long confinement in hospital had removed her from home at an important time in her development. She had heard her parents say it was touch-and-go whether she would live. Some children who went through such a near-death experience developed a sense of being special. Pauline had also experienced a period of religious mania during her illness.

  Mr and Mrs Rieper, Medlicott contended, had produced only one normal child out of four. Their first was a blue baby who died within twenty-four hours. Rosemary was a “Mongolian imbecile” institutionalised at Templeton. Pauline had a rare form of insanity. Wendy was the only normal one. In his opinion, all this raised a question as to the stock from which Pauline came.

  He moved on to Juliet. Her chest trouble at the age of five or six had disrupted her schooling and resulted in separation from her family. This could have had a deleterious effect, tending to break normal developments between parents and child and move her away from normal associations and interests. Her time in the Cashmere Sanatorium had also removed her from school, giving her more time to live a fantasy life and write. It was a remarkably bland account of Juliet’s terribly neglected childhood.

  Adolescence, Medlicott suggested, was “a significant part of the picture”. At such a time, increased self-love and preoccupation with oneself were not uncommon: this had been called “the arrogant megalomania of childhood”. And then there was the sexual aspect. Before developing a mature capacity to love a person of the opposite sex, the adolescent frequently went through a stage of forming passions for members of his or her own sex. The association was tragic for the two accused in that their relationship rapidly became homosexual, although there was no proof it was physical.

  At that Mr Justice Adams sat up. “What is homosexuality but a physical relationship?” he wanted to know. Medlicott replied that homo­sexuality did not have to involve a physical relationship, although there was a lot of “very suggestive” evidence from the diaries that there had been one between Pauline and Juliet. Pauline’s 1954 diary contained frequent references to the girls bathing together, spending a great deal of time and late hours in each other’s beds, and frequent sexual talk between them. This was not, from a medical point of view, healthy. Most importantly, it prevented development of normal adult relationships with the opposite sex. And homosexuality and paranoia, Dr Medlicott stated, were frequently related.

  Before the doctor expanded on his consultations with the girls, there was a problem to be dealt with. When Medlicott had first seen the two accused, they were claiming to be insane. Even accepting his point that paranoiacs were lucid and could plan and reason, it was a more serious problem for the defence than Medlicott seemed to recognise. Surely it would be difficult to persuade the jury that two girls who were mad might pretend to be mad? It was well known that mental hospitals were full of lunatics insisting they were sane, but insane people pretending to be insane?—this was something members of the jury were bound to have trouble accepting.

  Medlicott was vague about when exactly the girls had stopped pretending they were insane. He had seen each of them twice on the weekends of June 27 to 28 and July 11 to 12. “Within a very short time in both interviews they had given me what they considered proof of their insanity.” One of them said she occasionally had a compulsion—which she had never acted upon—to thrust her hand into the fire. Both claimed they had telepathic powers and received “unusual communications” from each other. They also claimed to suffer mood swings between ecstasy and depression, with thoughts of suicide. He did not accept any of these statements as evidence of insanity.

  By the third round of interviews—it was not clear when exactly these had taken place— both girls were quite definite they were not insane, he said. A doctor had told them they would be better off in jail than in a mental hospital. On August 23—the day before he gave evidence—Pauline had told him, “We are both sane. Everybody else is off the mark. Our views are much more logical and sensible…”

  The most striking abnormality that convinced Medlicott both Juliet and Pauline were insane was their mood during his interviews. “There was persistent exaltation and … they would suddenly swing into fury,” he told the court. “Their mood was grossly incongruous. They exalted over their crime … with this exaltation there was quite gross excitement. Each girl would have sudden spells of intenseness. They would, you might say, click into gear, talk so rapidly for a time as to be almost incoherent.

  “They showed a conceit that was quite out of the world of normality. Their ideas about their looks are not based on any reality. Their ideas about their genius were not based on any sound ground, except one of them had a high IQ. … They were prepared to accept their books as world-shattering without deferring to any outside authority whatsoever.”

  The girls, he said, had suffered “a very gross reversal of morals

  or of moral sex … they admired those things which were evil and condemned everything the community considered good. It was obvious that the normal personality’s defences against evil had almost completely gone.” Their super-egos—in Freudian terms the voices of conscience and self-restraint—had been all but silenced.

  The girls’ delusional—paranoiac—thinking, Medlicott declared, was clearly demonstrated in Pauline’s diary entry for Good Friday, April 3, 1953: “Today Juliet and I found the key to the 4th World. We realise now that we have had it in our possession for about six months but we only realised it on the day of the death of Christ. …We now know we are not genii as we thought. We have an extra part of our brain which can appreciate the 4th World. Only about ten 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 into that beautiful world which we have been lucky enough to be allowed to know of.”

  During his July visit both girls had, he said, given him consistent accounts of the 4th World, which by then they were calling “Paradise” or “Paradisa”, and of the extra part of their brains. He was convinced that, because of their belief in their own special paradise, the thought of death did not disturb them in any way. This delusion was quite different from the ordinary fantasies they spun.

  Medlicott had also been struck by the “quite fantastic conceit” revealed in Pauline’s poem The Ones That I Worship:

  “… two beautiful daughters

  The most glorious beings in creation;

  They’d be the pride and joy of any nation.

  … 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 …”

  When he had questioned Pauline about this jejune nonsense, she had allowed that she was “a
bit more than usually conceited” the day she wrote it, but insisted it was essentially true. When he had asked Juliet about religion, she had become so excited and ecstatic he often found it almost impossible to follow what she said. They had their own religion, she told him. In it all people were not equal: there were only twenty-five people on their own level who would go to Paradise, “a world of music, art and pure enjoyment”. Their god was not a Christian one but a more powerful version of the human. “He has the same powers, only greatly magnified.” The extra part of their brain “attached to the usual part … makes the whole thing different. … You can appreciate the whole nature of everything.”

  “I don’t wish to place myself above the law,” she said. “I am apart from it.”

  Pauline had given Medlicott more details of the 4th World. She and Juliet had known about it, she said, six months before their experience at Port Levy. When Medlicott asked her about the two days each year when they could look into it, she had replied, “We see it now whenever we wish to.”

  The day after what Medlicott called “the Port Levy revelation”, there had been a particularly bloodthirsty episode in Pauline’s writing. Roland, in a blazing fury, had shot Roderick, and the horse Vendetta had killed Gianina on the eve of her marriage to Nicholas, then trampled Nicholas to death before galloping into a blood-red sunset. This writing had come so soon after the delusions at Port Levy that Medlicott believed the delusions had released murderous impulses. Had he read the passage a year earlier, he would have been fearful that some day the girls would break through into action.

  Entries in Pauline’s diaries, including about making love with the Saints, also supported his diagnosis that both girls were suffering from paranoiac delusions, Medlicott told the jury. They showed that as time went on “evil becomes more and more important … they ultimately become helplessly under its sway”.

  Juliet and Pauline’s irregular hours and activities at night were, he said, symptomatic of their growing exaltation. He was convinced that by June 1954 both girls were grossly insane. Even before they started to play with evil, as shown by their shoplifting and attempts at blackmail, there were warning signs that their normal defences were being overwhelmed. Their conceit had to be fed continually by their making fun of other people, proving everyone else wrong. The paranoiac had an inability to appreciate the rights of others — “even [the right] to live”.

  But, he said, although Parker and Hulme were insane when they attacked Mrs Rieper, they were aware of the physical nature and quality of their act: they knew they were killing a human being. They were “aware at times of the rightness and wrongness of acts. This awareness is so temporary they will switch between what they know about the law and back into their own fantastic ideas at a moment’s notice. Paranoia affects the judgement very definitely… always the delusional theme drives them.” Neither girl, Medlicott said, had ever acknowledged to him that what they did was morally wrong.

  Alan Brown was eyeing the psychiatrist impatiently, eager to get started on his cross-examination.

  CHAPTER 25

  The Thing Called Bliss

  Alan Brown was determined to show that Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme were legally sane when they killed Nora Rieper. He began by getting Reg Medlicott to admit that all three doctors who would be called by the Crown to rebut insanity—James Hunter and James Saville of Sunnyside Mental Hospital and Kenneth Stallworthy, senior medical officer at Avondale Mental Hospital—had considerably more experience in medico-legal matters than he did.

  He then homed in on a clear weakness of the defence case: the fact the girls had pretended to be insane. Medlicott was not sure why they had done this, he said. It was possible they thought being insane might lessen their time in detention. Brown put it to him that they thought they would be better off in a mental hospital than in jail having to work.

  Brown turned to the fact that during Medlicott’s first interview with Pauline she had told him she knew murder was considered wrong, against the law. The Hulme girl, too, had admitted knowing that in killing Pauline’s mother she and Pauline had done something wrong in law. She had added, “There is no right and wrong. … If I ran a country I would make laws for others to stick to and I would punish them if they didn’t. As king, of course, the laws would not apply to me.” But she had understood that the law of New Zealand applied to her. If she had been old enough to be hanged, she had told Medlicott, she would not have cared. “It is a nice thing to go to Paradise.”

  Although the girls knew the killing was wrong in law, he had never been able to get them to admit it was morally wrong, Medlicott rejoindered. He was forced to conclude they did not know their action was morally wrong. They understood the generally accepted com­munity standards of right and wrong, but did not recognise them as applying to themselves.

  “Do you think these girls were convinced that battering Mrs Parker over the head was morally right?” Alan Brown said.

  “I think they were,” Medlicott could only reply.

  Wasn’t there, Brown went on, an apparent contradiction between the girls considering themselves beyond the pale of the law yet know­ing they would be punished if they were caught breaking it?

  Paranoiacs did that, Medlicott answered. They considered the moral standards of the community did not apply to them.

  “They were permitted to do that [commit murder] but no one else was?”

  “Yes.”

  Why, then, had the girls been anxious not to be caught and lied to the police, Brown asked.

  Their plan would be frustrated if they were caught, Medlicott said. Until Juliet finally confessed, they thought Pauline would be found insane and the Hulmes would be able to take responsibility for her and take her out of the country. “It is a fantastic belief,” he acknowledged.

  Brown pressed on. “When was the first point in time either of them became grossly insane?” he asked.

  The onset of paranoia was insidious, Medlicott replied. It was difficult to pick the exact point, but he felt the Port Levy incident

  in April 1953 was when they went over from their constitutional paranoid personality into actual paranoia.

  “Was their belief that they were highly intelligent a delusion?”

  “No.”

  “Their thoughts that [Mrs Rieper] was in their way was not a delusion?”

  “No.”

  “It was a very great reality?”

  “Yes.”

  “And was not their reason for killing Mrs Parker to put her out of their way?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was not the result of a delusion at all, was it?”

  “Not directly.”

  “Was not their main plan in life to remain together?”

  “It was.”

  “Was not Mrs Rieper’s interference doing something to interfere with their plan?”

  “It was.”

  “And their doing away with Mrs Parker would remove the inter­ference to their plans?”

  “That is what they thought.”

  It was a good point. Even if the two accused were suffering from para­noiac delusions, it did not follow that the killing of Honorah Rieper was due to a delusion—a false belief in a state of affairs that did not exist.

  Alan Brown was on a roll. What emotional state were the girls in when they ran up to Mrs Ritchie at the tea kiosk, he wanted to know. Did they not display the emotions you would expect from two sane girls who had committed a dreadful deed?

  “I think there was some definite emotional response to the deed. I think the blood shocked them,” Medlicott replied.

  Brown pressed his point. “Do you agree that they behaved im­medi­ately after killing Mrs Parker as you would expect two people who had done such a deed to behave?”

  “Yes. They showed signs of shock.”

  “Did they behave as people who had committed such a deed could be expected to behave: yes or no?”

  “I don’t know,” was all Medlicott could say.


  Brown continued to pummel the witness. “You say [Pauline] said she had a period during primary school of religious mania … Were they her words?”

  “I am not clear. I went over my notes. I may be getting confused by what was told to me by her sister Wendy.”

  The judge intervened. “You say you can’t assure us that either of the girls used the phrase about religious mania?”

  “No. I went back on my notes and could not find it. I did find it in my notes about the interview with Wendy and regret it very much that at the time I became confused…”

  Alan Brown had Medlicott on the ropes. “You realise it is very important that evidence be accurate.”

  It was a small thing but it had damaged Medlicott’s credibility.

  If, as soon as discovering a mistake had been made, he had offered the court a correction no harm would have been done.

  Brown was not finished yet. He wanted to know why Medlicott had said in evidence that problems with the Riepers’ other children raised a query as to the stock from which Pauline came.

  “Do you not think you are being unjust to Mrs Rieper in saying that?”

  “I said no more than it raises a query.”

  “Do you not think it was being unjust to say even that?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What do you mean by it?”

  “It’s simply what I said—it suggests the possibility of defective stock.”

  “That is, hereditary insanity from father to son or mother to daughter?” Brown asked.

  “There is no evidence of hereditary insanity that I could find.”

  “Your suggestion is that there might be?”

  “That is not the intention of my suggestion.”

  “What do you mean by it?” Brown continued. “Simply that they are a family of four, the first child died within twenty-four hours, the second one normal, the third one I consider suffers from paranoia, and the fourth one is in Templeton?” Brown was enjoying Medlicott’s increasing discomfort. “Do not your words imply that the insanity which you allege exists in Parker was hereditary?”