Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century

by Peter Graham

  While psychiatry offers these tantalising explanations and insights, another factor at least as potent factor was at work: neuro­chemistry. The two girls were wildly enamoured with each other. In the throes of love the body experiences chemical changes. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter, increases in parts of the brain, including the nucleus accumbens, a region associated with reward, motivation and addiction. It then drives up testosterone levels—in women as well as men—increasing the sexual drive. And dopamine metabolises into norepinephrine, a hormone and neurotransmitter that stimulates wild flights of imagination and increased energy. When you can think of nothing except your beloved, sleep and food are unnecessary.

  These psychiatric and neurological theories go some way to explain­ing the strange and ultimately criminal behaviour of Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme, but there is still one last question. As one of Pauline and Juliet’s classmates at Christchurch Girls’ High said, “There was definitely some attraction between them, but what the heck was it?”

  Brian McClelland, who saw a good deal of Juliet before and during the trial, thought Juliet loved only herself. The Hulmes’ house­keeper, Mrs Grinlaubs, went further. She believed Juliet’s main consideration was to completely take over someone such as Pauline Parker as “a shadow person”. Nancy Sutherland, too, remarked that when Pauline first started appearing at Ilam she was always in a servile role, waiting on Juliet much as Juliet’s little brother had until then.

  How true was this? After she was released from the sanatorium Juliet seemed besotted with her friend. In his written statement for

  the crown prosecutor, Bill Perry said that when Pauline left Ilam after staying there Juliet would collapse, take to her bed for two or three days, and mope until her next visit. When Pauline went home she would get on with life in a way that seemed quite impossible for Juliet.

  Pauline wanted to be like Juliet, and Juliet was more than willing to colonise her, transplanting her thoughts, opinions, tastes in music, films, literature and everything else. The dynamics of narcissistic relationships such as this were studied by Heinz Kohut in the late 1960s. He found that ambivalents want to merge with people who have desirable characteristics they feel they lack. Someone who inwardly feels ugly seeks to merge with someone beautiful. A person who feels unintelligent wants to merge with someone perceived as particularly intelligent. This was true of Pauline. Juliet, for her part, needed another person to help maintain her inflated self-image; the twinship relationship served her narcissistic needs because Pauline was willing to adopt all her likes, dislikes, ideas and philosophies.

  Kohut called this “twinship transference”. The more alike the two people become, the more they love each other. He, and others who followed him, observed that some of the great romances in history had nothing to do with love in the mature selfless sense but were, in essence, narcissistic, based on self-love.

  It has been suggested—by a Canterbury historian, Stevan Eldred-Grigg, among others—that two key factors in the murder of Honorah Rieper were sex and class. The first is indisputable: whatever the girls’ long-term sexual orientation, their fascination with each other found a homoerotic expression pleasurable to both, and this bound them even closer in a relationship increasingly detached from reality.

  But what of “class”? It is part of the mythology surrounding the case that, because of the Hulmes’ superior social standing and cultural sophistication, Pauline, “the girl from the fish shop”, was swept off her feet, dazzled by the glamour of life at Ilam, and became enslaved to Juliet. It makes a good story but the truth is more complex. Certainly, the Hulmes lived in a house that was grand by New Zealand standards and mixed easily with the Anglophile upper tier of Christchurch society. And certainly Pauline, with her limited social experience, was impressed by their life and sometimes fantasised about being a Hulme herself: she even taught herself to speak as they did. Yet her adoration of Juliet went far beyond admiration for a social superior. And her seething anger, self-loathing and intermittent hatred of her mother did not spring from dissatisfaction with her social mileu and envyof Juliet’s: these feelings had started long before she met Juliet Hulme. No one could say the social cleft between the Riepers and the Hulmes had nothing at all to do with the girls’ fatal friendship, but if Pauline had been the daughter of well-off educated parents closer to the Hulmes in social class the same events would probably have occurred. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were, after all, both sons of Jewish millionaires from the affluent suburbs of Chicago.

  CHAPTER 41

  Separate Lives

  Are Anne Perry and Hilary Nathan in contact with each other? Has there been a Heavenly Creatures reunion? Do these girlhood friends, now in their early seventies, get together from time to time to reminisce? Speculation has been driven by the fact that for years both women have lived in Scotland, only about one hundred miles apart. Surely this is too much of a coincidence? It is such an intriguing thought some are convinced the women must have met. Their imaginary reunion is even the premise of a play, Folie à Deux, by Canadian playwright Trevor Schmidt, first staged in Edmonton in March 2010.

  There are several reasons for thinking that, for all the theatrical possibilities of such a meeting, it has probably never occurred. Juliet and Pauline could not have met in New Zealand after their release: Juliet was whisked out of the country while Pauline was still in prison. In 1966, when Pauline went to England, Anne was living there, although very soon afterwards she moved to California, where she remained until 1972. Even if such a meeting would have been possible before her departure, or after she later returned to England, the odds are against it. Assuming the girls’ friendship served narcissistic needs that were particularly strong in adolescence, it can be expected to have long outlived its usefulness.

  Anne Perry has made abundantly clear her lack of feeling for Hilary Nathan and laid the blame for the murder squarely on her former friend. Chris Cooke revealed that this allegation had given rise to considerable sympathy for Parker, not least from the girls’ former classmates, who remembered Juliet Hulme “as a girl who didn’tdo anything she didn’t want to”. If Hilary Nathan ever made a public statement she might well challenge Anne Perry’s version of events. Perhaps this was what Perry meant when she told Robert McCrum, “My worst fear about all this is that you will find Pauline.”

  Two weeks after Hilary Nathan was discovered living in England, Perry told readers of Woman’s Day, “I hope things go well for Pauline. That is my hope for everyone. There is no one I wish any harm to.”

  She insisted to NBC’s Jamie Gangel that since being sent to prison she had not seen, or had any communication with or about, Hilary Nathan.

  “No contact at all?” Gangel asked.

  “Until the story broke, when I heard she is a private person and apparently doing quite well and I hope it remains that way.”

  To Bob Brown on America’s ABC television, she said, “I don’t think we have anything to say to each other now, honestly. I wish her well. I wish her well but I think it is best we keep our separate lives.” Amanda Cable wrote in the Daily Mail, “When asked if she ever thinks of Pauline … Anne will not be drawn, but her icy response—and the fact she will refer to Pauline only as ‘she’—seems to speak volumes about her feelings.”

  Anne Perry finished with Pauline Parker a very long time ago. The last thing in the world she would want is some sort of emotional reconnection. Nor would Hilary Nathan—struggling to run her island croft, communing with God, and battling the elements and the occasional journalist or film-maker intent on invading her privacy—conceivably be eager to reestablish contact with Juliet Hulme, who proved so dangerous to know all those years ago. Would either want to be reminded of the time when Gina and Deborah believed them­selves goddesses, heavenly creatures, the two most glorious beings in creation?

  Epilogue

  Some of the police officers and lawyers involved in the investi­gation of Honorah Parker’s murder and the trial of Pauline Parker an
d Juliet Hulme would be profoundly affected. One of the first was the crown prosecutor, Alan Brown. It was clear to everyone at the trial that Brown was at times extremely distressed, and noticeable to some that his cross-examination, particularly of Dr Francis Bennett, often galloped out of control. Dr Reg Medlicott was no doubt smarting about his own cross-examination by Brown when he told Brian McClelland that the crown prosecutor was certifiable—“off his head”—and would be his patient within two years. Medlicott was wrong: Alan Brown was in Ashburn Hall, where Medlicott was medical superintendent, within weeks.

  He had clearly suffered what was then called a “nervous break­down”. After the trial his behaviour, which included very heavy drinking, was soon alarming his partners and colleagues. The problem landed in the lap of Derek Round, the most junior member of Raymond, Donnelly and Brown. Round, then a law clerk and part-time law student, would go on to become a distinguished foreign correspondent and editor for the New Zealand Press Association, but in July 1954 he was nineteen years old and, as he is first to admit, wet behind the ears.

  Brown refused to talk to his law partners, Peter Mahon and Jack McKenzie, but often spoke to Round, who became increasingly worried. While the exact details are unclear, there is a story that Brown dumped a load of legal files into the Avon, and another that he removed a painting from the Canterbury Officers’ Club.

  Of particular concern to Derek Round was a relationship Brown had formed with an unusual couple who frequently visited him at his office. Round was not sure whether they were clients or friends, but thought the man, from his appearance, was Indian or from the West Indies. The woman was conspicuous by her outlandishly large hats. The pair claimed to have a silver mine in which they wanted Brown to invest. The man was in possession of a shotgun, which he carried with him much of the time, fearing someone was trying to steal the map locating the mine. Round remembers seeing him come up the stairs one day carrying a leather gun-case, presumably with the gun in it.

  The final straw came when Brown was said to have wandered upto Cathedral Square with a rifle and started taking his clothes off. Round went to Ted Taylor, the Christchurch coroner, who was a good friend of Brown’s, and told him everything he knew and had heard. Taylor asked Round to apply to have Brown committed under the Mental Health Act.

  Feeling “acutely embarrassed and uncomfortable”, Round went to see the magistrate Rex Abernethy S.M. and an arrangement was made to have Brown examined by the police surgeon. Round made a sworn statement in front of Abernethy, who then signed the order for Brown’s committal. Round felt so uneasy about his part in the proceedings he hoped Brown’s wife would not learn it was he who had made the application.

  Ted Taylor and another close friend of Brown’s, Colin Urquhart, who later became the commissioner of police, found Brown at the Canterbury Club and drove him to Dunedin, where he became the inmate and patient of the man to whom he had given a public mauling at the trial.

  Shortly after Brown’s commital, at Medlicott’s request Derek Round drove down to Ashburn Hall. Brown received him cordially and intro­duced him to a number of his fellow patients. Medlicott told Round that Brown was suffering from a pre-existing mental disorder that had been brought to the fore by the stresses of the trial. He did not name the disorder but Round guessed it was manic-depression. Medication with lithium was then unknown.

  On one occasion Brown phoned the country’s solicitor-general, complaining he was being held against his will. Eventually he rang Brian McClelland and said, “For God’s sake, you’re a friend, get me out.” McClelland went to Dunedin to see him and talk to Reg Medlicott. Medlicott, McClelland observed, “lived like the Rajah of Bong”, drinking only the best brandy and being waited on by his wife Nan, who believed the great man needed to rest his brain, and never expected him to lift a finger. He found Alan Brown hoeing the rose garden.

  McClelland persuaded Medlicott to release Brown on condition he never drank again. The crown solicitor did not return to his post: in 1957 Peter Mahon was appointed to replace him. As an act of kindness a fellow lawyer, Ralph Thompson, gave Brown a job in his firm, Charles S. Thomas, Thompson and Hay. When Brown died in 1961 at the age of sixty-four, his obituary described it as “a less exacting position”. It was

  a sad end for a man of his many talents.

  Mr Justice Adams, by then Sir Francis, surprised everyone by marrying his associate the day before he retired; the happy timing meant the new Lady Adams would be eligible for a judicial pension when he died. After retiring he enjoyed some good productive years, parked at the end table in the Supreme Court library beavering away on revisions to Adams on Criminal Law. He was always willing to share his encyclopaedic knowledge of the law with young lawyers stuck on a difficult point. One afternoon Nico Gresson came across Sir Francis and Lady Adams taking tea in the United Service Hotel. Seizing the moment, he asked Sir Francis what he had thought of his father’s defence of Juliet Hulme. “Absolute poppycock, my boy,” he replied.

  Terence Gresson was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court in 1956. He was forty-two, one of the youngest judges ever appointed, but his life was to end in tragedy when eleven years later, on November 14, 1967, he was found dead. He had put his head in a gas oven. He had planned his death meticulously, even remembering to leave gifts for his godson and others. He was said to have been under financial pressure, and many friends wished they had had some hint of his problems. They would have been only too willing to help, but he was a proud man. He was greatly missed.

  Alec Haslam was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1957, when it was recorded that he was “notable among his friends and contemporaries for his unusual combination of mental and physical vigour, enlivened by frankness in speech, and governed by courtesy in behaviour”. He may have been courteous in a social setting, but lawyers who appeared before him in court were more likely to remember him as one of the most dyspeptic judges they ever encountered.

  Jimmy Wicks’ future career surprised those who knew him as a student and young practitioner of the law. Although less obviously gifted than any other counsel in the Parker–Hulme trial, he was appointed a magistrate in 1961, and by 1978 was senior stipendiary magistrate. Given a knighthood that year, he was appointed Wanganui Computer Centre privacy commissioner, a position he held until 1983.

  Brian McClelland’s part in the Parker–Hulme trial led to a long and successful career. Speaking of himself and his much-loved wife Phyll, he said, “We were young [and] proud of the fact I was in the trial. It was marvellous, a wonderful experience—even though we got done.” As one of the governors of Christ’s College McClelland was at the heart of the Canterbury establishment, yet he was worshipped by the hundreds of trade union members for whom he had acted in personal injury claims. Appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1977, he never fully retired. Not long before his death he lamented the change in criminal court work. Once, he said, he had appeared for “unarmed, skilled criminals” such as safe-blowers. “Now it’s drugs and gangs. … That doesn’t interest me greatly.” He always had a photograph of Terence Gresson beside his desk.

  Peter Mahon, too, would have a distinguished career. In 1962 he resigned as crown solicitor to take up practice as a barrister sole. In 1971 he was appointed Queen’s Counsel and became a judge of the Supreme Court. He was an outstanding judge. Calm and patient, even if often bored, he produced beautifully written judgements not­able for their humanity and a determination to see justice done. In 1980 he was appointed to chair a Royal Commission of Inquiry into an air disaster in which an Air New Zealand sightseeing plane to Antarctica had crashed into Mount Erebus, killing all 257 passengers and crew. Mahon’s 166-page report contained the words: “I am forced reluctantly to say that I had to listen to an orchestrated litany of lies.” The fatal phrase reflected his conviction that the senior management of Air New Zealand had conspired to falsely blame the pilot for the accident.

  Air New Zealand persuaded the Court of Appeal that making such a finding without giving t
he airline an opportunity to refute it amounted to a miscarriage of justice. Mahon was stung by the finding, which he believed called into question his competence and sense of justice, and resigned as a judge. The Crown appealed to the Privy Council in London to overthrow the Court of Appeal’s decision but was unsuccessful. Mahon, with good cause, was extremely bitter. Sadly, he came to believe old and dear friends were snubbing him in the street.

  The most tragic story is Archie Tate’s. The police officer who played a leading part in the Honorah Parker murder investigation and ensuing trial was described by one of the members of a rugby team he coached as “quite a refined sort of bloke for a cop in those days. You never heard Archie swear or use coarse language”. Tate’s daughter Lesley told journalist Chris Cooke that the murder and trial had deeply upset her father. “What really got to him was that not only were they the same age as me but they appeared to be two normal girls.”

  Like Alan Brown he seems to have had a breakdown of sorts, but terrified of showing weakness and perhaps ruining his career he soldiered on. By January 1964 he was a detective chief inspector stationed in the northern city of Hamilton. Towards the end of that month he was ordered to take charge of a murder investigation. David Rowe, chief steward of the New Zealand Star, had been found dead while the ship was at sea. Tate and two other detectives boarded the vessel at Napier to investigate. Within twenty-four hours they had arrested John Vincent, a seaman.

  When the New Zealand Star sailed for Lyttelton on Sunday,February 2, Tate and the two detectives remained on board to continue their inquiries. Later that night Tate was found hanging in his cabin. There were, the police announced, “no suspicious circumstances”.