The documentary opens with Anne talking at the Surrey International Writers’ Festival in Vancouver, which is an annual event for her, then moves back home to Portmahomack, where it follows the routines of a writer’s life. It captures the tensions, especially between Anne, Meg MacDonald and Jonathan, and leaves an uncanny sense of déjà vu in the relationship between Anne and Meg, in which there is an unavoidable resonance with the friendship of Juliet and Pauline. The film’s release in New Zealand provoked an inevitable renewal of interest in the murder yet again. Chris Cooke from Television New Zealand emailed Anne in March 2010, requesting an interview and ‘an honest and frank discussion’ about what had happened. This was the perfect opportunity, he felt, for her to ‘step out of her comfort zone’. He suggested they visit Christchurch together, and Ilam, because the homestead was still there. Pauline’s sister, Wendy, had taken exception to Anne’s assertion that she believed Pauline would have committed suicide if she had not helped to kill Honorah. Cook suggested that ‘if you were of a mind to apologize to Wendy I’m sure this can be arranged. So happens I am a trained restorative justice facilitator so can assist in such a process.’49
They also had an approach from me, in October 2009, proposing to write a biography of Anne. Meg sent an email to Vicki Mellor, Susanna Porter and Don Maass. ‘I don’t think this particular author is the right person. She’s based in New Zealand, which will put Anne’s hackles up. She’s published a biography of Ngaio Marsh … But it seems a good moment to review the issue of whether a biography of Anne would be a good thing now.’50 In the end they decided that the timing was not right, and that a biography might well ‘scare up a lot of discussion that we’ve all spent years trying to bury’.51
I received an email from Meg: ‘Dear Joanne Drayton, I’m sorry to say that even Anne’s publishers don’t feel it’s the right time for a biography, so we’re putting this whole issue on the back-burner for the foreseeable future.’52
I tried again on 28 April 2010: ‘You may feel this is a case of what part of “no” don’t you understand, but I am approaching you again to let you know I now have a confirmed contract with HarperCollins NZ to write a literary biography of Anne Perry. Once again I am writing to solicit your/her participation with this project.’ The next day Meg replied with a short email requesting more information: ‘Was there a proposal you sent to HarperCollins, perhaps?’53 A day later my proposal arrived in her office at MBA. The concluding paragraph stated:
It is amazing to have discovered a voice for Juliet Hulme in the writing of Anne Perry, and New Zealand needs to listen. It is time to move out of the 1950s, the details of which have been frozen in time and ground over long enough. In today’s context this is punitive and embarrassing. Anne Perry’s life story needs to grow, to leave behind the terrible mistake of a young teenager and mature to acknowledge the remarkable adult contribution and achievements of one of the world’s most well-known crime doyennes.
‘Thanks, Joanne — this is very useful. I’ll talk to Anne and get back to you as soon as possible,’ Meg wrote when the proposal arrived. Then, 21 minutes later: ‘Discussions have moved on more quickly than I anticipated. Can Anne and I meet you when you’re here [in London] in the summer?’54 …
II
‘There is no comparison between the environment at Arohata and that of the women’s section of Mt Eden,’ wrote NZ Truth in September 1954. Pauline’s prison life was considerably less severe than Juliet’s. Her cell was ‘a wooden, sound proof room about eight feet by 10’, which had a:
normal-sized window covered by strong meshed wire, its ceiling a grating to cover the light bulb. Its only furniture … a wooden bedstead and a table and stool fixed to the wall … Arohata is a modern building, not unlike the majority of hospitals, possibly better. Its corridors are covered by well-polished linoleum and are shut off by wide swinging doors.55
The original intention had been that Juliet and Pauline would spend time at both prisons, ‘presumably for equivalent periods’, but this never happened. Juliet survived four years in Mt Eden before she was moved to the less stringent Arohata. After her epiphany she relinquished any obvious desire to see Pauline, although for months after the murder memories of the friendship were a touchstone in times of distress. But accepting the blame for what she did and renouncing the friendship became intrinsic to the lessons she felt she had learnt.
There is one thing about doing something for which you pay very, very heavily and which you profoundly regret. You are a great deal more careful about ever doing anything you are going to regret. It certainly affects your understanding of stepping out of line … You are far more careful of not doing it again than would have been otherwise … I’ve been burned and you never go near the fire again. You don’t even go in the same room as the fire.56
Juliet said she participated in the murder out of a sense of ‘misplaced loyalty’, and although this does not fully acknowledge the obsessive intensity of the attachment, it does explain why it was easier for her to give up the friendship and move on. Pauline yearned for much longer to see and hear news of Juliet. It was only after converting to Catholicism, towards the end of her stay in prison, that Pauline began to see their relationship as what in other circumstances it might have been — a teenage pash that could quickly have burnt itself out.
During her stay at Arohata, Pauline ‘enrolled for correspondence courses in English, French, Latin, Mathematics, Drawing and Design, and later Maori’.57 She passed School Certificate and University Entrance, and after matriculating took papers towards a Bachelor of Arts degree. To keep the young women separate, when Juliet was moved to Arohata, Pauline was transferred to Paparua Prison near Christchurch. Once there, she was visited and instructed by various academics from the University of Canterbury. Professor of English John Garrett’s standard joke became: ‘If you’re an ordinary student, you get an ordinary tutor. Kill someone, and you get the professor.’58
While Pauline was at Arohata, her father was the only family member she saw, but after she had been there for a year he found it too difficult to continue. The grief he felt over the loss of his wife was exacerbated by the legal costs he was forced to pay for years after the trial. It was only when the courts realized the financial burden he was under that the money was waived. At Paparua, Pauline was able to re-establish some contact with her family.
In August 1958, Juliet was moved to the secure block at Arohata. It was closed off and separate from the rest of the prison, and had its own screened and completely private exercise yard rimmed with razor-wire that ran along one side of the building and at the end. ‘The workroom in the security wing is a cheerful enough room and its windows look out across green fields,’ NZ Truth told its readers.59 Juliet had her first proper glimpse of the outside world after four years behind the grim stone walls of Mt Eden. She drank in the views and the less punitive physical environment and routine, and impressed authorities with her ability to adjust and comply. Both she and Pauline were regarded as model prisoners.
Although politicians and newspapers announced that Juliet and Pauline would be treated like any other lifers, their age, gender, class and the high-profile nature of the case made this impossible. Their time in prison was far more assiduously managed than that of most inmates.
In fact, according to Alison Laurie and Julie Glamuzina, Sam Barnett ‘took a direct and personal interest in them’ and regular reports on their progress were sent directly to him.60 Barnett was a friend of Henry Hulme, which undoubtedly had an influence. His overseeing of their progress reports was unusual, as was the degree to which their mail and visitor lists were scrutinized. Hate mail from cranks and problematic correspondence had to be separated from legitimate letters. Magazines and visits from evangelizing fundamentalist groups such as the Moral Re-Armament Organization were also intercepted.
Both girls had some behind-the-scenes protection from elements in the prison that might pose a danger to them. At Mt Eden, Grace Powell took a special inte
rest, and, according to Don McKenzie, Superintendent Haywood and his wife took Juliet into their home on the occasional weekend.
Any titbits of official or anecdotal information from prison were immediately reported in the press, and there were also letters to the editor. On the day Juliet was taken to Mt Eden, Eric T Price wrote to the New Zealand Herald:
From the report of the decision of the Cabinet with reference to the two girls convicted of murder, it would seem that the purpose is to inflict the greatest punishment possible. It may be desirable to separate them for other reasons, but one would like to think that the purpose was reformative, not punitive. Some day these girls will be released. The kind of people they will then be will depend to a large extent on how they are treated during the long years of imprisonment.61
Their release was as thorny a problem as their initial imprisonment. The media were trigger-happy. London’s Sunday Express announced to readers that Juliet ‘would be released before her [twenty-first] birthday’. This was contradicted by a New Zealand Herald article on 17 February 1959, which quoted Minister of Justice Rex Mason’s comment that ‘the release from prison of Juliet Hulme … has not been considered yet’. The next day another article appeared in the New Zealand Herald, correcting the Sydney Sunday, which had quoted a parole board member as ‘saying Parker and Hulme would be released soon’. The Herald announced the government’s official line: ‘the question of Hulme’s release comes up before the Executive Council on March 31 [1959]’.62
This frenzy of speculation fuelled an already hot topic. Accompanying the conjecture were commentaries expounding the girls’ achievements in prison and speculating on their future rehabilitation. The New Zealand Herald told readers: ‘[An ex-inmate] has said Hulme had developed into an expert dressmaker and had ideas of setting up a dress shop in England … Hulme has said she never wants to see Parker again.’63
When the liberation finally happened, however, everyone was caught out. By the time the girls’ release hit the newspapers, Juliet was already long gone, ‘her destination unknown to all except a few senior officers of the Justice Department’.64 Juliet and Pauline were released two weeks apart, so there would be no possibility of their meeting. Juliet left the country in mid-November, and the official announcement was delayed until 4 December 1959. In total each girl had served a little over five years in prison. Barnett told the newspapers: ‘we realized that eventually and inevitably their release would become known but we wanted to give them as fair a start as possible’.65
‘I didn’t really know it was going to happen until just about when it did, just a day or two before,’ Anne recalls. A small deputation brought her the news and she was given the opportunity to select her own first name. ‘They told me, something very ordinary. It had to be Jane, Mary, Margaret, Elizabeth, Anne, one of those sorts of things … nothing unusual, nothing different, nothing to draw any attention, whatsoever … All the interesting names I could have had, they said: “Oh no, you can’t have anything like that.”’66 So reluctantly she chose ‘Anne’ and then was instructed to take the surname ‘Stewart’, which was her maternal grandmother’s maiden name.
After her new identity was established, she was issued with a passport. ‘I had to give up my past — the hardest thing imaginable — and begin a life in a new identity … knowing even a tiny slip could unravel everything.’67
They took me out [of prison]. It was like someone walking out of a dark cave into the light. They put me on a plane … We changed planes at Sydney, and there was a few hours in between until the next flight. I remember getting out in Darwin and it was like walking into a hot, wet blanket. Very hot. We hit an electric storm, I remember that — a very, very frightening electric storm going from Darwin along to Bangkok, Karachi, and my father and his wife met me in Rome. And then we drove from Rome, through Italy and across to Britain, and then up to Northumberland.68
Marion was waiting for Anne when she arrived in the village of Hexham in Northumberland.
I was so shell-shocked and totally stunned. It was the first time in five-and-a-half years that I could choose whether I ate or what I ate, or didn’t, or get up or go to bed if I wanted to, or walk outside when I wanted to. Or see a sunset. I hadn’t seen a sunset in all that time, or listened to any decent music or seen the horizon — and I still get a kick out of that one. It doesn’t wear off.69
In Hexham, Anne was unable to talk about her experiences. Her family, desperate to forget the whole affair, could not bring themselves to discuss it. ‘Mother never talked to me about my crime,’ she told Amanda Cable of the Daily Mail in 2005.
She felt we should leave it behind. I think, in many ways, she didn’t want to feel guilty. Maybe she thought that if she’d been there for me more as a teenager, this may not have happened. But I didn’t want her to think that I blamed her. If I ever talked about how I felt, it would distress her. So we chose not to.70
Anne was completely ill prepared for life at the dawn of the 1960s. Since her referral to the Christchurch Sanatorium in 1953, she had been ‘shut away, out of circulation’. She had never worn make-up, mixed with other adolescents, been out on dates:
It took me a long time to learn to fit into society again. I remember feeling so awkward and detached … I had to learn to do a job and behave like other people. In many ways I was a 12-year-old, and yet I had seen things that I hope most people will never see … and most of the people I know have absolutely no idea of what that is like. They know something happened and what the newspapers have said, but they don’t know what it’s actually like.
The most desirable practical skill she left prison with was shorthand typing, so she did secretarial work while she adjusted to life in the outside world.
Anne lived with Marion and Bill for nearly two years before taking a flat in Newcastle-upon-Tyne with three other women. ‘I — of all things — I did the cooking. We were all very hard-up, and I knew I had to cook quite a few things that would feed a number of people on nothing very much … I was the oldest person there and over twenty-one, and the others were young, and so I was kind of responsible in a fashion, legally because I was of age.’71 Christine Lynch, one of the girls in her flat, became a close, lifelong friend. Anne returned to Hexham to see Marion and Bill for visits and the occasional weekend stay.
Anne worked at the local John Lewis department store in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and started dating. But all the time there was a lingering consciousness that she was concealing a secret life. When people asked her about her past ‘I never lied, but I evaded. I would say I’d been ill and I’d been abroad.’72 The fabrication was easy with mere acquaintances, but more difficult with people she wanted to know better. ‘I was always dreading the day I’d have to tell somebody what I had done. But in the end I only felt close enough to one boyfriend to tell him.’ She thought quite a bit about having a family in her twenties, and the idea of a conventional life appealed, but none of her romances ever proceeded to marriage; nor was her maternal instinct strong enough to need to have a child.
For years she battled feelings of social awkwardness and periods of depression, but gradually these became less frequent. She moved into a bed-sit with a ‘shared toilet and bath’ and became a stewardess for a local airline, ‘but not a particularly good one’. It would later rate as her worst job ever. ‘We were waitresses in the sky.’ She lacked patience and hated being patronized and ordered around. It would rankle ‘when men snapped their fingers and asked me to bring them something’ and privately she felt like throwing it in their lap.73 Her job as an assistant purser on the Hull – Gothenburg ferry was a better fit.
During this period, Anne decided to change her surname by deed-poll from Stewart to Perry. Bill had married Marion, and it made more sense and drew less attention to have just the two surnames in the family — Hulme and Perry. It felt right, too. ‘Bill adopted me … he was happy to own me. He always treated me as his own.’74
Changing her surname may have helped Anne avoid poten
tially risky and revealing questions, but it also linked her directly to the Parker–Hulme murder. The case bubbled away in people’s subconsciousness, occasionally erupting with the publication of a book, an anthology or a dictionary entry, or a feature newspaper or magazine article. While Juliet and Pauline were in prison, the case had already been included in Rupert Furneaux’s Famous Criminal Cases (1955) and in Tom Gurr and HH Cox’s Famous Australasian Crimes (1957). (In 1958, Gurr and Cox fictionalized the case in a bestselling novel called Obsession.) Furneaux’s preface states, ‘In New Zealand we have a case which may well become world famous as the most terrible crime of the century.’ His chapter on the murder concludes:
Complete egoists, they were insane only in the sense that their ideas were those of animals rather than of human beings. Their law was the law of the jungle and like wild animals they must be caged until they have shown themselves capable of living together with other human beings.75
Gurr and Cox’s Famous Australasian Crimes was inaccurate in detail, but perhaps not in vision. With remarkable foresight, they wrote ‘Juliet Hulme will be the one who will serve a short sentence; and it is possible that, under another name, the world in time will recognize a writer of talent.’76 Of the crime they concluded: ‘the normal mind shrinks from the implications of this tragic story. In many other crimes, lessons of some sort or other are to be found. Here there is little but horror, sadness, and bafflement.’
The books continued after Juliet and Pauline were released. In 1965 the case was included in Charles Franklin’s The World’s Worst Murderers, and in 1973 in both Leonard Gribble’s The Hallmark of Horror and Gerald Sparrow’s Queens of Crime, which refers to the girls as ‘Satan’s children’.
The Search for Anne Perry Page 35