A BEST-SELLING crime writer who helped murder her best friend's mum is to open her heart on American TV.

Anne Perry, who has sold more than 25 million novels, was only 15 when she helped pal Pauline Parker bludgeon her mother to death in a park in New Zealand.

Now, for the first time, she has allowed a camera crew into her home in Portmahomack, Easter Ross.

The film, Anne Perry Interiors, will be released in the US this week.

It will give a rare insight into the writer's world - where she lives, as a born again Mormon, immersed in her work, with only her brother and a few close friends for company.

Throughout the documentary, the murder in 1954 is referred to as the "thing" or the "accident" rather than a brutal premeditated murder that shocked the world.

Perry, now 72, said: "I did something stupid that I have regretted for the rest of my life but I can't undo it."

The writer was born Juliet Hulme as the daughter of a distinguished physicist who was the rector of University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.

As a teenager, she developed an obsessive friendship with classmate Pauline Parker.

Hulme's parents were in the process of separating and she was supposed to go to South Africa to stay with a relative.

Pauline wanted to go with her but her mother Honora wouldn't allow it - so they hatched a plan to kill her. They joined her for a walk in the park and then battered her to death, striking her 45 times with a brick wrapped in a stocking.

On TV, Perry claims Pauline had snapped when she heard she was going to South Africa.

She said: "That was when the world seemed to fall apart for her.

"I was frightened of her, in the fact that I thought she really would take her life. It is stupid but I felt absolutely trapped."

She said it was then that she helped plan the murder.

Perry said: "I knew it was wrong and I knew I would have to pay for it and I knew it was stupid but I was terrified that she really would take her life and that it would have been my fault."

The picture of Pauline she paints is of a disturbed and needy girl but, in fact, both had lived in a dark fantasy world where they wrote to each other as invented characters.

The girls were placed in a highsecurity prison. Anne was in solitary confinement for the first three months.

Perry said: "For the first three months afterwards, I was frozen and then I cried and cried and cried.

"I never cried again because once I start, I will never stop."

Perry said that period in solitary was the worst.

She recalled: "At that time, I finally got down on my knees and said 'OK, it was me. I did it. It was wrong and I am sorry.' And then I began to heal."

The story of the killing was also the focus of movie Heavenly Creatures, starring Kate Winslet in 1994. Shortly after, Anne Perry was outed as Hulme.

She had refused to co-operate with movie makers but later decided to admit who she really was.

She had been deported to the UK after five years in prison and had adopted her stepfather's name of Perry. The girls were released, on condition they never contact each other again. To this day, they have not.

Parker has never spoken about the murder and is believed to be teaching riding in Orkney under a new identity.

When a friend, Meg MacDonald, moved to Scotland, Perry visited her and fell in love with the countryside. She asked MacDonald to look for a suitable house nearby.

The house is remote but stunning. She has a loyal staff - a secretary, gardener and driver and her brother Jonathan does her research. A blue Rolls-Royce sits in her garage, testament to her prolific and hugely successful 40-year career.

Perry was close to her father who died not long after she moved to Scotland 20 years ago.

They met in art galleries and museums but had to keep their relationship a secret because no one could know that she was his daughter.

He had remarried and his wife refused to allow him to be associated with Perry in case of the "scandal".

Perry said her family never discussed the murder with her following her release. But she said: "Strangers raise it. Strangers who know nothing about it and that hurts but I can't afford to lose my temper and say 'mind your own business. What the hell is it to do with you?'."

Ever since she was outed, the village has rallied behind her and her friends and staff are fiercely protective. They never ask her about the murder either.

Perry said: "Most of the people I know that like me, that are my friends, don't want me to talk about 'it' because they find it distressing. I suppose because they think it is painful and they don't want me to be hurt."She became a Mormon during a stint working as an air stewardess in the United States.

She believes that on judgment day, she will be forgiven by God because she has led a decent life since her crime.

Her secretary Elizabeth Sweeney believes remorse made her turn to religion.

She said: "I think it was when she realised she could be forgiven for everything with repentance."

The film talks to her closest circle and her best friend Meg.

Meg, who has known her for 30 years, said: "I have known from the beginning that what she did was a dreadful act and I have never doubted her as a person. I trust her with my children, with my life."

Her driver Simon MacDonald believes her crime stopped her from sharing her life with a partner.

He said: "She lived the rest of her life with a secret and secrets are corrosive."

But at 72, she admits it is time to leave her "comfort zone" and find someone. She said: "I have got to make some big changes soon."

For details of the film, log on to www.journeyman.tv.


In a crime that shocked the world, the two girls lured Honora Parker to a park on the Port Hills in New Zealand and rained blows on her with a brick in a stocking until she lay dead.

The case gained international notoriety through the discovery of Pauline Parker's diary. It gave an insight to the girls' fantasy world and the murder of her mother, referred to in the diary as "moider".

Entries in it left no doubt the pair were planning murder.

Juliet Hulme was the elder daughter of Henry Hulme, an English physicist who arrived in New Zealand in 1948 to become rector of the University of Canterbury.

Juliet, then aged nine, had not enjoyed good health. She befriended Pauline Parker at high school and the friendship became intense. The girls soon slid into a world of fictional characters and prolific writing.

Pyschiatrist Reginald Medlicott and the late Brian McClelland, QC, junior defence counsel for Juliet Hulme, both read works by the pair.

In 1991, Mr McClelland recalled the girls' obvious excitement over a play outline written by Juliet Hulme.

He said: "They really believed it would make it in Hollywood."

Dr Medlicott described the young Juliet Hulme as excitable and intolerant of criticism. She found it difficult to stop play-acting.

Intelligence tests before high school indicated an IQ of about 170.

The doctor said: "By the end of 1952, the two had developed their own fictional characters, acting them out and referring to them as their 'families'.

"Increasingly, their writings became a morbid preoccupation with evil."

After they were convicted, Hulme was sent to Mount Eden Prison and Parker to Paparua Prision.

Hulme was released first and left the country within days to join her mother, Hilda, in the UK. Parker stayed in New Zealand until the mid-1980s, then headed to the UK.

Both now live in Scotland, but have no contact with each other.