Pauline Parker was born on May 26, 1938, Christchurch, New Zealand. Juliet Hulme was born on October 28, 1938 in London, Great Britain. Pauline had an illness named osteomyelitis when she was five years old. Her treatments were painful and she was excused from physical activities at school due to chronic leg pain. She was described as artistically talented. She enjoyed sculpting with clay and writing. Juliet Hulme was hospitalized for tuberculosis when her family lived in England. Juliet Hulme’s family moved to New Zealand when Juliet Hulme was 13 years old. She was the daughter of Henry Hulme, a physicist who became the rector of University of Canterbury.
Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme met in 1953, when they both attended classes in a school. Initially their families were happy with the friendship. Their mental conditions were a similarity over which they connected. Soon, families started worrying. Their connection was quite strong. They were spending a lot of time together in their own fantasy world. They completely excluded other relationships. When they were together they even wrote stories and plays based on the fantasy world they created. Juliet Hulme’s mother said that Juliet would enter so completely into these characters, so it was difficult to establish contact with Juliet. Juliet (primary person) was lost in the fantasy person. Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme developed names for themselves, Gina for Pauline and Deborah for Juliet. They believed that they would be actresses someday in the U.S. They believed they were geniuses and they found a special key that allowed them to see what they referred to as the fourth world. That was their religion. The fourth world was like heaven. They could glimpse into that fourth world twice a year. When they died, they would go there forever. They were described as arrogant and conceited. Their parents thought that they were romantically attracted to each other. At that time, it was unacceptable. Their parents still allowed them to continue their friendship. At one point, Juliet Hulme’s parents brought her to a mental health professional. He said that the two were probably having a homosexual relationship, but not to worry about it because they would probably grow out of it. Juliet Hulme’s mother had an affair.
In 1954 Juliet’s parents divorced. The plan was for Juliet to leave New Zealand with her father and go to South Africa. Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme came up with an idea that Pauline Parker could move with Juliet Hulme. Families were against that idea, but the girls saw Pauline Parker’s mother as the problem. They thought she was an obstacle to this plan. They fixated on her. In late April of 1954, Pauline and Juliet decided to murder Pauline’s mother, Honorah. They were developing their plan to fly to New York or Hollywood, California. They thought if they could reach one of those destinations, they could publish the books, they had written and Hollywood would turn them into movies.
On June 22, 1954 Honorah Parker was walking in Victoria park along with her daughter, Pauline Parker, 16, and her friend Juliet Hulme, 15. They were walking on a path that was surrounded by trees. Her daughter, Pauline Parker, produced a stocking containing half of a brick and beat her mother to death with it. Not long before this, all three of them were at a nearby Tea shop. The girls ran back to this location and told the owners that Pauline’s mother had fallen and struck her head. The injuries were inconsistent with a fall. Pauline’s mother had 45 external injuries, 24 of which were to the face and scalp. The front of her skull was also fractured. The other key evidence was Pauline’s diary which the police found. The same evening, 16-year-old Pauline was arrested. The next day, 15-year-old Juliet was arrested.
During the investigation, police found out that Pauline’s mother Honorah wasn’t married to Pauline’s father, Herbert Rieper, but they were living together. Thus, during the trial, both Honorah and Pauline were referred to with the surname “Parker”. Pauline was Pauline Rieper. Pauline’s diary contains some pretty incriminating entries. She wrote about the plan to murder her mother. She wrote: “It’s a definite plan we intend to carry out. We have worked it out carefully, and are thrilled by the idea… Naturally, we feel a trifle nervous but the pleasure of anticipation is great… like the night before Christmas… happy event, like a surprise party…” They confessed and the trial was about the issue of insanity. Because both were under 18, Pauline was 16 and Juliet 15, neither could be sentenced to death. Their punishment was ‘detention during Her Majesty’s pleasure’. Pauline’s lawyer, Alec Haslam, said in his final address to the jury that the two girls had killed Pauline’s mother because she was a threat to their remaining together. “We have these girls planning their dreadful act, carrying it out so clumsily, and then, after it was over, not showing any remorse.” In the opinion of psychiatrists Reginald Medlicott and Francis Bennett, the girls’ contempt for the Bible and belief in a ‘fourth world’ paradise was evidence of insanity. The jury were told that the pair thought they had a moral right to kill Honorah. They suffered from ‘paranoia, delusions of grandeur and delusions of ecstasy. Each affects the other and aggravates the process of the disease’. The Crown Prosecutor maintained that the psychiatrists had contradicted their own evidence under cross-examination. The Crown Prosecutor said: “…plainly was a cold, callously committed and premeditated murder, committed by two highly intelligent and perfectly sane girls… They are not incurably insane. My submission is they are incurably bad.”
On August 28, 1954 they were found guilty and sentenced to 5 years in prison. Included in the girls’ sentence was a provision that they were never to contact one another again. Pauline Parker worked for a while in New Zealand, under close surveillance, before being allowed to leave for England in 1965. She was given a new identity Hilary Nathan. Juliet Hulme moved to Italy and was given a new identity Anne Perry.
In 1996 Pauline Parker released a statement through her sister in which she said she was sorry for killing her mother. She said it took five years for her to realize what she had done. She lived humble life.
Juliet Hulme became a writer, very successful one. She sold over 20 million books. She died on April 10, 2023 (aged 84) in Los Angeles, California. She wrote detective novels. She made several statements. She made the assertion that the relationship between she and Pauline was obsessive, but they were not romantically involved with one another. She participated in the murder, because if she didn’t, she was afraid that Pauline Parker would commit suicide. She stated that her first three months in prison were in solitary confinement. It was there that she acknowledged she was guilty and prison was the right place for her. She was forced to do hard labor in prison for two weeks, but then she collapsed and was given a job – selling uniforms. She said that prison was awful, because there was no fruit and no library.
There was never a definitive diagnosis established for either Pauline or Juliet. The mental health professionals argued that the girls both had paranoia, narcissism and attachment anxiety. The defense tried to make the case that they had folie à deux (shared psychotic disorder).
Some clinicians wonder if that could be folie à deux or shared psychotic disorder. It’s an explanation of how delusions sometimes manifest. For folie à deux we need the primary partner, also called the inducer, the principal or the dominant partner and the secondary partner, also called the associate or submissive partner. The dominant partner, who had certain mental condition, transmits the delusions to submissive partner, who do not have any mental disorders. When they are separated, the second partner do not suffer from any condition. The second type is communicated psychosis. The secondary partner adds delusions on top of what was transmitted so when the partners are separated the secondary partner still has some delusions. The third type is simultaneous psychosis. Delusions appear at the same time for both people. Two people who have delusions just finding each other and influence each other. Although, they are both psychotic, the primary partner introduces new delusional ideas to the secondary partner. The last two types don’t count because in those definitions the secondary partner must manifest a delusional belief before coming in contact with the primary partner so there is some disagreement about what exactly constitutes folie à deux. It’s rarely lead to murder.
When we deal with couples who murder, we know almost as a rule that one individual is a dominant, but not because of delusions.
