Heavenly Creatures killer Pauline Parker dies in Orkney, aged 88

To her neighbours and friends, Hilary Nathan was a quiet, religious woman who ran a riding stable in the small Orcadian island of Burray.

But her death in an island care home last week at the age of 88 closes a chapter on an extraordinary life that began 70 years ago on the other side of the world with a sensational murder trial.

As a 16-year-old and under her birth name of Pauline Parker, she was convicted alongside her schoolfriend Juliet Hulme of the murder of her mother Honora Parker.

The case shocked New Zealand – and the rest of the world.

The court heard the girls had become inseparable at Christchurch Girls' High School. Fearing that they'd be separated following the divorce of Juliet's parents and a planned move to South Africa, they plotted to kill Mrs Parker, who they believed stood in their way.

They lured her to a park and bludgeoned her to death with a brick inside a stocking.

By the time filmmaker Sir Peter Jackson was born in 1961, both girls had served five years in prison, been released, given new identities, and left New Zealand for good.

"It was known for its tabloid sensational aspect. I know a lot of English tabloids flew to Christchurch, New Zealand, to cover the case of the 'evil schoolgirl killers'," he told the BBC's Late Show in 1995.

"Repeating that stuff would have been easy, but that's not what we wanted to do. We wanted to understand more about Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme, and what made them become friends."

His film Heavenly Creatures starred Kate Winslet as Hulme and Melanie Lynskey as Parker. It showed how their intense friendship spilled over into a strange shared fantasy life which culminated in the brutal murder.

The defence argued insanity, but both girls were found guilty of murder and only avoided the death penalty because of their age.

In 1960, having served five years in separate prisons, they were given new identities and moved away from New Zealand.

The court ordered that they should never meet again, and yet they lived part of their lives about 80 miles (129km) apart.

When the film came out in 1995, Juliet was living in Portmahomack in Rosshire, where she'd become a crime writer living under her new name, Anne Perry.

She told the Late Show that she didn't plan to see the film.

"It would be too harrowing," she said. "What was close to the truth would be distressing and what was far from the truth would be even more distressing."

"It's a bit like being stripped naked in the High Street for everyone to come and look and pick and poke. I'd rather put my clothes on and go back home, thank you."

During filming, Kate Winslet said she had no idea where the two women were, and after Anne Perry's identity was revealed, the actress expressed the hope that Pauline Parker would be able to retain her anonymity.

"These are two women who, for the last 40 years, have had to overcome so much in order to get on with their lives and just survive," she said.

"I hope she is never found."

But Parker was found - by lawyer and true-crime author Peter Graham, who had written a book about the case called So Brilliantly Clever, its title taken from her diary, which was used as evidence in court.

She, like Juliet, had come to the UK, where she had settled in a small village in rural Kent and opened a riding school.

By 2004, now known as Hilary Nathan, she had moved to Orkney and was running another stable when her identity was discovered.

Her friend Louise Scott told the BBC that it was a "shock" to discover her past but people in Burray and South Ronaldsay just decided to accept her as the woman they had known before they found out.

Scott said Hilary was "mortified and saddened" that she had been tracked down because she thought she had found somewhere where she could live out her life in peace.

"She went and hid in her farm and wouldn't come out," Scott said.

"Quite a few of us went up to the farm and I had to talk to her through the letterbox to assure her that nothing had changed as far as we were concerned.

"After a wee bit of persuasion, she did eventually decide to stay.

"She just went back to being Hilary and we all just carried on.

"We all liked her and accepted her for the woman we knew she was."

Scott said Nathan lived an "incredibly frugal" lifestyle.

"She was religious and she devoted her whole life to helping other people," she said.

For both women, religion and small tight-knit communities provided a haven.

While Nathan was a devout Catholic, Perry was a Mormon, who enjoyed the support of her own community when reporters began to arrive after Heavenly Creatures was released.

She said: "The media descended on Portmahomack. I was horrified, especially since my mother lived in the village. It's not just the people the film is about, it's all the people around them. I felt it might ruin my family."

Although her books were hugely successful in America, she never really found the fame she merited here in the UK, partly because of her reticence to do any promotion.

Prime Suspect creator Lynda La Plante expressed interest in a TV version of Perry's books, but the author vetoed the plan for the same reason.

In 2001, I visited Perry in Portmahomack for a rare interview for Newsnight Scotland. At that stage, she was a glamorous author, with a back catalogue which had sold 15 million copies around the world.

"I think after 51 years, you can let it go," she told me. "It's not who I am now. It's not who I have been for decades."

We didn't talk about the murder directly, but you don't have to look far in her books for insight into what happened and how her life had turned out. Her detective, the Victorian policeman William Monk, suffers from amnesia, and sometimes wonders exactly who he is.

"Monk sees himself as just himself but because of his memory loss, he has to deal with the fact that he may be someone else. That comes from my own sense that other people view me as a monster," she admitted.

"Of course it affects what I write. I have far more compassion and understanding for people who do wrong things than I'd ever have if I hadn't been in that position.

"The questions of right and wrong and compassion and forgiveness concern me in a way they wouldn't have, had I not had the life I had."

Anne Perry died in Los Angeles in 2023 at the age of 84.

Hilary Nathan's death last week brings their strange story to a close.

How they reinvented themselves out of the world's harshest headlines, and found redemption in the smallest of Scottish communities.

"I would say if you had something which harrowed you, or caused you to feel shame, you should never give up," Anne told me.

"There's more forgiveness, understanding and help out there than you might think."