When crime author Anne Perry, who, as a teenager helped murder her friend’s mother, she inadvertently launched herself on the road to becoming a bestselling novelist in the world.

Perry’s forte was crime.

The novelist served five years in prison from the age of 15 for bludgeoning Honorah Mary Parker to death.

Perry died in a Los Angeles hospital in 2023. She had been declining for several months after suffering a heart attack in December. The author was the inspiration for Peter Jackson’s 1994 film Heavenly Creatures, which starred Kate Winslet.

According to Bold Fact, Perry was born Juliet Hulme and was involved in one of New Zealand’s most notorious crimes at just 15 years old. Decades later, she reinvented herself as a bestselling crime novelist. But how did she go from a convicted murderer to a respected author?

In 1954, Perry and her best friend Pauline Parker committed a brutal murder. The girls bludgeoned Pauline’s mother, Honorah Mary Parker, to death with a brick in a stocking murder in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The murder was a desperate attempt to avoid being separated as Perry’s parents planned to send her abroad. The trial was dramatic, with evidence of their obsessive relationship and fantasies about becoming famous novelists.

According to a BBC report in 2023, details of the murder were later discovered in journals found by police. Honorah Mary Parker died after being hit with a brick about 20 times. When the case went to trial, a court heard the two girls had plotted the murder in an attempt to avoid being separated when 16-year-old Perry’s parents were planning to send her abroad.

The girls wanted Parker to join Perry as she went to live with relatives in South Africa, and thought Parker’s mother would try to stand in the way of their plan. As both were aged under 18 at the time they killed Parker’s mother, the girls were too young for the death penalty, and were sent to prison instead, according to BBC.

Perry served five years in prison after which she returned to the UK under her new name, along with Parker. After she was released from prison, she left New Zealand to return to the UK, and worked briefly as a flight attendant.

She lived a quiet life initially, working as a flight attendant before becoming a Mormon and settling in Scotland. It was in 1979 that she published her first novel, The Cater Street Hangman, marking the beginning of her prolific writing career.

Perry was born in Blackheath, London, in October 1938, and moved first to the Bahamas at the age of eight before settling in New Zealand. She said on her website that she had been fostered as a child due to illness and missed a lot of school as a result.

Her first novel, The Cater Street Hangman, was published in 1979. She went on to write a string of novels across multiple series, which collectively sold 25 million copies around the world.

Bold Fact reports that one series of books focused on a Victorian police-inspector-turned-detective Thomas Pitt. Another featured a private investigator called William Monk. The most recent novel in the Pitt series was published just before she died.

New Zealand director Peter Jackson dramatised the murder by Perry and Parker in his 1994 Academy Award-nominated Heavenly Creatures.

Perry’s novels, including the Thomas Pitt and William Monk series, sold millions of copies worldwide. Her success as an author was remarkable, especially given her past. Her story reached a broader audience when Peter Jackson’s film Heavenly Creatures dramatised the infamous murder, featuring Kate Winslet as Perry.

Despite her success, Perry’s past remained a topic of fascination and controversy. Her brother, Jonathan Hulme, described her as a complex character who never fully escaped the psychological damage of her youth. Perry’s death in 2023 at the age of 84 marked the end of a life simultaneously defined by darkness and literary achievement.

Her life story is a reminder that people can change and find redemption but can never fully escape their dark past. From the depths of a teenage crime to the heights of literary fame, her journey is a compelling narrative of dark secrets and transformation.

• A Tell Media rport