Pauline Parker, the New Zealand teenager convicted in a notorious 1954 murder case that inspired the 1994 film *Heavenly Creatures*, has died at the age of 88 in a retirement home on South Ronaldsay, part of Scotland’s Orkney Islands.

Parker, then 16, and her 15-year-old friend Juliet Hulme fatally attacked Parker’s mother, Honora Parker, in Christchurch, New Zealand. The pair had invited Honora to join them for tea in a park before returning to a nearby café to claim that she had suffered a head injury. In reality, the girls had bludgeoned her to death with a half-brick concealed inside a stocking. The killing was reportedly motivated by a fear that Honora would prevent Parker from continuing her close friendship with Hulme, who was soon to move away.

Both girls were convicted of murder but received five-year prison sentences rather than the death penalty, as their ages made them ineligible for execution at the time. After serving their sentences, Parker and Hulme were released under new identities. Parker lived quietly in Scotland for nearly three decades, using the name Hilary Nathan until her death last week.

Hulme, who passed away in 2023 at age 84, later gained recognition as Anne Perry, a prolific author of historical detective fiction, having written around 100 books. She, too, settled in northern Scotland, not far from Parker. Despite their geographical proximity in later years, the two women never reunited after their trial, where they had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. During the case, it emerged that the pair had created an elaborate, shared fantasy world, inventing a religion they called “the Fourth World,” which they believed allowed them access to a transcendent state.

The case remains a subject of enduring public interest for its unusual circumstances and the psychological complexity involved, as well as its cultural impact reflected in film and literature.