80. The 4th World Murder Teens - Anne Perry
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You're listening to an Ono Media podcast. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Into the Dark podcast. I'm your host, Peyton Morland. I'm so happy you are here. If you're watching on YouTube, can you please give this video a thumbs up, turn on notifications so you don't miss an episode, and then also just drop a comment for me, even if it's just an emoji. Let's do

like an animal emoji okay put an animal emoji in the comments please and if you are listening on podcasts and can leave a review that would be great also if you could like turn on automatic downloads for me you guys it just helps so much please please I'm begging you I'm not above begging okay I'm not above it I will beg you every single time to please help me out

And I'm so happy you're here. Also, I just wanted to throw in, go check out our other Ono Media shows, obviously "Murder With My Husband" and then "Rise In Crime." It's a bi-weekly true crime show hosted by my mother. Okay, "Rise In Crime," "Murder With My Husband," "Into The Dark," "Ono Media." All right, let's get into my 10 seconds. Okay, so I wanted to update you guys that I actually went to the movie theaters

and I watched the new Quiet Place. And this is my warning, if you haven't seen it, which by the time this comes out, it's probably gonna be old news to be honest, 'cause I'm trying to record ahead right now. But it messed me up, okay? There is a cat, there is a cat in that movie.

And it's just like the fact that animals had, okay. I don't want, okay. There is a cat in that movie and it kept me on edge. I was so scared it was gonna meow the entire time and then it was gonna die, okay. And it just kept getting lost and then it kept getting found and it just, why did they have to include the cat? Why did they have to include the pet? Okay, I don't wanna feel bad for pets, okay. I don't wanna feel bad for humans either, but like humans are fallible and also kind of suck sometimes, okay. So, you know, but a cat,

a dog. I just, I couldn't do it okay. And it messed me up. It messed me up so much in the middle of the movie. I was like, I want to leave. I want to leave. It was very sad. It was very sad. It wasn't even scary. It was just sad. Okay. So that is my review. I'm going to go ahead and give it like a five out of 10. Okay. Cause obviously it's still a good premise. I loved the other quiet places, but like the cat, the, the,

the story. Okay. It was just too much. If you've seen it, can you please leave it in the comments and let me know how you felt about it. If you loved it and you're mad at me for my opinion, it's just the cat. Okay. I can't with the cat and the sadness, I can't do it. But I might, I add, if I'm going to like actually review the movie and get over the cat, I feel like they were setting up a bunch of stuff to make another one.

And I know it was like day one, but like, I feel like we learned a lot of stuff in there that was like going to lead to the fact that we are actually gonna learn where these creatures came from and that it's like actually war. Like another civilization, whether in a different, okay, in a different, what is it called? Planet attacking America by using those creatures. That's what I think. That's where I think this is going. I'm saying it now. Okay.

I feel like they were setting that up, the whole movie, just 'cause of little things. Also, okay, I'm just gonna keep going 'cause I'm already on it. "Quiet Place 1."

John Krasinski, I think that's his name. Sorry, I'm not a big Office fan, okay? So I like him, I loved it. I'm not a big Office fan, so I think that's his name. Hanging up in his little thing where he would make the hearing aids, newspapers saying, it's sound, be quiet, like a bunch of newspapers. How were they printing those? Watch day one and tell me how they were printing newspapers and delivering them

There ain't no way they were able to print multiple days of newspapers with those creatures there and not dying and delivering them. That doesn't make sense, John. Okay. That doesn't make sense. You would have died. It's too loud. Okay. I'm just saying, I'm just saying. Okay, guys, let's get into the episode. All right. So when I say the phrase, the trial of the century, you might picture OJ Simpson, Bill Clinton's impeachment hearings.

or trials for infamous murderers like Charles Manson. Those are all very famous cases in the United States of America.

But there are other countries with their own trials of the century. And I know that's like hard for us to wrap our mind around, but there are crimes that are nationally famous there, but which we've barely heard of here in the States. So today I'm going to tell you about one of the most infamous incidents ever.

that happened in New Zealand history. So it began with a girl named Juliet Hume, who grew up in a wealthy household in the UK. Juliet was born in England in 1938, and she came of age during World War II. So it was a dangerous, scary time to be a young girl in that part of the world, especially because

Juliet was in very poor health for most of her childhood. When she was just six years old, she had a severe respiratory infection that almost killed her. And even after she recovered, Juliet's parents thought she'd be much better off in another country with a warmer climate where she could breathe more easily.

So while Mr. and Mrs. Hume stayed in England, Juliet shuffled around between friends of the family in the Bahamas, Barbados, and New Zealand. Now understandably, it's hard to make friends when you're moving around that frequently, especially when you're that young and you're not even with your mom and dad. And on top of that, Juliet obviously isn't feeling very close to her parents because she would go years at a time without seeing them. So

So she felt very alone and like there wasn't anyone around to love her or care about her. And this is heartbreaking.

But Juliet got a chance for a fresh start in October of 1948. So that was when her father started a new job that actually required him to move to New Zealand. And New Zealand was one of the countries that was warm enough that Juliet could actually live there safely. So finally, when Juliet was 10 years old, she reunited with her long lost parents. They bought a house in a town called Cranston.

Christchurch and it must have felt familiar to the family because Christchurch was in a region that was known for having a very British vibe.

The architecture was heavily influenced by homes and buildings in England. People planted British plants in their gardens. It was probably very appealing to an English family like the Humes who wanted something that felt like home while they settled into a new country. And more importantly, at least for Juliet, she actually made a friend there. It was a girl the same age as her named Pauline Parker.

Now, if you do some research, you'll see she was sometimes also called Pauline Riper. The truth is her parents weren't married, but they lied and said they were. So Pauline didn't even know her mother and her father weren't husband and wife at this point in the story because they just said they were married and husband and wife.

So some later news coverage used Pauline's father's last name and some used her mother's, which is why we have Pauline Parker and Pauline Riper. She's more famous as Pauline Parker. So that's the name I'll be using in this episode. Now, Pauline had a lot in common with Juliette.

She also was sick through a lot of her childhood. And in her case, it was a severe infection in her bone marrow. The condition is treatable today, but in the 1950s, Pauline just had to suffer through a painful life-threatening flare-up that lasted for nearly nine months. And she did almost die.

and she never actually recovered entirely. Pauline needed to get painful treatments for years afterward, and she walked with a limp for the rest of her life because of this. And like with Juliet, Pauline's illness impacted her social life. She actually missed a lot of school due to her medical appointments. And even though she was very smart, she felt like an outsider when she spent time with her classmates. So that was actually something that once they met, Juliet and Pauline bonded over.

They shared similar challenges, but there was one big difference between Juliet and Pauline. While Juliet's family were wealthy and able to afford luxuries like a big house, international travel, horses, Pauline grew up poor. She lived in a tiny rundown building in a pretty bad part of town.

So whenever friends came over to visit, they felt nervous about walking on her street after dark and they usually made a point to leave early before sunset. And so when Pauline met Juliet, she saw her as someone who had a better life in basically almost every way. Pauline's parents lived on the upstairs level of a shared house while Juliet's family lived on a gorgeous estate that had its own name.

Pauline's place was always messy, while Juliet's parents had housekeepers to always keep things tidy. And Pauline wasn't the only person in their social circle who thought Juliet's British accent sounded very posh and refined. Basically, Juliet was everything Pauline wished she could be, but couldn't afford.

But I don't want to make it sound like Pauline was only interested in Juliet for her wealth. They also clicked because they both loved to read and write. They penned short stories and poems together. That's actually how they filled the hours they weren't spending in gym class once the school decided they were both too frail for physical activity.

And so in no time at all, they became best friends. Now, right away, it was clear that this relationship or friendship was not the healthiest of friendships. Pauline and Juliet would egg one another to break rules and get into trouble. On more than one occasion, Juliet waited until her parents were asleep and then raided the kitchen for food and wine. Then she and Pauline would meet up for a late night alcohol-fueled picnic.

which might sound like ordinary teenage, but let me clarify, these picnics began when the girls were only 11 and 12 years old. Other times they'd go out riding their bikes or horses all night long without telling anyone where they were, what they were up to. And as the years went by, the girls' relationship took an even stranger turn.

By the end of the first year, they'd begun to pretend they were sisters who'd somehow been separated at birth and then reunited, like actual blood sisters. Juliet and Pauline also liked to write stories, as I mentioned before, and a lot of their tales were about an imaginary land that they called the Fourth World. And it was kind of like a combination of Narnia and Heaven,

Pauline and Juliet wrote that when good people die, they go to the fourth world, but also some chosen, some special people have the ability to travel to the fourth world while they're alive. I mean, this sounds like the setup in any number of fantasy stories, except based on diary entries both of them wrote, it sounds like Juliet and Pauline genuinely had difficulty telling truth from fantasy.

They didn't just write these stories about magic and alternate universes for fun. Both girls really seem to think that the fourth world was real.

And Pauline actually wrote a very alarming diary entry in April of 1953 when they were both 15 years old. According to that entry, she and Juliet believed that they'd found a key that would let them travel between the real world and the fourth world. Again, like it was real and they'd physically been there. Again, they're 15. They also wrote that there were only 25 people in the entire world who understood certain secret magical principles.

Now, naturally, Juliet and Pauline counted themselves among the chosen 25. And it's honestly kind of like they were making up their own religion. They picked celebrities they liked, singers, filmmakers, writers, and said some of those people were gods, others were saints. Juliet and Pauline supposedly even prayed to these famous people. They talked about how they wanted to run away from their New Zealand homes and move to Hollywood so they could meet these gods and saints in person.

They also gave themselves new names, which they used in real life and insisted that their friends and family members also adopt. So Juliet became Antoinette and then Deborah. And then Pauline went by Gina. So we're not talking about mild delusion here, childhood fantasy, fake friends here.

Assuming these diary entries are an accurate description of how Juliet and Pauline saw the world, they seem to have kind of some serious mental health problems at this point. They made up wild stories and became convinced they were real and that they were completely different people with separate identities. I mean, they had really kind of just created this little cult together and they lived in it entirely. Now, the Riper Parker and Hume families did

know the full extent of the issues. Pauline and Juliet didn't talk openly about their new religious beliefs or their supposed journeys to this fourth world, but their parents were picking up on the fact that something just wasn't quite right between the best friend's

Juliet was getting moodier by the day and she flat out refused to follow her parents' rules or treat them with any respect. Pauline developed an eating disorder. She was alarmingly thin. Both of the girls were frequently sick, even more often than they already had been because of their childhood illnesses. And

And they were both sneaking out regularly. Sometimes after a particularly long day, I love to play games on my phone to get my mind off things. And one game I have been loving is June's Journey. June's Journey is a hidden object mystery mobile game that puts your detective skills to the test. You play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s while uncovering the mystery of her sister's brain.

murder. With hundreds of mind-teasing puzzles, the next clue is always within reach. Every new scene and chapter leads to more juicy secrets and clues being revealed about this mysterious murder that brings out the detective in everyone. Plus, you get to chat and play with or against other players by joining a detective club. You'll even get the chance to play in a detective league to put your skills to the test.

I have always loved good scavenger hunts and puzzles, and of course, we all know I love a good murder mystery, and this is just the perfect marriage of the two. Right now, I'm on chapter two. I've been trying so hard not to use the light bulb feature to help me search for clues. I seriously look forward to playing it every night. Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android.

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Visit cbdistillery.com and use code dark for 20% off you guys. If you wanted to give CBD a try, go to cbdistillery.com, code dark. cbdistillery.com, use code dark. All right, let's get back to the episode. On top of that, everyone from their classmates to their teachers to their doctors could tell the girls were unusually close, even for good friends.

So the parents brought in doctors and mental health experts to talk to the girls and to get to the bottom of whatever was going on. And they heard a wide variety of opinions. Some professionals thought Juliet and Pauline were just simply in love with one another. And I'll note right now, there's still a lot of debate about the nature of Juliet and Pauline's relationship, even to this day.

Both of the girls were sexually active with boyfriends and they denied having any same-sex feelings for one another. But their diaries did tell a different story, suggesting that they might have hooked up at some point. Either way, keep in mind, this was the 1950s. A lot of the doctors saw same-sex attraction as mental illness.

They weren't as accepting of LGBTQ plus people as we are today. So those physicians had a lot of advice for the girls' parents about how to try and supposedly turn them straight. That's what they thought the issue was. Other experts thought that the girls' behavior was just a normal part of growing up. Juliet and Pauline were teenagers by this point, and some people tried to argue that they were just good friends with pretty vibrant imaginations. They were going through an ordinary rebellious phase, and this was nothing to worry about.

So for their part, Juliet and Pauline's parents tried to keep them separated for a while. And this coincided with a time when Juliet's health actually took a turn for the worse and she had to stay in a hospital for four months. It was from May to August in 1953.

Keep in mind, by this point, she has been best friends and inseparable with Pauline for four years. She wasn't gonna let illness or her parents' rules stop her from talking to her closest, dearest companion. So she called her every day, she wrote her letters constantly, and there was nothing that would keep her apart from Pauline.

And by the time Juliet got out of the hospital, their parents allowed the girls to just go back to being best friends. It was pointless to try and keep them separated. So they went right back to seeing each other all the time, going out every night and sinking deeper into their delusions.

About a year after Juliet got out of the hospital, she learned that her mother was cheating on her father. And Juliet actually caught her mom in the act. And interestingly enough, Juliet told her mom that she was willing to keep her secret for a price. She and Pauline still wanted to run away to Los Angeles to meet the gods and the saints.

and they thought they might be able to blackmail Mrs. Hume for enough money to fly to the United States. Instead, Juliet's mom realized the jig was up. She came clean to her husband about the affair.

So at this point, the Humes agreed to get a divorce and Juliet's mother planned to move home to England. The scandal around the affair and the divorce had cost Juliet's father his job, so he was also going to leave the country. And they both decided to send Juliet to a boarding school in Johannesburg, South Africa, because again, she had to live somewhere with a warm climate. So it kind of just went right back to how it was when she was a kid.

She obviously couldn't go back to England with them. And Pauline was going to stay behind in New Zealand with her own family. So Juliet and Pauline's life is falling apart. Like their friendship is falling apart. They beg their parents to just let Pauline move to South Africa with Juliet and

It's amazing that they thought either family would agree to this. Besides the fact that Pauline's parents definitely could not afford a fancy international boarding school, both sets of parents were already very uncomfortable with the girls' close friendship and a move out of the country wasn't gonna ease those concerns.

That said, from the sound of it, Juliet's parents might have pretended to be open to the idea. I mean, they never had any intention of paying to send Pauline to school with their daughter. But by this point, Juliet had a tendency to fly into extreme rages when things didn't go her way. And we know she'd been sneaking around behind her parents back for years. Basically, she was out of control. And rather than tell her no and deal with Juliet's reaction, her parents sort of kind of let her on, let her think that

Maybe she was going to get her way and Pauline would get to go to school with her. The problem was they couldn't keep this lie up forever. And once they realized that they couldn't go to boarding school together, Juliet and Pauline had to come up with some other way to prevent their separation. So on June 22nd, 1954, the two of them planned a hike with Pauline's mother. Her name was Anora Riper, who went by Nora.

They headed out to a hilly area just outside of Christchurch called Victoria Park. And in the park, there was a tea shop where the three stopped midway through the day for snacks and drinks. After they finished some scones, cakes, tea, and juice, they headed out to continue the walk at around 3 p.m.

About 30 minutes later, Pauline and Juliet ran back to the tea room. They barge in, they look panicked, and they're covered in blood. They sounded very upset while they tried to explain to the people in there what had happened. They said that Nora, the mom, had taken a bad fall and had hit her head on a rock and that she was dead.

The tea shop owner's wife stayed with the girls while he ran out to check on Nora for himself, and when he came across the scene, what he found did not look like an accident. It was Nora, dead on the ground. Her head was almost completely caved in. Her face was covered in blood and bruises already. There was also no big rock on the ground anywhere near her body. Nothing she could have landed against badly in a fall.

He did see a brick that was covered in blood and hair, but it was sitting some distance away. Like someone had tried to get rid of it after beating Nora to death with it. Now, naturally, this was all very suspicious. So he called the police and while he waited for them to arrive, he and his wife asked Juliet and Pauline to explain again how Nora had died.

The girls must have known people weren't buying their story because they started to change up some details. They started by saying that Nora slipped and fell and hit her head, just like in their earlier version. But now Pauline and Juliet claimed that they panicked when they saw Nora was unconscious. They tried to pick her up and carry her back to the tea house to get help, but Nora was too heavy. They dropped her. So if she had multiple injuries, it was because she had actually fallen multiple times.

Needless to say, the tea shop owner and his wife did not buy this explanation. And once the investigators arrived on scene, they were suspicious right away too. In addition to what the tea shop owner had already noticed, the police identified defensive wounds on Nora's arms and hands. She also had bruises on her neck as though someone had tried to choke her while beating her with the brick.

Plus the investigators found a stocking near her body that was tied up in a knot. The assumption was that someone had put the brick in the stocking so they could kind of swing it around. That's what had caused her deadly injuries. All to say, Nora had definitely been murdered and Julia and Pauline knew more than what they were saying.

And it's worth mentioning, Juliet and Pauline were acting very guilty in addition to all that evidence. Besides changing their story, they also seemed calm and happy once Nora was declared dead, almost like they had been putting on an act when they first ran up to the tea room, seeming scared and upset. Once the police arrived and started investigating, the girls headed back to Juliet's house where they took a hot bath to wash off all the blood.

They then ate a big hearty dinner. Juliet's parents were shocked that the two girls hadn't lost their appetite after what they'd witnessed earlier that day.

And I don't think the police were aware of their past obsessions and their disconnect from reality at this point, but they didn't even really need to know any of that. They already had plenty of reason to suspect the two girls. So police pull Pauline and Juliet into separate interrogation rooms beginning at 8 p.m. on the night of June 22nd. So this is just five hours after Nora had died.

Juliet denied everything. She said she didn't even see Nora fall. She just heard Pauline start screaming at one point. She ran over to see Nora already on the ground covered in blood, but she didn't know if it was an accident or if Pauline had done something. And when the police told Pauline what Juliet had said, she agreed with the whole story. She said she had in fact murdered her own mother and she had done it alone.

and she refused to explain why. But Pauline was quick to assure the police, no, no, no, Juliet had nothing to do with this. She'd even made a point of waiting until Juliet's back was turned before she swung the brick around that killed her own mother. She didn't want her friend to have to see the brutal crime or put Juliet in a position where she'd have to cover for her.

So at this point, the police concluded that Pauline was the killer and Juliet just happened to be an unfortunate bystander. They let Juliet go and they charged Pauline with murder. Now, of course, you guys, this case wasn't closed. They still had to gather evidence. They still had to collect witness statements and figure out the motive. So the detectives seized Pauline's diaries, talked to her friends and neighbors, and everyone, basically everyone said, wait a second,

"Police, are you sure that Pauline did this alone?" Everyone told police, nah, nah, nah. She and Juliet did everything together. And the diary entries backed up that idea. It was pretty clear to the police that Juliet and Pauline had been plotting something for a while. And Pauline's entry for that morning, which was written before the murder, it had a title. And let me tell you what that title said.

The day of the happy event. The entry itself was pretty explicit that Pauline expected her mother to be dead by the end of the day and that Juliet was going to help her pull off this murder. This was enough for the cops to realize they'd made a mistake in believing Juliet's original description of events in which she had nothing to do with it. They needed to bring her back in and question her.

So when some detectives showed up at Juliet's house, she immediately announced that she wasn't willing to let Pauline take the fall for her and she now wanted to confess. So after talking to both of the girls and gathering the evidence, the detectives pieced together the motive. Pauline and Juliet had decided they weren't willing to be separated. They would not under any circumstances let Juliet move to South Africa while Pauline stayed behind in New Zealand.

And they got the idea that if one of their parents died, their spouse might be too distraught to raise the surviving daughter. Then the other family would have no choice but to take the girl in. So if Nora died, her husband wouldn't be able to take care of Pauline on his own and the Humes would basically have to adopt her.

I'm sure the girls also picked Nora as a parent to die because of her financial situation. Neither girl wanted to live in poverty the way Pauline's parents did, like living with her parents. So if they killed one of the hooms, Juliet and Pauline might both end up in that, you know, upstairs unit. And neither of them wanted that. So it was clear that one of Pauline's parents would have to go once they came up with this plan and they decided to settle on her mother.

Now, based on the evidence at the scene and Julia and Pauline's confessions, here's what the police were able to determine about the murder itself. The girls asked Nora to go on a hike with them specifically because they wanted to get her somewhere remote. They wanted to make sure there were no witnesses.

When they got about a mile away from the tea room, Juliet dropped a pretty pink rock on the ground. And then she called Nora over basically saying, "Hey, Nora, come look at this cool rock I found." When Nora bent over to get a better look at it, Pauline, her daughter, pulled a homemade weapon, a brick in one of her stockings out of her bag. And then she swung it around and struck her mother in the head.

The girls then took turns at this point beating Nora to death. They hadn't realized though that it would be so hard to kill a person. And at one point, Juliet held Nora down with her hands on her neck so Pauline could finish the job. And then once Nora was dead, the girls wanted to drag her off the trail so she couldn't be found, but the body was heavier than they'd anticipated.

So on the spot, they made up the story about Nora tripping and hitting her head. And when they ran back to the tea room, they sealed their fates. Nobody believed them. And it was only a matter of time until they would both be caught.

So Juliet and Pauline were charged with murder and their trial began the next summer in 1954. And like I said before, it came to be known as one of New Zealand's trials of the century. People lined up by the courtroom door hours before the hearing started every day.

They wanted to make sure they'd get a seat. And all these spectators also wanted to see Juliet and Pauline as they arrived and left, like they were celebrities in their own rights.

As for the trial itself, the girls basically acted like it was no big deal. They would pass each other notes. They would giggle out loud, like so loud that the official had to hush them. Essentially, they acted like they were sitting through a boring day at school and not like they were on trial for murdering one of their mothers. Their lawyers actually tried to argue that the girls suffered from something called a folia doe.

That's a word for when two people share the same mental illness, particularly one that involves delusions. So first one person believes something that's impossible and then they convince someone close to them to believe the same thing. According to the defense attorneys, Juliet and Pauline were completely out of touch with reality. They fully believed in this made up religion and the fourth world. They didn't understand that what they'd done was wrong or even that Nora was permanently dead and never going to come back.

Now there does seem to actually be a lot of support for that idea in Juliet and Pauline's diaries, but the prosecutors argue that the diaries weren't necessarily an accurate reflection of their mental state. Clearly Juliet and Pauline had been planning this murder for a while. They wrote about it for months before it happened. And according to prosecutors, the girls must could have, I guess, just have faked their mental illnesses and delusions during this same time in the diary.

It was entirely possible they never even believed in the fourth world or the celebrity gods and saints. Instead, they might have planted these clues in their diaries specifically so they could fall back on the insanity defense if they were caught. Okay, most beauty brands don't understand fine color treated hair, but Proz does. They have a formula that can address my specific type of hair needs, which makes sense because it's based on me.

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Let's get back into the episode.

So to summarize, there was never any question of whether Juliet and Pauline did it only over what their mental state was and if they understood what they'd done and if they could be held accountable.

Now, ultimately both girls were found guilty, but to understand the next part of the story, I actually need to pause and explain a certain quirk of the New Zealand criminal justice system. Over there, minors can be sentenced to something called quote, "during her majesty's pleasure."

The gist is that there's no set length for the sentence. The courts have to periodically review a case and whenever they felt like the person is ready to be released, they would let him go. That could be a week. It could be a few years. It could be decades. So when they were found guilty, Pauline and Juliet were both 16 years old and they got that sentence to remain in prison during Her Majesty's pleasure.

Now, the judge made a point of sending them to different facilities. In his notes, he wrote that he thought the punishment would actually be harsher if the girls couldn't be together. So they'd killed Nora Riper to avoid being separated. And here they were forcefully kept apart anyway.

They weren't even allowed to write each other letters during their incarceration. Roughly five and a half years later, they went back to court to be reassessed in separate hearings. Pauline and Juliet had both been model prisoners for those five and a half years. They hadn't gotten into any trouble. And in terms of psychology, they also didn't have any worrisome symptoms or signs of mental illness. They seemed like normal individuals.

and healthy while they were apart. There didn't appear to be any evidence that they were at risk of re-offending. There are two ways of interpreting this. One is that they really had been faking their mental illness and now they were behaving better because they'd gotten caught. There was nothing to gain from continuing to pretend to have symptoms. Or alternatively, if they really did suffer together, they'd been able to basically cure it by being separated.

When they weren't feeding into each other's delusions, the delusions were no longer there.

It seems the courts must have been leaning toward that second interpretation because they released Juliet around early 1959. And I say around because the judicial system didn't publicize it. Apparently, the courts believed Juliet deserved privacy as she reentered society as a free person. She'd served roughly five years of her sentence. And then later that same year in December of 1959, Pauline was also let out. But unlike Juliet, who received an unconditional release, Pauline

Pauline had to spend time on parole, but still she had only served about five and a half years.

So after their release, Julia and Pauline both changed their names so they could live in relative anonymity. Pauline adopted the name Hillary Nathan. She tried to become a nun, but she couldn't complete her training. Instead, she lived the rest of her life essentially as a recluse. The people in her community thought she was a bit eccentric, but ultimately harmless, and she kept to herself.

Juliet, on the other hand, got out and began writing thriller novels and murder mysteries under the name Anne Perry, and they became bestsellers. She also fulfilled the childhood dreams she'd once shared with Pauline. In 1967, just before her 30th birthday, Juliet moved to Beverly Hills and lived a glamorous life full of parties, whirlwind romances, and the Southern California sun. One thing was missing.

She and Pauline never reunited. Their friendship didn't pick up after their release from prison. There's not even evidence that they ever spoke on the phone or wrote one another letters. Even though their sentences were very short, they apparently accomplished what they had to. They ended their toxic friendship and helped put both women on the path to mental health and stability. Julia actually died of natural causes in 2023.

And Pauline is presumably still alive and would be 86 years old at the time of me recording this episode. I say presumably because like I said, she's a very private person since her release from prison. And if she did pass away, it would be very unlikely it would make the news. So that's the story of Pauline Parker, Juliet Hume, and Nora Riper.

To this day, it's one of the biggest criminal cases in New Zealand history. And honestly, I can tell why. It may be because the crime and the subsequent trial were so complex. They involved issues around class, sexuality, mental health, and age. And to this day, there is still a raging debate about whether justice was served. Some think the girls were having a mental health crisis and should have never been found guilty.

Others believe Juliet and Pauline expertly played the court system as like total psychopaths. They essentially got away with murder with only a slap on the wrist. Odds are we'll never know for sure. Now that Juliet has passed away and Pauline seems unwilling to talk to the press. But while we might never understand the truth, this case lives on and so does the continued public debate about it.

You guys, that case was wild. Like I am so not shocked that it is so popular in New Zealand. Let me know what you think in the comments. I actually am very interested to know if you believe that this was a shared delusion or if you think that there was something more notorious at play. I don't usually take a side, but I'm gonna let you know that I actually do believe that there was shared delusion going on after researching this case.

And I think that they knew what they were doing was wrong. I think that they knew killing someone was wrong, but I don't actually think they set up this possible defense of insanity because it's quite insane to think that they were just going to kill Nora and then push her body away and then move on like nothing happened. That in and of itself is not good planning. What if someone found her body? Someone had just seen all three of them together at the tea shop. I mean, it

the way that they originally wanted to do this crime was not smart.

It was not smart. They weren't even going to get away with it then. And then the plan that they made up when their plan didn't work out also was not smart. So I don't think that they then were smart enough to put together this diabolical defense of, well, let's start writing in our journals and seem like we're crazy and make up this whole crazy world just in case we get caught. I don't even think they were thinking about getting caught. Like truly, I don't think they were. I think that they were in this shared delusion of,

running away together they were just love bombing the crap out of each other is how it feels to me in a non-romantical romantical in a non-romantic way um i think that they were just in their own world and sharing delusion that's really what i think all right you guys i hope you enjoyed this case and i will see you next time as we go further into the dark together goodbye