Vale Anne Perry

[Bramblethorn]

Anne Perry, author of historical detective series, has died (April 10th, but I only just saw the news). Her first novel was published in her late 30s, after a life rather more varied than her website bio lets on, and she had two successful series of detective fiction.

In 1994 it became publicly known that as a 15-year-old she and a 16-year-old friend had murdered the friend's mother in a sensational New Zealand case. After serving five years she'd been released, moved to the UK, and changed her name. Her career seems to have weathered the revelation.

There's a line in Dead Man Walking: "People are better than the worst thing they've ever done."

 

[MelissaBaby]

They say, write what you know...

 

[SimonDoom]

I didn't know anything about her but I recall seeing the movie based on the murders, Heavenly Creatures. It was the first time I ever saw Kate Winslet in a movie. It was directed by Peter Jackson, who went on later to direct Lord of the Rings. It's interesting that she was able to escape notice for so long.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I didn't know anything about her but I recall seeing the movie based on the murders, Heavenly Creatures. It was the first time I ever saw Kate Winslet in a movie. It was directed by Peter Jackson, who went on later to direct Lord of the Rings. It's interesting that she was able to escape notice for so long.

The movie was how her past was exposed - not that it mentioned her new identity, but it revived interest in the case and somebody then made the link. In the 1950s I guess it would've been a lot easier to get away from something like that by moving to another country.

It does leave me wondering how many other biographies hide such huge lacunae, and how often that ends up being for the best, as I think it was in this case.

 

[SimonDoom]

The movie was how her past was exposed - not that it mentioned her new identity, but it revived interest in the case and somebody then made the link. In the 1950s I guess it would've been a lot easier to get away from something like that by moving to another country.

It does leave me wondering how many other biographies hide such huge lacunae, and how often that ends up being for the best, as I think it was in this case.

It's a good movie, if you haven't seen it, but it's a small art-house sort of movie, so when I heard Peter Jackson was going to be the director of the biggest epic ever I was surprised.

 

[Bramblethorn]

It's a good movie, if you haven't seen it, but it's a small art-house sort of movie, so when I heard Peter Jackson was going to be the director of the biggest epic ever I was surprised.

Yes, I enjoyed it, although I gather Perry wasn't a fan and felt she'd been misrepresented.

It's quite different from some of his later and earlier work, but I do recall that he did pretty well realising the two girls' fantasy world on a low budget, which might've been a recommendation for LotR.

 

[CJLahrainn]

I didn't know anything about her but I recall seeing the movie based on the murders, Heavenly Creatures. It was the first time I ever saw Kate Winslet in a movie. It was directed by Peter Jackson, who went on later to direct Lord of the Rings. It's interesting that she was able to escape notice for so long.

That was her first movie role. It was also Melanie Lynskey's debut. Good movie, as well.

 

[TadOverdon]

Flattened.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Not sure why this thread is necro-ing now, unless it's on the name "Perry", but...

I'd say that's true for some people, but even good people should pay for their crimes. Five years for murder isn't much, especially for bashing a woman in the head with half a brick more than 20 times, but if that's all her best friend's mother's life was worth, then that's what it's worth.

Nobody suggested that that was "what her life was worth". Run along with your strawman now.

 

[SimonDoom]

Strawman? Now that's laughable.

She was sentenced to five years for killing someone. Five years is the price she paid. Five years is what the court valued that victim's life at.

Grow up.

She was a minor. 15. Generally speaking, minors don't do the same kind of time for a crime that adults do.

I don't know anything about the case other than what I saw in the movie, and I make no assumptions about the accuracy of its depiction of the events. I think most people would probably agree, if they watched the movie, that five years time for that crime, given how awful it was, doesn't seem like enough. But I don't think we can make any judgments about how justice was done in that case without knowing all the facts, and I don't pretend to.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Strawman? Now that's laughable.

She was sentenced to five years for killing someone. Five years is the price she paid. Five years is what the court valued that victim's life at.

I'm not sure whether you're deliberately misrepresenting for the sake of hyperbole or if you just don't understand the principles of sentencing, but no, that's not how it works. Sentencing is not intended to equate to a valuation of the victim's life.

If you want to know what factors actually go into determining a sentence, Google is at your fingertips. Might be a bit light on the finer details of mid-1950s New Zealand sentencing specifically, but should be enough to get the general idea.

In this case the interpretation is doubly wrong, because the "five years" bit didn't come from the court at all. The actual sentence passed on Hulme/Perry and Parker was "at her Majesty's pleasure", which means indefinitely - imprisonment until the Queen or her designated delegate (here, the Minister for Justice) was satisfied that they should be released.

Here, have some newspaper clippings: https://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Heritage/Digitised/ParkerHulme/pdf/page15.pdf

The facts are straight forward if you look into it.

Yes, you probably should've tried doing that.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The sentence is the price she paid for her crime, in this case murder.

Try to talk around it all you like, but the punishment is exactly the what the life was valued at by the justice system.

And you can repeat that false notion all you like, but it's still false. That's not what sentences represent, not what they're intended to represent, and not what they represented in either 1954 or 1959.

If you want to keep on being mad about things that only happened inside your head, I can't stop you.

I guess she didn't take much pleasure in detaining them and after five years, they decided that's what the victim's life was worth.

You could guess that, if you were determined to cling to this bespoke idea of what a sentence means despite having a world of information just a few keystrokes away. It would be a wrong guess but you have the right to be an idiot in public if that's what gets you off.

What exactly are you trying to prove? That she didn't only spend five years in prison for the murder of her BFF's mother?

Oh look, another straw man!

My point there was that your assertion about "the court" having sentenced Hulme to five years was wrong. Which it was. I'm sure you'd much prefer that I hadn't pointed out your error, but there it is.

If you confine yourself to arguing against things that were actually said, and not hallucinating things that weren't said and getting mad about them, we'll all have a much nicer time here.

Read about it already.

Oh? So you were aware that the length she was to serve depended entirely on the Minister, and yet you still claimed it was the court that sentenced her to five years?

Interesting.

5 years was the price she paid for taking a life.

Which means the life she took was only worth 5 years.

In your head, it can work that way if that's what it pleases you to believe! Just don't mistake that for facts about the real world.

Anyway, I've had a few go-arounds with you in these forums now, and the quality of your conversation isn't improving, so I'm going to pop you on ignore for a while. Have a nice life working yourself up about things that didn't happen!

 

[SimonDoom]

The value of the victim's life may mean more to me, or you, but to the COURTS, it meant 5 years.

That's a fact you can't deny.

That's the criminal price she paid for murder, isn't it?

I don't understand the basis for your repeated insistence that the length of a sentence demonstrates the value of the life taken. Since when? Is that a factor the courts consider? What's your basis for that? Do you have authority for that?

We don't live in an "eye for an eye" system, and my guess is New Zealand wasn't that way in the 50s, either. Our system does not try to figure out the appropriate length of a sentence by determining the value of a human life that was taken.

If that were true, then all sentences for killing a person would be the same. But it's not true. Manslaughter is punished with a lesser sentence than murder, even though the value of the life taken obviously is the same. The issue in that case is culpability: a person who intentionally takes a life is more responsible, and deserves greater punishment, than a person who takes a life through negligent action. Where I live, if you take a person's life and are convicted of the crime of misdemeanor vehicular homicide, the maximum sentence is 1 year. That obviously is in no way meant to indicate the value of the life taken compared to an intentional murder case in which another person can be sentenced to life in prison.

Children generally have been regarded as less culpable than adults when they commit crimes than adults are, and historically they have served lighter sentences, although that's not always true. It has nothing to do with an estimation of the value of the life taken.

I'm not defending the sentence in that case. It seems light to me, but I don't know the facts, and in any event it has nothing to do with the system estimating that the value of the life taken was only "five years."

 

[SouthernCrossfire]

Those who commit crimes as minors often get off with far lighter sentences for the same crime committed by an adult due to the adult better knowing the difference between right and wrong versus the minor still being young and impressionable. That's a real stretch for many young felons and they'll be back in prison convicted of the similar or even worse crimes in far too many cases. I'm glad to see that Ms. Perry paid the mandated price, as poor as it may seem, and that she apparently stayed out of trouble for the remaining sixty-three or so years of her life.

Edit: Looks like Simon made part of my point just before I posted.

 

[SimonDoom]

The sentence you pay for a crime equals the value of that crime.

Says who? Are you a lawyer? Have you studied the criminal justice system? Do you have a citation to authority for this proposition?

I don't agree with this at all. A crime does not have "value." That's not meaningful. We do not imagine a hypothetical exchange in which a person offers their life to be taken and says, "Here's what you have to pay me to take my life." This is a meaningless way to think, and it does not, as a real-world matter, inform how criminal judgments are determined. Courts look at many factors, and culpability is a big one.
Others include retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and isolation of dangerous people from society. It's impossible to pick a case and without knowing everything that went into the sentence imposed say with any confidence that the sentence indicates how much the system values the life taken.

 

[ishtat]

Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme (Later Anne Perry) were both minors at the time of trial. The former served 5 years plus 6 months parole, the latter served 5 years. The New Zealand Justice system was vindicated by the fact that neither offended again in any way. It impacted their lives in that neither ever made any significant personal relationships and both had solitary but otherwise successful careers. Hulme (Perry) came from a well off family, Parker not so much. They lived out most of their lives in the UK. Parker is still alive.