Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century by Peter Graham

Author:Peter Graham
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781626363052
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2013-03-11T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

A Crime in a Million

On July 16 Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker were committed for trial by jury in the Supreme Court of New Zealand. It had been conclusively established that Herbert and Honorah Rieper had never legally married, so from now on both mother and daughter would suffer the indignity of being officially known by Nora’s unmarried name.

Evidence taken from Agnes and Kenneth Ritchie, Harold Keys, Dr Donald Walker, Sergeant Robert Hope, Constable Audrey Griffiths, Herbert Rieper, Hilda Hulme and Walter Andrew Bowman Perry had been presented in deposition form. Statements taken from the girls had been presented by Senior Detective Brown and Detective Sergeant Tate.

Juliet had painted a dramatic picture. “On the way back I was walking in front and was expecting Mrs Rieper to be attacked. I heard noises behind me. It was loud conversation in anger. I saw Mrs Rieper in a sort of squatting position. They were quarrelling. I went back. I saw Pauline hit Mrs Rieper with the brick in the stocking. I took the stocking and hit her too. I was terrified. I thought that one of them had to die. I wanted to help Pauline. It was terrible. Mrs Rieper moved convulsively. We both held her. She was still when we left her. The brick had come out of the stocking with the force of the blows…”

At last the press had some facts to get their teeth into. The committal hearing was fully reported in The Times, The Manchester Guardian and The Sydney Morning Herald. Even Time ran a short piece, although the writer had a shaky grasp of the mise en scène: “One day, three weeks ago, Pauline and Juliet, like many other fashionable New Zealanders, sat taking tea with Pauline’s mother at a restaurant in lofty Victoria Park…”

The Manchester Guardian reported that gasps had arisen in the crowded court when Senior Detective Macdonald Brown read out a few extracts from a diary found in Pauline’s bedroom. “Why could mother not die?” Pauline had written. “Dozens of people are dying all the time, thousands … Anger against mother boiled up inside me as it is she who is one of the main obstacles in my path … I want itto appear either a natural or accidental death … The pleasure of anticipation is great.”

The London Daily Mail reported that during the seven and a half hours the girls were in court they “giggled, whispered, yawned and scribbled notes”. The Sydney Morning Herald noticed that they smiled and whispered together unconcernedly, and twice had to be rebuked by a police matron. The matron told a reporter from Sydney’s Sun-Herald that they found it “all very boring”.

Christchurch Prison was in the countryside at Paparua, about ten miles from Christchurch, and close to Templeton Farm where Rosemary Rieper lived. While Pauline and Juliet awaited their trial they lived in the women’s section, a modern bungalow-style facility housing seven or eight prisoners. Kept apart from the other prisoners, they were reported by the Sun-Herald to spend much of their time on the verandah.

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