The Express, Jan. 6 1997

SWEET SPINSTER WHO IS ONE OF THE WORLD'S LOST KILLERS"

Grey-haired schoolteacher unmasked 43 years after battering her mother in Heavenly Creatures murder

The missing link in one of the most enthralling murder trials of the post-war years was finally in place last night when retired grey-haired school-mistress Hilary Nathan was revealed as an infamous killer.

Pauline Parker took on a secret identity after serving a six year sentence for smashing her mother's skull with a brick wrapped in a stocking. The killing, in New Zealand in 1954, stunned the world because Parker was just 16 and her partner in crime schoolfriend Juliet Hulme, was a year younger. After the trial Hulme also assumed a new name, Anne Perry. She moved to Scotland and built a successful career as a crime writer.

Perry was unmasked in 1994 during the making of the film Heavenly Creatures, which portrays the murder. But all attempts to find Parker failed. Now she has been traced to a rundown cottage in a remote corner of a windswept farm near Strood, Kent, where she runs a children's riding school. Since assuming the name Hilary Nathan the spinster has become a devout Catholic and devoted her life to handicapped children.

Parker, 57, was freed from prison after serving six years of her sentence. She studied at Auckland University, graduating with a BA before training as a librarian and moving to Britain in 1965. She settled in Kent, retrained as a teacher, and taught mentally handicapped children at Abbey Court special school in Strood until her retirement three years ago, by which time she had become deputy headmistress. She is a regular worshipper at English Martyrs' Roman Catholic Church in the town, where members of the congregation were astonished to learn of her past.

"It's so difficult to believe," said one woman who did not wish to be named. "She seems like such a good woman. This is a terrible shock to us all."

Parker's 3 bedroom cottage is sparsely furnished. She has no radio or television, but there are many reminders of the children she has devoted her adult life to - her living room is full of dolls and a large rocking horse stands inside the front door.

Each weekend half a dozen young girls from the village muck out the stables behind the cottage where Parker keeps her ponies. A small, sprightly woman, she showed little surprise yeasterday when she was confronted as she fed and groomed her ponies. "I have absolutely no comment to make," she said.

According to her sister Wendy, Parker is living the life she always dreamed of as a girl. Wendy said at her home in New Zealand: "In general she has led a law-abiding life, and now deeply regrets what happened all those years ago. The crime she committed was terrible, but she has been paying her debt to society for 40yrs by keeping away from other people and getting on with her own life."

Parker took five years to realise the enormity of her crime, said Wendy, but now is so repentant she spends most of her time praying. Her next door neighbour, Joyce Hookins, said, She is very quiet and always very business-like in her dealings with people around here. But she has always seemed very nice, and she clearly loves children. She has never said anything to us about her past. We didn't even know she was from New Zealand."

........ 未完, 待續 ...........