Pauline Yvonne Parker (May 26, 1938)
[currently Hilary Nathan]


Pauline was eight when her family moved to 31 Gloucester Steet. Throughout much of her later childhood, Pauline attended East Belt Methodist Church regularly with her sister, Wendy, though her parents were not regular parishoners. She and her sister went on outings and vacations in the country sponsored by the Church. Pauline was described as a serious, mature, bright girl and an imaginitive, gifted writer. She became interested in creative modelling in plasticine and wood and became quite accomplished. Upon entering Christchurch Girls High School in February 1952, at the age of 12, Pauline was placed into the top stream. Note that Pauline entered High School at the normal age, despite having been hospitalized for the better part of a year.
 
Enter Juliet


Pauline wrote extensively during this time, in the form of letters to Juliet, stories and in personal diaries beginning in January, 1953. Pauline's diaries would eventually provide most of the physical evidence for premeditation of Honorah Parker's murder. They would also be used extensively by the army of psychiatrists in their testimony during the trial. Glamuzina and Laurie claim that much of Pauline's diaries have been sensationalized and mis-interpreted.
Pauline's school picture from October 1953 shows her to be a serious, rather short, dark-haired girl with an oval face and full, dark brows. At "seven stone" (98 lbs) she appears slim compared to her classmates and rather more sad than brooding, with arms held quite stiffly behind her and her face downcast. Her hair is dark and had been curled and pinned on either side of her head, a little untidily. All the girls around her have short hair styles. Pauline's uniform is well-fitting, neat and pressed, her collar starched, and her tie is loosely but correctly knotted and placed.
 
Gear up for murder
When the Hulme family started disintegrating, Pauline became concerned and upset at first, according to her diary. Pauline had formed a close relationship with Hilda Hulme before this upheaval, or perhaps a close attachment would be a more correct description, according to her diaries. Pauline had apparently believed that Hilda and Henry Hulme would support her in her desire to leave her family for theirs. The Hulme family upheaval changed all that, and it seems that Pauline and Juliet came up with several alternative 'escape' schemes.Honorah Parker was apparently pleased that the relationship between the girls would be broken up and she became very pleased when she learned that Dr Hulme was to leave the country, with Juliet, according to evidence presented during the trial. Around this time Honorah removed her daughter from school and enrolled her at Digby's Commercial College. According to Glamuzina and Laurie, "Suggestions were made that she had fallen behind in her schoolwork [when she left the High School]. The school record shows no indication of this".

She apparently planned to exonerate Juliet, hoping that Juliet would escape punishment, but it was in vain. After making her brief, rather uninformative confession, Pauline Parker offered little more concrete information about the murder in the weeks and months ahead, or her reason for committing it, and she has kept her silence on these matters to this day. She admitted, during questioning, that she was aware of her crime and that it went against the moral standards of the community--sufficient evidence to find her legally sane.



 
at Her Majesty's pleasure

Pauline was removed to a Borstal (roughly equivalent to lower-security Juvenile Detention) near Wellington, Arohata Women's Reformatory, where she served out most of her sentence. This more lenient environment, compared to Mt Eden, was partly the result of lack of prison facilities in New Zealand and also because Pauline was viewed by the public, after the trial, to be slightly the dupe or victim of Juliet Hulme's intense persuasion. The public perceived the murder, for reasons best known to itself, to have been something of a 'thrill killing' in some respects, possibly at Juliet's instigation. There may have also been a little racism and English backlash involved in these sentiments, too. Pauline and Juliet were not allowed to communicate in any way or meet during their incarceration. It was reported that Pauline was extremely distraut by these circumstances in the early stages of her prison term.

Early in her incarceration Pauline converted to Roman Catholicism and apparently became a devout Catholic. Pauline enrolled in courses in English, French, Latin, Mathematics, Drawing and Design and, later, Maori. She completed University Entrance and made considerable progress towards her Bachelor of Arts degree, eventually completing it soon after her release from prison.
 
Hilary Nathan
In late 1959, Pauline Parker was furnished with a new identity under the name Hilary Nathan and released on parole after Juliet Hulme had been released and had left the country. During her parole, Pauline was subject to controls in terms of her movements and her employment and she was closely monitored. Department of Justice officials noted their concern over Pauline's association with lesbians during her probation period, a good indication of the scrutiny under which she was placed. It also illustrates the type of official labelling, discrimination and repercussions in this timeperiod.After her release from prison Pauline studied at Auckland University, graduating with a BA before training as a librarian. She remained on parole until 1965.




Pauline Parker had become an anonymous private citizen after her release from prison and she has continued to maintain her anonymity as late as 1997, when a New Zeland reporter found her.




Villagers stated that 58yr old Miss Nathan was a reclusive, devout woman. Diminutive and grey-haired, she does not own a tv, radio or oven and is said to live on a diet of sandwiches and currant buns. A villager said: "She is very eccentric and very much keeps herself to herself. She is very well spoken and appears very intelligent and well educated". A source close to Abbey Court said at the time, "This I know will come as a shock to the whole school. Nobody knew anything about it... She was very much a loner but she was well liked and there were never any problems. But I did notice when school photographs were taken she used to hold herself back out of the picture". Miss Nathan refused to answer questions. "I have absolutely no comment to make," she said. But her sister Wendy, speaking from New Zealand, said, "She has led a good life and is very remorseful for what she's done. She committed the most terrible crime and has spent 40 years repaying it by keeping away from people and doing her own little thing". 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". Wendy, a year older than Pauline, still found it hard to explain why her sister and Juliet lured Mrs Honorah Parker into a Christchurch park and took turns clubbing her to death. "She has never spoken to me about the details of the way she took our mother's life. Well it was absolutely overboard, wasn't it? The story is: they met, they were ill-fated and they committed a dreadful crime".
 
The mural

I knocked on the door and it was opened by a very small and skinny lady. When we went in we couldn’t believe how someone lived in the house in such a humble way. In the front room was a workbench along one wall with many dolls on it. The kitchen just had a sink and very basic cooking instruments indeed, there were a couple of tiny dogs running around that kept getting under your feet, but you could tell they were loved and they loved their owner back. The bedroom where she slept was just a mattress chucked in the corner and nothing else, there was just one lump of coal on the coal fire which didn’t even tackle the cold.
If you were to ask me what I thought of Hilary that would be very simple: she was extremely nice, to the point and maybe a bit eccentric but we connected and things went very easily with the sale. During the sale we had quite a lot of contact and as before I couldn’t have wished for a nicer person.
It was not until we moved in we found out who Hilary was, and in total fairness it never did and never has changed my opinion of her – she was a very nice lady – just a little different. She was very well known in the area, mostly for what she had done but also for the good she did in the community where she showed many children how to ride horses”.
Do check out the Flickr gallery of Pauline Parker's artwork as seen on the walls of her house, see the links-section.


 
Orkney

