Crime author and 'Heavenly Creatures' killer Anne Perry dies

British crime author Anne Perry, who was jailed as a teenager for murdering her friend's mother, has died at the age of 84, her agent has confirmed.

As a writer, she was known for her Pitt and Monk detective novel series.

But her dark past— dramatised in the Oscar-nominated Peter Jackson movie Heavenly Creatures, in which she was played by a young Kate Winslet— was hidden from the world until the eve of the film's release.

The writer, born Juliet Holme, served a five-year prison sentence for helping to murder the mother of her friend, Pauline Parker, in one of New Zealand's most notorious crimes. Hulme, who was born in London, later changed her name and moved back to England.

She would go on to become a bestselling crime writer, whose role in the story was unknown to the world, until NZ journalist Lin Ferguson revealed her true identity.

In 1954, Perry along with Parker, bludgeoned the latter's mother to death with a brick in a stocking in Christchurch, New Zealand, in a case that shocked the country.

Perry and Parker were convicted after the jury in the case rejected their not guilty pleas on the grounds of insanity.

The events would later be the inspiration behind director Jackson's 1994 psychological drama, starring Winslet in a break-out role as Hulme and Last of Us star Melanie Lynskey as Parker.

The 1994 film received an Academy Award nod for screenplay writing, and helped launch the career of NZ film director Jackson, who would go on to make the blockbusting Lord of the Rings films.

As both Perry and Parker were under 18 at the time of the killing, neither could be sentenced to death and they were instead subject to "detention during Her Majesty's pleasure."

Perry’s biographer Joanne Drayton described the salacious interest and "loathing" in the case in the years that followed the murder, telling NZ news website Stuff.co.nz: “The matricide, the betrayal of a daughter by a mother, the lesbianism – homophobia was rife and undoubtedly in the mix, it was looked at with horror and a degree of repugnance.

"There was a sense of ‘curing’ these two.”

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Perry began her writing career once her prison sentence had been served, returning to the UK and publishing The Cater Street Hangman in 1979 - the first in a series of books featuring Victorian policeman Thomas Pitt and his wife Charlotte.

Following the exposure of her true identity, Perry gave interviews about her past as she sought to rehabilitate her image, telling the Guardian: "Why can't I be judged for who I am now, not what I was then?"

Who was Anne Perry?

Perry was born in Blackheath, southeast London, in October 1938, and moved first to the Bahamas at the age of eight before settling in New Zealand.

Her website states that she had been fostered as a child due to illness and missed a lot of school as a result.

Following her imprisonment and by then aged in her 20s, Perry returned to live in Hexham, Northumberland, going on to publish the mystical novels Come Armageddon and Tathea.

Perry's second series of crime novels revolve around private detective William Monk and volatile nurse Hester Latterly.

In 2000, she won the Edgar Award, which celebrates mystery novel writers, with Heroes, a short story about a murder that takes place in the trenches during the First World War.

Prior to her death, she had been working on more titles in both the Pitt and Monk series. Her works have regularly appeared on the New York Times bestseller list.

She had just this month released another novel in the sequence called The Fourth Enemy and in 2017 released 21 Days, which follows the couple's son Daniel.

Perry, who has also lived in southern California and Portmahomack near Inverness in Scotland, is survived by her brother Dr Jonathan Hulme and his family.

Her agency confirmed her death in Los Angeles, at the age of 84.

A statement from Ki Agency said: "Anne was a loyal and loving friend, and her writing was driven by her fierce commitment to raising awareness around social injustice.

"Many readers have been moved by her empathy for people backed into impossible situations, or overwhelmed by the difficulties of life.

"Her characters inspired much love among her fans, and comforted many readers who were going through tough times themselves."

The agency announced her death along with the Donald Maass Literary Agency in New York and Ken Sherman & Associates in LA, confirming she had died on Monday, April 10.