Stranger Than Fiction

I watched Heavenly Creatures this week. It's an early Peter Jackson film and Kate Winslet's first film.

It's about these two teenage girls, Pauline and Juliet, who become fast friends. They share a vivid imagination and write stories about another world and become obsessed with this world and each other. Kate's character, Juliet Hulme, has TB and is moving from New Zealand to South Africa for a better climate. Pauline wishes to go with her. Pauline's mother forbids it so the girls form a plan to murder Pauline's mother. They follow through with their plan. The girls go to jail and after five years are released upon the condition that they never contact each other ever again. This is a true story.
Pauline is on the left and Juliet is on the right.
Juliet Hulme is none other than the famous crime author Anne Perry.

This is Anne Perry (Juliet Hulme) today.
I have been reading as much information as I can on the web the past couple days and I'm just floored by how unreal this true story seems. Here's a link for all the newspaper articles collection from the town in which the girls lived. It's an old case (1954) but the information is new to me. I wouldn't necessarily recommend watching the movie, it was more odd than entertaining. However, Kate Winslet (and Melanie Lynskey who plays Pauline) still look the same 16 years later.