The Power of Conscience

I need to take a break from writing about self-publishing. Ironically enough, I feel compelled to write about the subject that stumped me so much I neglected this blog for a year and a half. I was stumped because I wanted to write about an author I met at a writer's conference, but I didn't want to reveal who she was. The main reason was that she was a well-known mystery writer who had also been convicted for murder when she was a teenager. The crime of passion had been made into a movie, "Heavenly Creatures," giving Kate Winslet her first big role - she played the character of Juliet Hulme, who would later become Anne Perry. I highly recommend that movie - it was excellent and a pretty accurate depiction of the events that happened.

I actually read a few of her novels before finding out about this - namely, from her Inspector and Charlotte Pitt series. In the series, when we finally find out who the murderer was, there's often a sadness surrounding the incident and that somebody gave in to that animalistic brutality inside of them. I had also seen the movie and can still remember how heartsick I felt when the girls were leading Pauline's mother down the path where they would kill her, knowing that their actions were futile.

I think I went to this conference because I knew she was going to be there, and if there's any one person I'd love to interview, it would be Anne Perry. She has talked about the crime on one talk show in Britain and her obsessive friendship with Pauline Parker, but it's rare that she'll discuss these incidents. She was convicted at 16 and released 5 years later. The only reason she and Pauline Parker weren't given the death penalty were because they were to young under New Zealand law at the time. After her release, Juliet moved to England and changed her name to Anne Perry. She later settled in Scotland, and had a series of jobs and became published when she was around 40. She's now in her 70's and has a very successful writing career that most writers only dream about. She's never married - nor has Pauline Parker - she's known to be very reclusive with just a few friends around her. She's also very religious, having become a Mormon during her brief time living in the US. Almost 60 years have passed since she and her best friend killed the latter's mother. But what would that be like, to have taken somebody's life away and then be able to move on with yours?

At the conference, she gave a workshop titled: "What's it About?" and in the brochure, there was a general description about digging deep to find out where your stories are coming from. Her main topic in the workshop was forgiveness, forgiving others for their offenses, but also forgiving oneself. She made it clear that only God can judge, but that we as humans can forgive all. She also posed the question of forgiving the unforgivable - is it possible that anything could be if we are to forgive all? She then talked about one of the characters she's working on, who is planning to murder for the sake of saving her city or to protect the interests of the "greater good," and how she's justifying that in her mind.

Anne Perry was very soft-spoken. After a while I put down my pen and just listened and took her in. She was very intelligent and eloquent, and had a lot of depth. It was fairly brilliant the way she concluded her monologue on forgiveness into a segue of finding what our stories are about: "These are the questions you must ask yourself to find out what your story's about. If you dig deep enough, that's where the richest stories come from."

I was pretty out of it at the end of her workshop. She was intense and her subject matter was heavy. I was surprised to realize I'd had the questions answered I would have asked her if I'd had the chance. My friend who came with me to this workshop was pretty floored when I told her about the speaker's past. "Whoa," she said. "That certainly puts a whole new spin on everything she said about forgiveness." And it does. Murder is the one thing you can never make amends for. If you abuse somebody, it is possible to atone for it. You can apologize, you can do kind things for that person to make amends. If somebody is beaten or raped, they have a chance to heal - even if they are scarred by what happened, the victim still has their life to move on to. But if you kill, there's no giving that life back and there's no way to say "I'm sorry."

As Anne Perry was speaking, all I could think was: "You can never be free of this. This is a burden you carry with you all the time." Anne Perry couldn't even give a talk at a writers' conference more than 50 years later and not have it pervading her subject because it is in her all the time. Technically, her sentence was 5 years - seemingly short, given the violence of the crime. But the real prison is the one that takes place in her mind and heart, to live with that knowledge for the rest of your life. That is a prison she can never escape.