Christine and Léa Papin committed two murders in February 1933 — and their names have haunted France in the 90 years since. Their crimes were so grisly that the details are not for the fainthearted. Yet the case has proved so fascinating that it is constantly retold, reshaped, and reexamined by each generation. Were these crimes emblematic of a crack in society? Were they in the grip of mental illness? Were the sisters also lovers? All these questions and more have proved increasingly elusive and intriguing with every passing year.
The suspects
Before they became known as the infamous Papin Sisters, Christine and Léa Papin were seemingly like any other girls from Le Mans, France. Christine was born in 1905 and Léa in 1911 to parents Clémence Derré and Gustave Papin.
After news of the crimes of the Papin Sisters gripped the nation, pictures of the innocent-looking girls were published far and wide. Onlookers would be amazed that the two women pictured could possibly commit such depraved acts.
They will not soon be forgotten
"The double crime of Christine and Lea Papin will not soon be forgotten," wrote Bernard Lauzac in Police magazine in 1933. To give you an idea of the crime, the publication used the headline "Les Arracheuses d'Yeux" — "The Eye Gougers."
The article continued, "It will even remain, not only in Le Mans but in criminal and judiciary records, as one of the most terrifying and cruel murders ever committed." Yet people couldn't look away from it.
The photo that captivated the world
It was this photo that had French intellectuals fascinated by the case of the Papin Sisters. They came to believe that the finer details of these bloody murders were emblematic of everything that was wrong with society at the time.
"With their wavy hair and their white collars, how sensible Christine and Léa Papin seem in the old photo that some papers published! How had they become those haggard furies offered up to public condemnation in the photos taken after the drama?" wrote Simone de Beauvoir in 1960's La Force de l'âge.
They blamed it on their childhood
"One must accuse their childhood orphanage, their serfdom, the whole hideous system set up by decent people for the production of madmen, assassins, and monsters," de Beauvoir said, echoing the outrage felt by others.
"The horror of this all-consuming machine could only be rightfully denounced by an exemplary act of horror: the two sisters had made themselves the instruments and martyrs of a somber form of justice," de Beauvoir continued.
They were raised in convents
Few concrete details about the early lives of the Papin Sisters are available. Most reports of their cases focus on the brutal conclusion, for obvious reasons. But we do know that the sisters spent their early lives in convents.
In fact, Christine and Léa Papin all went to the same convent as their older, non-criminal sister, Emilia. The New York Times described them as "the daughters of a drunkard and a sometime maid with less than perfect morals."
They entered the workforce early
According to The New York Times, "Poor girls [in this convent] were taught either to join the order or to master the kinds of tasks that would give them the only employment they could hope for: cleaning up after people with more money."
It can be little surprise, then, that Emilia became a nun and the other two sisters became maids. Christine also "developed a lasting hatred for her mother and a protective and perhaps stifling love for Léa," reported the Times.
They were perhaps a little too close
The sisters' love for each other meant that they wanted to work together once they left the convent. They found this opportunity in 1926 when they started working as maids for the Lancelins.
The New York Times described their situation like this: "They shared a room, they broke away from their mother, they lived for each other and quite possibly they were lovers."
It was not a glamorous job
The Lancelin family consisted of homeowner René Lancelin, who was a retired lawyer, his wife, Léonie, and their adult daughter, Genevieve. However, it is important to contextualize the Papin Sisters' role in the household.
The sisters — like many maids in France at the time — were so poor that they were not in a position to turn down jobs. "Even modest families could afford maids," The New York Times reported. But this meant long hours, terrible wages, and worse living conditions.
"Humiliations were frequent"
According to the Times, "Humiliations were frequent" and "a broken plate might mean a deep gouge in the wages." This is not to mention the daily reminders that you were second-class citizens.
"For six years, in total submission, they put up with remarks, demands, and insults. Fear, exhaustion, and humiliation slowly nourished the hatred within them," wrote poets Paul Éluard and Benjamin Péret in Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution no. 5.
Life was not easy
After the Papin Sisters had committed their brutal crime, the trial revealed the humiliations that the sisters had to endure in service of the Lancelin family. For example, Monsieur Lancelin never once spoke to the young women in his employ.
The ladies of the house — Léonie and Genevieve — also only spoke to the Papins when they wanted a chore done. On January 6, 1935, the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph reported, "Christine and Léa were not treated as machines... but as slaves."
The conflict they endured
The newspaper revealed, "Once when Mme. Lancelin discovered a scrap of paper on the parlor carpet, she seized Christine by the arm, pinched her black and blue, and then made her fall down on her knees to pick it up."
"On another occasion," the paper explained, "Léa had the bad luck to spill a drop of water on the table while watering a pot of flowers, and the mistress boxed her ears."
They stayed at it for seven years
"For seven years the Papin sisters endured this sort of tyranny like Spartans, without a murmur," the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph reported. "No ill-treatment seemed able to exhaust their submissiveness. But Mme. Lancelin and Genevieve, by sowing the wind, reaped the whirlwind."
"Maddened at last by constant humiliation and abuse, and longing to be delivered from oppression, Christine and Lea suddenly became transformed into furies of hatred," the paper revealed. What was the spark that lit the match? A broken electric iron.
Tensions reached a fever pitch
The shocking murders happened on February 2, 1933, in the Lancelin household in Le Mans. Mme. Lancelin scolded the sisters for breaking the electric iron — and then the sisters attacked "with the ferocity of wild animals."
According to the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, the sisters first killed and mutilated Mme. Lancelin before turning their attention to Genevieve, "who rushed to her mother's rescue." We'll spare you the grisly details.
Crimes of passion
Léa and Christine committed much of their murders with their hands and "a heavy pewter pot." But after the first round of rage, they also "fetched carving knives from the kitchen" to make sure of the job.
"Then, apparently exhausted by their work, they cleaned the knives, washed their hands, went to their garret bed-chamber and bolted the door," the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph reported in 1935. But it wasn't long before police arrived on the scene.
The husband raised the alarm
After Monsieur Lancelin had arrived home and been unable to unlock his front door, he searched for his family without success. He got the police involved, and soon they found themselves breaking into the house.
After surveying the terrible scene, the police forced their way into the Papin Sisters' room. The sisters were discovered in their bed. "We were waiting for you," they said. A confession shortly followed.
A terrible confession
"Christine and Léa confessed they were the authors of the double murder, declaring they were tired of being mistreated by Mme. Lancelin and her 'daughter, and had slain them out of revenge," the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph reported.
The trial that followed seemed like it might be a pretty straightforward affair — but there were a few wrinkles. First off, the courts had to decide whether Christine and Léa were fit to face trial.
The trial did not last long
The Papins' attorneys tried to make the case that the pair were mentally unbalanced and not responsible for the actions. However, the opposition successfully convinced the jury that this was not the case.
The resulting trial was fast, and the jury took just 40 minutes to declare the sisters guilty. Christine was sentenced to death via the guillotine (later commuted to life in jail). Léa was handed a ten-year sentence because she was believed to be acting under her sister's influence.
The trial led to some outrage
The public keeping tabs on the trial were torn over the result. "Among the enlightened classes in Paris," the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph reported in 1935, "there is a feeling that consideration should be given to the barbarous way servant girls are treated."
The paper continued, "Thoughtful people, many of whom are socialists, believe that the time has come for a radical change in the treatment Of the laboring and servant classes in the country districts."
Christine died in prison
Christine may never have faced death at the sharp end of the guillotine, but she also didn't make it out of prison. She was later moved to a mental institution in Rennes, France, and died in 1937.
Léa lived much longer. She served eight years of her ten-year sentence and lived out her life in as much anonymity as possible. She even lived with her mother until her mother passed away. Some believed Léa died in 1982, while others believed she survived until 2001.
The case lived on
A case with this much notoriety has been adapted into multiple plays, films, and books. Most notably, director Bong Joon-Ho cited the Papin Sisters' case as the inspiration for his Oscar-winning film, Parasite.
This shocking murder has echoes of another crime that would haunt two girls and a city for years to come. The crimes of best friends Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker became infamous in New Zealand in the 1950s — and the consequences for both young women were wildly different.
Haunted by the past
Even after her wild success as a novelist, Anne Perry — the former Juliet Hulme — was never able to outrun her sensational true-crime past. "Why can't I be judged for who I am now, not what I was then?" she lamented to The Guardian in 2003.
"I had to give up my past — the hardest thing imaginable — and begin life in my new identity as Anne Perry, knowing even a tiny slip could unravel everything."
Everything unraveled
The past she tried to escape from began when Hulme was born on October 28, 1938, in London, England. Her parents were Hilda and Dr. Henry Hulme — the latter was a physicist who would go on to help create the hydrogen bomb.
Then, when Hulme was six, her parents had a son named Jonathan. After Jonathan’s birth, however, Hulme became seriously ill.
A fateful trip overseas
Apparently, the young girl began to suffer from both bronchitis and pneumonia. At one point, she became so ill that a medic was reportedly prepared to sign a death certificate for her.
But at eight years old, Hulme was sent thousands of miles across the world to live in the Bahamas with people she didn’t know. Hulme’s parents, it seems, had hoped that hotter climates may be of benefit to their daughter’s health.
A deadly best friend
Just a few months after arriving in the Bahamas, though, she was sent away again — this time to the Bay of Islands, a subtropical area in New Zealand.
Finally, when Hulme was 13 years old, her father found a job as a clergyman at Canterbury University College on the country’s South Island, and the teen was duly reunited with her family. Then Hulme met a girl named Pauline Parker.
Two friends, one love
Pauline Parker had been growing up in a very different world. She was born on May 26, 1938, in Christchurch, New Zealand, to working-class couple Honora and Herbert Parker.
And although her parents lived in the same house, they were not married – presumably a somewhat unusual domestic arrangement for the time. Yet even at this stage, Parker had something in common with Hulme.
The past meets the present
Parker had been seriously ill as a child, too. She had apparently suffered from osteomyelitis — an infectious condition that affects the bones.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, Hulme and Parker encountered each other as students at Christchurch Girls’ High School. They formed a connection owing to their similar experiences. In fact, it’s believed that the pair both expressed rather idealized views of their past health problems.
The girls become firm friends
At high school, neither Hulme nor Parker was able to participate in sports activities due to their respective childhood illnesses.
Instead, then, they focused on their shared appreciation for books. The girls occupied themselves by writing, while Parker even informed her parents that she was working on an opera.
They enter The Fourth World together
And as the duo’s friendship developed, they allegedly invented a rich fantasy realm complete with their own interpretation of heaven that they called The Fourth World.
Hulme and Parker apparently went as far as to believe that their bond allowed them to attain a type of divine enlightenment. More worryingly still, the pair also believed that on occasion they were actually able to visit The Fourth World.
Their parents were concerned
Their strange behavior wasn't going unnoticed. According to reports, both Hulme and Parker’s parents suspected that there was something unusual about their children’s friendship.
Parker’s mother had even taken her daughter to see a medical professional about what she perceived to be an unhealthy obsession between the two. But despite the intensity of the teens’ bond, there appears to be little evidence that the relationship was ever romantic.
The girls get closer and closer
Then, when Hulme was 14 years old, her health took another turn for the worse. As a result, she was kept for several months in a medical facility while her parents traveled to London alone.
Rather than driving Hulme and Parker apart, however, it seems that the experience merely brought the two girls closer together. According to Hulme, Parker kept in touch with her every single day.
A twist in the tale
After Hulme was discharged from the hospital, she returned to live with her parents in their large Christchurch home once more. But their family life would be shattered when the girl apparently walked in on her mother in bed with another man.
And so, with divorce on the cards, Dr. Hulme decided to leave New Zealand and return to England to continue his research. It was this development that led to a shocking crime.
The friends planned to escape
It seems that Dr. Hulme had at first intended to leave his daughter in Christchurch with her mother. Yet before he could depart, he made a disturbing discovery about Hulme and her friend Parker.
The girls had apparently been plotting an escape to America, where they hoped that they could make money from their novels.
They wouldn't be separated
Horrified by Hulme and Parker’s scheme — and seemingly disturbed by their intense relationship — Dr. Hulme changed his mind about leaving his daughter behind.
Instead, he planned to send Hulme to South Africa, where she and her brother would stay with a relative. But Hulme’s response to the idea was simple: she demanded that Parker accompany her.
A dark plot
Some reports have documented that Hulme’s mother, Hilda, consented to this rather strange arrangement. Honora, on the other hand, is said to have refused to let Parker go.
But neither parent could have guessed the terrifying lengths that their daughters would go to so that they might stay together. The girls had begun plotting a terrible solution to their predicament.
A sinister scheme
On the afternoon of June 22, 1954, Hulme and Parker put their sinister scheme into motion. The teens, accompanied by Honora, set out for a walk in Victoria Park in the hills above the city of Christchurch.
And just as the girls had planned, Hulme — carrying a stash of decorative pebbles hidden in her pocket — rushed ahead of the others.
Young girls become young murderers
Once Hulme had run far enough along the path, however, she dropped the stones on the ground. Then, when the others had caught up, Honora leaned down to scoop up one of the colorful rocks.
And it’s believed that while the woman was distracted, Parker pulled out a stocking-wrapped brick from her pocket.
The girls' vicious attack
The teens' plan kicked into action. The story goes that Parker hit her mother squarely around the head using the makeshift weapon.
And when Honora fell to the ground as a result, her daughter apparently continued to rain down blows. Next, Hulme is thought to have returned to Parker’s side and aided her friend in the vicious assault.
A web of lies
Once their gruesome task was complete, Hulme and Parker sprinted the short distance back to the park’s kiosk. There they found the owner, Agnes Ritchie, on duty.
And while still covered in Honora’s blood, the friends began to gasp out a fabricated tale. According to the pair’s initial accounts, Parker’s mother had stumbled over a log and taken a blow to the head when she fell.
They're taken into custody
When Ritchie’s husband Kenneth went to investigate, he discovered Honora’s lifeless body beneath a tree and a brick that had been discarded nearby.
Ritchie reportedly also heard the girls giggling as they cleaned the blood off their hands at a nearby sink. The authorities subsequently arrived, and later, police officers took Parker and then Hulme into their custody.
Standing trial for murder
Just a few weeks after that fateful day, there came an announcement that would send shockwaves through New Zealand and the rest of the world: Hulme and Parker were to stand trial for Honora’s murder.
And as the proceedings began, the teenagers found themselves at the center of a media circus — the likes of which Christchurch had arguably never seen before.
An obsessively close friendship
During the trial, much was made of the obsessively close nature of Hulme and Parker’s relationship. According to Famous Australasian Crimes, a 1957 book written by Tom Gurr, the Crown Prosecutor referred to the pair as “dirty-minded little girls” in front of the jury.
Moreover, the prosecution pointed out how intensely devoted Hulme and Parker had been to each other — even claiming that the teens had often slept in the same bed.
A damning diary entry
The trial continued. Both the prosecution and the defense wanted to establish whether or not the girls were sane. And to that end, some passages from Parker’s diary were recited in court.
“Why could not mother die?” read one excerpt. “Dozens, thousands of people are dying. Why not mother – and father too?”
Separated at last
So, on August 28, 1954, Hulme and Parker were found guilty of murder after just over two hours of jury deliberation. Owing to the girls’ ages, though, they were spared the death penalty.
Instead, 16-year-old Parker was sent to Wellington on the North Island, where she became an inmate at an institution called Arohata Borstal. The 15-year-old Hulme was imprisoned at the infamous Mount Eden facility in Auckland. They were each sentenced to five years.
"They put me on physical labor until I passed out"
According to Hulme, she was the only minor at Mount Eden and was subjected to unpleasant living conditions. “It was cold, [and] there were rats, canvas sheets, and calico underwear,” she told The Guardian in 2003.
“I had to wash out my sanitary towels by hand, and they put me on physical labor until I passed out.”
Escaping their pasts
But despite the conditions at Mount Eden, Hulme survived — even claiming to have repented during her time in prison. In November 1959, both girls were released from their respective jails, each having served less than six years behind bars.
They went on to take new names. Hulme adopted the surname of her mother’s new partner, becoming Anne Perry; Parker started afresh as Hilary Nathan.
They went their separate ways
Interestingly, though, some sources have claimed that there was a particular caveat to Hulme and Parker’s release. It’s been said they were instructed to never contact each other again — although some have expressed doubt over the truth of this claim.
But regardless of whether or not the girls’ estrangement was a legal requirement, it appears as though they made no attempt to reunite in the years that followed their dreadful crime.
A new life
Instead, Hulme – now Perry – left the country immediately after her release and joined her family in Italy. From there, the woman made her way to England, where she spent some time working as a stewardess.
It’s believed that Perry also lived in the United States at some point, where she reportedly became a member of the Mormon faith.
A crime writer with a criminal past
Perry then settled in Portmahomack, a remote fishing village in northern Scotland. And in 1979 she published her first novel, finally realizing the dream that she and Parker had once shared.
Perry became a respected historical crime writer, in fact – although her true identity remained hidden from her readers.
An award-winning career
Under her new name, Perry has written a number of successful books that mostly fall within the genres of detective fiction and historical mysteries.
She has created two popular recurring characters, including William Monk – a private investigator who suffers from amnesia. And in 2001 she even picked up the prestigious Edgar Award for her short story “Heroes.”
The partner in crime
Parker settled in Auckland after leaving prison under the new identity of Nathan. But unlike her partner in crime, it seems, Nathan’s release had been subject to certain conditions, and she wasn’t initially allowed to leave New Zealand.
When the ban reportedly expired in 1965, though, she fled the country. The woman apparently made her way to southern England before settling in the Orkney Islands, a remote archipelago off the coast of Scotland.
Heavenly Creatures
Against all the odds, then, Perry and Nathan seemed to use their new identities to successfully disappear — or so they may have thought. Because in 1994, everything changed.
In that year, director Peter Jackson was set to release Heavenly Creatures, a drama based on the events of Honora’s murder in Christchurch 40 years previously.
Her secret identity revealed
Starring an up-and-coming Kate Winslet as Hulme and New Zealand's Melanie Lynskey as Parker, Heavenly Creatures takes its name from a line in one of Parker’s real childhood poems.
And the movie was not only a critical success, but it also brought the gruesome story of the teenage murderers into the sphere of public attention once more. In fact, before the picture had even hit theaters, a journalist had managed to track down Perry and expose her identity to the world.
“It seemed so unfair”
“It seemed so unfair,” Perry told The Guardian of the reveal. “Everything I had worked to achieve as a decent member of society was threatened. Once again, my life was being interpreted by someone else.
"It had happened in court when, as a minor, I wasn’t allowed to speak, and I heard all these lies being told. And now there was a film, but nobody had bothered to talk to me.”
Murder out of obligation
Heavenly Creatures seems to imply that the characters of Hulme and Parker are engaged in a romantic relationship. And yet Perry has always adamantly denied that there was ever a sexual element to their encounters.
Although she has admitted that the pair were intensely close. In fact, Perry has even claimed that she helped Parker to commit the murder out of a sense of obligation.
“I felt that I had a debt to repay”
“I felt that I had a debt to repay,” Perry explained to The Guardian. “Pauline was the only one who had written to me when I was in hospital, and she threatened to kill herself if I didn’t help.
She was vomiting after every meal and losing weight all the time. I am now sure she was bulimic. I really believed she would take her own life, and I couldn’t face it.”
The end of her story
Anne Perry died on April 10, 2023. She had suffered a heart attack four months before this and had never been able to fully recover. She was 84 years old.
It won't be the last people will hear from the writer, though, as her final book will be published in September 2023. But most people were still fascinated by her past — much to Perry's consternation, it seems.
Judging herself
“Do you have any idea how unbearably painful this is for me?” she is reported to have said to one writer who wanted to retell her story. Yet Perry has rarely definitely condemned her actions in public.
“In a sense, it’s not a matter — at the end — of judging,” she said in a documentary about her. “I did this much good and that much bad. Which is the greater?”
“It’s who you are when time’s up that matters”
“It’s in the end, 'Who am I?'" she went on. "Am I somebody that can be trusted? Am I someone that is compassionate, gentle, patient, strong...?
If you’re that kind of person — if you’ve done something bad in the past, you’ve obviously changed.” She ended, “It’s who you are when time’s up that matters.”
A sad conclusion
Even today, then, the story of Honora Parker’s murder – and the tale of the two teenage girls who committed it – continues to cast a dark shadow over New Zealand.
And while Nathan may have tried her best to fade into obscurity, it seems unlikely that Hulme and Perry will be forgotten any time soon.