Anne Perry, the crime writer who was found guilty of murdering her friend’s mother at 15 years old, has died at the age of 84, permultiple reports.
The author, whose agent told theNew York Timesthather health had declinedsince a December heart attack, died at a Los Angeles hospital on Monday.
Reps for Perry did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Before Perry’s extensive career writing detective books following the fictional characters of Thomas Pitt, William Monk and others — starting with 1979’sThe Cater Street Hangman— she was found guilty of murdering her best friend Pauline Parker’s mother Honorah Rieper alongside Parker when she was 15 years old and Parker was 16, in 1954.
Perry, born as Juliet Marion Hulme before taking up her pen name years later, was sentenced to 5 years in prison after being accused of bludgeoning Rieper to death in New Zealand with a brick wrapped in a stocking.
In a 2006 interview with theTimes of London, the author said she made the “profoundly wrong decision,” and that she worried about her friend potentially taking her life if she didn’t participate in the murder. She and Parker were ordered to never to meet again.
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Her next novel, titledThe Traitor Among Usand set to continue the story of English detective Elena Standish, is set to be published in September.
source: people.com
