Killer Children and Conservatism

I was studying at the National Archives today and decided to issue
out the original police report from the Parker-Hulme case. For those
not familiar, that is the case around which Heavenly Creatures is
based where two Christchurch girls killed one of the girls' mothers.
It was pretty creepy reading the actual report which had direct quotes
from the girls because you realise how crazy these girls really were
and that it wasn't just Peter Jackson's poetic licence. There were
heaps of interesting things in it including:

• A transcript of the detective interviewing Pauline Parker. It is pretty creepy because she keeps referring to Juliet as 'Deborah'. There are also strange parts where she attempts to lie to the detective like in this part:

      "When asked how she knew that her mother was dead she said “The blood, the blood, there was a lot of it.” When asked about the stockings she hesitated and said “We didn’t take mother’s stockings off.” Then she said after another hesitation, “I wasn’t wearing stockings, I was wearing sockettes.” After a further hesitation she said, “I did have a stocking. I had an old one in my bag. We used it to wipe up the blood”."

• References to Christchurch making it way more creepy. Just normal things like the fact that Pauline lived at 31 Gloucester Street.
• A part about Pauline writing an admission to her diary on a piece of paper and when asked about it at the police station, throwing it into the fire. A policewoman quickly got it out but all that could be made out was the line "They have questioned Deborah but I am taking the blame"

However the strangest bit to me was a report by the caretaker
of Victoria park who saw the two girls in the tea rooms covered
in blood and was taken to the body. In this account he tells of
how he saw the body, covered in bruises and blood and saw
that from the position she was lying in, her skirt had ridden up
past her knee. So he adjusts it and pulls it below her knee so
that she is decent. Never mind that she has been brutally
murdered, she must be terribly embarrassed that her knee is
showing. Good to see that people back then had their priorities
in order.