Anne Perry, born Juliet Hulme, kept her dark secret hidden until 1994, when she finally revealed that she and her friend had killed her friend's mother in 1954.
The late writer sold more than 26 million copies, was featured alongside Agatha Christie in The Times's list of 100 "masters of crime", and had a Peter Jackson-directed biographical murder film made on her teenaged life.
Anne Perry, a prolific British-born crime novelist of stories that explored the dark corners of the Victorian age, who also kept her own chilling secret for decades after serving five years in prison for murder in a teenage plot with her best friend, died April 10 at a hospital in Los Angeles. She was 84.