Canadian knot expert gives evidence, detective quizzed about bedroom in Polkinghorne trial

Thursday, 1 August 2024

In Philip Polkinghorne's trial, first responders testified about the scene of his wife's death, which he claims was a suicide. Police initially found the situation suspicious, noting injuries and inconsistencies.

Health boss Pauline Hanna was found dead on April 5, 2021 at the Remuera home she shared with her husband.

After an extensive and lengthy police investigation, her husband, eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne, was charged with murder.

Polkinghorne has pleaded not guilty and the trial under way at the High Court at Auckland.

Warning: The details of this case may be distressing for some readers.

The jury hearing the trial of eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne, who is accused of killing his wife Pauline Hanna, heard evidence from a Canadian rope expert and a detective who was quizzed about the bedroom Hanna slept in the night before her death.

Polkinghorne, a 71-year-old eye doctor, has admitted charges of possessing methamphetamine and a pipe to smoke the A-class drug but has denied murdering his wife. Hanna was found dead in the entranceway of their Remuera home on April 5, Easter Monday, in 2021.

The Crown’s case is that Polkinghorne was living a double life, that he had obsession with sex and meth and was in a covert relationship with an escort in Sydney. It argues Polkinghorne murdered Hanna before staging their home to make it look like suicide.

Philip Polkinghorne arriving at the High Court at Auckland with his lawyer Ron Mansfield KC.

Polkinghorne’s defence is that Hanna had a history of mental health issues, was on medication, exhausted by work and tragically took her own life.

The rope found at Polkinghorne’s home, said to have been used by Hanna in her death, has become an important piece of evidence in the case. The first detective who arrived at the scene raised suspicions after testing the tension of the rope and knots. He believed the rope could not hold much weight, as did the Canadian expert.

Expert gives evidence

On Thursday, after a short delay due to technology, forensic rope expert Robert Chisnall beamed into the courtroom from Canada.

He told prosecutor Brian Dickey he’d been called as an expert witness for 40 years and has looked at over 200 cases. Chisnall told the court he has also written a manual on forensic analysis of knots and ligatures.

Chisnall said he was contacted on April 12, 2021 by forensic scientist Fiona Matheson to look at the rope found on the balustrade at the Polkinghorne home.

The orange nylon rope tied to the balustrade inside Philip Polkinghorne's Remuera home.

He was sent 76 images, analysed them and wrote a report which he detailed to the court.

Chisnall said the rope on the balustrade was an insecure grouping of tangles and slack on the floor. He said “it was too long and too insecure to suspend any weight”.

“The loop knotted around the balustrade slipped down at some point and the tangles collapsed,” he said.

Chisnall said the knots around the balustrade were common knots requiring little skill, but knot reconstruction was not possible.

The orange rope found on the stairs at the Remuera home.

The rope found lying on the lower stairs was observed as being disorganised and a haphazard tangle with one knotted loop.

The expert also reconstructed the pictures with different types of rope he had at his home in Canada to look at the structure of the knots.

“I did some set ups myself and found balustrades in my home and elsewhere,” he said. “I wanted to verify how insecure the knots were.”

Chisnall said the result was the same each time, and that very little force was required for the knots to collapse.

Dickey, the prosecutor, asked Chisnall if the detective’s report about conducting a tension test on the rope was consistent with his own testing. Chisnall agreed.

Under cross examination, Ron Mansfield KC, Polkinghorne’s lawyer, questioned why Chisnall wasn’t sent the actual rope by police, or even the balustrade to conduct his analysis.

Various containers containing methamphetamine were found at the Polkinghorne home.

Chisnall said it was never offered to him, and that the results would have been the same.

During the cross-examination, Mansfield took Chisnall through Polkinghorne’s comments to Detective Ilona Walton at the police station on the afternoon of April 5, 2021 .

Polkinghorne held his head in his hands during Mansfield’s reading of the comments.

The eye surgeon said he undid the “granny knots” upstairs after getting his wife down.

“I got rid of the rope… I didn’t want to look. It looked awful just hanging there - it just was horrible, the rope.”

Polkinghorne said he was trying to put Hanna’s dressing gown around her after removing a belt from her neck.

“I just felt like she needed some dignity,” Polkinghorne told the detective.

He was questioned about the rope on the stairs and the rope still tied to the balustrade. Polkinghorne said he couldn’t remember what he’d done. He said he was flustered and may have lifted the rope tied to the balustrade to undo it.

“I thought I undid it… I thought I got rid of it.”

Chisnall mentioned possible kinks in the rope that was on the staircase and said it was possible it could have been undone.

The bedroom where Pauline Hanna slept the night before she died was found in disarray with pillows on the floor and an Ottoman tipped on its side.

Detective quizzed about bedroom

Sergeant Christian Iogha was a Detective Constable in April 2021 when he was called to the home after Polkinghorne called emergency services telling them his wife had killed herself.

But when Iogha arrived and inspected the knots of the orange rope tied on the balustrade, he said they were loose.

“I didn’t believe it was able to sustain any weight,” Iogha said.

This is when he informed his supervisor, and the scene was soon determined suspicious, he previously told prosecutor Alysha McClintock.

Over the following days, Iogha said he searched the house.

On Thursday afternoon, Iogha’s cross-examination continued. He was quizzed at length about the room Hanna was said to have slept in the night before she was found dead.

The Crown’s case is the room was in a dishevelled state, with bedding pulled off the bed and an Ottoman tipped over, indicating signs of a struggle before her death.

Mansfield, Polkinghorne’s lawyer, pressed the detective on whether there was evidence Hanna died in the room.

“So, if there was some form of scuffle or altercation in that bedroom, despite a very careful and thorough investigation by the New Zealand police and ESR, there was no evidence as to how Pauline Hanna’s body, if she’d died in that room, had been moved from that room to the downstairs area where she was found?” he asked.

Iogha agreed.

The detective also agreed that other than the state of the bedding and the Ottoman there was no evidence of assault or damage to the room, no blood or bodily fluid.

“No damage as such, but it is very odd to see a room in that state after someone’s said to have taken their life, and the person who found them has told us that the place that they last stayed was in that room,” Iogha said.

The trial, which is set down for six weeks, continues in front of Justice Graham Lang and a jury.