Philip Polkinghorne trial: The key evidence from week 1

Saturday, 3 August 2024

Doctor Philip Polkinghorne, a successful eye doctor, has appeared in court charged with murdering his wife.

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

The long-anticipated trial of eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne kicked off this week. A jury of 12 is being asked to decide whether they believe Pauline Hanna killed herself, or whether her husband murdered her and staged their home to look like suicide.

Polkinghorne, a 71-year-old eye doctor, has admitted charges of possessing methamphetamine but has denied murdering his wife. Hanna was found dead in the entranceway of their home in Auckland’s Remuera on April 5, 2021.

The Crown’s case is that Polkinghorne fatally strangled Hanna before reporting her death to police as a suicide. It argues he was living a double life, obsessed with meth and in a covert relationship with an escort in Sydney.

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

Here are the five key things we learnt this week

What Polkinghorne told police

Constable Alexander Rowland was the first police officer to speak to Polkinghorne about his wife.

When he arrived at the home, Polkinghorne was walking around upset and “audibly wailing”. He calmed down while giving a statement.

Retired eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne denies killing his wife.

Polkinghorne said the night before the couple drank wine, had dinner and watched Netflix before retiring to separate rooms.

Rowland said Polkinghorne told him he woke at about 6am, and left his bedroom an hour and 45 minutes later, heading downstairs to make breakfast for Hanna.

He said he found her in a chair, leaning forward with a belt around her neck. He said the belt belonged to him and she’d been using it as a tie for her dressing gown.

“I was very flustered, I knew she was deceased as she was blue and bloated,” Polkinghorne said.

After he’d finished taking Polkinghorne’s statement and handed it to his supervisor, the sergeant scribbled “1C” on his hand - that was police code for “suspicious circumstances”.

Later that day, while giving another statement to Detective Ilona Walton at a police station, Polkinghorne told police he undid the granny knots on an orange rope tied to the balustrade.

“When I got her down it looked too hideous to me… it looked awful just hanging there. It was horrible, the rope,” he said in the statement.

Police suspicions

Sergeant Christian Iogha was a Detective Constable back in April 2021 when he was called to the property. He was the officer in charge of the scene and immediately began looking for a suicide note. He didn’t find one.

Iogha said he’d been asked by another Detective Sergeant to analyse the rope, which is usual practice in suspected suicides to make sure there are no suspicious circumstances.

The orange rope found tied to the balustrade inside the Upland Rd address in Remuera.

He was assisted by Detective Ilona Walton who took photos of the rope prior and after, but not the whole process.

Iogha told Crown Prosecutor Alysha McClintock the rope slipped down the balustrade with ease.

“I informed my supervisor what I had just done and my belief that this rope wouldn’t be able to support any weight,” Iogha said.

It was shortly after the tension checks that the scene was deemed suspicious.

Iogha also thought the bedroom where Hanna was said to have slept in the night before seemed “odd”.

He was questioned at length by Ron Mansfield KC, Polkinghorne’s lawyer, as to whether there was any evidence Hanna had died in that room.

The bedroom where Pauline Hanna was said to have slept the night before she died.

“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 no evidence had been identified.

The detective also agreed that other than the state of the bedding and the tipped over 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 rope

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.

Robert Chisnall beamed into the courtroom from Canada on Thursday morning. He’d been contacted by ESR scientist Fiona Matheson and asked to analyse the photos of the orange rope and the knots.

The jury was shown a video of Pauline Hanna visiting a rubbish tip the day before she died.

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 expert also reconstructed 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.”

Under cross-examination, Chisnall mentioned possible kinks in the rope that was on the staircase and said it was possible the knots could have been undone.

CCTV footage of Pauline Hanna

On Friday, the jury were also shown a video of Hanna the day before her death.

The CCTV footage showed Hanna visiting a rubbish tip in Onehunga with items secured in the back of a red ute using an orange rope.

Brian Dickey, one of the prosecutors, said the court could accept the orange rope was the same rope found at the Polkinghorne home.

Iogha, who hadn’t seen the video before, said it appeared in the footage that Hanna untied the rope and unloaded items at the tip.

Polkinghorne’s defence is that she later used that rope to take her own life.

Meth found

After the Remuera house had been secured by police, Iogha told the court a number of containers containing methamphetamine had been found.

Various containers of methamphetamine were found around Philip Polkinghorne's home in Remuera after his wife died.

A container with meth inside was found in the bedside drawer of what Iogha determined to be Polkinghorne’s side of the bed in the master bedroom.

Under the bed a butane lighter and glass pipe was found, Iogha said.

More meth was found in a satchel and drawer in the office.

Polkinghorne’s charges regarding the methamphetamine were previously suppressed and were only able to be reported at the start of trial after he pleaded guilty to possession and possession of utensils.

The trial will continue on Monday with forensic scientist Fiona Matheson continuing her evidence.

The trial is set down for six weeks at the High Court at Auckland before Justice Graham Lang.