The eye surgeon was interviewed by Detective Ilona Walton on the morning he reported Pauline Hanna dead, April 5, 2021. Video/Pool
WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT
Jurors in the Philip Polkinghorne murder trial were given a crash course in accounting today as minute details – both salacious and mundane – of his and late wife Pauline Hanna’s spending habits were put under a microscope.
Nearly $300,000 was transferred from bank accounts controlled by Polkinghorne to six women, at least three of whom have been identified as sex workers, in the five years leading up to Hanna’s suspicious death.
But the defendant’s wife would have been far from financially helpless – having spent over $110,000 from 2016 to 2018 on personal spending for items and services such as clothes, hair, skincare and dry cleaning – the defence later emphasised as forensic accountant Margaret Skilton spent a second day in the witness box.
Polkinghorne, now 71, is accused of having fatally strangled Hanna, 63, inside their Remuera home before staging the scene on April 5, 2021, to look like a suicide by hanging. Prosecutors have suggested he lashed out at his wife while high on methamphetamine, possibly during an argument over the exorbitant amount he was spending on sex workers or a secret “double life” with high–profile Sydney escort Madison Ashton.
About $106,000 in bank transfers went to Ashton, who was found staying at an expensive Mt Cook chalet with Polkinghorne three weeks after Hanna’s death. The last payment had been for $5580 on January 5, 2021, exactly three months before Easter Monday, when Polinghorne called 111 to report his wife’s death.
The defence has contended Polkinghorne and Hanna, jointly worth over $10 million, had a happy “open” relationship and that Hanna’s history of depression was responsible for her death rather than foul play.
Sydney sex worker Madison Ashton and Philip Polkinghorne, who is on trial for murder. Photo / Supplied
Skilton, who works in the police financial crime unit, tallied $296,645 that Polkinghorne had transferred to the six women between January 2016 and March 2021. The payments came from accounts that only he had access to.
In addition to the money that went to Ashton, the payouts included:
$35,905 from 2016 to 2019 to a woman named Lee, who was identified by Polkinghorne’s barber earlier in the trial as a mutual acquaintance sex worker
$72,100 between 2019 and 2021 to a woman named Jody
$61,800 between 2016 and 2021 to a Northcote Point resident named Alaria who was identified by her neighbours to jurors as a sex worker who would receive frequent visits from the surgeon – his car’s personalised RETINA plates having made an impression
$13,550 between 2017 and 2018 to a woman named Kimberley, and
$7160 in 2019 to Ashton’s daughter.
Polkinghorne’s bank accounts also saw cash withdrawals of $439,450 during the same period, almost half of which had been taken from cash machines in Australia. The accountant pointed out that neither Polkinghorne nor his wife were in Australia when many of the withdrawals were made, suggesting that an unknown third party had been given access to the account.
Defence lawyer Ron Mansfield KC suggested during cross-examination that the cash could have been used on simple day-to-day spending, but the witness was sceptical.
“A lot of companies don’t even take cash anymore,” she said.
Mansfield did not touch on the bank transfers to the women, but he’ll get another opportunity to traverse the subject when Skilton returns to the witness box tomorrow. The defence lawyer instead directed the witness to focus on other areas of the couple’s finances, including their substantial assets.
Multiple witnesses have testified that Hanna had been contemplating leaving her husband due in part to suspicions of infidelity but she worried that she couldn’t do so without first getting her financial affairs in order. Hanna’s niece testified told jurors that Hanna had been distraught at one point, fearful that Polkinghorne had swindled her out of access to their joint assets by having her sign financial documents without telling her what they were for.
But she would have had no legitimate reason to worry, the defence suggested today.
“You would know that in New Zealand, assets [upon divorce] ... would be divided ordinarily 50/50,” Mansfield pointed out in one of his first questions to the accountant, adding that it wouldn’t matter whose name the bank accounts were in. “It wouldn’t matter whether a person had seen the bank statements at all.”
Given that standard aspect of New Zealand divorce law, Hanna could have expected to receive over $5 million if they were to separate and could have easily kept herself afloat in the meantime with her salary of over $200,000 per year, Mansfield said.
“It’s not unusual, is it, in a relationship for one member in the relationship ... to look after the finances?” he asked, to which Skilton agreed.
But Skilton had seemed to indicate earlier, during questioning by the Crown, that it went beyond that.
“Mr Polkinghorne had control of Ms Hanna’s financial position,” she concluded, explaining that the defendant had siphoned significant amounts of money from the couple’s joint account to ones in which Hanna had no access.
Justice Graham Lang ended court a few minutes early today, informing jurors that the trial will move back tomorrow to the High Court complex’s largest courtroom. The trial had been moved late last week to a smaller courtroom to accommodate a visit by the Supreme Court.
The transfer to the original courtroom means there will be more space to accommodate viewers in the public gallery. The trial, now in its fourth week, has continued to draw capacity crowds.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
