WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT
It was the day before Pauline Hanna’s funeral and widower Philip Polkinghorne had gone to fellow ophthalmologist Susan Ormonde’s house when discussion of his wife’s death took a startling turn.
“I’m also worried there are some other things that are going to come out,” the witness recalled Polkinghorne saying as she testified today at his murder trial.
The first thing he revealed, she said, was the couple’s sex life.
“What else?” the colleague recalled asking.
“Meth,” he replied.
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Polkinghorne, 71, is accused of having strangled his wife before staging the scene in their Remuera home on Easter Monday 2021 to look like a suicide by hanging. Methamphetamine, which was found in various locations of the home, has become a major part of the Crown’s narrative over the past three weeks of testimony in the High Court at Auckland. It is contended the surgeon was high on the drug when he attacked his wife - possibly during an argument over the exorbitant amounts of money he had been spending on sex workers or his alleged “double life” with one specific sex worker.
The defence, meanwhile, maintains that Hanna, 63, died by her own hand after decades of depression combined with elevated job stress helping to coordinate the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine.
Ormonde said she was torn by Polkinghorne’s admission, having to balance her roles as friend and as clinical director at Auckland Eye where they both worked.
“We were quite shocked,” she said of herself and her husband. “We weren’t expecting him to say meth.”
Ormonde said she was “pretty certain” Polkinghorne also reported cocaine use but she was absolutely certain he mentioned the other drug.
“He asked us if we had ever had meth, to which we said no,” she recalled. “And he said, ‘Well, you should.’”
The colleague said she had an obligation to the safety of Auckland Eye’s patients to report the disclosure, which she described as a “considerable concern”.
She initially disclosed the conversation to the company lawyer and to the Medical Protection Society, which she said advised that he might be treated with more lenience by the Medical Council if he was to self-report. In a later conversation, she said Polkinghorne indicated to her that he had self-reported. She later found out, she said, that the self-report didn’t include mention of methamphetamine.
Ormonde said she didn’t report the matter further until a shareholders’ meeting sometime later, when an article was published in the Herald, as the meeting was taking place revealing that the drug had been found in the house.
Polkinghorne was later charged with methamphetamine possession, but the charge was suppressed by the courts until the start of his trial three weeks ago, at which point he pleaded guilty to the minor charge.
Defence lawyer Ron Mansfield KC later pointed out during cross-examination of the witness that Polkinghorne would have known about her leadership role at their workplace and her obligations about reporting his disclosure.
“I don’t know what his motive was for telling me about it,” she responded.
She agreed with the defence that she had never observed him to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol while at work.
Ormonde’s testimony followed a second day of tense cross-examination of Hanna’s GP, who continues to have name suppression.
Jurors learned during the questioning that the doctor had not prescribed a sleeping pill that was found in Hanna’s system in elevated amounts at the time of her death.
“It seems that ... Pauline was self-medicating with Zopiclone,” fellow defence lawyer Hannah Stuart said.
The doctor agreed.
Most of this morning’s cross-examination of the doctor focused on the 11 years Hanna had been prescribed weight loss medication - in contradiction, the defence suggested, of the recommended use.
The defence is expected to argue that both the sleeping pills and the weight loss drugs can increase risks of suicide when combined with alcohol. Medical records suggest Hanna expressed concerns about her own alcohol intake on several occasions, receiving a drug aimed at reducing alcohol cravings after reporting at one point that she had been drinking about a bottle a night and regularly experienced blackouts.
Her focus on her appearance should have been a “red flag”, Stuart suggested, noting that the drug was intended for people with a body mass index of 30 - much higher than Hanna’s.
“Most women, especially going through menopause ... they have heightened awareness of their weight,” the doctor said, adding that she would prescribe the drug to any patient in that situation who asked for it. “I didn’t find it very unusual. She really wanted to continue taking medications to maintain her weight.”
The defence noted that there had been other occasions where other doctors noted the length of Hanna’s use - not recommended beyond three months if weight loss hasn’t been successful - and noted that she should be weighed to see if usage should continue.
“That didn’t cause you to think, ‘Hold on, maybe I should stop and have a think about this?’” Stuart asked.
The doctor said no.
“I’ve never seen anyone who has abused Duromine,” she said. “She was okay on this medication. She didn’t have any side effects of the medication.”
Testimony is set to continue this afternoon before Justice Graham Lang and the jury.
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.
The Herald will be covering the case in a daily podcast, Accused: The Polkinghorne Trial. You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, through The Front Page feed, or wherever you get your podcasts.
