WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT
The jury considering Philip Polkinghorne’s fate on a murder charge has watched a 3D computer-generated video walkthrough of his Remuera property the day his wife Pauline Hanna was found dead.
During their lengthy scene examination of the couple’s sprawling 370sqm Upland Rd home, police had ESR scientists conduct a 3D scan of the entire house.
This afternoon the video was played to day 3 of the murder trial in the High Court at Auckland.
The 3D video shows the positioning of orange rope which is central to the case - the Crown alleges eye surgeon Polkinghorne, 71, murdered Hanna and then staged her death to look like a suicide.
The defence says there is no evidence of a homicide in the death of his 63-year-old wife.
STORY CONTINUES AFTER LIVE BLOG
STORY CONTINUES
As Philip Polkinghorne sat at his dining room table, giving an initial statement while police responded to the death of his wife, two detectives were examining the scene of what they had been advised was an “apparent suicide” inside the Remuera home.
But as soon as they conducted a “tension check” on the bright orange nylon rope that Pauline Hanna, 63, was reported by her husband to have hung herself with, they realised something seemed off, Detective Ilona Walton testified this morning at Polkinghorne’s ongoing murder trial.
Polkinghorne, now 71, was at the time of the Easter Monday 2021 death a respected eye surgeon who was nearing retirement. But behind the scenes, prosecutors alleged as his six-week trial began earlier this week, he seemed to harbour a significant methamphetamine habit, mounting expenses due to his extra-marital affairs and liaisons with prostitutes, and a domineering attitude towards his wife of more than 20 years.
“It very quickly unravelled,” she said of the rope, explaining that another detective had given the rope “a gentle, light pull” using a finger and a thumb.
“It’s started coming undone,” she recalled. “It just kept going and going and going and going – extending out from where he was holding it.”
She described the test result, which was not recorded, as a “genuine” surprise.
“It’s not in line with how we’d normally expect a ligature of someone who’s killed themselves to react,” she said. “It seemed unusual and not normal that the rope would unravel in that manner.”
Shortly after, the decision was made to have Polkinghorne finish his statement outside the home, so as not to contaminate the scene. Police were beginning to treat the death as suspicious.
But during cross-examination this morning, defence lawyer Ron Mansfield KC suggested the test was an example of police jumping to conclusions, treating the tension test as evidence of a crime when there was a simple explanation.
The knot that secured the top of the rope to an upstairs balustrade remained in place. It was the other end of the rope that fell to the floor below, he noted. As the detectives conducted their test, Polkinghorne was already telling a constable in his statement that he had gone “upstairs to undo the knot from the cord” shortly after discovering his wife’s body, the defence lawyer pointed out.
Mansfield has characterised the investigation as an overreach by police spurred by a mistaken assumption within an hour of officers’ first arrival at the home.
After Polkinghorne finished his police statement, Walson said she approached him outside, offering her condolences and asking if he would accompany her to the police station to provide “just a few more details”.
“He happily obliged,” she said.
The three-hour interview that followed is expected to be played for jurors later in the trial.
En route to the police station, the detective recalled Polkinghorne taking a call in which he told someone he couldn’t go into work that morning because his wife had died.
“It was just very business-like,” she said of his tone while on the call. “There didn’t seem to be any emotion behind it.”
He also noted that he and his wife, a health administrator who was heavily involved in the Covid-19 vaccine rollout, had received their vaccinations the day earlier.
“He briefly questioned whether the Covid vaccine could have something to do with her actions,” the detective recalled.
Sergeant Christian Iogha, who conducted the rope tension test alongside Walton, was called to testify after the detective.
After the surprise result in which the other end of the rope dangled to the ground, Iogha said he decided to go back up the stairs to examine the knot, which was tied around three separate balustrades. The knot had not been pulled to the base of the bannister, which he found odd given what should have been the weight of a body on it earlier.
He described putting his finger on top of the knot and gently pushing down to see if it would budge. It did, he said, moving about a centimetre or so with minimal pressure applied.
“Our purpose was just to see if the rope would stay where it was if there was pressure on it,” he explained. “At that point, I didn’t believe it would sustain any weight.”
His testimony is expected to resume this afternoon as the trial continues 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.
