The grainy CCTV footage, filmed from afar, showed Hanna, 63, unloading items from her red ute at a South Auckland rubbish tip on April 4, 2021, the day before she was found dead at the couple’s Remuera home.
Defence lawyer Ron Mansfield KC played the video during a third day of questioning Detective Christian Iogha. Mansfield pointed out to jurors that Hanna appeared to be using orange rope to secure items to her vehicle. The Crown didn’t dispute the fact or put any significance on it, asking no follow-up questions about it after the video was played.
Police found two orange ropes near Hanna’s body when they responded to their home the next morning. Polkinghorne told police he had discovered that his wife hung herself with the rope after going downstairs that morning to make her breakfast.
But throughout the first week of what is expected to be a six-week trial, the Crown has suggested the suicide report was all a charade. Polkinghorne, now 71, is accused of having fatally strangled his wife – possibly while high on methamphetamine and during an argument about finances or the money he had spent on prostitutes – before staging the scene to look like suicide.
There has been an intense focus on the orange rope found at the scene in recent days, with two detectives explaining how the rope knotted to an upstairs bannister did not appear tight enough to support a person’s weight. It was the first indication, they testified, that the death might be suspicious. The Crown also called a rope expert from Canada who agreed the knots would not have supported the weight of a person in the position police found them in.
Philip Polkinghorne appears in the dock charged with the murder of his wife Pauline Hanna. Photo / Michael Craig
The defence, however, has suggested that Polkinghorne gave a credible explanation to police from the get-go. After discovering his wife’s body, he ran upstairs to “undo” the rope, he said in police statements. So the knot that was seen by police and later analysed by the expert would have been different when Hanna’s body was discovered, Mansfield has suggested.
Detective Iogha’s testimony today was marred by several momentary power cuts that caused lengthy delays after courtroom equipment had to reboot. Other areas outside the courthouse had also been hit with the power cuts, Justice Graham Lang assured the jury.
The detective was followed on Friday afternoon by the day’s only other witness: forensic scientist Fiona Matheson, who spent days examining evidence at the Polkinghorne home.
She explained to jurors how she tested for blood and took swabs for DNA throughout the large four-bedroom, four-bathroom house. Most of the tests came back negative, but probable blood was found near the drain in the laundry room sink and near the drain of the bathroom next to the messy room where Hanna was reported to have slept the night before. There was also a bloodstain on the corner of the bed Hanna was reported to have slept in. The indoor and outdoor handles of a kitchen door leading to the couple’s backyard also tested possible for probable blood, as did various buttons on the phone Polkinghorne used to call 111.
Retired eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne is on trial for murder in the High Court at Auckland, accused of strangling wife Pauline Hanna inside their Remuera home and staging it to look like a suicide. Photo / Michael Craig
DNA testing results, which might shed more light on who the blood belonged to, have not yet been explained to jurors.
But from the outset of the trial, prosecutors have tried to temper expectations about the forensic scientist testimony from Matheson and others expected to be called next week.
“Scientists from the Institute of Environmental Science and Research, they’ll come along and give evidence about the thing that they carried out in the house – samples they took and things,” Crown Solicitor Alysha McClintock explained during her opening address on Monday. “They tested... for blood and things like that within the house, and look, much of that evidence didn’t necessarily reveal anything that Crown relies on.
“But it is important for you to know what testing was done, and you need to know what wasn’t found just as much as you need to know what was found. It’s part of the assessment.”
Mathseon also explained to jurors how the forensic science team made an eerily realistic 3D video of the interior of the house, which was played in court earlier in the week. The video was the result of about 100 separate scans, each taking about 10 minutes to complete, over the course of several days.
Testimony ended about 4pm on Friday, giving jurors an early start to the weekend before returning on Monday morning, at which point the defence’s cross-examination of Matheson is expected to begin.
Justice Lang emphasised to jurors not to discuss the case with anyone, or even to reveal their jury service to anyone who doesn’t need to know.
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.
