WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT
The wife of Auckland eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne had been dead for just over three weeks when Auckland and Christchurch detectives showed up at a lavish Mt Cook chalet where he was staying to execute a search warrant.
Polkinghorne came to the door alongside Australian sex worker Madison Ashton, whose phones police were after.
The scene, painted for jurors this morning in the second week of Polkinghorne’s six-week Auckland High Court murder trial, provided a stark contrast to the two prior witnesses - both of whom said Polkinghorne seemed devastated in the immediate aftermath of Pauline Hanna’s death.
Polkinghorne, 71, is accused of having fatally strangled Hanna, 63, inside their Remuera home some time over the long Easter weekend in 2021 before staging the scene to look like a suicide.
A significant part of the Crown’s circumstantial case against him is that he had been leading a double life - spending large amounts of money on sex workers, Ashton in particular.
The defence, meanwhile, has contended the couple had a happy “open” relationship and that Hanna’s history of depression was responsible for her death rather than foul play.
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Detective Sergeant Lisa Anderson’s description of the Mt Cook search warrant execution came amid a quick succession of witnesses today as the Crown case made an abrupt shift from the scene examination evidence that dominated the first seven days of testimony.
The Auckland-based investigator said she had received information that Polkinghorne was staying in the Matariki Room at Mt Cook Lakeside Retreat when she travelled there to execute the search warrant. She described Ashton as being co-operative, to a point.
The escort told officers where two of her phones were - one personal and one she said was for work. But she then declined to give the passwords for the phones, as was required under the Search and Surveillance Act, the detective said.
The testimony was brief. The witness did not explain why the phones were important to the investigation or delve into Ashton’s career.
The Crown, however, described Ashton as a sex worker during last week’s opening address. She is expected to testify later in the trial.
Spending a longer period in the witness box this morning was Barry Payne, the couple’s longtime personal trainer. He had spent separate back-to-back one-hour sessions with Polkinghorne and Hanna on Saturday, April 3, two days before Hanna’s body was found, and had been about to leave the house for another session on Monday when he learned of her death.
“She’s gone. She’s dead. She’s gone,” he recalled Polkinghorne telling him in a call that morning.
Payne said he didn’t take it seriously, thinking the chronically late Hanna might have slept in, but then he heard the anguish in the defendant’s voice.
“Philip was pretty distraught at that time,” he explained, adding that he himself was “a stunned mullet” and didn’t know what to say.
“What happened?” the trainer recalled asking after a pause.
But Polkinghorne didn’t immediately say, just repeating, “She’s gone,” Payne recalled.
Payne said he considered both Polkinghorne and Hanna friends, but only in a professional capacity as they worked out with him two to three times per week.
He would sometimes see tiffs between the two, but nothing out of the ordinary from other couples he worked with, he said, adding that nothing stood out as unusual on the Saturday before Hanna’s death.
He described Pokinghorne as a friendly client who took his workouts seriously.
The surgeon was never manic, distracted or acting like a “weirdo”, he said with a laugh under cross-examination, contrasting the testimony a day earlier from a longtime friend of the couple who said he suspected Polkinghorne was on drugs.
Hanna, he said, seemed to be the more stressed of the two.
“She once mentioned that she thought Philip had a girlfriend,” Payne said, adding that he did not engage her further on the topic because it wasn’t his business. “I ignored it.”
The healthcare administrator sometimes seemed pre-occupied with work, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, he said. She was always meticulously put together, so “haggard” wasn’t the right word, but she did seem “run down a lot”, he said.
Despite that, he added, he didn’t notice any signs of depression.
“I’m sure she was a bit grumpy some days - probably some dispute going on - but never breaking down,” he said.
His testimony was followed later in the morning with a statement from John Norton, a friend of the couple who has since died. He had known the couple for years after his partner went to Polkinghorne for treatment, he explained, and had even attended the couple’s wedding.
On the evening before her body was found, Hanna showed up at Norton’s home unannounced with lamb shanks.
The couple had been going through health issues lately and it had been the second time Hanna had brought by a meal, but it was unusual for her to stop by without calling first, he said.
She only stayed for a minute, not having been invited to stay for dinner because Norton and his partner had already eaten, he recalled.
But during that time her behaviour did not seem unusual and he saw no cut on the bridge of her nose, which investigators would note the following morning when her body was found.
“She seemed happy,” he said, describing her as her usual self: “Glamourous, beautiful and bubbly”.
Norton met with Polkinghorne the day after Hanna’s death.
“He was devastated,” the witness recalled. “He adored her.”
Prosecutors also called two residents of a small Northcote Point apartment complex who recalled seeing Polkinghorne frequently visit a neighbour who they believed to be a sex worker.
His car was quite noticeable, said former police officer turned personal trainer Rob Masters.
It was a white Mercedes with a registration plate reading RETINA.
Masters said he would see Polkinghorne visit the apartment one to three times per week, while neighbour Myra Riddington estimated it to be up to four times per week.
The visits lasted more than a year, with Polkinghorne twice showing up to body corporate meetings to advocate for her.
The surgeon’s visits to the property stood out among the neighbour’s other male visitors, Riddington said, describing the defendant as a “terrible driver” whose plate she memorised after he nearly ran into her once.
“He’s a man who likes to stand out,” she said. “He came with champagne and gifts for her.”
Defence lawyer Ron Mansfield KC noted that his client knew the resident he visited, known as Rachel or Alaria, after he treated her son. During cross-examination of the witnesses, Mansfield suggested the visits were the result of a friendship.
The Crown is expected to continue calling witnesses 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.
