WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT
Two people who knew Auckland eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne and wife Pauline Hanna have described scenes of the ophthalmologist being distraught in the immediate aftermath of his wife’s death.
“It was one of the worst conversations I’ve had,” a longtime friend testified today as jurors returned to the High Court at Auckland for the sixth week of Polkinghorne’s high-profile murder trial.
Polkinghorne, now 71, is accused of having fatally strangled his wife of 24 years inside their Remuera home before staging the scene on April 5, 2021, to look like a suicide by hanging.
Prosecutors spend nearly five weeks calling witnesses to support their theory that the surgeon lashed out at his wife while high on methamphetamine, possibly during an argument over his relationship with overseas escort Madison Ashton or the hundreds of thousands of dollars he had spent on her and other sex workers.
The defence, now in its second day of calling witnesses, has suggested repeatedly that Hanna’s death was exactly as it initially seemed – self-harm by someone who suffered long-term depression and was under immense amounts of work stress.
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Today’s first witness, someone in the medical field who has been granted interim name suppression, recounted Hanna talking about her work stress during a dinner at the couple’s Coromandel bach on February 2, 2021, just two months before her death.
“It sounded terrible, the calls she was getting,” he said of her job, which involved helping manage the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine. “The fact she was trying to manage this with one arm tied behind her back – it was very political...
“I know that she was under a lot of stress to do that work.”
The witness said he tried calling Polkinghorne on the day of Hanna’s death but he was busy talking to police at the time. He reached him by telephone the next day. At the end of the “distraught” conversation, the witness said Polkinghorne asked him to be involved in Hanna’s funeral, which he said was a surprise since he didn’t consider himself an especially close friend of the couple but an “honour”.
Sharon Jenkins, a former receptionist at Auckland Eye where Polkinghorne worked, was asked about house-sitting for the couple about six times over several years.
She recalled seeing the defendant one other time in the office after the death of his wife.
“He was obviously very upset and distraught,” she recalled. “He’d obviously been crying.”
Multiple defence witnesses were asked today to describe Polkinghorne’s work ethic, and all provided glowing reviews.
“His patients loved him,” Jenkins said. “He always treated his patients very well.”
If patients needed him over the weekend, he’d be there, she and others said. If they couldn’t afford to pay, the doctor would forgo his fees, they said.
Jenkins said she did notice weight loss and tiredness around 2018.
“I did wonder if he did maybe have cancer or something, because it was quite dramatic,” she said.
Former Auckland Eye operating theatre hostess Leonie Darlington described the defendant as a perfectionist at work who had very high standards.
“His approach to patients was very outstanding – he always put them first,” Darlington said.
Former Auckland Eye nurse Jillian Blakely had similar praise, adding that he could get “a bit cheeky” in the operating room during stressful situations if he didn’t have silence. But he always thanked the employees afterwards and always put patients at ease, she said.
It would have taken about 15 years of medical training for Polkinghorne to have reached his medical specialty, the witness with name suppression said. While other ophthalmologists might become senior lecturers, Polkinghorne was somewhat rare in that he had earned the higher position of associate professor at Auckland University, he said.
None of the witnesses recalled having ever seen the surgeon intoxicated on drugs.
Under cross-examination, the witness with name suppression said he was surprised to learn of drug use at all, much less the defendant having the equivalent of 370 doses of methamphetamine in his home. He was also surprised to hear of his friend’s relationship with Ashton, the Sydney sex worker.
“I found out about that about the same time as everyone else in Auckland,” he said.
Two witnesses were asked today to discuss the couple’s finances.
One served as a trustee on the Hanna Polkinghorne Trust, a bank account that had been referred to repeatedly during testimony from a forensic accountant who had been called by the Crown. It was suggested by prosecutors that the sale of a $1 million home previously belonging to Hanna had been put into the trust before being drained over the course of a year, with some of the money going to accounts controlled solely by Polkinghorne and used to pay sex workers.
The witness said he became a trustee around 2000 but had a hands-off approach, knowing very little about how the money was spent. He said saw himself mostly to serve as a referee if needed, which it never was. Hanna was involved in the account and would sometimes have him sign papers, he recalled.
Tony Glucina, an investment advisor at JBWere, described investing $500,000 from the home sale for the couple, with the goal of providing income after retirement. Polkinghorne was the primary investor so he was the person who he dealt with, he said. Had Hanna called to check on the investments, he legally couldn’t have given her any information without checking in with Polkinghorne first, he said. But she never did call, he said.
Glucina also recalled a dinner with the couple at their Coromandel bach in the months before Hanna’s death, and also recalled leaving with the impression that Hanna was suffering work stress. He and his partner noticed and discussed afterwards that Hanna hadn’t touched her three-course meal, he said.
Polkinghorne and Hanna had discussed a stuff-up involving “Covid protection equipment” that was coming to light, he recalled.
“She was pretty stressed at that time,” he said, explaining that it wasn’t so much an observation as much as the couple’s own words that left him with that impression. “There was a lot of discussion about that from them both.”
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.
