“I have tried to bring up with Philip but he tells me he hasn’t got time to go over the negative tonight = he has enough. I must stand on my own two feet but I don’t know today if I have two feet or what they look like.
“So I have had 3 glasses of wine and a beautiful dinner thanks to PJP - but I don’t know what to do with myself.. So I will go to bed and not sleep. V. unusual for me - and it builds up - who knows what might follow. Have to tell someone even if no- one but God ever sees this.”
The email, which had not been included in the Crown evidence, was retrieved from Hanna’s device earlier this winter by a defence-hired Australian IT expert who described himself as an “ethical hacker” for his ability to gain access to client devices.
It was revealed for the first time today as defence lawyer Ron Mansfield KC continued to call witnesses in the seventh week of the eye surgeon’s high-profile Auckland High Court 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. Prosecutors have presented a circumstantial case focusing on the defendant’s methamphetamine use, his significant spending on sex workers and alleged serious relationship with Sydney escort Madison Ashton, who he traded intimate messages with shortly after his wife’s death. They’ve also called two witnesses who said Hanna made an outcry about being strangled by her husband in 2020.
The defence has argued consistently that Hanna, 63, had struggled with long-term depression, elevated work stress due to her job helping to roll out the Covid-19 vaccine and a documented history of suicidal ideation. Her “cocktail” of alcohol, sleeping pills, anti-depressants and weight-loss drugs could have increased her risk of self-harm, the lawyers have said.
Atakan Shahho, who has run an IT company out of Australia since 1988, told jurors today that he was able to hack into Hanna’s laptop after determining her password. He told jurors it allowed him to retrieve documents, including some from the cloud, that would not have been available to police through the common data extraction programmes used by law enforcement.
Among them was the haunting letter from Hanna to herself, sent at 8.11pm on April 14, 2020.
Polkinghorne grabbed handfuls of tissues as it was read aloud by his lawyer. He put his hands over his eyes and bowed his head towards the row of hard wooden desks that sit between his lawyer and the press bench - where he has sat for the duration of the trial so far. His weeping was muffled but distinct as his lawyer continued to quiz the witness.
Mansfield also read aloud an email that has been referred to repeatedly by the defence through the trial, written by Hanna one week before her death.
“I am so sorry I have been so remote and not even phoned - it is not because I don’t miss and love you,” she wrote in an email to Polkinghorne’s adult son and his wife, who lived in the UK. “My life is insane and I do not know what day it is sometimes. I (reluctantly) took this role as Head of Logistics for Vaccine.
“I did not want to.
“But Philip was so proud of me when Outbreak happened, I thought he would be proud of this - which I guess he is - but it is incredibly difficult and lonely.”
During cross-examination of Shahho today, Crown solicitor Alysha McClintock noted that Hanna’s April 2020 email to herself had not been produced by the defence during the testimony of the police officer who also scoured Hanna’s laptop. She noted that there were odd font sizes in the email and her signature appeared to be a different colour than other emails. None of that was especially out of the ordinary, the defence witness replied.
Jurors also heard today from a fourth forensic pathologist, the second one to be called by the defence.
“I would have given the cause of death as hanging,” Dr Christopher Milroy, a University of Ottawa professor who had been a forensic pathologist for over three decades, told jurors via audio-video link from Canada.
His testimony now brings the tally to two Crown pathologists who said there wasn’t enough information to determine whether Hanna’s neck compression death was suicide or homicide and two defence pathologists who said they reached a non-homicidal hanging conclusion.
“Although the pathology is important, there are other circumstances that come into the question, right?” McClintock later asked the expert, to which he agreed.
“I’m quite aware I’m not the trier of fact,” he said. “The trier of fact is the jury, and they have to put everything together - not just the pathology information... I haven’t heard all the evidence.”
The trial, before Justice Graham Lang, is expected to resume later than usual tomorrow morning to accommodate a juror’s schedule. Deliberations are expected to begin next week.
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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.
