Retired eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne has pleaded not guilty to murdering wife Pauline Hanna in 2021.
The Crown alleges Polkinghorne, 71, strangled his wife and staged her death to look like a suicide at their Remuera home but the defence says there is no evidence of a homicide.
Polkinghorne fatigue is a thing, an exhaustion that began to set in around about Wednesday during week four of the murder trial of Dr Philip Polkinghorne.
You can only take so many revelationsabout a wealthy Remuera ophthalmologist who enjoyed the relatively blameless recreations of smoking methamphetamine and having sex with hookers until, police say, he lost control and killed his wife Pauline, then had the nerve and the expertise to stage her death as a suicide.
We feel the drag of it in courtroom 13, where Dr Polkinghorne - nicknamed affectionately once upon a time as “Polk”, sometimes “Polky” - sits day after day wearing never-repeated, mad socks (Friday: dramatic aqua stripes) and staring straight ahead with his resting face set in a kind of gormless expression, the lower lip sticking out. The drag of it is not contained to court. The nation feels it. The nation is over it. The nation wants it done.
I know what you’re thinking. Everyone thinks it. Some of the nation come up to me on the street and say (this is a precis of their monologues), “Are you etc etc? Love your Polky stories! Anyway, he’s obviously [verdict redacted].” But they are only going on the broad outlines of a shockorific trial.
The jury has heard every little thing. His defence has been vigorously argued. Who better suited to the most sensational trial in modern New Zealand history than Ron Mansfield KC? David Jones KC is brilliant, but his posh bearing might send the wrong message of rich white privilege; Nick Chisnall KC is the smartest man in the room, but he is too pure of heart for a case so sordid. Mansfield - a street fighter who never stops working, who maintains a virtuous diet of apples and almonds but his appearance these past four weeks seems to have got more, shall we say, well-rounded - was made for Polky.
The defence states Pauline hanged herself. A braided belt is placed in court as an exhibit, but not the orange nylon rope it was attached to, according to Polkinghorne, whose version of events is that he woke up in their Remuera house on the morning of April 5, 2021, went downstairs, and found her body slumped on a chair.
It was Easter Monday. The Crown view what happened as a ghastly kind of resurrection, inasmuch they allege he took the body down from the cross (an upstairs bedroom) to manipulate in a different position, before placing it in a shroud (Polkinghorne covered her with a duvet taken off a drying rail). Yeah. Jesus wept.
Much of the Crown evidence has not gone anywhere near the scene of the alleged crime. Week four heard evidence of Polk behaving in a volatile manner at his work offices, of Polk running up quite a large bill for services rendered by sex workers (he bought one of them a washing machine!), of Polk making a sex tape with Australian escort Madison Ashton.
Friday’s evidence, though, was centred exactly at the scene of the alleged crime; computer and phone searches revealed images of Ashton naked at his Remuera home, and the two of them exchanging cheerful WhatsApp banter in the hours and days after Pauline’s death. Eg, she sent him a link to an image of herself in a swimsuit, and making slow-cooked lamb shanks for her chihuahuas, at 4pm that Easter Monday of Pauline’s death.
Pauline Hanna and Philip Polkinghorne at an event in December 2018. Photo / Norrie Montgomery
Polky, a short man, 71, has constantly been presented by the Crown throughout his trial as a repulsive sex gnome. The court has heard from 55 witnesses. The court has suffered some terribly long cross-examinations. The court has got smaller, the walls are closing in; the same familiar faces, gormless Polk, Kim Baker-Wilson from TVNZ with his long, beautiful fingers, the nice lady from Whangārei who recently moved to Ponsonby and didn’t know anyone in Auckland but has now made good friends with others who sit in the public gallery ….
I love it, I weary of it, I measure my stamina in the quality of the packed lunches I bring to court. On the opening day of week one, a rich and delicious Moroccan fish stew between sandwich bread. On Friday, day 19, a half-eaten hotdog.
You can have too much Polk. But someone else has intruded on his murder trial. Something else worked its way into week four. More than mere fatigue, there was the sound and texture of heartbreak. The court heard from Pauline.
Actually the court heard from Pauline in week two, on that amazing phone recording of her at a dinner with family in Hawke’s Bay. It was extraordinarily personal. She openly discussed how unhappy she was being married to “a sex fiend”. But even then she held back, deflected, kept up a brave front: “Please don’t hate Philip. He is a good man. He is going through a lot of stress … I’m safe, darling. I’m safe.”
Her brother Bruce is heard saying, “You’re one of us.”
A woman says, “Your brother has got your back.”
“I know that,” Pauline says.
“You should know that,” Bruce says.
“I know I can come home here,” Pauline says. “I know that.”
This is someone surrounded by a close, loving family, who give her the support she needs, tell her she isn’t alone. She sounded strong, comforted.
On Thursday this week, Pauline spoke to the court again, but this time in an email, and the tone was completely different. Its author was broken, alone. She had gone to pieces.
It was a letter to Polkinghorne when they were discussing divorce or separation in the summer of 2020; she scurries around the page, pleading, begging, in thrall to her lord and master.
“I have never been dirty but take on board your criticism about my handling of food … I take my dishes down to the dishwasher in the morning … I do shop for groceries, I do shop for things for the house, I do get flowers etc to make it nice ... I don’t wear body suits, I don’t pick up the glasses by their upper rim etc etc as you keep criticising me.”
Philip Polkinghorne appears in the High Court at Auckland. Photo / Jason Oxenham
What’s with the bodysuits? What’s with all his critiques, what’s with all her craven attempts to please him? “The heart just sulks and it whines and remains a child”, sang the great Tracy Thorn from Everything But The Girl. So much of The King vs Polkinghorne is a love story gone bad the worst way. Pauline loved him with all her heart.
Her letter was read out in court by Madeleine Palmer, a constable training to be a detective. She is the only person to appear in court who is smaller than Polkinghorne. She looked to be in her 20s, and wore her hair in a ponytail.
Just about everyone in her generation speaks with a vocal fry but it gave her reading a strange power; it was as though her voice was breaking, catching on jags of raw emotion, as she read from Pauline’s heartbreaking letter. It was like a torch ballad. Tracy Thorn could scarcely have sung it with more feeling.
The constable also read from Polkinghorne’s letter to Pauline. Even if she had tried to, Palmer couldn’t have made the letter sound like a cry from the heart. Its opening sentence read so badly composed and impersonal it was like something written by ChatGPT: “Dearest Pauline, I have felt increasing devoid in the last few months from our relationship.”
What? And this awful Grinchy command: “For many years you have asked what I want for Christmas and my stock answer has been to not ask me to borrow money from me.” Also: “In 25 years I don’t think you have ever paid for the rates, water bill, insurance etc.” The water bill! Polky, that old romantic.
One afternoon in week four, after the Crown produced evidence of the staggering sums of money that the accused had transferred to sex workers, the judge called for a tea break. The jury stood up. As they filed past Polkinghorne, he kept his head down.
