All eyes strayed to the tiny figure of Dr Philip Polkinghorne at the High Court of Auckland today in the opening day of a murder trial that the tattered, battered remains of thelegacy media has been waiting for, with details so immediately lurid and allegedly diabolical that it felt like a case from the golden age of tabloid journalism - it was as though the 19th Century had come calling, inky and horrified and gothic. This is going to be a classic trial, one for the ages. It is set down for six weeks. The Crown have signalled it will devote quite a lot of time wanting to present Polkinghorne to the jury as some sort of malignant sex dwarf.
I nearly stepped over him in Courtroom 11 in the morning. He doesn’t take up much room and I hadn’t noticed him, or knew who he was until he stood in front of the jury and was asked how he pleaded to the charge of murdering his wife Pauline Hanna on Easter Monday, April 5, 2021, at their big white house in expensive Remuera. “Not,” he said, with some force, “guilty.” And then he took his place behind his lawyer, the inevitable Ron Mansfield KC. Polkinghorne is 71. He looks fit, spritely, a nimble presence in a little trim suit and a pair of kooky polka-dot socks.
Crown prosecutor Alysha McClintock addressed the jury for two hours. In essence she cancelled Polkinghorne, exiled him from decent society. She said he was a fiend for methamphetamine. She said he spent considerable sums of money on hookers. She said Pauline agreed to threesomes to please him but only did so reluctantly. She said he killed his wife, strangled her, and staged it to look like she had hanged herself.
She said the court would hear from witnesses who remembered Pauline Hanna had a strange euphemism for Polkinghorne’s infidelities: she called them his “malfunctions”. According to McClintock, he constantly malfunctioned; he was “consumed” with sex, “obsessed” with sex, demanding threesomes, demanding to have sex with Pauline every day. His methamphetamine use, she suggested, was similarly chronic.
Lurid, but not especially novel; sex and drugs are commonly available pleasures. The difference in the trial of Dr Philip Polkinghorne is wealth. Wealth is the least commonly available pleasure and it forms the exciting, rarefied atmosphere of the trial. McClintock’s opening address included the unusual tactic of showing images on a big screen. The courtroom ogled at pictures of the Polkinghorne home in Upland Rd, four bedrooms, four bathrooms, with splendid views of the Orakei Basin. The rich are different than you and I. They sleep in separate bedrooms. One image showed Pauline’s bedroom, the duvet pulled on to the floor, an ottoman on its side. Evidence, said McClintock, of a struggle.
Pauline Hanna and Philip Polkinghorne at an event in December 2018. Photo / Norrie Montgomery
“There is no evidence of an argument,” Mansfield told the jury. “No evidence of any assault. No evidence that Dr Polkinghorne used methamphetamine that night.” What had happened, he said, is exactly what Polkinghorne said had happened in the 111 call that was played in court. Polkinghorne held his head in his hands as his squeaky voice filled the courtroom: “My wife’s hung herself.” The operator asked him to cut her down. He returned to the phone about a minute later, and said, “You there? She’s dead.”
Mansfield’s version of their marriage is that it was fine. It was an open relationship. They both enjoyed threesomes. “You will hear evidence their relationship wasn’t perfect. I don’t know the perfect relationship, and I’m sure you’re much the same.” The imperfect jury stared back at him. Later, though, he said, “Their relationship was perfectly happy.”
He said she suffered mental health issues, and was on medication for depression. “She was a woman who was prone to depression and thoughts of taking her own life, and had tried before.”
Murder, or suicide; happy threesomes, or reluctant threesomes; a methamphetamine freak, or a casual smoker of the drug; a miserable and dysfunctional marriage falling apart in a two-level house with splendid views, or, as Mansfield put it, “Dr Polkinghorne loved his wife, and she loved him.” Either way, the same ghastly result. Another of the images shown to the jury was a photo of Pauline’s body beneath a duvet in the front entrance of the Upland Rd house. Polkinghorne, on the 111 call: “She’s cold.”
