Philip Polkinghorne’s lawyer called two pathologists who believe the circumstances of Pauline Hanna’s death suggest she committed suicide. Video / Corey Fleming
Opinion by Steve Braunias
Steve Braunias is a senior writer for the New Zealand Herald.
Retired eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne has pleaded not guilty to murdering his 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.
Done. All over, the last little drops of evidence squeezed out at 12.26pm on Friday in the murder trial of Dr Philip Polkinghorne, on day 31 of an epic seven-week ordeal at theHigh Court at Auckland, that bottomless well of pain.
“As it pleases the court,” said Ron Mansfield KC, even before his final witness left courtroom 11, “that is the defence for Dr Polkinghorne.” It pleased the court very much. Everyone could go home.
Everyone will return at 10am on Monday for the closing address of Crown prosecutor Alysha McClintock. Members of the public wishing to attend this day-long last crucial act in the case against Polkinghorne are advised to get in early to take their place in the queue behind the velvet rope outside courtroom 11. The public gallery has been full throughout the trial and Monday is surely going to attract a record audience at this medieval pageant.
McClintock will play a kind of highlights reel of circumstantial evidence presented these past seven weeks at a trial that has taken hold of New Zealand like a fever dream – 2024, year of the Polkinghorne pandemic, pricking the public epidermis and working its way inside the bloodstream of our island history.
We will not soon forget it. It’s the one about an ophthalmologist (on $750,000 a year) accused of killing his wife (on meds for depression, for sleep, for weight loss) and then positioning her body (on a chair, with a belt twisted around her neck) in a gross charade of suicide. Pauline Hanna died on April 5, 2021. She was 63. Polkinghorne called 111 from his landline and reported she had hanged herself.
The 111 call was played in court on day one of the trial, Monday, July 29, back when New Zealand lay white and limp in the grip of winter. Auckland has always fancied itself as California. It never rains in Cal and seldom so much as drizzled these past seven weeks on the isthmus, as interested parties travelled across Auckland as well as coming in from Havelock North, Raglan and Whangārei to attend the trial.
Families of the deceased often set up a kind of vigil at a murder trials and Hanna’s brother Bruce never missed a day. Other onlookers came to peer at the petite, pink-faced Polkinghorne, 71, and hear evidence of his satyriasis (the male version of nymphomania – strange how you never hear much about it) and his alleged fondness for smoking methamphetamine from a variety of glass pipes, one emblazoned with the legend SWEET PUFF.
So much sex, and so many drugs, and rock ’n’ roll in the shape of evidence about Mr and Mrs Polkinghorne booking tickets through the Northern Club to see Crowded House. So not very rock ’n’ roll. But the court heard much about the frantic pace of their lifestyle, the long working hours, the regular workouts with their personal trainer Baz, the constant need to dry clean their professional armours (average annual spend at Regal Drycleaning: $8000).
Busy people, busily stressed out of their minds. He felt the eye clinic he co-founded was screwing him out of a decent retirement package (“He is devastated and gutted that after 30 years he is in this position,” Hanna wrote in an email presented in court), she was in charge of the Counties Manukau DHB vaccine response to Covid (“I reluctantly took this role … It is incredibly difficult and lonely … My life is insane”).
Philip Polkinghorne at his trial in the High Court at Auckland. Photo / Jason Oxenham
But they had each other. Didn’t they? They sat at home and watched Netflix at night, and by day they sat on the patio and photographed a native wood pigeon in the trees. They shopped at Farro. They dined at Morrells. He kept his appointments with sex workers; she knew of his long history, and had joined him for group sex.
He was maintaining an especially close relationship with Sydney sex worker Madison Ashton; he travelled to Sydney at Christmas 2019, but told Hanna he was at a kind of wellness retreat and would not be answering his phone. Three weeks after the funeral, he flew Ashton for a rendezvous at a hotel in Mt Cook. She was worried it might be in the wild. He assured her it was posh. She messaged him: “I love the fact that rural NZ isn’t bursting with critters and things that can kill you.”
The trial had a lacuna, that lovely Latin word for something missing, a gap, a void: Madison Ashton. She was on the witness list. She was due to appear for the Crown. She might have given evidence that had a profound impact on the trial – but she did not come to court.
There were some long, dull days in courtroom 11 – Mansfield is a stranger to the succinct cross-exam – but media attention never flagged, this reporter kept his spirits up by eating a range of delicious home-made dishes, and the public never tired of the latest instalments that created the Legend of Polky.
Many murder trials are the bad deeds of ferals. A trial for attempted murder was held at another courtroom at the High Court at Auckland this month; like the Polkinghorne case, it centred on an incident in Remuera, but at a less salubrious address – the Remuera Motor Lodge and Campground, $130 per night, caravan sites available.
Pauline Hanna and Philip Polkinghorne at an event in December 2018. Photo / Norrie Montgomery
I called into sentencing on Tuesday. The accused had changed his plea to guilty. He stabbed a man in the head, neck, and back. The court was informed he was a direct descendant of King Arthur, Mary, and Jesus. He sat in court wearing a little blue yarmulke on top of his wild-haired head. He was duly given a hybrid sentence of eight years in prison and the Mason Clinic.
Anyway, who among us can relate to any of that tale of ordinary madness? That’s the thing with the Polkinghorne trial: they were executive class, but every white-collar schnook can relate to them, with their busy schedules, their lifestyle of pinot and Netflix, their overwhelming whiteness. The only thing that would have made the trial better was if the accused was a lawyer.
Seven weeks of an Auckland tragedy, seven weeks of evidence, ending on Friday with the final two defence witnesses, both experts on suicide. University of Auckland professor and psychiatrist David Menkes sloped in wearing what looked like a velvet smoking jacket.
Dr Susan Hetrick, principal clinical adviser to the Ministry of Health’s Suicide Prevention Office, strode into the witness box in a purple trouser suit. She strode out, a purple cloud scudding across the courtroom, as Mansfield informed Justice Graham Lang the defence henceforth rests.
The judge turned to the jury. “You have heard a vast morass of evidence,” he said. “But please don’t come to any conclusions. Mull over by all means what you’ve heard. We have reached the most critical point of the trial.”
And with that he bid them a good weekend. They left; the public gallery emptied; lawyers and media packed up to leave. The trial is at a knife edge. The suspense has built and built and built. But on Friday, in courtroom 11, there was nothing to do but go home, and wait.
