WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT
Eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne had an estimated $13,000 worth of methamphetamine scattered about his Remuera home when police arrived on Easter Monday 2021 to investigate the suspicious death of wife Pauline Hanna, jurors learned today as the first phase of his ongoing murder trial neared its end.
Jurors were also told Polkinghorne had been in Sydney – home of high-profile escort Madison Ashton, with whom he is accused of having established a “double life” – over Christmas 2019. He told his wife in a letter that he was attending an Auckland men’s retreat to contemplate the status of their marriage.
Both pieces of disparate information came as the prosecutors called Detective Senior Sergeant Chris Allan, the officer in charge of the investigation. He is expected to be one of the last witnesses before the Crown completes its case in chief. After the Crown closes, control over who testifies next will be turned over to the defence.
Polkinghorne, 71, is accused of having fatally strangled Hanna, 63, inside their Remuera home – possibly while high on methamphetamine – before staging the scene to look like a suicide on the morning of April 5, 2021.
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STORY CONTINUES AFTER LIVE BLOG
Prosecutors have suggested Polkinghorne might have violently lashed out at Hanna as they argued over the hundreds of thousands of dollars he had spent on sex workers in recent years. Financial records show more than $100,000 went to Ashton.
The defence has focused intently on Hanna, described as an overworked healthcare executive with a history of depression and suicidal thoughts who was pushed over the edge by the most stressful work assignment of her life, helping to oversee the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine. The apparent suicide scene was exactly that – a suicide – lawyer Ron Mansfield KC has repeatedly insisted.
The first witness to testify this morning was Detective John Kennedy, who arrested Polkinghorne.
Kennedy, now retired, testified for less than 10 minutes. He recalled meeting with Polkinghorne and his lawyer by appointment at 7.55am on August 16, 2022. The surgeon was read his rights and asked if he wanted to make a statement as he was charged with murder, possession of methamphetamine and possession of a meth pipe.
“He made no comment,” the witness said.
Polkinghorne pleaded guilty to the methamphetamine charges at the start of the trial, but his lawyers have sought to characterise his usage as recreational while the Crown has suggested he had a significant habit.
The rest of the morning was filled with testimony from Detective Allan, the officer in charge. He said that the price of methamphetamine in Auckland at the time of Hanna’s death was about $350 per gram, with “a little bit of a wholesale aspect if you buy in bulk”. Police found just over 37g in the Polkinghorne home, which would put the value at roughly $13,000.
He played for jurors a series of CCTV clips from Polkinghorne’s workplace, Auckland Eye, on the night of Saturday, October 17, 2020. The following Monday morning, a meth pipe was found in a consultation room. The defendant’s lawyer has stringently denied it was his.
The grainy footage showed three people entering at around 8.49pm, one of them – bald, wearing a loud shirt and possibly shorts – resembling the defendant. Co-workers who have also reviewed the footage, although outside the jury’s presence, have indicated it was Polkinghorne. The group leaves about 10 minutes later and Polkinghorne is seen returning an hour after that.
The fisheye footage was barely discernable at the end of the corridor, near the entrance to the room where the meth pipe was found. But the figures could be seen moving left and right between rooms in that general area.
Mansfield later played CCTV clips of his own, showing cleaners and multiple other Auckland Eye employees entering and leaving the premises on Sunday, the day before the pipe was found.
Prosecutors also delved again into a December 2019 incident, alluded to by previous witnesses, in which Hanna was distraught after Polkinghorne vanished over Christmas – reportedly leaving her to lie about his whereabouts to family as they gathered at the couple’s Rings Beach bach in Coromandel. It was around that time that Hanna called her physician, and then a crisis hotline, to report that she was having suicidal thoughts but no plan to enact them.
Jurors last week were shown a letter from Polkinghorne to his wife just prior to the disappearance in which he said he had been feeling “increasingly devoid in the last few months from our relationship” before listing her perceived flaws – including extensive spending in travel and using his “airmiles”. He ended the letter by indicating he was leaving immediately for a “three-day course” in Auckland called “Moving on or Up”, where he planned to contemplate the future of their marriage.
“I don’t know what the outcome of this retreat will be but to be frank without some sort of insight I am sure I will not be able to continue,” he wrote. “If there is a pill to make it easier, don’t worry I would take the bottle!!
“My intention is to return to Rings on the 27th. I will not be contactable until then. The organizers’ of the retreat have agreed I can answer patient’s texts, but other stuff is out of bounds [sic].
“I don’t know where the bucketload of love went, but there you have it.”
But travel records, Detective Allan pointed out, showed Polkinghorne wasn’t at an Auckland retreat during that time. He left New Zealand on a flight to Sydney on December 23 before returning on December 27.
During cross-examination of Allan, Mansfield suggested that police had restricted Polkinghorne from accessing his home for an unnecessarily long time – until midday on April 16, the day after Hanna’s funeral. The home was toured by the investigator, along with the Crown solicitor and an ESR representative while the funeral was taking place.
Police spoke with people at 79 neighbouring properties and businesses and received permission to secretly monitor his calls for the next three weeks amid the investigation, Mansfield noted. The point was one the defence has attempted to hammer home repeatedly throughout the first half of the trial: that police reached an erroneous conclusion about foul play early on and failed to have an open mind about it having been a suicide.
Allan’s cross-examination is expected to continue when the trial resumes 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.
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