Day 3 of the coronial inquiry into the undetermined death of Pauline Hanna, wife of the most famous but perhaps least celebrated eye surgeon in New Zealand ophthalmological history, Dr Philip Polkinghorne, very properly tried to confine itself to the room or rooms where the death, a suspected suicidal or alleged homicide, occurred on the night of April 4, 2021, or sometime in the quiet, pre-dawn hours of April 5, Easter Monday.
Everything else has been set aside. No one needs to know about Polkinghorne’s hooker habits. Only the last 24 hours of a 63-year-old woman’s life at her Ōrākei home, and the immediate aftermath, well short of 24 hours.
The coroners court hearing in Newmarket is a shorter, more studious version of the sprawling High Court trial in the winter of 2024 when Polkinghorne was found not guilty of his wife’s murder. The trial was a read-all-about-it tabloid sensation. I had to guard my seat on the press bench like a tiger. Every hack wanted in; the last thing I remember in the chaos outside the court after the verdict was TV wallah Michael Morrah swanning around in a beautiful caramel knee-length coat.
I was the last ghoul left sitting at the press bench on Wednesday afternoon. Everyone else had scarpered, even documentary maker Mark McNeill, a chatterbox who adores company. The coronial hearing lacks sensationalism. It is solely concerned with the cause of death. Its options are whether it was self-inflicted, or, on the balance of probabilities, whether it was, you know, not self-inflicted. Polkinghorne is in attendance at the hearing and looks really good these days, fit and free.
We haven’t talked. He was like a kind of chatty work colleague during the High Court trial. It was mainly small talk—the weather, current events, pies—but now and then he was moved to vent about the trial itself. “Just you wait,” he seethed one day, after hours and hours of the Crown telling the jury about his considerable fondness for the company of sex workers, “for the science!” It was a prophecy that came to pass. Science, surely, set him free. The case against him was largely circumstantial and also largely enjoyable but it came down to the pathology, and the forensic evidence failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he killed his wife.
No one has to wait long for science at the hearing. Evidence was heard from three police officers who attended the scene at the $3m white geometric pile overlooking Ōrākei basin. Much of their testimony concerned intimate details of Pauline’s death which the media are prohibited from reporting as per Section 71 of the Coroners Act. But that still left a great deal of evidence that can be openly reported and was very interesting, very interesting indeed; and much of it was a reminder of why the High Court jury reached its verdict of not guilty.
Detective Inspector Chris Allan was an officer in charge of the murder investigation. He was cross-examined by Polkinghorne’s lawyer Ron Mansfield on Wednesday morning. With his nose now and then dipped in a brown paper feedbag of nuts, and his ritual of scoffing an apple in court, he has a docile, horsey kind of demeanour. In cross-exam, he has one setting: aggression. He went at DI Allan, whose occasional setting was to gabble and yammer at length. Asked what time he got to the house in Ōrākei after Polkinghorne called 111, he replied, “The bottom half of the 9 o’clock hour.”
Coroner Tania Tetitaha told the court on Monday that it was her task to establish when, where, what and how were the circumstances of Pauline’s death. Mansfield was all good with that. It gave him the opportunity to closely question DI Allan about one aspect of evidence that by and by, slowly and steadily, eroded the police theory that after Polkinghorne killed Pauline, he acted out a ghastly charade of staging it to look like death by suicide.
Mansfield: The sheet and duvet that was found downstairs covering Mrs Polkinghorne when the police arrived, that was tested, wasn’t it, to see whether it had been used in some way to carry or drag her body from the upstairs bedroom?
DI Allan: I believe it was examined.
Mansfield: For what actual purpose?
DI Allan: That is a matter for Ms [ESR scientist, Fiona] Matheson to probably comment on.
Mansfield: But the police were interested, weren’t they, in whether the duvet and the sheet might have been used to move her body from upstairs to the downstairs area?
DI Allan: Yes.
Mansfield: And that examination revealed nothing to suggest that the duvet and the sheet had been used to move her from upstairs to the downstairs area, either by her being carried in it or her being dragged while using it, correct?
DI Allan: I think it’s probably clear that it was inconclusive whether or not that was the case or not. I don’t believe that there was any specific forensic evidence that would have supported one way or another.
Mansfield: Well, it was either used in that way or it wasn’t. Let’s see if we can get past this. The police were looking for blood on the sheet or the duvet?
DI Allan: Yes.
Mansfield: Police were looking for clumps of hair that might be on the sheet of the duvet?
DI Allan: I believe so.
Mansfield: And the police were looking to see whether there was any damage to the sheet or the duvet that might have been indicative of whether it had been used directly to wrap her or to carry her or to drag her from the upstairs room. Correct?
DI Allan: Yes.
Mansfield: There was no such evidence?
DI Allan: I don’t believe so.
Mansfield: We will hear evidence that through the forensic autopsy that was conducted, Ms Hanna had a number of hairclips in her hair. Are you aware of that?
DI Allan: I believe she was someone that would regularly use hairclips.
Mansfield: And it seems there was no dislodged hairclips found in the bedding or within the bedroom. In fact, her hairclips remained in her hair at the time of the forensic examination.
DI Allan: Correct.
Mansfield: So just to round it off, there was no forensic evidence identified by the police in the bedroom, or the stairway going down to where she was found, that was indicative of an assault or a struggle?
DI Allan: No.
Mansfield: Well, that’s all I’ve got for you. Thank you very much.
The detective was free to go. I looked at my watch. It was the bottom half of the 11 o’clock hour.
