Day 9 of the constantly interrupted coronial inquiry into the as yet unexplained death of Remuera woman Pauline Hanna was filled with sex, drugs, alcohol, a great many tears, and quite a few inconsistencies in evidence which may or may not be regarded as deeply suspicious—the usual, really. This is an intrigue that keeps circling back on itself in a kind of whirlpool of intrigue. It could go on forever. It certainly feels like it as proceedings continue in a Newmarket courtroom.
But Coroner Tania Tetitaha offered hope at the close of Thursday’s hearing. “I would prefer,” she said, “to deal with the matter before the end of the year”. It was exciting to imagine an end to this long, tragic case, which began with the end of Pauline’s life. She died on April 5, 2021. Her husband Dr Philip Polkinghorne called it in as a suicide. Police arrived at their Ōrākei house and immediately smelled a rat. The rat was the furry little figure of Polkinghorne, an eye surgeon who was charged with murder. A jury found him not guilty. Pauline’s death is now for the coroner to determine.
Before he was charged, Polkinghorne gave an interview for a documentary. Snippets of the raw footage were played in court on Thursday afternoon. He wept numerous times on camera, when he was asked to talk about Pauline’s death; he sat in court and wept numerous times watching himself weep. Two crying Polkinghornes, one noisy, one quiet; the courtroom was full, and I think it fair and accurate to report that no one else was even slightly moved.
It’s always terrible when no one believes you but the extreme scale of Polkinghorne’s predicament is Kafkaesque. He made it plain in the documentary footage that he was living a nightmare—a grieving widower who police suspected had staged his wife’s death. He has since endured five years of that nightmare, and has welcomed the inquest as a chance to clear his name.
Although he elected not to give evidence at his 2024 trial, he has done so at the inquest. He was in the witness box all day on Tuesday. He began by giving evidence in chief to his lawyer Ron Mansfield. Crown solicitor Alysha McClintock then turned up the heat in her cross-exam. The hearing was interrupted for a day so court staff could prepare raw footage of Polkinghorne. “Thank you to the juniors who have been working very hard on this,” the Coroner said on Thursday afternoon, when the film was ready to screen. “It’s most appreciated. The rest of us have the luxury of having your skill. You youthful people know how to move these things. Very good. Thank you.”
And then Polkinghorne appeared on screen, and said, “She was on medication and she drank very heavily.” He set the scene for Pauline’s last night alive. They watched New Amsterdam on Netflix. She helped him write his retirement letter from private surgery Auckland Eye. “So it was a good night. Pauline used to drink Pinot Noir and I used to drink Shiraz. She finished the bottle of Pinot Noir, she started drinking my Shiraz. So she drank about a bottle and a half.”
The interviewer, ex-TV journo Chris Cooke, was off-camera, and he suddenly and dramatically asked, “How can we get rid of it?” It transpired he was talking about Polkinghorne’s cat. Its meowing interfered with the sound recording. “What I’ll do is I’ll lock it upstairs,” said Polkinghorne. The camera stayed fixed on an empty chair while he sorted out the cat. He returned, and Cooke resumed asking Polkinghorne about what happened that night.
Polkinghorne: I was still typing my resignation letter and instead of going to the master bedroom that night she went to another bedroom. So I went to the master bedroom and went to sleep.
Cooke: Why did you sleep in a separate bed?
Polkinghorne: Simply because of the interference that was happening during the night. Phone calls and stuff like that. She had a messenger system on and the phone would flick all night. She had the phone typically on all night.
Cooke: A tough question, but I guess I need to ask. Does that mean you weren’t physically intimate?
Polkinghorne: No, no, no. Typically in the morning one or the other would come to the other’s bedroom and we would have time together. That happened every day. And the Sunday afternoon, I remember we both went to the master bedroom for a period of time. Yes, yes. Yes, we certainly did. Yeah.
Cooke: So back to the Sunday.
Polkinghorne: She went to bed and I then went to bed shortly thereafter. And I didn’t use any electronic devices that night, to my recollection. Didn’t take my laptop to bed or anything like that.
But this totally contradicts his own evidence at the inquest when he talked of waking up in the middle of the night and using his phone for an hour. Polkinghorne claimed he was engaging in medical research; the police theory is that he was engaging in phone sex with his lover Madison Ashton, and that his crazed desire to be with her was the motive to kill his wife.
Cooke: And in the morning, what did you do?
Polkinghorne: I came down the stairs and went to make breakfast for her because she was going to the gym. I put the toast on, the tea on, and then I went to feed the cats. And as I walked over I saw what my most beautiful wife just did.
He cried, and continued the interview through tears and whimpers.
Polkinghorne: I went to get my mobile phone, but I couldn’t use it. I’m told subsequently it was on flight mode. I don’t know what it was on flight mode for. So I used the landline and I rang 111.
Cooke: What happened next?
Polkinghorne: The ambulance personnel confirmed that she was dead. And then a police officer came and talked to me and asked if I’d make a statement, and then he said he’d like to take it down to the CBD and type it up and would I sign it. And I said sure. Oh and that was when I discovered, when I was in the police station the day Pauline died, that my phone had been deleted.
Cooke: Who deleted it, or how was it deleted?
Polkinghorne: I don’t know.
But he did know. He did not “discover” it had been deleted; he deleted it himself, at the College Hill police station, to remove private information—namely, messages with sex workers, and nude selfies that Ashton sent to him.
The subject turned again to police asking Polkinghorne to come with them to the College Hill station. This is where his story starts resembling the fate of the hapless clerk only known as Joseph K in Franz Kafka’s classic 1925 novel The Trial. The novel begins, “Without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.” He is interrogated, dragged through the courts, tormented, accused, crushed; his fate is out of his hands.
Cooke: So the police asked you to go with them.
Polkinghorne: They said, “You’ll be able to see Pauline again before we take her away.” I was reassured by that, but they never let me see her again. They asked would I go down to the police station so they could type up my statement and then I’d sign it. So I thought I’d be gone for 10 minutes or something like that. But we went down to the police car, and they put me in and then the doors were locked and I was in the car downstairs for about 15 minutes.
Cooke: And then what happened?
Polkinghorne: I was interrogated and videoed for five or six hours that day. And it was only towards the end of that day when I got a phone call from a schoolboy friend of mine who happens to be a criminal barrister and he told me to walk out of the police station and I said, “No, I’m trying to help them, Tony.”
He is due back in court tomorrow to resume his cross-examination with Alysha McClintock. Still trying to convince the police that what happened is what he told them had happened right from the start; still being viewed with suspicion, contempt, disbelief. The Trial ends with Joseph K asking, “Were there some arguments in his favour that had been overlooked?”
