Day 7 of the suddenly increasingly newsworthy coronial inquiry into the April 5, 2021 death of Pauline Hanna was devoted to the mind and movements of the man accused by police of killing her. Remuera ophthalmologist Dr Philip Polkinghorne gave evidence all day on Tuesday. Parts of it were astonishing. Not his breaking down in a weepy heap, which everyone has already seen earlier at the inquest and in his High Court trial in 2024; it remains widely and coldly viewed as a pantomime. Not his suggestion that intolerable work stress caused Pauline to take her own life, which was the defence theory already heard at trial; the verdict was not guilty, and has led to the two-week inquiry in a Newmarket courtroom to rule on the cause of death. But for the first time Polkinghorne told his story about the previously unknown and supposedly very, very suspicious things he was doing on his phone between 1:11am and 2:42am the night she died.
The public gallery was full for the first time during the inquest. Their number included Tony Bouchier, a gentlemanly and distinguished criminal lawyer, and a loyal friend of Polkinghorne. The press gallery was full, too. I got in late but Herald legend Carolyne Meng Yee graciously gave up her seat, confirming the old adage that there is honour among ghouls.
“I call Dr Philip John Polkinghorne,” said his lawyer Ron Mansfield to begin the most important day of the inquiry. Polkinghorne did not give evidence at his trial. All anyone has previously heard from him was his twitchy appearance in a documentary about the case, and the strange, raving five-hour police interview he gave at the College Hill station on the afternoon of her death. We all deal with grief in different ways. Polkinghorne talked his head off to the cops, in no way sequentially, all non-sequiturs and random asides. Afterwards, he went home, and showered; police found a point-bag of methamphetamine dropped on the bathroom floor.
He gabbled now and then, too, in the witness box. But mostly he stuck to the point. In cross-examination to Crown solicitor Alysha McClintock, who prosecuted him at the epic nine-week trial and has waited a long time to try to smoke him out of a perceived cave of deceit, lies, and pathological cunning, he was terse, sarcastic, sick to death of her accusations. To believe his story in court on Tuesday—an innocent man, grossly wronged— was to consider the Polkinghorne case as a stain on the nation, an injustice so deep that the police and judgmental public should be ashamed of itself.
But such a consideration does not come easily. It would require accepting everything Polkinghorne said in court as true.
“Thank you listening to me,” he said, his voice cracking, at the end of reading a prepared statement in the witness box. He set out the details of his last weekend with Pauline, the chores and the meals, and finding her body on Easter Monday morning. He spoke through tears, snatched at a box of tissues. And then Mansfield asked about methamphetamine. Police found 37 grams of that white magic in the house, and traces of it in an unflushed toilet. Polkinghorne pleaded guilty to possession of the drug on day 1 of his trial.
Mansfield: There’s evidence of methamphetamine being located in your house.
Polkinghorne: That’s correct.
Mansfield: Were you aware that methamphetamine was there?
Polkinghorne: I was aware methamphetamine was in our house.
Mansfield: Had you used methamphetamine the night before Pauline’s death?
Polkinghorne: No.
Mansfield: So to be clear, had you used it in the preceding days?
Polkinghorne: No.
Mansfield: Had you used the ensuite next to the room that Pauline used that night to urinate?
Polkinghorne: No.
The Coroner: Whoever has that cell phone, please go outside now. We’re not resuming until that person leaves.
A ringing phone interrupted the hearing. Incredible that someone should come to a coronial inquiry and not have the decency or horse sense to make sure their phone was switched off. It’s as bad a phone ringing at a funeral.
Mansfield: Do you acknowledge that prior to Pauline’s death you had a sexual relationship with Madison Ashton?
Polkinghorne: I do.
Mansfield: Had you communicated with Madison Ashton on the day that you discovered your wife had died?
Polkinghorne: I believe I did not.
The police theory is that his desire to be with her provided the motive for killing his wife. Ashton is expected to have a statement read out at the inquiry. On Tuesday, the subject turned to why Polkinghorne had deleted their messages on his phone on the afternoon he gave a lengthy police interview; he said he did it immediately after he received a phone call from Tony Bouchier.
Polkinghorne: Tony rang me to inform me my house was being treated as a crime scene, and that I was the prime suspect. He said, “Get out, now.”
Mansfield: And did that change your attitude towards the police interview?
Polkinghorne: Yes. I felt that I’d been betrayed and the police had taken advantage of my vulnerability.
Mansfield: Shortly after that you deleted messages on your iPhone. Why did you do that?
Polkinghorne: I wanted to delete anything that was what I would consider inappropriate.
Mansfield: What are you talking about?
Polkinghorne: Well, I’m talking about my relationship with Madison Ashton. I wanted to keep it private. It had compromising material on it which I didn’t want anyone else to see.
Mansfield: Compromising in what respect?
Polkinghorne: Well, she used to send me a large number of images of herself.
Mansfield: And were there communications between you and other sex workers?
Polkinghorne: Yes, there was.
A coronial inquiry is not a criminal trial. There is no threat of jail, no battle to prove or disprove guilt. But Tuesday’s hearing was tense, grim, exhausting. It was a test of Polkinghorne’s credibility. When the subject turned to what he was doing on his phone in the small hours of Pauline’s last night alive, he claimed that he had put it on airplane mode unwittingly: ” I have no recollection of doing that. I believe that it was the equivalent of a pocket dial.”
Mansfield: And thereafter there is activity between the hours of 1:10am and 2:44am.
Polkinghorne: Correct. I was writing a paper and so that night I accessed my phone to look at ophthalmic images because sometimes in the middle of the night I get a bright idea which will disappear in the morning, so I action it when I think of it.
Mansfield: What would be on your phone by way of photos or videos?
Polkinghorne: Well, all my ophthalmic photos are stored on my phone. I was writing a paper on a particular condition of the eye where I’d been called to operate on a patient, where the inside layer of the cornea had fallen into the back of the eye. So I was looking for representative photos which would help illustrate the paper I was writing.
Mansfield: So it seems clear from the record of the phone that between 1:10am and 2:44am you’re awake and using your phone.
Polkinghorne: Correct.
Mansfield: Did that ever happen during your professional life, waking during the early hours of the morning?
Polkinghorne: I’m afraid so. It continues to be.
The greater tension was felt during cross-examination. He acknowledged the inconsistencies in some of the things he said at the time of Pauline’s death and some of the things he is saying now. He said the shock of finding Pauline’s body was so devastating that he can’t be sure of exactly what he did that morning. Crown solicitor Alysha McClintock was especially interested in the 111 call, which she characterised as a charade, that Polkinghorne was only pretending that he’d found his wife’s body.
She asked him if it would help to play the 111 call. He was adamant that he did not wish to hear it.
McClintock: Dr Polkinghorne, I can understand you saying you were distressed that day, but there are a number of differing accounts as to what you saw and what you did.
Polkinghorne: I’ll concede that.
McClintock: And that causes great difficulty relying on what you said you say you did.
Polkinghorne: That’s a fair critique.
The Coroner: Do you need a bit of a break?
Polkinghorne: No. She doesn’t like my answers, that’s the problem.
The Crown solicitor asked him again if it would help to play the 111 call. He was once more adamant that he did not wish to hear it.
McClintock: What I’m suggesting to you is that there isn’t enough time on that 111 call for you to have done the things you claim to. So you’ve done a re-enactment. Do you agree?
Polkinghorne: No, I strongly disagree.
McClintock: I’m suggesting that the only thing we hear on that call is you pretending. Do you agree?
Polkinghorne: No, of course not.
McClintock: Isn’t it the case you are just trying to explain away the many, many different accounts that you’ve given about this?
Polkinghorne: Conversely, I’m trying to get to the bottom of it. I know the truth and I know what you’re saying is patently false.
The Crown solicitor seemed to take a certain pleasure in asking him a third time if it would help to play the 111 call. He was adamant for a third time that he did not wish to hear it.
The cross-exam turned to Polkinghorne’s movements when the police arrived at his house. In her opening statement, last Monday, the Crown solicitor said he was walking around hither and yon, “tampering” with the evidence. He told her on Tuesday that he stayed out of the way of scene examiners.
McClintock: Would you agree that it’s not really accurate to say you did stay out of it? You were coming up and down the stairs past Pauline’s body.
Polkinghorne: They promised me I could kiss her goodbye.
McClintock: So you go downstairs, and step over her.
Polkinghorne: No, I don’t concede that. If you’ve got photographic evidence of me walking over her, I’ll be glad to review my opinion. I think I stepped around her. Many times. Many times I went past her.
McClintock: My point is, that’s not staying out of it, is it? That’s putting yourself right in the middle.
Polkinghorne: I didn’t know I was interfering.
The afternoon session tested Polkinghorne’s evidence on methamphetamine. It was maddeningly vague, full of inferences and innuendos.
McClintock: When you were interviewed for a documentary, you claimed you had only tried marijuana 40 years prior as a student.
Polkinghorne: Oh, probably a bit longer than 40 years.
McClintock: I’m not too worried about the marijuana. I’m more interested in your denial of using methamphetamine. Did you not plead guilty to possession of methamphetamine?
Polkinghorne: It was in my house. I pleaded guilty to it on advice.
McClintock: Are you suggesting now that the methamphetamine is not yours?
Polkinghorne: It was in my possession.
McClintock: Are you suggesting it’s someone else’s?
Polkinghorne: I’m saying I pleaded guilty to possession of the methamphetamine.
McClintock: No, no, I want you to be clear about that. Are you saying all of the methamphetamine in the house is yours or not?
Polkinghorne: I’m saying not.
Coroner Tetitaha interrupted both Mansfield and McClintock several times on Tuesday to pose her own questions. She looked at Polkinghorne with keen interest all day long, resting two fingers on the side of her face and staring at him; the mystery of who owned the methamphetamine was something that clearly puzzled her, and she led a new line of questioning.
The Coroner: Who do you say it belongs to?
Polkinghorne: Well, there’s three possibilities. One, it’s all mine. Two, it was part mine and part another individual in the house. But I’m not going to incriminate my wife. If you want me to say that Pauline was involved in it, I will say it was all mine, because I’m not going to tell you it was Pauline’s.
The Coroner: Are you saying that the methamphetamine that was found in your house is not yours, it belongs to Pauline? Is that what you’re saying?
Polkinghorne: No.
The Coroner: Then are you saying the methamphetamine that’s found in your house partly belongs to you?
Polkinghorne: Yes.
The Coroner: And the other part belongs to who?
Polkinghorne [pause]: A person unknown.
The Coroner: All right. I don’t think I’m going to take this further.
Long day. The hearing fizzled out about 10 minutes later. Much had been claimed, much had been denied; only the Coroner can determine how much had been learned.
