A successful eye surgeon accused of having a habit for methamphetamine and sex-workers. His wife, found dead at their home in an affluent Auckland suburb.
For eight weeks, the trial captivated New Zealand. On Monday, the jury found 71-year-old ophthalmologist Philip Polkinghorne not guilty, bringing an end to a case that gripped the country, filling newspapers and TV bulletins for months.
Polkinghorne stood accused of murdering his wife, Pauline Hanna, in 2021.
The Crown alleged he fatally strangled her and staged her death to make it look like a suicide. The defence argued that Hanna, an overworked health sector executive, took her own life after struggling with depression.
Murder trials are far from uncommon in New Zealand, where there is roughly one homicide every five days, according to police statistics. But in recent years, few cases have attracted the extraordinary degree of public attention as the Polkinghorne trial.
Two of the country’s largest news outlets, the New Zealand Herald and Stuff, ran daily live blogs and launched competing podcasts to cover every development, witness by witness, exhibit by exhibit.
At the high court in Auckland, the public turned out in droves to watch the proceedings in person, regularly filling the public gallery to capacity, while both podcasts about the trial have climbed to the top three on Spotify’s podcast rankings for New Zealand.
James Hollings, an associate professor of journalism at Massey University, says the degree of media attention devoted to the trial was “unusual”, which he attributes to both local media’s push for ratings during an otherwise “quiet news spell” and to the presence of the “classic features of the celebrity trial”.
“It ticks all the boxes of what makes a trial interesting, which is a high profile person, a mysterious death. It’s got all the sort of tacky details of the sex workers and the double life.”
‘It will sound shocking’
It all began on the morning of 5 April 2021, when Polkinghorne called police to report that he had found his wife’s body in the couple’s home in the wealthy Auckland suburb of Remuera, apparently hanged.
Within an hour of attending the scene, police were treating the death as suspicious, although it took sixteen months for Polkinghorne to be charged with murder.
As the trial opened, Crown prosecutor Alysha McClintock told the jury that the doctor was living a “double life”, which was becoming “harder and harder to keep from his wife”. The Crown case was that a combination of drug use, infidelity and financial problems drove Polkinghorne to kill Hanna.
“He staged the scene to make it look like his wife’s death was a suicide,” McClintock alleged. “It will sound shocking, like something out of a crime novel.”
The fact that Polkinghorne used methamphetamine was not in dispute, with the defendant pleading guilty on the first day of the trial to possessing the drug. While the defence maintained the doctor only used the drug recreationally, the Crown cast him as a “heavy” user whose behaviour was becoming increasingly erratic.
An analysis of Polkinghorne’s phone revealed that, in the days after Hanna’s death, Polkinghorne searched “leg edema after strangulation” using a private web browser, and searched for how to delete iCloud storage. The court heard that WhatsApp messages sent minutes before calling police were also deleted, as were phone call logs.
A central character in the Crown’s case was Sydney-based escort Madison Ashton, with whom Polkinghorne was found at a luxury South Island lodge less than a month after Hanna’s death. The court heard that Polkinghorne had transferred over $100,000 to Ashton, while messages deleted from Polkinghorne’s phone indicated the pair were in a relationship and were planning for the future.
Polkinghorne’s relationship with Ashton wasn’t his only extramarital entanglement. In the five years leading up to Hanna’s death, Polkinghorne transferred a total of $300,000 to six women, three of whom were identified to the jury as sex workers, the court heard.
Before her death, Hanna told relatives that she knew of her husband’s infidelity, calling him a “sex fiend” who “wants to have sex with everyone”. “He screws women, and he hurts me, but I know he loves me,” the court heard Hanna say via a recorded conversation.
Polkinghorne’s lawyer, Ron Mansfield KC, said the evidence of extramarital affairs and drug use was a distraction, and that the Crown had failed to identify any forensic evidence of a murder.
“No evidence at the scene, no evidence on the body. That would have to be the perfect murder. Can I suggest it’s not. It’s a phantom,” Mansfield told the jury.
Two forensic pathologists called by the defence concluded that the likely cause of death was suicide by hanging, both stressing the lack of injuries indicating a violent struggle.
Defence witnesses also spoke of Hanna’s struggles with depression. She had attempted suicide in the early 1990s, her sister said, while her GP confirmed Hanna had reported suicidal thoughts in 2019. Other witnesses spoke of the stress that Hanna was under in her job during the Covid-19 vaccine rollout, at times working about 100 hours a week.
On Monday, Justice Lang read out a question he had received from the jury, which revealed that most of the jury did not believe there was enough evidence to show that Hanna committed suicide but some did not think the Crown had provided enough evidence to answer whether Polkinghorne had murdered Hanna. Three hours later, the jury returned its verdict: not guilty.
Speaking outside court, Polkinghorne said: “We can now grieve and let Pauline rest in peace.”
Lifeline Aotearoa can be reached in New Zealand on 0800 543 354. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
