WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT 

Dr Philip Polkinghorne, the renowned Auckland eye surgeon whose salacious murder trial gripped New Zealand for nearly two months, has been acquitted.

Jurors returned their verdict this afternoon following 10 hours of deliberations that stretched over two days.

Outside court, Polkinghorne told media, “Today’s outcome is a huge turning point in our lives. This process has taken a massive toll on so many of us.

“But now we can grieve and let Pauline rest in peace and that is the best gift we can possibly give her.”

He thanked media and walked away, refusing to make any further comment

For eight weeks the jurors listened intently to evidence from the Crown who alleged Polkinghorne murdered his 63-year-old wife Pauline Hanna at their home in Remuera and arguments from the defence who claim she took her own life.

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Gasps could be heard from the courtroom gallery, which had been full for most of the eight weeks as lawyers combed over details of the surgeon’s seemingly voracious appetite for sex workers, his usage of methamphetamine - at home and, allegedly but disputed, at work - and his unusual activities before and after Hanna’s death on April 5, 2021. The gallery was only about half full as the verdict was read. 

The defendant’s sister, Ruth, pumped her fist as the verdict was announced. Hanna’s brother and other relatives looked shell-shocked. 

Hanna’s good friends Pheasant and John Riordan arrived at the High Court after the verdict. Pheasant, who gave evidence during the trial, had her hand over her mouth and was in tears. Over 20 members of the media were gathered outside the courthouse. 

Although not guilty of having committed homicide, Polkinghorne pleaded guilty at the outset of the trial to two minor charges: possession of a meth pipe, punishable by up to one year imprisonment, and possession of meth, punishable by up to six months’ jail. 

Immediately after the verdict, Justice Graham Lang set a sentencing date for November 1. 

Over eight weeks, lawyers combed over details of Polkinghorne’s seemingly voracious appetite for sex workers, his usage of methamphetamine - at home and, allegedly but disputed, at work - and his unusual activities before and after Hanna’s death on April 5, 2021. 

Jury’s question 

The jury resumed deliberations in the High Court at Auckland on Monday morning after being sent home on Thursday afternoon. Justice Graham Lang addressed a note they sent out late Thursday afternoon. 

It read, “Most of the people on the jury do not think there is enough evidence to support Pauline having committed suicide. However, some people on the jury do not think that the Crown has supplied enough evidence that we can answer yes to the question, ‘Has the Crown made you sure that Dr Polkinghorne caused the death of his wife, Ms Pauline Hanna, by intentionally strangling her?’ Please can we have some direction.” 

The judge responded by noting that each question in the question trail begins with “are you sure” and that the defence doesn’t have the onus of proof. “At the end of the day, it’s not sufficient for you to say that Dr Polkinghorne is probably guilty or even very likely guilty,” Justice Graham Lang repeated from his summing-up. 

He directed the group to return to the jury room to continue deliberating. 

Philip Polkinghorne in court on Monday morning. Photo / Michael Craig 

On Thursday the 11-person jury started deliberating at about 11am after listening to two bits of audio evidence for a second time. 

The first was the 111 call Polkinghorne made after Hanna died. Afterwards, Polkinghorne began sobbing into a tissue. While he has cried before during the trial this was the first time he did so loudly enough to the point of interrupting proceedings. The second recording they listened to was of Hanna telling relatives of the wild sex life of her husband, herself, and other invited parties. 

At about 4.30pm the jurors said they would not be returning a verdict by the end of the day and were sent home with a reminder from Lang not to discuss the case with anyone. 

They did not deliberate on Friday as one of the jurors had a prior commitment and Justice Lang said the long weekend may help crystalize their thoughts by the time they returned on Monday. 

Polkinghorne’s trial began in late July as the Crown went about trying to convince jurors that Polkinghorne fatally strangled his wife before staging the scene to look like a suicide by hanging in the foyer of their $4 million Remuera home. 

Pauline Hanna and Philip Polkinghorne at an event in December 2018. Photo / Norrie Montgomery 

The Crown 

It was a circumstantial case, and Crown solicitor Alysha McClintock told jurors she didn’t know if Polkinghorne attacked his wife amid an argument or if he snuck into the guest bedroom as she slept and killed her in cold blood. But the group could be fairly sure, she argued, that he took a “toot” from the “Sweet Puff” pipe found underneath his bed before lashing out at his wife of 24 years with meth-fuelled courage and rage. 

The killing was the result, McClintock said, of his two worlds inevitably colliding. In one world, he was a respected medical professional - half of a power couple of sorts, with Hanna commanding a high-ranking health administrator job. But in his shadow world, she said, he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on sex workers and paid particular attention to Sydney escort Madison Ashton - a well-known tabloid figure in Australia with whom he was infatuated and dreamed of starting a new life. 

She pointed to the intimate WhatsApp messages between Polkinghorne and Ashton for years prior to Hanna’s death and in the immediate aftermath. They met at a secluded South Island chalet three weeks after Hanna died, at a time when Hanna and Polkinghorne should have been on a 4WD holiday in the South Island, and talked about how they should divide house chores. 

“Honestly I really love you,” Ashton told him three days before his wife’s service. “Do not wear a f**king bow tie at the funeral. Keep the hat.” 

McClintock said Polkinghorne was “arrogant” enough to think that his social standing would result in police “rubber-stamping” his wife’s death as a suicide. So he was caught off guard when investigators instead started poking around their home - at first finding the suicide rope to be suspicious, then noticing the oddly dishevelled guest room and about $13,000 worth of methamphetamine stashed throughout the house. 

During a break in a four-hour police interview on the same day as his wife’s death, Polkinghorne deleted his WhatsApp message history with Ashton. He then searched “how to delete iCloud storage” soon after the interview - attempting to delete the search itself - before going to the website for encrypted app DuckDuckGo on April 7 and typing a search that prosecutors described as “hugely significant” to the Crown case: “leg edema after strangulation”. 

“This search unmasks the murderer, I suggest,” McClintock said. “There is not an explanation for that search that is an innocent explanation.” 

But the “single most significant piece of evidence”, she said, was Hanna’s outcry to friends John and Pheasant Riordan in January 2020 that her husband had previously strangled her. 

“Sadly, John Riordan was right [when he told her], ‘If he’s done it once, he’ll do it again’,” the prosecutor said. 

The defence 

But defence lawyer Ron Mansfield KC disputed the prosecution’s interpretation of the outcry, as he did almost every other aspect of the Crown’s case. He noted that Hanna had been drinking that night and suggested she might have been lying or exaggerating in a bid to get sympathy about the admittedly rocky - but never violent - state of their marriage at the time. 

He acknowledged his client might be seen as a “dirty old man who didn’t realise how good he had it with Pauline”, but he warned jurors to avoid “emotional vigilantism” based on sympathy for Hanna or disdain for Polkinghorne’s unconventional lifestyle. 

“This has been a trial prosecuted by emotion and where the victim is logic,” he told jurors during his own closing address, suggesting that police and prosecutors were so intent on scandalising his client with drugs and sex because they knew they didn’t have any actual murder evidence to focus on. “A trial prosecuted by emotion allows our murder-mystery fantasies to run wild. It was like a binge of every Murder She Wrote all in one session by our own Angela Lansbury presenting.” 

The forensic evidence - most importantly, the testimony of four different pathologists - “provides the complete answer and always has”, Mansfield argued. 

Two pathologists hired by the defence said they would have determined Hanna’s death to be non-homicidal hanging had the case been theirs. The two pathologists called by the Crown agreed with much of what the defence witnesses said but left open the possibility Hanna could have been strangled without leaving any internal or external neck injuries. 

Mansfield repeatedly rubbished that suggesting as a “phantom”, noting that the four witnesses combined could only recall two times when fatal strangulation left no injuries. The Crown repeatedly pointed out that, as a man with a medical degree, Polkinghorne would have known more about the body than most people. But Mansfield countered that his client would have to be a “highly efficient and well-trained killer to leave someone dead without any tell-tale signs”. 

“It sounds absurd because it is,” he continued, describing the Crown case as “one of the most gravest nonsenses our courts have heard for a long time”. 

The lawyer devoted his last hour of addressing jurors to focusing on Hanna and the many suicide risk factors pointed out by psychiatrists who had been called to testify by the defence. Among them was an alleged outcry in the early 90s in which Hanna was recalled by her sister to have insinuated that she had cut her wrists and a documented call to her GP in December 2019 saying she had suicidal thoughts - but no plan - about driving into a lorry after her husband disappeared for several days. 

She might not have been depressed at all times and she certainly didn’t let most people know about her “vulnerabilities”, but writings, recordings and recollections from friends showed she suffered some dark moments, Mansfield said. 

“I cannot live if that is the result that I got it wrong,” she wrote in March 2019 of the prospect her husband didn’t love her - a document that was found on her laptop after her death. 

Pauline Hanna. Photo / Supplied 

In April 2020, she sent an email to herself saying she was tired and not herself. 

“I am never good enough despite my efforts,” she wrote. “I want desperately to tell someone and cry and ask for help but everyone seems to think I’m amazing and does not want to know that I have foibles and failings. 

“... So I will go to bed and not sleep. V unusual for me – and it builds up – who knows what might follow. Have to tell someone even if no one but God ever sees this.” 

Then on March 28, 2021, exactly one week before her death, she wrote to her son-in-law and his wife: “My life is insane and I do not know what day it is sometimes. I (reluctantly) took this role as Head of Logistics for Vaccine. I did not want to. But Philip was so proud of me when Outbreak happened, I thought he would be proud of this – which I guess he is – but it is incredibly difficult and lonely.” 

That “bleak” and “desperate” feeling returned - no doubt amplified by a dangerous combination of sleeping pills and alcohol - when she woke up in the middle of the night on April 5, 2021, and decided to find a rope, Mansfield said. 

“There is no more lonely place when you’re already feeling low than the early hours of the morning,” he told jurors.