Engineer who conducted simulation of alleged suicide method gives evidence at murder trial

News
Crime

Author: Craig Kapitan & George Block,
Publish Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2024, 9:52am

WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT

A Remuera hair salon owner who had Pauline Hanna as a client for about 25 years told jurors today that Hanna appeared “fine” during her final three appointments but was quite obviously being kept busy with work.

Anne Millar’s testimony came as the march of defence witnesses continued for a third day in the murder trial of Hanna’s widower, eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne, in the High Court at Auckland.

The defendant, 71, is accused of having fatally strangled his wife before staging the scene inside their home on April 5, 2021, to look like a suicide by hanging. Polkinghorne’s lawyers have argued that police were too distracted by salacious details of the couple’s personal life to see the obvious: that it was indeed a suicide by someone suffering long-term depression and immense work stress.

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Millar, testifying via audio-visual feed from her holiday hotel room in Europe, recalled seeing Hanna every four weeks to retouch her hair tint and condition her hair.

There was usually no time for chatting during the appointments, she said, explaining that Hanna would sometimes be on Zoom meetings during the appointments.

Defence lawyer Ron Mansfield KC has pointed out repeatedly throughout the trial that Hanna had an at times thankless job helping to manage the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine.

Multiple witnesses called by the Crown have said Hanna felt immensely proud of the work she was doing, thrived in high-pressure environments and preferred to work long hours. But over the past two-and-a-half days of defence evidence, witnesses have described someone who seemed to be struggling with an assignment she never actually wanted but felt she had to accept.

During her third-to-last appointment on February 6, 2021, Millar said she could tell her client was busier than usual with Covid-19 response demands. During her second-to-last appointment on February 27, Hanna had her laptop out and was working, the witness said. And during her final appointment, on March 20, Hanna showed up uncharacteristically late and remained busy and distracted with her work throughout the appointment, before finishing early to leave for another meeting, Millar said.

The business owner agreed under cross-examination by the Crown that Hanna presented as a busy professional woman but was also remembered as positive in outlook and attitude. During her last visits, she had been looking forward to a South Island 4WD holiday and was enjoying being a grandmother, the witness agreed.

Millar was also asked by the defence to identify the products that were used to dye Hanna’s hair. Such products can sometimes strip hair follicles, causing false negatives for drug tests involving hair clippings, the defence had noted earlier in the trial. Police had tested Hanna’s hair dating back six months and found no traces of methamphetamine use.

The defence has previously suggested that the 37g of methamphetamine found in the couple’s home was for recreational use by both of them. But the Crown has suggested it was for Polkinghorne alone, and the amount found – the equivalent of about 370 doses – showed the surgeon had a serious issue with the drug.

The only other witness to testify this morning was chartered accountant Robert Willis, a patient of the defendant’s who went on to help handle the couple’s finances.

Willis was called by the defence in part to rebut earlier evidence from police forensic accountant Margaret Skilton, who outlined how the proceeds from the sale of a $1 million Papatoetoe property were put into a trust designed to benefit Hanna, before the funds were dispersed by Polkinghorne over the course of a year. The outbound payments, Skilton testified, included a $500,000 investment and money to Hanna’s stepson to help him buy a house. But the accountant also traced some of the money back to private accounts that Polkinghorne allegedly used to to pay sex workers.

Willis said he was initially told the trust was set up to “give Pauline a separate accumulation of wealth” but he didn’t know if the intent of the account had changed.

There had been an error somewhere along the way – which he emphasised was of no fault of the defendant – in which the money was paid to Polkinghorne’s account. He suggested the police forensic accounting report was based on erroneous information.

Under cross-examination, prosecutor Brian Dickey asked the witness why he didn’t tell police that, if he believed they were looking at the wrong set of accounts.

“That wasn’t my role to do that,” Willis replied, adding that he would have set the record straight had the police accountant ever contacted him.

Dickey noted that the witness and the defendant met sometime last year, while Polkinghorne’s murder charge was pending, and discussed the “Skilton report”. The witness, however, disagreed with the characterisation by the prosecutor that the two “put their heads together” to analyse the report at that time. Willis was later emailed a copy of the report, either by the defendant or one of his lawyers, he said.

The witness indicated there didn’t seem to be anything unusual about the account that would suggest money was being hidden from Hanna. Had Polkinghorne and Hanna separated, he noted while being questioned by the defence, their property would have been split down the middle, regardless of what accounts the money was in.

Lawyers are expected to continue questioning the accountant when the trial resumes this afternoon before Justice Graham Lang and the jury.

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.

The Herald will be covering the case in a daily podcast, Accused: The Polkinghorne Trial. You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, through The Front Page feed, or wherever you get your podcasts.