• Philip Polkinghorne claims the Covid-19 vaccine contributed to his wife Pauline Hanna’s death in interview for the documentary Polk: The Philip Polkinghorne Trial.
• The former eye doctor was acquitted of murdering Hanna following a High Court trial in Auckland last year that featured salacious evidence of meth use and sex workers.
• High-profile Australian escort Madison Ashton also spoke in the documentary, claiming she believes Polkinghorne “knocked [Hanna] off”.

Philip Polkinghorne blamed the Covid-19 vaccine for his wife Pauline Hanna’s death in a secret interview with a mystery journalist before a High Court jury last year acquitted the eye doctor of murdering the 63-year-old in their Remuera mansion four years ago.

“She had the Covid vaccine the day before [her death].

“I think she got post-vaccine encephalitis, and she went psychotic overnight. And the literature supports that”, Polkinghorne said in the Blonde Razor-produced documentary Polk: The Trial of Philip Polkinghorne, which went live on ThreeNow this morning and screens over three consecutive nights on Three from 8.40pm today.

The 71-year-old was cleared in September of causing his wife of 24 years’ death in April 2021, after a salacious eight-week trial in Auckland that featured evidence of meth use and sex workers.

The Crown accused Polkinghorne of strangling his wife in their $5 million Upland Rd home.

Until now, the pensioner’s only public comment on Hanna’s death was an interview with the Herald three days after he told police he’d found her body and a brief statement outside court following his acquittal.

Polkinghorne was interviewed in footage included in the documentary by an unidentified journalist hand-picked by private investigator Julia Hartley Moore, who, with her Blonde Razor co-director – top screen producer and director Mark McNeill – executive produced the three-part series.

 
Philip Polkinghorne speaking in the documentary Polk: The Trial of Philip Polkinghorne. The former eye surgeon was last year acquitted of murdering his wife Pauline Hanna.

Asked what he thought caused Hanna’s death, Polkinghorne blamed the Covid-19 vaccine, which health executive Hanna was involved in the rollout of.

“She had the vaccine very early on, long before there was experienced vaccinators,” Polkinghorne said.

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“And I think – looking at the literature – she was probably injected not intramuscularly, but intravascularly … and that primed her immune system to develop, ah, encephalitis.

“I’m an eye doctor. The pathologist should have looked at those aspects, in my opinion.”

The documentary series begins when charges against Polkinghorne have been laid and concludes in the immediate aftermath of the verdict.

Polkinghorne, who at times wept as he spoke about the past four years, agreed to be interviewed as long as the footage wasn’t shown before the trial, McNeill said.

After the trial, he and his defence counsel declined producers’ invitations to give further interviews.

Police and Crown lawyers at Philip Polkinghorne's home in Upland Rd ahead of the arrival of a High Court jury during his trial last year. Photo / Jason Dorday

In the documentary, Polkinghorne addressed accusations he staged Hanna’s death.

“I think this is what happened, I can’t really remember,” he said, speaking inside the Upland Rd home about the moment he found his wife’s body.

Police later said he’d “altered a crime scene”.

“I didn’t realise it was a crime scene. But if you were staging a murder, I would think you wouldn’t do it on an open-lane road with no curtains.

“And I don’t know how I got her downstairs, if I did. I would have thought it was physically impossible. But I may have had an accomplice. Maybe that’s their theory. I don’t know.”

He also didn’t know why his phone was on airplane mode for seven hours on the night Hanna died, nor how all his WhatsApp messages from before her body was discovered were deleted, he said.

 
Philip Polkinghorne, pictured in court during his trial for murdering wife Pauline Hanna (inset). A jury ultimately acquitted Polkinghorne of murder.

Polkinghorne pleaded guilty at the start of his murder trial to possession of the 37g of methamphetamine that police investigating Hanna’s death found in his home, and possession of a meth pipe that was stashed under his side of the bed.

But, in his interview with the mystery journalist before the trial, he denied responsibility.

“They allegedly found methamphetamine in the, um, makeup drawer. I don’t usually hide my, um, methamphetamine in the, ah, makeup drawer … I presume it was Pauline’s. Because I found methamphetamine in her handbag.”

She’d used the drug “on occasions”, he said.

“It wasn’t my cup of tea. I took marijuana when I was a student, but I haven’t taken that for 40 years. I don’t smoke even.”

In November, Justice Graham Lang sentenced Polkinghorne to 150 hours’ community work for the drug charges and gave him a serve for continuing to cast blame on his dead wife.

“I do not accept that assertion,” said Justice Lang, of Polkinghorne’s statement to a pre-sentence report writer that his wife bought the drugs and used them with him.

“There was no evidence [of that] at trial ... I am satisfied you were the owner and the purchaser of the methamphetamine.”

Private investigator Julia Hartley Moore believes she was contacted by Pauline Hanna seven weeks before Hanna's death.

Polkinghorne wanted the public to know the investigation had been a “waste of money, waste of police time, could have all been solved very quickly”, he told the documentary interviewer.

“I have never harmed my wife … the police … came in with a fixed view. That I murdered her.

“I’m surprised they haven’t blamed me for climate change as well.”

He and Hanna were “devoted to each other, but neither of us fulfilled every expectation at times”.

“So both of us had other people in our relationship at different times.”

In an audio recording played during the murder trial, Hanna told family she “used to join the prostitutes [Polkinghorne hired] and be part of the whole f***ing thing”, but “I can’t do it anymore”.

High-profile Australia-based escort Madison Ashton was among several others to appear in the documentary, including Crown prosecutor Alysha McClintock, Hanna’s brother Bruce Hanna, friend Pheasant Riordan and executive producer Hartley Moore, who believes Hanna was the mystery woman who called seeking her private investigation services seven weeks before her death.

Ashton was paid more than $100,000 by Polkinghorne in a relationship that began with paid-for group sex and advanced to him giving her a diamond engagement ring in 2022.

Escort Madison Ashton recalls in Polk: The Trial of Philip Polkinghorne the moment police raided the luxury chalet she and Polkinghorne went to after Pauline Hanna's death.

In a recording of a phone call the former top ophthalmologist made to her in August 2022, she reacted with distress when he said: “Darling, I’m going to be charged with murder tomorrow”.

The sex worker, who showed off $10,000-a-shelf stiletto collections she said were gifted by Polkinghorne, also described the moment police raided the luxury Mt Cook chalet – “the location was the New Zealand version straight out of the Deliverance [movie] playbook” – where she and Polkinghorne were staying three weeks after Hanna’s death.

“I was wearing a catsuit … unfortunately my areolas came out of my costume, which was really affecting my ability to defend my man.”

However, she was shocked at Polkinghorne’s “effortless lying” to police and later, after returning to Australia, described doubling over as “I just knew he’d done it”.

“He can’t make his mind up where this body was in his house. Let’s face it – the body was in bed. He knocked her off.”

Ashton later confronted Polkinghorne in secret recordings published by the Herald yesterday.

“I want to know about the night she died. I know you did it, you did it for me so we could be together,” she was heard saying.

Escort Madison Ashton and Auckland eye doctor Philip Polkinghorne. Photo / Supplied

The recording is the latest in personal correspondence and videos between Polkinghorne and Ashton gathered by the Herald that suggested he was living a double life and actively planning a future with the escort he met, according to Ashton, in 2011 for a foursome with Hanna and another sex worker.

In Polk: The Trial of Philip Polkinghorne, the former eye surgeon admitted “the wheels of the bus had started to come off” what he used to tell people was a “perfect relationship” between him and Hanna.

Hanna was distracted by “Covid issues”, was on antidepressants “all the time that I knew her” and told her stepson 10 days before her death she “couldn’t take it anymore”.

“She was just worked to death,” Polkinghorne said, breaking down in tears.

She’d “done a lot of strange things” before her death, including going to the rubbish dump and cooking a “totally inappropriate meal” for friends, he said, without giving details.

“It was almost like she … was saying goodbye.”

The couple loved to exchange cards and Polkinghorne read from a Christmas card she’d given him.

“I love you for being my happiness … I want to spend the rest of my years loving you.”

The world needed to know it had “lost a star” when Hanna died, he said.

“That’s a tragedy, not me.”