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Victoria Pheasant Riordan puts hands around her neck as she recounts Pauline Hanna's description of strangulation threat from Philip Polkinghorne.
NOW PLAYING • Philip Polkinghorne murder trial: Pauline Hanna's friend gives evidence about strangulation threat
Victoria Pheasant Riordan puts hands around her neck as she recounts Pauline Hanna's description of strangulation threat from Philip Polkinghorne.
WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT
Pauline Hanna told friends her husband Philip Polkinghorne once put his hands around her neck and threatened her, a jury has heard.
Victoria Pheasant Riordan, a Hawke’s Bay-based friend of Hanna, gave evidence this morning as the trial for the Auckland eye surgeon accused of murdering hiswife, now into the third day of the third week, continued.
Riordan told the court Hanna took the strangulation gesture as “a threat, a real threat that he might do that to her.”
Earlier, another friend of Hanna said Polkinghorne showed her a suicide note he claimed Hanna left behind after her death.
Alison Ring told the court the note read “Dear P, I love you forever, from P,” or words to that effect, and Ring told the court it was not the type of note she believed Hanna would leave.
“I was very distressed, and I had a few sleepless nights over it, because it just didn’t sit with me.”
Herald reporter George Block is filing live from the Auckland High Court. Follow our live updates below.
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14 August, 05:05 am
John Riordan tells Alysha McClintock Hanna acted "completely different" around Polkinghorne.
He recalls being at the Upland Rd, Remuera home with his wife and having banter with Hanna, "and then Philip came in and Pauline withdrew within herself".
"The mood of the day just went dead."
Her demeanour changed "straight away" from bubbly to withdrawn, Riordan says.
"It was almost like she was careful about the words that she said for fear that she may say something wrong."
Justice Graham Lang adjourns the trial until 10am tomorrow when John Riordan will continue his evidence.
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14 August, 05:02 am
Friend: 'I felt that she was very nervous about the idea of leaving Philip'
After Hanna told the family about the strangulation, she said she had no money, so couldn't leave Polkinghorne.
She then said he was remorseful and said it wouldn't happen again.
John Riordan says Hastings Hospital would have jumped at the chance of hiring Pauline Hanna and he was "strongly encouraging her to come home".
"I felt that she was very nervous about the idea of leaving Philip."
When she told her friends her husband had shown remorse, John Riordan told her that if he'd done it once, he'd do it to you again.
"We see this time and time again."
What was his wife Pheasant's reaction to this? asks McClintock.
He doesn't recall, he says, he was focused on Hanna's safety: "getting her out and getting her home", in his words.
They carried on with the dinner but talked about the "possible permutations" of getting Hanna back to Hawke's Bay.
But she wanted to get back to Auckland, John Riordan remembers.
He confirms Hanna was drinking and had had a couple of glasses of wine.
Afterwards, the Riordans went home. Pauline was staying at Porter's, a boutique hotel connected to the restaurant.
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14 August, 04:56 am
'He tried to strangle me', Hanna told friend
In response to questions from Auckland Crown solicitor Alysha McClintock, John Riordan says when they arrived, Hanna was at the restaurant with a family friend, who left soon after.
The conversation began with Hanna's mother, who was suffering from dementia.
"It was clear that she wanted to tell us about what was going on in her life," John Riordan says.
She then started talking about difficulties and arguments she was having with Polkinghorne.
Hanna said she had to be "very very careful" around her husband, otherwise he would blow out, John Riordan tells the court.
"What she was saying was becoming more and more serious."
"Then she stopped talking, and did this," and, like his wife earlier, John Riordan places his hands on his neck.
"Then she said 'he tried to strangle me'."
Riodan is 100% confident Hanna said the words: "he tried to strangle me".
"I just said to her, pack up your bags, you're coming home with us."
John Riordan said to Hanna that if he'd done it once, he'd do it again.
John Riordan says Hanna told them she was at home when her husband tried to strangle her.
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14 August, 04:51 am
On that point, Corbett is free to go.
The Crown now calls John Riordan, the husband of Victoria Pheasant Riordan, who told the court today how Hanna had claimed Polkinghorne had placed his hands on her neck in what she interpreted as a threat that he could strangle her at any time.
The trial heard earlier John Riordan, his wife and son Connor and Hanna were at a January 2020 dinner at Malo in Havelock North, where the hands on the neck were mentioned.
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14 August, 04:48 am
Corbett says the practice was 100% behind Polkinghorne and trying to engineer the best possible retirement for him.
Mansfield asks if Polkinghorne was ultimately offered $450,000 upon retirement. Corbett isn't sure.
But Corbett agrees the other specialists received more like $650,000. He agrees Polkinghorne may have found that hard to take on a personal and professional level, given his longstanding involvement with Auckland Eye.
Corbett agrees he told police he never saw Polkinghorne consume drugs or observed any behaviour that suggested he had used drugs.
He further agrees there was never any criticism of how he treated his patients or his skill as a surgeon.
And referring to the last time he saw Hanna and Polkinghorne, in mid-March 2021, he agrees they seemed happy.
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14 August, 04:44 am
Polkinghorne's retirement worries
Mansfield says the legal costs were more than the specialist who left received in remuneration, so there was criticism of the way Auckland Eye had managed it.
But Corbett pushes back, saying the departure of the two ophthalmologists was "extremely unexpected" and a number of circumstances led to the shareholders agreement being rewritten.
The practice was working with Polkinghorne on "the most suitable, equitable way" for his exit when the two ophthalmologists left unexpectedly.
The departure of the two ophthalmologists and their request for an "extreme" sum of money created huge issues and endangered the company, necessitating legal advice, Corbett agrees.
But Corbett says Auckland Eye had managed the difficult situations well.
"It was matter of being patient and taking stock of the situation and making decisions moving forward," he says.
Mansfield says he is not trying to be critical of the management of Auckland Eye, but is trying to work out if the exit of the two eye doctors would have affected Polkinghorne's retirement plans.
Corbett says there were "many, many balls in the air" including capital and land issues, but concedes Polkinghorne may have seen the the exit of the two shareholders as a "substantial threat" to his exit plans.
Corbett had discussions with Hanna over her husband's retirement worries and he wanted to ensure Polkinghorne was being looked after and managing his stress.
Corbett told the police that Hanna had told him Polkinghorne was not going to be leaving without the same payout as the other two ophthalmologists, who left amid acrimonious circumstances and an acrimonious legal battle in 2019.
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14 August, 04:34 am
Polkinghorne was stressed when the two specialists left in difficult circumstances in 2019, because their payouts meant the practice was not so well-placed to pay him out on his proposed retirement a few years later, Corbett agrees.
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14 August, 04:31 am
In his interview with police, Corbett spoke of a strategic planning day in 2020, part of which Polkinghorne had slept through.
He didn't see it himself but it was reported to him as a change of behaviour. Most of his awareness of Polkinghorne's behavioural change, Corbett says, was hearsay.
He agrees the room hosting the strategic planning day where Polkinghorne reportedly fell asleep was "quite stuffy".
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14 August, 04:27 am
Ophthalmology requires "incredible intelligence", Corbett agrees, and a lot of hard work as well and Polkinghorne was internationally respected for his work.
Despite his conduct in the operating theatre no longer being considered appropriate, Mansfield asks, was Polkinghorne very focused on his patients and achieving good outcomes for them? Corbett agrees.
Returning to Polkinghorne's weight loss about 2017 and 2018, Corbett admits he was not aware Polkinghorne and Hanna had become very focused on their diet and personal training regimens.
Pinned
14 August, 04:24 am
Corbett spoke to police in mid-June 2021, about two months after Hanna died. The intervention with Polkinghorne was about two years before that.
Operating on the eye is very detailed work, requiring a great deal of care and patience, Corbett agrees in response to Mansfield's questions, but pushes back on Mansfield's assertion that things can "easily go wrong".
"I think that we understand that the risk profile - the benefit profile - of what we're dealing with, and some operations carry with them greater risk than others," Corbett says.
STORY CONTINUES
Two New Zealand pathologists who estimate they have conducted 14,000 post-mortem examinations between them over the course of their careers spent the majority of yesterday in the witness box at Auckland eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne’s ongoing murder trial.
But by the end of the day, jurors were left with few definitive answers other than an admittedly vague agreed-upon cause of Pauline Hanna’s death: neck compression.
The mechanism of the 63-year-old’s fatal neck compression might have been suicide by hanging, or she might have been strangled with hands or a ligature, Doctors Kilek Kesha and Martin Sage reckoned. It also might have been a chokehold-like manoeuvre sometimes used by police officers called a carotid hold, and auto-erotic asphyxiation could not be ruled out.
Prosecutors allege Polkinghorne, 71, fatally strangled Hanna before staging a suicide scene in the entryway to their Remuera home on the morning of April 5, 2021. The defence has noted she had battled depression for decades and has insisted there are logical explanations for each of the things that caused police to treat it as a suspicious death almost immediately.
While being questioned by Crown prosecutor Brian Dickey today, Kesha noted two strange things about a braided pattern found on the side of Hanna’s neck at the scene: Its angle and the disappearance of the impression by the time of Hanna’s autopsy the next day, roughly 20 hours later.
A belt matching the pattern was found rolled up in the kitchen of the couple’s home. Polkinghorne said in a police interview that he had found the item around his wife’s neck but had removed it before police arrived because it was too grotesque.
The disappearing “criss-cross pattern”, Kesha told jurors, might suggest “that there was an object on the neck after death” - potentially giving credence to the Crown’s suggestion of a staged suicide.
Philip Polkinghorne is on trial in the High Court of Auckland, accused of murdering wife Pauline Hanna before staging it to look like a suicide. Photo / Jason Oxenham
“It’s clear there’s something on her neck,” he later explained. “Most likely it’s been removed shortly after death.”
As for the angle of the pattern, Kesha said he would have expected it to be in a diagonal direction across her neck had she died via hanging. A straight line impression, as viewed at the scene, would be more indicative of someone pulling a ligature from behind, he opined.
If jurors might have been initially left with the impression that a suicide by hanging was the least favoured of the pathologist’s theories due to the belt mark, Kesha left a quite different impression during his cross-examination.
“Is it right to say your findings were entirely consistent with suicide by hanging, namely an incomplete or partial hanging?” defence lawyer Ron Mansfield KC asked at the outset of his questioning.
“No,” Kesha said, before clarifying: “It can be.”
The defence lawyer suggested that the belt mark might be there initially but disappear if it was used in a hanging but then removed between an hour or so after death. The pathologist agreed.
“These possibilities are equal, aren’t they?” Mansfield said of the theories that the belt was either applied after death or there during death and removed within two hours. The pathologist again agreed.
So the jury shouldn’t put “undue weight” on the disappearance of the mark between April 5 and the autopsy the next day, Mansfield suggested and Kesha agreed.
But Kesha wouldn’t go as far as agreeing with the defence that he didn’t find the disappearance of the mark or its alignment on the neck “at all significant”. He might not have mentioned the disappearance in reports but had mentioned it to police who were present during the post-mortem, he said.
“I think it’s relevant,” Kesha said, as he was asked the question several times.
Listen in full: Covert recording of wife Pauline Hanna describing surgeon husband as 'sex fiend'
The recording made of Hanna by a relative when she visited their Hawkes Bay property, in which Hanna describes Polkinghorne as a 'sex fiend', was played to the jury in court.
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NOW PLAYING • Listen in full: Covert recording of wife Pauline Hanna describing surgeon husband as 'sex fiend'
The recording made of Hanna by a relative when she visited their Hawkes Bay property, in which Hanna describes Polkinghorne as a 'sex fiend', was played to the jury in court.
Kesha was also asked by the Crown and the defence about the lack of major injuries on Hanna, which he confirmed was “significant” - unusual but not unheard of for someone strangled in an assault. Dickey, for the Crown, pointed out that a person can be made unconscious after less than 10 seconds of consistent pressure. But Kesha noted it hardly ever happens that way in real life.
“Most of the time when someone is strangled, the pressure is not consistent,” he explained. “They’re putting up a fight. This fighting could go on for quite some time.”
Mansfield later suggested that to cause a person to lose consciousness without injury would take a professional - like a police officer or SAS member - experienced in carotid holds. The defence lawyer also noted that Hanna did not suffer a strap muscle haemorrhage, which is common in chokeholds or manual strangulations but not often seen in suicides by hanging. The pathologist agreed the finding was “significant”.
Kesha, who operates out of Auckland Hospital, was followed on the witness stand by Sage, a colleague from Christchurch who was asked to review the post-mortem report and findings. Sage, who has been conducting autopsies for criminal investigations for 35 years, estimated that he has handled roughly 800 hanging cases.
“I’ve seen a lot of hangings, but I haven’t quite seen it like this,” he said of the disappearing neck mark.
He took issue with the way the defence presented some questions to Kesha, noting that he and his colleague were often being asked if the findings were “consistent with” a suicide. That term has been “condemned” by courts in recent years because it can be vague and misleading, Sage asserted, adding that he was reluctant to go along with anything put to him in those terms.
Sage’s answers were much the same as his colleague’s, but he pushed back more when it was suggested by the defence that the autopsy findings amounted to evidence in favour of suicide.
Photo of a leather belt from inside eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne's Remuera home have been entered into evidence at his murder trial in the High Court of Auckland. He is accused of having strangled wife Pauline Hanna then staging the scene to look like a suicide by hanging.
For example, you’d expect to see bruising around the neck if it was a manual strangulation and there was none in this case, he conceded. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to have strangulation without bruising, he said, noting that such cases would be more likely to go unnoticed and therefore be less documented. He noted that some serial killers in the United States claim they’ve found a way of doing so without leaving marks, but added: “What faith we can put in that commentary, I don’t know”.
“It’s terribly inconvenient” when injuries aren’t found, he said, “but the absence [of injuries] doesn’t prove if it happened”.
The defence is likely to call a third pathologist later in the trial: Stephen Cordner from Australia. Mansfield referred to Corner’s own 100-page report throughout today’s cross-examination. Sage said he disagreed with the report’s ultimate finding.
“He certainly decided that this all looks like a hanging ... and then doesn’t adequately, I think, explain the alternative explanations,” he said. “I think the court needs to hear further, other alternatives.”
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.
