WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT
Pauline Hanna had been asleep on her stomach, self-sedated on a high dose of meds not prescribed to her, when husband Philip Polkinghorne crawled on top of her and pinned her down, putting her into a fatal chokehold. Due to her vulnerable position and the sleeping pills, she was unable to put up much resistance to the surprise attack, scratching him once on the forehead but passing out in a matter of seconds.
Her husband of 24 years, high on methamphetamine, then put her in a fireman’s hold and dragged her downstairs before wrapping a belt around her neck to make it look like a hanging.
That theoretical scenario - the most detailed to date - was put to jurors today by Crown solicitor Alysha McClintock as the sixth week of the eye surgeon’s ongoing murder trial in the High Court at Auckland came to a close.
The high-profile trial, originally set to last six weeks, is now expected to continue all of next week and possibly run into an eighth week. Jurors were told today that they are tentatively expected to begin deliberating next Friday.
Polkinghorne, now 71, is accused of having killed Hanna, 63, inside their Remuera home on April 5, 2021, the Monday of a long Easter weekend. The Crown’s case is circumstantial, with prosecutors having relied heavily on evidence about Polkinghorne’s methamphetamine use, the hundreds of thousands of dollars he spent on sex workers, his alleged “double life” with Sydney escort Madison Ashton and an alleged outcry from Hanna in 2020 that the defendant had choked her and threatened he could do so again.
The defence has now spent a week presenting evidence that emphasised Hanna’s long-term battle with depression, work stress, alcohol abuse and alleged prior suicide attempt. It was an example of an unfortunately common suicide, defence lawyer Ron Mansfield, KC, has contended.
Both expert witnesses he called to the witness box today bolstered that hypothesis.
Sydney-based psychiatrist Dr Olav Neilssen, who has published roughly 40 academic papers on suicide risk, agreed with the defence lawyer that there were numerous risk factors for suicide in Hanna’s life even if she presented to others as as vivacious and outgoing.
She had been taking anti-depressant Prozac for over 20 years, had been on an amphetamine weight-loss drug for much longer than was generally recommended, had acknowledged to her doctor that she had a troubled relationship with alcohol and a hair test showed she had been using Zopiclone - a sleeping pill that had been prescribed to her husband - for months.
The sleeping pills alone, when combined with chronic depression and alcohol, can be “very dangerous for suicide”, the psychiatrist said. Alcohol abuse, meanwhile, can worsen anxiety as the effects wear off. And combining alcohol with Prozac is not recommended because it renders the drug less effective, he said, describing it as “an arm wrestle with the alcohol winning”.
The psychiatrist noted that there was an empty bottle of pinot noir, her favourite variety of wine, found inside the home. Hanna had told a medical professional a decade earlier that she would drink up to a bottle a night, sometimes experiencing blackouts, but there were some indications that might have tapered off over the years, the witness said.
The weight loss drug Hanna was prescribed, Phentermine, could have had the worst effect, Neilssen said.
”It’s got a whole bunch of worrying side effects, foremost of which is depression,” he explained.
Bereavement is also a risk factor for suicide, as is previous attempts at self-harm, he said.
Hanna’s mother had died in February 2021, less than two months before her own death. And Hanna’s sister - the first witness called for the defence - recounted an emotional exchange in the early 1990s in which she said Hanna insinuated she had tried to cut her wrists some time in the years immediately following their father’s death. Hanna also contacted her GP and a crisis team in December 2019, reporting that she was having suicidal ideation but no plan to carry it out, after Polkinghorne vanished for several days.
“Anyone who’s self-harmed has about a hundred-fold increased probability of subsequent suicide,” Neilssen explained.
“What we have here is this cocktail of high-risk factors,” Mansfield suggested before rephrasing it into a question: “From what you’ve told us, there were a number of factors that increased the risk of suicide for her?”
The psychiatrist agreed.
Because of a scheduling issue, the Crown will not cross-examine Neilssen until Tuesday.
But McClintock, the prosecutor, did get to spend time today cross-examining Melbourne-based pathologist Dr Stephen Cordner, who had told jurors earlier that had the case been assigned to him he would have listed Hanna’s cause of death as suicide. That assessment was based in large part, he said repeatedly, on the small number of injuries found on Hanna’s body. People rarely submit to a homicidal strangling without putting up a fight that leaves marks, he explained.
But McClintock referred back to Cordner’s own testimony that about 30% of cases left no mark. Those cases almost always had a good reason, Cordner said, giving an example of an 11-year-old who was drugged.
That’s when McClintock started painting the theoretical scenario in which Hanna was attacked from behind as she slept. Cordner acknowledged that each aspect of the scenario was possible, but he remained sceptical that it wouldn’t leave more marks.
“People can wake up really quite quickly,” he said.
McClintock continued: “If they’re surprised or asleep that might affect their ability to resist, wouldn’t it?”
“It might,” the expert agreed.
The prosecutor read aloud testimony from one of the two previous pathologists who testified, both of whom said there wasn’t enough information to know if Hanna’s fatal neck compression was due to suicide or homicide.
“He doesn’t, I think, explore the alternative explanations,” Christchurch-based pathologist Dr Martin Sage had said of Cordner’s own assessment. “I think the court needs to hear further alternatives.”
But Cordner remained firm in his view that the overall picture suggested suicide.
Justice Graham Lang and the jury will return to court on Monday for what is expected to be the final two days of testimony.
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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.
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