Retired eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne has pleaded not guilty to murdering his wife, Pauline Hanna, in 2021.
The Crown alleges Polkinghorne, 71, strangled his wife and staged her death to look like a suicide at their Remuera home but the defence says there is no evidence of a homicide.
Only every now and then have we heard anything at the High Court at Auckland these past six weeks about the life and times of Pauline Kay Hanna, whose death at her Remuerahome on Easter Monday, April 5, 2021, was treated by police as a homicide, and has led to the murder trial of her husband, eminent surgeon Dr Philip Polkinghorne.
She got her hair done only a few weeks before she died – by suicide, insists Polkinghorne – and the following is a reconstruction of those appointments taken from evidence given in courtroom 11 on Tuesday, with other factual details taken earlier from the trial which has variously horrified, disgusted and captivated the nation.
Anne Millar was on holiday in the cathedral city of Truro in Cornwall, Britain. The cobbled streets were a long way from her home in Auckland. It was raining on Monday night and she made a video call to a lawyer, who spoke to her from the High Court at Auckland on Tuesday morning (NZ time).
He asked her to think back to one of her regular clients at the hair salon Headquarters, which she owned and managed for 27 years. The woman came into the Walton St salon every four weeks for 25 years. She was lovely. Her name was Pauline Hanna.
Hanna always looked immaculate to Millar. Her hair, her nails, her clothes, her makeup – all of it perfect. There were certain standards to be maintained in wealthy Remuera and Hanna was the epitome of graciousness and style.
Millar thought that for a woman of her age, 63, Hanna had an amazing figure. “I’ve got plenty of men after me,” Hanna told her brother’s family over dinner one night.
“I’ve actually got quite a lot of men who fancy me quite frankly … I’m f***in’ hot.” But she loved her husband. She knew Polkinghorne saw sex workers – she used to join him for group sex – and that he could be “beastly” to her, put her down, say intensely hurtful things. But she was ever hopeful they could work things out. He loved her.
She asked for a tint. Millar put on a L’Oreal product and told Hanna she would be back in 35 minutes while it processed. Hanna immediately took a Zoom call with her staff at Counties Manukau DHB.
She had a senior role, responsible for the vaccine rollout to combat Covid in Auckland, and she couldn’t afford to waste a minute. Sometimes she emailed throughout the night. It was a stressful job – truly dealing with matters of life and death – but she told friends she was proud of how well she was handling it.
Okay, so she drank too much after work. She was aware of that. And okay she was on antidepressants, but like her best and closest friend Pheasant Riordan said: “Who isn’t?”
Hanna had always made appointments at Headquarters on Thursday nights.
Covid changed everything, and she now made bookings for Saturdays. After the Zoom meeting, Millar came back and blow-dried Hanna’s hair. It was Waitangi Day.
Hanna asked Millar what her plans were that night, and Millar said she was hosting a dinner party. Hanna paid on her way out and then came back a few minutes later with a beautiful bouquet of flowers to give Millar for her table at the dinner party.
Pauline Hanna and Philip Polkinghorne at an event in December 2018. Photo / Norrie Montgomery
There were two more hair appointments after that and both times Hanna worked throughout on her laptop. She worried about putting on weight and took prescription medicine for that. She worried about sleeping and took prescription medicine for that, too. “I don’t know how you hold it all together,” she was told at that family dinner when she confessed about joining Polkinghorne to have sex with prostitutes. Hanna replied: “No, sometimes I don’t either.”
There were other anxieties. Her internet searches included “anorgasnia” (a misspelling of “anorgasmia”, someone who does not achieve orgasm) and “what does it feel like to smoke methamphetamine”.
But she only made idle, happy chatter when she saw Millar at Headquarters during her final appointments. Her attitude was positive. Hanna was generous as well as gorgeous, with good friends – she regularly caught up for coffee with a cohort of professional women who called themselves the Housewives of Middlemore. She was open with them about her husband’s “extraordinary sex drive”.
There had been a kind of crisis in the marriage at Christmas 2019. She had the idea he was in talks with Simon Blackwell, who she gathered was the best divorce lawyer in Auckland.
She emailed Polkinghorne: “I still have a bucketload of love and I think you do too.” His reply was cold, like an employer putting someone on notice; his email concluded: “I don’t know what happened to the bucketload of love, but there you have it.”
But they stayed together and their messages to each other during the day throughout 2020 and early 2021 were frequent and affectionate.
Millar told the lawyer in courtroom 11 on Tuesday morning that she last saw Hanna on March 20, 2021. The appointment was for 2.30pm.
Hanna arrived 10 minutes late. “She was busy and distracted with her work throughout,” Millar remembered. But Hanna told Millar she was looking forward to a 4WD holiday in the South Island with friends. Hanna rushed off at 3pm to have a Zoom meeting in her car. Millar only had time to give her hair a quick blast on the way out.
“See you again soon,” Millar said to one of her best customers. Hanna’s appointments routinely cost $270; in a typical year, she spent just shy of $5000 at Headquarters.
