Days 24 - 26: Witnesses reveal a different side of Polkinghorne as defence argues its case

The former Auckland eye surgeon is accused of murdering his wife, Pauline Hannah, who was found dead on April fifth, twenty

twenty one. He maintains she took her own life. Witnesses for the defense revealed a different side to polking Horn then what we've previously heard, with former colleagues and neighbors describing him as funny, generous and caring, while the case took another dive into the couple's accounts, electricity usage the morning Hannah died and the reappearance of a red mark on the stairs, and the defense pathologist weighed in as well.

Day twenty four started with an ophthalmologist the man is intending to seek permanent name suppression, so we can't reveal much about him, including his sub speciality. The man, like all defense witnesses so far in the trial, declined to be filmed or recorded, but we can still report on what they said. The witness said he's known the defendant since Polkinghorn was completing his training in London in the

early nineteen nineties. The witness says he met Pauline Hannah in the mid nineteen nineties when she was a manager of the eye department at Auckland Hospital, before she went on to work with the county's Monaco DHB, where she remained until her death. Defense lawyer Ron Mansfield asked about Polkinghorn's reputation. The witness agrees he was respected as an expert in his sub specialty and his standing was reflected

by invitations to speak overseas. Polkinghorn had founded the business that became Auckland I in two thousand and he worked in other parts of the country providing services as well. He gained an associate professorship at the University of Auckland too. The witness said that Hannah would travel with Polkinghorn regularly for those overseas trips. Mansfield asked about the witness's personal

relationship with Polkinghorn. He says they would sometimes see each other on holiday and on other social occasions, maybe once or twice a year. The majority of their social interactions were via their professional work at functions organized by auckland I. The witness became a trustee on one of Polkinghorn's various trusts. When he became the trustee, it was the fashion for there to be someone outside the trust to be a trustee,

someone trusted by a family. I saw my role as a tie breaker if there was a need, he said. In twenty nineteen, he asked to be removed from the trust due to an increasing pressure in general in New Zealand on trustees to be more involved. He was contacted by Hannah in August twenty twenty and asked if he could sign something for the trust. In March twenty twenty one, the month before Hannah's death, the witness had further contact with Hannah regarding documents so he could finally come off

the trust as a trustee. Hannah brought the document about midday to their practice and she signed it in February twenty twenty one, the witness and his wife had dinner with polking Horn and Hannah at their Rings Beach batch. It was a pleasant night, he said, though finished early so Hannah would visit her gravely ill mother. The witness didn't notice anything out of the ordinary that night. Moving

ahead to the day Hannah died. April fifth, twenty twenty one, the witness heard from someone at Auckland Eye that Hannah had committed suicide. The witness messaged Polkinghorn to express his condolences and asked if he wanted to meet. Polkinghorn contacted the witness on April sixth and was distraught. It was one of the worst conversations I've had, the witness said. At the end of the difficult conversation, Polkinghorn asked him

to be a poll bearer. He said he was assisting police in their inquiries and had been asked a lot about their relationship. Mansfield asked the witness if he'd ever seen Polkinghorn use or be under the influence of any controlled drugs, to which he said no. Prosecutor Brian Dickie then began his cross examination, asking if Hannah did most of the running around for the couple regarding the trusts.

The witness agreed and said he had very little understanding of the trust and its accounting and didn't know enough to answer anything about assets or financials. The witness isn't aware of Polkinghorn's relationship with Madison Ashton. I found out about that about the same time as everyone else in Auckland. He said. He was also unaware of Polkinghorn using methanphetamine. The witness again agrees it was remarkable the amount of time Hannah spent at County's Monaco DHB and said it

was a hard job. There are cuts every six months. People are leaning on you to increase volumes and reduce costs. She would have had a tough job, he said. Mansfield then asked more questions about Hannah's COVID role. She discussed it at the Rings Beach batch dinner, the witness said, and he said it sounded terrible the calls she was getting, the fact that she was having to manage this kind of thing with one arm tied behind her back. It was very political. I know that she was under a

lot of stress, he said. The next witness was Sharon Jenkins, a receptionist at Auckland Eye between twenty fourteen and twenty twenty two. She told defense barrister Harrison Smith that she was one of seven receptionists and one of abround seventy people who worked at Auckland Eye and Oasis Surgical. After a restructure in twenty nineteen, she was assigned to work

specifically with Polkinghorn and two other doctors. One of her duties involved looking after Polkinghorn's outer clinics and Pappatoy Toy and funger Ay, organizing administrative tasks, and preparing his lists. Jenkins had a house sitting arrangement with Polkinghorn and Hannah over Christmas each year, beginning in twenty seventeen. Polkinghorn had come to the reception and asked if someone could house

sit over Christmas. When she arrived, Hannah took Jenkins on a tour around the house and showed her the two cats, the pop plants she had to water, which bedroom she could sleep in. Jenkins was shown the which had laundry in it that day. They didn't have a physical outside line, so it was always in the dryer, Jenkins said. Smith asked what security measures Hannah described to Jenkins on her initial tour of the house, Jenkins says she showed her

the main alarm and keypads around the house. Smith later referred to photos of the master and guest bedroom, which both contained a red button. Smith referred to them as panic buttons, but Justice Lang asked Jenkins what she understood them to be. She said she wasn't sure, but had called them panic buttons in her police statement in April twenty twenty one that initial house sitting went well and led to Jenkins doing it again over the next several years.

She said that Polkinghorn had a good relationship with staff at Auckland Eye, that patients loved him, and he and Hannah were very kind and generous. She said when Polkinghorn came to the clinic after Hannah's death, he was distraught and had clearly been crying. In his cross examination, prosecutor Brian Dicky asked Jenkins about Polkinghorn's weight loss. She said it was noticeable and seemed quite sudden. Asked if she had worked out the red buttons were panic buttons or

if she'd just been told that. Jenkins said her ex partner had looked at them and told her they were panic buttons. Smith then asked a follow up question on when she noticed Polkinghorn's weight loss. Jenkins said it was around twenty eighteen and it was quite dramatic, to the

point she wondered if he had cancer. The next witness was Leoni Darlington, who worked at auckland I from two thousand and four to twenty twenty two in various roles, including as a theater hostess and as a surgical booker at Oasis Surgical, the specialist surgical center built by auckland Ie in twenty ten. He was very good to work with. He was a perfectionist. He had a very high standard and he expected that from his staff as well. She said they had a good rapport and he would come

to her for all of his bookings. Darlington said he was polite, courteous and generous to staff and to patients and would do anything for them, including sometimes foregoing his surgeon's fee so a patient could undergo an important surgery. She said she never saw him under the influence of drugs. Under cross examination from the Crown, she said she was not looking for signs of intoxication. Next was Gillian Mary Blakely,

a registered nurse specializing in ophthalmology. She met Polkinghorn in late nineteen ninety one when she was a junior theater nurse assisting Polkinghorn in surgeries. Blakely says she used to order Polkinghorn's stock and supplies for the theater and helped him with teaching staff as the years went on. He was very dedicated, very committed. He always had the patient's interest at heart, and I really respected him for those attributes, she said. Blakely started doing morning shifts at ORCA and

I in nineteen ninety seven. Ultimately, she worked with Polkinghorn for the best part of twenty seven years. She would be in surgery with him once a week over that period. They had a good working relationship, she said. She said he could get a bit rattled during stressful moments. He liked people to be interested in the case and preferred silence in the theater when operating. Like earlier witnesses, She

says he had a great relationship with his patients. She said Polkinghorn did not share much about his home life beyond surface level friendly chats, and she didn't notice his weight loss. Theatre scrubs are theater scrubs, she said. Defense lawyer Ron Mansfield next called Tony Robert Glucina. He's an investment advisor at JB Whirr, which manages seventeen billion dollars

of trusts for New Zealand clients. The trial heard earlier Polkinghorn had invested about five hundred thousand dollars of proceed from the sale of a Pappatoy toy rental property into that managed fund with JB Whirr. Glucina says JBI Werer had provided services to Polkinghorn and Hannah for about ten years and that he dealt primarily with Polkinghorn as the

investments were registered in his name. Asked about separations, he said that's common and even if the investment is held in one of the couple's names, it's considered shared matrimonial property. He met Hannah at a Christmas function where she accompanied Polkinghorn and Glucina and his partner, Buffy, a well known naturopath and nutritionist, had also socialized with the couple. Polkinghorn invited the couple to a dinner in January twenty twenty

one at the Rings Beach Batch. He said it was a good dinner, but his partner noticed Hannah didn't eat anything, despite there being three courses and a substantial dessert. Polkinghorn is flamboyant, he said, and gave them a tour of the house, which they were very proud of. He didn't observe Polkinghorn treating Hannah badly, and it didn't seem that there was any secret about Polkinghorn's investment with JB. Whirr.

The Crown in their case had repeatedly suggested Polkinghorn was squirreling away money that was at least partly Hannah's, including transferring her salary to accounts he controlled. Crown Prosecutor Brian Dickie then asked Lucina if he ever discussed the JB were accounts when he met with Hannah socially. He said he didn't. He said that Polkinghorn did not act out of the ordinary when they met him at Rings Beach. He said that he was told at the dinner that

Hannah was stressed. The next witness was doctor Timothy Scanlon, who appeared via audio visual link from his home in New Orleans. He runs a forensic consulting firm providing services and training to crime labs. He worked for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's office for more than twenty years. After Polkinghorn had been charged with mer in August twenty twenty two, he was instructed to provide assistance, including to travel to the Upland Road property and review it as a crime scene.

He visited the scene on March eighth and ninth last year. When he was at the property, he found an area with a mark and a blood stain or smear. He collected the sample, he told the court. Defense lawyer Ron Mansfield showed the photo to the court via the screens in the courtroom. It's an image of a set of three stairs just off the kitchen, between the kitchen and the garage. The mark, which appeared to Scanlan as potentially blood, was on the second step from the ground, on the

lightwood paneling on the right of the staircase. Earlier in the trial, we heard about this mark from s A forensic scientist Fiona Matheson. The mark was tested after Hannah's death, and in a photograph from April twenty twenty one, the mark resembled a red line with a gap in it with a black mark running through. Athson didn't test the mark for DNA at the time, as the area tested

negative for blood. In the photo taken from twenty twenty three, the black mark appears to have a slightly different appearance with the passage of time, as Mansfield puts it. He noted, and Scanlon agreed that police had said they had put commercial cleaners through the property. Scanlan says he documented the mark with photography and swabbed it for future DNA testing. He said the sample was sent to a lab in

Virginia for testing. Two samples was sent to the lab, the blood like substance he recovered from the stair and a reference sample from Philip J. Polkinghorn. Scanlan says the first sample was positive for blood and came back as a match to Polkinghorn's DNA. Under cross examination, Crown Prosecutor Brian Dickey asked who was present when he visited the Upland Road property in March twenty twenty three. Zalie Burrows

and Polkinghorn were there. Scanlon said the trial already heard Zalie Burrows was Madison Ashton's lawyer who she recommended to Polkinghorn. Dickie asked if there was a risk of contamination if there's a long delay between scene examinations. Scanlon agreed. Would that risk be heightened if that suspect had access to the scene, Dickie asked. Scanlon said, he thinks that would be fair to say. Dickie asked about the ESR examination

of the home. He recapped that Fiona Matheson had testified earlier. Reading one bit of her testimony, I have not detected any blood in that area. Now, two years later, you've detected blood in that area, Dickie asked, that's correct, Scandlon said. Dickie moved on to the two photos. Scanlon agreed that they are different in appearance. Miraculously, on the right we've got two tracks of red showing, whereas on the left

there's only one line, Dickie said. Scanlon agreed that the second photo from twenty twenty three, the mark appears to have been altered, but it's of the same length, at the same position and has the same void in the middle. But said Dickie, it's not as if the mark has been smudged while cleaning. Dickie then asked that could have come from contamination of the scene, couldn't it. Yes, that's

a possibility, Scanlan said. Dickie said he's not contesting that it's got Polkinghorn's blood on it, but that he's asking about the fact there are two different stains different in appearance. Dickie said one stain has one line and the latter photo of the stain has two lines. Scanlon said it's fair that the risk of interference and contamination is exacerbated if the suspect has access to the scene over that period. Ron Mansfield then asked why Scanlon put the photo from

the police in his report. Scanlon said he noticed it looked like it had been altered, so he specifically put that in his report to bring it to the attention of the court. He said new fr things could have happened after the stain. Mansfield then refers to Fiona Matheson's earlier testimony. She said she didn't take samples from the wooden area, and Scanlan said that's his understanding too. The

next defense witness was Dominic Simon Foote. He's known Polkinghorn and Hannah for some years after his family bought a batch in Rings Beach, two doors down from the polking Horns. Foot said he goes their most long weekends and family holidays. His parents were friends with polking Horn and Hannah, and he dived and fished with the couple and still fishes with Polkinghorn to this day. Polky some call him Foot, said, the first time the trial has heard that nickname in

a few weeks. He called him kind, generous, a great neighbor. He never saw him act erratically. He said, Polkinghorn and Hannah enjoyed carrying comically large glasses of wine. Brian Dicky, in his cross examination, referenced the earliest testimony of crown witness Stephen MacIntyre, another Rings Beach neighbor, who said Polkinghorn had acted erratically in the years before Hannah's death and he suspected he was on drugs. Foot saw nothing of

the sort. He was in bed by nine thirty every night for two and a half decades, even on New Year's Eve, he said. The defense's Harrison Smith called the final witness of the day Ronald Beatty. Beatty's an electrical engineer with expertise and forensic data analysis with fifty two years experience in the electricity industry. Earlier, the trial heard how police instructed Paul Smith from Consumer and Z to look at usage data from Polkinghorn's home in Remuera's Upland Road.

The Defense instructed Ronald Beatty to perform a similar exercise to see if Polkinghorn's explanation matched the power usage data. Beattie said, the electricity industry settles in thirty minute increments, so it's not possible to look at one or two days to consider what could happened within the premises. A wider set of data has to be used, but we can never actually say what exactly happened on any given day.

Smith's report looked only at one or two days of consumption and didn't look at what happened on similar days in the past. That is I think a failing actually of that side of the investigation. Beatty said he also had issues with some of the figures Smith used too. The washing machine used in his modeling wasn't the same as Polkinghorn's, Betty said, and that Smith had made assumptions around the jug. Betty said on April fifth, there was a standing load until about six am, when there's a

steep increase. The increase in load was followed by a larger increase at about eight am. Too great just to be lighting. It needed to be other appliances turned on as well at eight am, He said, Beatty can't tell

us what appliances specifically we used. For example, he can't say for certain if the jug and toaster were both used at around eight am, but Betty's able to use a list of appliances to determine whether or not they may have been used in that period, and the data indicates a regular pattern of electricity consumption to other days.

He said that if the washing machine had been used, he would have expected to see the washing machine turning off in the data on April fifth, which the data doesn't show, so in his view, it could have only been run on the evening of April fourth, and the same goes for the dryer. You'll remember from earlier in the trial, a damp top sheet was found in the dryer by police. It's believed to have come from the room Polkinghorn said Hanna had slept in. It was found

disheveled and missing the sheet. Under cross examination from the Crowns Brian Dickie, Beatty said that it'd be too refined an analysis to say if the kettle or toaster both could have been runner that morning, but that he would

exclude the notion the washing machine was running. Asked about the small rise at six am, which he took to be Ellie d lights switched on by polkinghorn in his bedroom when he rose, Beattie said he can't say who switched the lights on, or in fact where in the house the lights might have been switched.

You'll remember Hannah's hairstrand test was negative for meth. Defense lawyer Ron Mansfield asked Miller how she would describe Hannah's appearance when she attended her appointments.

when he retired. Willis transferred his clients to a younger partner at RSM, but stayed in touch with the couple regarding their financial affairs and remained their first port of call for financial matters. He met the couple on about four social occasions over the years. He would speak to Hannah at these occasions, which once involved picking them up from their Upland Road home and taking them to an

event related to the Rugby World Cup. The couple also visited Willis at his apartment in Prince's Wharf in downtown Auckland. Polkinghorn had said the couple were interested in selling Upland Road, spending more time at rings Beach, and we're looking at the idea of buying a city apartment, perhaps in the viaduct. He said. They later went out for dinner at a restaurant and Prince's Wharf. Willis said that the couple appeared fine when he saw them interact, and he wouldn't have

thought there was any problems with their relationship. On to their financial affairs, Willis confirms he would deal with Polkinghorn, but said Hannah was aware Willis was the accountant for their financial entities, including trusts and companies. Earlier, Willis said it's not uncommon for one party in a marriage to take greater interest in the trust and company related affairs.

The lengthy testimony from Willis went through specifics of various deeds, trustees and joint ventures related to these trusts, which you can read in full at enzid Herald dot co dot nz. There is a point to Willis's testimony. While the Crown earlier has argued that the network of trusts and companies were used to hide money from Hannah and Squirrel away

her salary in accounts Polkinghorn controlled. Mansfield's point via this witness is to suggest the structure of his companies and trusts were standard practice for taxation purposes and to protect personal property, and there would have been a fifty to fifty matrimonial property split should they have separated. Willis said the specific trust, the Hannah Polkinghorn Trust, was set up to give Poline a separate accumulation of wealth. Under cross

examination later, Brian Dicky asked Willis about this. If that was the case, then it would entirely make sense that upon the sale of its only asset, the Pappatoy Toy rental property, for the funds of that to be distributed to the trust, not Polkinghorn. Willis answered, you'd have to look into the minds of the trustees at the time the property was sold to determine what they intended. Willis said he doesn't know if Hanna would have seen in

the accounts before her death. Willis said he wasn't aware of payments made to a Polkinghorn controlled account in Australia, or to a woman named Jody, or to Madison Ashton, Polkinghorn's longtime sex worker companion who lived in Australia. The

next testimony was from Andrew McGregor, a mechanical engineer. He was instructed by Polkinghorn's legal team to investigate the circumstances of what was said to be a partial hanging at the doctor's upland wrote Home Justice Graham Lang suppressed most parts of his testimony and as such we won't be able to cover the full testimony here, but we can report what McGregor's broad conclusion was that it was physically possible for Hannah to have died via hanging in the

manner described by Polkinghorn to police in the immediate aftermath of his wife's death. The engineer conducted his tests at the remiwaer A home on the third of June and the ninth of July this year. Polkinghorn was home, but not observing the simulation he said. During cross examination, Crown Solicitor Alicia McClintock suggested to the jury that there were so many unknown variables that the expert's calculation was basically meaningless.

His testimony also missed the point. McClintock suggested, do you understand the theoretical possibility of this is not the issue, she asked. At one point, McGregor said he didn't take into consideration how loose the rope found tied to the upstairs balustrade was when conducting his tests because there wasn't enough information about how the rope had been tied. He also agreed with McClintock that while understanding angles and weights, due to his background as an engineer, he doesn't have

a pathology qualification. He also agreed that he needed to do some medical research on the suicide method ahead of the simulation. Were you aware if Pauline Hannah had any engineering qualifications, McClintock asked, adding were you aware if Pauline Hannah did any research like you did? No, I'm not aware of that history, he responded, but McGregor said he

doubted an engineering degree or research was necessary. Day twenty six was taken up solely by the defense's pathologist, Professor Stephen Cordner, lives in Melbourne and is an emeritus professor at the Department of Forensic Medicine at Monash University, Mansfield spent around sixteen minutes traversing the witness's credentials to show

how Cordner might be able to help the case. Mansfield started his questioning by asking Cordner to explain what he's required to do as a forensic pathologist when he's required to help courts or police.

keelak kesh At the following day. Mansfield moved on to another pivotal part of the defense's argument, the scene visit. During Mansfield's cross examination of pathologists and detectives who gave evidence for the Crown, he repeatedly questioned why they didn't photograph or measure the ligature mark on Hannah's neck at the scene before it mostly disappeared. Part of the Crown case is the direction of the mark more horizontal than vertical.

It showed the ligature was applied from directly behind and not from a rope secured to the balustrade above. The Crown said much of Cordner's evidence on injuries relating to suicide and hanging by strangulation was suppressed by the JAR, though we are allowed to report on the type of

injuries associated with different types of hangings. Cordner's testimony on Wednesday was lengthy, covering many aspects around suicide, the types of injuries to the body that are found after different forms of strangulation, and the state of a Hannah's body. You can get the full details at Ensit Herald dot co dot nz, but here's a general summary of what Cordner said. Suicide is ten times as common as homicide, he said, and in twenty twenty two in New Zealand,

suspected suicides would double the row toll. They're more likely to happen in domestic settings indoors. While people think suicide and a suicide note go together, that's not the case in more than half of cases, Cordner said. You'll remember police did not find a note from Hannah during their investigation, but Polkinghorn claimed to a friend after he was charged

that had found one. Asked about injuries sustained from homicidal manual strangulations, Cordner said that there's a likelihood the assault will be over an extended period because the victim will probably resist and fight back. Seventy percent of all victims of manual or ligature strangulation were the victim of a much more sustained assault, probably including fractures to the skull. Cordner testified that there was no sign of assault, of injuries to Hannah or any of Polkinghorn's DNA under her

fingernails to suggest should fought him off onto injuries. Cordner said Hannah was of the age when skin bruises become easier to cause and the skin becomes thinner and easier to break. We heard earlier in the trial Hannah had bruise marks on her arm and the shape of fingers like she'd been grabbed, but the defense contends this could have been by someone stabilizing her, like a personal trainer who she had an appointment with two days before she died.

As for her injury's post death, Cordner said that they're all consistent with the death by hanging. He said a lack of drag marks suggest a homicide did not take place, and the beltmark that appeared on Hannah's neck does not show she was murdered that Mark's disappearance is of no significance, he said. Cordner said the lividity of the body is

also consistent with Polkinghorn's version of events. He also said it would be difficult for Polkinghorn to have manipulated Hannah's body to look like there'd been a hanging.

talking about this sort of thing. The starting point is that it takes two people to really successfully and easily handle a dead body.