Hilda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and from the team behind the front page the New Zealand Herald's daily news podcast, This is Accused the Polkinghorn trial. Over a series of weeks in conjunction with our usual daily episodes, we'll be bringing you regular coverage as one of the most high profile trials of the year makes its way through the High Court at Auckland. A warning, this podcast contains disturbing content.
The former auckland E 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.
When the police walked up those steps at one two won Puckland Road that morning from into the house of doctor Polkinghorn and Pauline Hannah, they assumed that the man who stood in front of them was the devastated husband and that the woman laid out on the floor in that position was.
His wife, Pauling Hannah.
Victim a suicide. Pauling Hannah's death at first pass did.
Look like a suicide. It was meant to.
The police going into that house, as they normally do, looked around to assess the suicide. And they looked at the supposed hanging mechanism.
The rod.
Halfway up that valuestrade as you see in the photograph.
So they did their job.
They tested that rote, not expecting what happened next to happen under minimal tension that rode fell the way to the graph. It seemed that things were not adding up.
That is how Crown Prosecutor Alicia McClintock began her closing address of the crown's case. She said that police then invited Polkinghorn back to the station. He may have thought he could talk his way out or the police wanted to rub a stamp Hannah's suicide. But he couldn't explain that scene and he couldn't explain that rope. That's because Hannah didn't hang herself, McClintock said.
The police decided to explore the possibility that doctor polk Horn, renowned eye surgeon, man of wealth and standing, had killed his wife and staged it as a suicide. Now only you can decide if he did. He is highly intelligent. He certainly sees himself as smart. There is an arrogance and doctor Pulkinghorn, I suggest that you should not underestimate. The crown case is that he has taken his wife's life and he has blamed her for it. As he blamed her in life, he blames her in death. This
case is binary. If it's not suicide, it's murder. Pauline Hannah did not die by accident. She did not die by disease. She did not die by mistake. If it isn't suicide, it's murder.
Hannah had a number of suicide risk factors, but there was no evidence she was suicidal on the night of April fourth. McLintock said this case is not determined on suicide risk factors or probabilities, but on the evidence of those who saw, knew, and loved Pauline Hannah. Her own voice in the Longlands recording and in her own letters.
She was not a woman who had given up.
She was a woman whose husband was giving up on her. She was in the way of doctor Polkinghorn's life with the intoxicating medicine eshed it no doubt, fueled by the impacts of methamphetamine.
McClintock says she will start with Polkinghorn's conduct after his wife's supposed death by suicide. This evidence clearly portrays a man that doesn't fit with a man devastated by his wife's suicide. The prosecutor said, Firstly, he erased evidence. Secondly, he secretly tried to access whether he had left a clue on his wife's dead body. Thirdly, he started to try and manipulate those who knew Hannah and tried to paint her as suicidal.
McClintock says, before you, he's gone one step further and manipulated the evidence placed before you. He's faked a blood result to try and make it look like his blood is on the step at that address two years later when it wasn't there in April twenty twenty one. We are dealing humors of the jury with a very unusual case and a very complex defendant.
He is an.
A man with high levels of intelligence and self assurance.
He appeared to be living a very comfortable life and renewer with his wife of twenty years, Pauline Hannah. He was a renowned professional.
He was all of those things, it seem, but he was also living another life which you've heard about. He was living in another world, a world centered around medicine, Ashton and their relationship which at least in his mind, was his future.
McClintock said there was secret financial support for a number of sex workers and a problematic methamphetamine habit, and those two lives collided on April fourth, twenty twenty one. McLintock thanks the jury for listening to the morass of circumstantial evidence in the case and said it's her job to fit together the parts of the evidence that can be used to prove Polkinghorn killed his wife. Once the Crown's done that, she said, you can be sure that suicide
can be excluded. On pathology, McClintock said the true positive findings here are very limited and not decisive, nor need they be. She said. The findings establish the cause of death as neck compression and not much more, but it is speculative to use the absence of other injury to
support suicide. Defense pathologist doctor Stephen Cordner used the lack of injury to support the suicide theory, but he did not have all the evidence, said McClintock, such as the scene evidence or the prior strangulation evidence as alleged by family friends. The reardons all the evidence as to what
Polkinghorn did before and after Hannah's death. The crown doesn't have to prove everything you have heard in the case, the prosecutor told the jury, but to convict they must feel sure on the evidence that they've heard that Polkinghorn killed Hannah and he either intended it or he did it recklessly. McClintock moved on to Polkinghorn's actions after Hannah's death.
He was largely calm with the police and first responders, and not so. We hadn't talking on the phone to family members and others about what has happened. He was described as wailing and as devastated.
He called himself devastated. Now it is very true, and I don't suggest.
Otherwise that people grieve differently and there's no one way to react.
I'm not suggesting that there is is.
Doctor Hettrick said, you look, shock can do strange things to people. But remember what he's telling us in the days, weeks and months that follow her death is that he's devastated, devastated. He says, you are right members of the jury to stress hist his claim of devastation.
McClintock said that his priority, having made some calls about his wife's death, was to delete his WhatsApp messages, including his entire conversation history with Madison Ashton dating back to twenty seventeen. During the police interview, Polkinghorn left the room for a break at four twenty eight pm. McLintock said when Detective Andrew Reeves examined the doctor's phone later, he found no WhatsApp messages before April fifth, at about four
thirty pm. None of his messaging before then is available, but we know they'd been in regular contact before that, and a further review of his phone found he used it multiple times overnight between April fourth and fifth, when he told police he was asleep. Earlier messages were found on Ashton's phone from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty one, but the contents of those messages have been scrambled together. Mclintock's said that's not a coincidence.
It's not a coincidence that all of the messages prior to five April had gone off doctor Polkinghorn's phone and scrambled.
On Madison Ashton's.
I suggest, wouldn't you like to know what was being said between those two in those earlier messages, But you don't because doctor Polkinghorn has manipulated the evidence and deleted them. The clear and obvious and I would say only inference as to why he did this at that point in time at the police station is because they contained messages demonstrating that he was not the devastated husband at all.
If this was an open relationship that he had with medicine Esh, mister Mansfield urges upon you, then what's the problem.
There are also deleted searches, such as how to delete iCloud storage, which Polkinhorn searched the afternoon of April fifth after leaving the police station.
The next search that he does and deletes is hugely significant, and it comes on the sixth of April, and it's on page eighty of Exhibit twenty.
This search unmasks the murderer.
I suggest leg ademer after strangulation.
After strangulation.
Strangulation is an entirely different Woo took. In this context, it conveys murder rather than conveying suicide.
The one and only explanation is he's trying to check if he had left behind a clue. McClintock said he understands the working of the body and was worried that he'd left a trace. As it turned out he hadn't. There isn't an innocent explanation for the fact he searched it on Duck Duck go and encrypted web browser. McClintock said. She then moved on to Polkinghorn's holiday with Madison Ashton
the month of his wife's death. It's very telling, she said that just three weeks after the loss of his wife to a supposed suicide, he was off on a holiday to a remote part of the country with Ashton.
Either he and his devastation just happened to have found comfort in the arms of medicine Ashton in the South Island, or this is what he wanted when.
He decided, either that his wife was of the way and.
He strangled her or what whether he did that more spontaneously during an argument. Could be either of those things. And I'll come back to this, but this is the life he wanted.
And there he is. The end of the month with Madisone Ashton.
From April seventh, twenty twenty one, Polkinghorn was contacting Madison Ashton with limited references to Hannah and her death. McLintock turned to what she said with Polkinghorn's attempts to manipulate witnesses. He went around to his friend Paul Adrians's house and encouraged him not to speak to police. Then there's Alison Ring,
Hannah's good friend, she said. Polkinghorn went around to her house and started speaking ill of his wife, and also procured a suicide note he said he'd found in Hannah's bedding.
He knew, as Allison Ring told you, Pauline Hannah always left nut for everything. He knew questions were being asked about why she hadn't.
Left a note here.
He is trying to manipulate Allison Rome. And as she told you, that's exactly.
How she saw it.
I felt I had been manipulated by him.
That's what she.
Told you, McLintock said. Polkinghorn's deception got worse. She alleged he planted blood in his house to explain away the wound to his forehead that he could not explain at his first interview. She said that while this sounds shocking, the evidence tells us this. As ESR forensic scientist Fiona Matheson examined the house thoroughly for blood and did not find any on the steps leading up from the entrance
way to the small landing. She did find a red brown mark on those steps, but said multiple times she'd screened that area for blood and did not take a sample because it didn't look like blood and was not blunt.
Two years later, along comes Dr Pulkinghorn to interfere in all of that.
Doctor Scanlon is asked to visit his house at the request of the defense.
Prior to arriving in New Zealand, he's been told there's a blood stain on the side of the stairs. His attention when he gets there is specifically drawn to that area, but then it looked different. The one on the left is what Fiona Mathieson looked at and said, I know as a forensics shidist that is not blood, so I didn't swab it. But in any event, she luminold the entire area. The only blood stain that came up the luminold testing was back over by the door. You'll remember
that two years later. The one on the right is there when Doctor Scanlon turns out and he's directed to it by whom.
Doctor Polk.
There were visual signs of contamination. The mark is in the same place, but the size and shape are very different.
I suggest too, and there just isn't any way of being polite about it.
Doctor Polhan's that there.
He knows he hasn't explained that mark on his head an interview. He knows where that mark on his head really came from from his wife.
If you accept his covering things up, that's circumstantial evidence you can legitimately use to infer his guilt to McClintock said. For coverage of other news events in New Zealand, listen to the front page The Herald's daily news podcast wherever you get your podcasts. McClintock then moved on to part
two of her address, Pauline Hannah herself. McClintock said Hannah had her challenges, but was not suicidal that night, saying that Hannah had been painted as a bit of a stress cadet who drank too much and was obsessed with her appearance by her husband. McClintock pointed instead to Hannah being a beautiful, successful woman in her early sixties. She loved her family and treated Polkinghorn's children as her own.
She could suffer a crisis of confidence from time to time, especially in her work during the COVID pandemic, but she was flourishing in her job at the time of her death and looking forward to the opening of a new vaccination center. McLintock urged the jury not to pay attention to individual emails, such as one Hannah wrote that included the line my life is insane. She said people are complex and words on a page don't always convey well
what sets behind them, especially in isolation. She said that no one had seen anything to suggest she was on the brink, and.
To have her actions in going to the tip and taking dinner to people can be sort of cast as potential suicide indicators. Well, that confused even Doctormenki's who said, that's a bit confusing to say that's an indicator of something. It seems desperate to be frank to look to that to suggest she was suicidal. People go to the tip on long weekends and one of the reasons for that is they want to go to the tip and throw.
Some things out. It doesn't have to be a mental health issue.
McClintock said Hannah was sad but philosophical about her mother's death and had come to terms with it. Hannah was also on prozac for twenty years and took a standard dose. Her GP had said she was well maintained on that medicine and stable. McClintock said, she's not suggesting the medications she was on can't have a negative effect. The question is did it. She had been on her medications for a decade or more, and the evidence is the jurymine a weight loss drug seemed to be helping her state
of mind. McClintock said Hannah had sought help to reduce her alcohol intake in the years before her death, but it seemed that Polkinghorn would taunt her with it at times. Her blood alcohol limit at the time of death was below the legal limit. McClintock says Hannah did not attempt suicide between nineteen ninety and nineteen ninety two, as alleged by her sister Tracy Hannah in evidence.
Pauline Hannah's medical records were traversed over hours of cross examination. There is no medical evidence to support what Tracy Hann said. Here were no marks on her list at all. Topsy It is not something this supposed.
Attempt that anyone who was truly closed to.
Pauline Hannah was told on Tracy Hannah's own evidence. This was both a great shocking piece of information, and yet she also told you she kept it buried in the recesses of her memory for something close to thirty years. I can't explain Tracy Hannah's motivation to say what she did about Pauline Hannah, and I need not prove the crowd need not prove why she did. But I suggest you can safely put that evidence from her to one side.
Whether it's driven by jealousy of Pauline, by some sort of odd fascination with doctor Paulkinghorn, by a wish to be a center of attention, who knows, but I suggested it is unsafe to rely upon.
It is clear she had suicidal thoughts in twenty nineteen. The call to the crisis team shows her mother was in hospital and her husband had abandoned her at Christmas. Her thoughts, though, were not of hanging, they were of driving into a lorry, and she didn't get past those invasive thoughts, saying she was too scared and loved her family. McClintock says she suggested a comment Hannah made about chucking herself off a bridge in the long Lands recording was
not serious. Hannah had significant protective factors in her life, namely her family, so it's important to look at what she did when she had those invasive thoughts like reaching out to her GP. But she was also married to the complex personality of Polkinghorn. He was both her great love and her greatest vulnerability. McClintock said it was a.
Husband who she joined for sexual experiences with others to please him, and the last evidence of that is in twenty sixteen. Consistent with that, she describes group sex and the Longlands recording as something she used to do. He was the husband who she called an angry, angry man in that Longlands recording when things didn't go his way. The husband who knew she knew would have sex with sex workers in Sydney, but who she didn't want doing so on her patch, and she said that she was
clear about that. The husband who expected sex from her every day and.
Would go into her bedroom demanding it.
McClintock said Polkinghorn was a husband who criticized her, blamed her, told her not to wear body suits, and picked at her about benign things. This was seen by her friend John read In and there's evidence of Hannah drafting three versions of the pleading letter she was to SND in reply to her husband.
He was the husband who had strangled her and threatened her that he could do it anytime. He was the husband, though, that she loved despite all of it. The crowd does not and has not, contested that she loved him.
It's clear that she loved him for all as many.
Facts, she loved him. She loved him dearly. She kept trying to better herself to make him happy. The great tragedy of all of those is that her love for doctor Polkinghorn ultimately cost her her life.
But as it happened in his hand, not at her.
There were eleven witnesses who all said, as far as they were concerned, Hannah was fulfilled and had purpose through her work and her grandchildren. It's only after death that Polkinghorn started to talk about her dress, McClintock said. And while there's a note in only a third or a quarter of cases, McClintock said, the evidence shows Hannah left notes about everything. Her pattern was to reach out and
write down. If she was in pain, she would write to herself or write to family to just get it out.
Because her pattern was to reach out and write down she was in pain, that's what she would do.
She spoke about her pain when she was in pain, even to herself, emailed herself.
She got it out, including when she was feeling low April twenty twenty email to herself May twenty twenty email to family about being bullied.
She wrote it down, She got it out.
She wrote her feelings down all the time, or contacted people and spoke to them about it.
And yet she heeled herself and left no note. And I simply say for her, that.
Doesn't Hannah searched for things all the time, but there's no evidence she researched suicide methods before her death, which suggests that she had to know how to take her own life and the way the defense is alleged. Plus, why would she have chosen to hang herself when there were a number of drugs in the house she could have taken instead, McClintock asked. And then there's the location of where her alleged hanging took place.
This is in the.
Front doorway, in the most public part of the house, where she will be seen by whoever enters that doorway. Immediately, which she could have been saved from Darwin life. The door's class, as was its panel beside the door, does it jel Given everything you know about who, how consumed she was about appearance, about.
Others, who would find who? There?
Statistics don't tell you the answer with this, Well would she.
Do in what stated? Because she's naked.
But for that dressing gown in the most public part of the house, naked under a loose dressing gow, this hugely proud, immaculate woman impulsively decided to leave this world pretty much naked.
McClintock then talked about what may have happened after Hannah sent an email to Polkinghorn at ten forty six pm, the last piece of written communications she made. We know that she plugged her phone in at some point. Then, if you followed the suicide narrative, Hannah got up at some point in the night despite the high levels of zoppoclone in her system, but she didn't touch her phone or her laptop. She also didn't go to the toilet,
despite having a full bladder when she died. Instead, she made a mess of a room, stripped just the top sheet off the bed, and took off the pillowcases, which appeared to have vanished. Hannah then went naked apart from her robe to get the rope, but we don't know exactly where from if it's still in the ute. She went outside, full bladder in her robe, hair and makeup,
undone across the street to get it. Polking Horn had said he'd sealed the ends of the rope the day before, but the rope had been cut between the sealed ends, so continuing that narrative, Hannah would have had to cut the rope but then hidden the cutting implement in her disinhibited state. She then would have had to truss one bit of rope to the balustrade without any search on her phone and laptop before moving a chair into the
hallway or without noise or lights. She also fetched a leather belt to attach to the rope, despite her robe having a belt. She would have done all of this without being noticed by polkinghorn On, who we know was using his laptop until around two forty four am. The rope used was also unnecessarily long and from a needlessly high point in the house, and did not have enough tension when found by police. McClintock said on pathology. McLintock said that it only takes us so far. The Crown
pathologists ruled that Hannah died of net compression. The defense pathologists said they would expect Hannah to have suffered many more injuries if she'd been strangled, but McClintock said the pathologists acknowledged the minority of cases where there are no or limited injuries are where there's a good reason, such as a self sedated victim or an assailant who knows
what they're doing. McClintock said, various injuries on Hannah's body, to her nose, her temple, her arms weren't present on April fourth.
It really just a.
Case of stopping, I suggested, thinking logically about the life, because no matter how much you'll urge to discard all of these injuries because of the view that there should have been more, which I'll come to, it's actually much more straightforward and you just stop and think about it, because what are the chances that she has both become suicidal and had this bumpy old time that's injured her in all of these different.
Ways, And there's a fourth injury, an abrasion to her back that McClintock says, is a bit more equivocal. It's the only injury the two Crown pathologists both said could have been made after death. You need to consider all the injuries together, McClintock said, again, the answers here lie outside the pathology. Hannah had no evident injuries on April fourth, but here she is dead on April fifth with those injuries.
McClintock then moved on to the evidence supporting Hannah being of victim of murder.
The single most significant piece of evidence in this trial, I suggest, is that doctor Pulpinghorn had tried to strangle Pauline Hannah before she told her best friends the Reddins about it in January twenty twenty twenty five.
January twenty twenty.
She was dead from net compression within thirteen months of that disclosure. That she told her friends that he had done that. That's one of the few pieces of evidence that's not been contested before you.
So she did tell him that.
There was a challenge to the Reddin's memory around what she said in the Leader and after and whether it was spoken of her gig, but there was no challenge none to the fact that she said that he had done it, and to the fact that she demonstrated that he.
Had done it.
Pheasant Readon said, Hannah became agitated and described that Polkinghorn had done this to her before the witness gestured with her hands to her throat. McClintock said, Pheasant's husband, John Ridon, said, during a dinner in twenty twenty, what she was telling them became more and more serious before she placed her hands on her throat. After this, she said nothing for maybe five seconds, Riddon said, before saying he tried to
strangle me. When Hannah had defended Polkinghorn multiple times in the past, why would she have lied about this as the defense suggested, McClintock asked. Doctor Christopher Milroy, one of the defense pathologists, acknowledged that while rare, it was possible to strangle someone without leaving significant injuries.
Non fatal strangulation common feature of violence against women, a key marker for the escalation of domestic violence. Dr Molroy accepted that said, almost all of the strangulation cases he has dealt with clinically involved a male perpetrator and a female victim, so this is something just to be set against all of this talk of suicide risk factors and suicide indicators that the experts spoke of at length. Indicators
don't decide cases. You know, the facts decide cases. But if we're going to get into looking at suicide indicators, you have to look at this tone.
She told the jury they should look at Polkinghorn's behavior, and I told one friend Philip has become beastly, that he was an angry man. She warned her niece not to stay with them over Chris and asked her step children not to repeat things back to him. Back to Hannah's injuries, McClintock said, they are not nonspecific when viewed through a lens of control and aggression.
Either she's been surprised in the ensuing struggle, she's been struck and punched and gripped and strangled, or what there's an argument during which she's been struck and punched and gripped and strangle. You don't need to prove which there isn't a camera in that role. This is about connecting everything together, so it's really important not to get trapped into isolating bits of evidence.
The crown doesn't have to prove what type of strangulation was used, McClintock said. In a criminal trial, the exact mechanism of death does not need to be proven, but you do need to be sure the neck compression was caused by Polkinghorn and not Hannah hanging herself she told the jury. McClintock said that the jury should also remember that Polkinghorn is a doctor and would have been avoiding
making it look like he killed his wife. The Crown must prove two things that Polkinghorn killed Hannah, and at the time he did that he either intended to kill her or was reckless as to whether his actions would kill her. While the Crown does not need to prove motive, it's helpful to look at what was going on in
their relationship. The evidence shows that Hannah knew Polkinghorn had sex with prostitutes, and she may have joined in in years past to please him, but she didn't enjoy it and wasn't happy about his infidelity, and there is no evidence of it being an open relationship. In April twenty twenty one, it's unclear why he didn't leave her, and the reasons could have been anything from arrogance to appearances
to money. McClintock said, while Hannah was scared, he had a big shot lawyers on his side, and that she wouldn't have any money in her name anymore if she left him. There were also concerns about finances, to the point that Hannah opened a personal loan account right on the cusp of her death. McClintock said, we must add to all of this that Hannah was a woman whose husband was on math.
He's preoccupied.
It's some level with each of these things as well other women, money, meth.
The real problem in his mind that supports this is why.
So whether he decided to end it having watched videos that night for Madison, Ashton smoked myth and surprised his wife. Whether they argued and he strangled her during that both.
Are available.
Alsia McClintock turned to Polkingcorn's life in the eighteen months before his wife's death.
There's three aspects to who he had become on the night of four April. His behavior had changed. He had become increasingly angry and agitated. That might tie to his use of myth fetomene.
He's obsessed with medicine Ashton. He thinks he's setting up a life with her. It's clear in his.
Messages that that's what he thinks. He's hemorrhaging money and money was an issue he's preoccupied with. So again, any one or more of these support the inference the logical conclusion that these two argued about something at night, or these issues boiled over for doctor Pulkinghorn that night and his decision to strangle his wife.
Many people picked up on the fact he was acting differently, including being more irritable at work and disclosing his meth us to colleagues. At the same time, He's going through the cash and has been controlling of and abusive too his wife, and had an ever developing relationship with the Madison Ashton. The suggestion he's not responsible for the meth in the toilet adjoining Hannah's room is just silly, McClintock said. Polkinghorn had also tried to blame the meth pipe found
at auckland I on others. Unusual behavior and aggression are symptoms of meth use, as we heard from an expert witness, doctor Emma Schwartz, and it is also associated with an increased libido. Hannah had complained to friends about him wanting sex every day, calling him a sex fiend. Schwartz also testified that meth use is associated with an increased risk of violence.
Being an older, wealthy, privileged man does not make him.
I muse on the effect of.
On to Madison Ashton, McClintock said that Polkinghorn is emotionally and financially fully invested in Ashton at the time of Hannah's death. It doesn't matter what Ashton's true intentions were or whether she was genuine or not genuine. McClintock says, it's about what he thought and what he wanted.
This dream life that he had Madison Ashton could.
Not be reconciled with the life he had at home with Pauline Hannah.
Cracks were starting to show She's.
Worried, Pauling Hannah's worried. She's being worried throughout twenty twenty. You know that something's got to get and the tensions between these two and the collision of these two worlds.
Evidence shows he was a man spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on sex workers and drugs to try and keep his second life away from Hannah.
When you draw that together, there's one person in this marriage, Miss Hannah, who actually had her life pretty together at this point despite her struggles, but she was busy.
She had struggles with her husband, but she's busy and pretty together despite all of it. She turns up dead under a sheet the bottom of the stairs, totally out of the blue and a shock to all of those close to her.
Onto the night itself, McClintock said that Polkinghorn lied to police about going to bed at ten pm on April fourth, with data showing his phone active after that, including him putting it on airplane mode between one eleven am and eight oh six am. He still used his phone during that time. There is photo and video app usage through to eight oh five am, two minutes before he calls one one one.
He is active for much of this night. And the point is he had plenty of time to kill her.
Whether it's between eleven sixteen and one team one window two forty four and six forty six another one now, no one can say.
The point is is clenty.
Of time and either of those windows, plenty of time to get himself in a state about Madison Aston message her or her message him, plenty of time have a toot on his meth pipe, plenty of time to either surprise his.
Wife in her bedroom or argue with her and strangle her there somewhere else.
Don't have to be sure about where upstairs bedroom does seem the most likely place. Plenty of time for his wife to at least leave one.
Mark on him as she tried to fight back that cut to his head.
That cut he simply couldn't and didn't explain in either his first written statement to the police or his police interview. Noticed by all the first responders.
Are photos sent to Madison Ashton on April fourth shows Polkinghorn didn't have a mark then, and there's also meth traces in Hannah's toilet that puts him in the room and he doesn't want that. McClintock said, he knows what happened when he went in then he killed his what.
He desperately doesn't want to be put in that room.
On his own account, polking Horn was going to the gym twice a week with personal trainer Barry Payne. McClintock said he could have carried Hannah down the stairs. There's also an important detail suggesting she was brought down the stairs she's covered in a sheet when first responders arrive, and a sheet is also missing from the bed where she slept. The sheet was on top of her under
the duvet. No sheet was mentioned in the interview. McClintock said Polking had ample time to stage the scene as a hanging and would not have used surgical knots as the defense suggested. McClintock said, we must prove Pauline Hannah was killed by him and with murderous intent.
That's what we must prove every nuance in the evidence. We need not prove he had.
Time to do all of the things I've gone through. But at the same time, as I referred to yesterday, there.
Was a time limit on him here. There was a pt session booked.
In with Barry at nine am that morning. Pauline had arranged to go first. She had a work meeting as well afterwards, so he knows alarm bells are going to be ringing if she is not with Barry at nine am.
He had also been so active that night he never plugged his phone in. McClintock said, by comparison, Hannah's phone was not used after ten seven pm on April fourth, and the defense's suggestion that she drafted two messages overnight are a complete red herring. In comparison, Polkinghorn's phone was active throughout the night.
Something has happened between them that night. Whether he is high, low strung out on meth, we can't know which.
But the drug does its.
Effects continued after the period of intoxication.
Doctor Schwartz told you that, so.
Its ability to play a role in aggression and behavior remains regardless of its precisely when he may have taken it. In simple terms, his wife has died on a night when it is clear he is awake much of that night, and he has inexplicably hit his phone on airplane mind and he has had time to do all of these things.
There was a time limit, and Polkinghorn did not tidy the upstairs room or flush the toilet. McClintock said he did not expect the police to go all through his house over an eleven day scene examination. Onto Polkinghorn's interview, to do.
You think there's an interview was unusual, weird even I'm not seeking and saying that to promote the idea that there's one way to behave or one way to grief, But it's an incredible mixture self centeredness, jokingess, relaxed presentation, and mixed at times with an almost episode of what appears on.
Its face to be acting.
It breaks down in grief and then bounces back and starts talking again.
McClintock said the interview is three hours of Polkinghorn trying to distract from the scene. But when his pinned down on the fact the rope is tied halfway up that balustrade, his demeanor changed.
His willingness to talk changes at that point in time when he realizes this photograph that's been pointed out to him, what he's been saying doesn't seem to be right.
Everything changes. He's been called out.
So I suggest that much of that interview is a complete deflection from the truth.
McClintock then returned to the scene and said she left it last deliberately to help the jury understand Polkinghorn's willingness to manipulate people and evidence.
The interview was a deflection because the scene that those first responders went to that morning was a deception. Pauline Hannah had not committed suicide, and the scene the police were looking at and that's why it didn't make sense.
If she had, it should have.
Been obvious that she had, but it wasn't obvious. You've got police forensic scientists combing through it, struggling to make sense of it because it didn't make sense. Police officers who were there Sadly, they attend suicide scenes and took one look at that right satan i over said they loved odd so.
He tested it. We know whatever, it didn't stack up.
The very first piece of evidence the jury heard, the one one one call was at eight o seven am when Polkinghorn said he'd found his wife. McClintock said that from the point the operator told Polkinghorn to cut Hannah down, he would have had to remove her from the chair she was sitting on and undo the ropes and belts and then lay her down on the ground and then check if she was breathing.
That's a lot to do, especially when he says he's in shop. Well he would be if she committed suicide. But that's a lot to do. Yet he managed to do it all and about ten seconds.
Polkinghorn was also told to leave everything as you have found it, but by the time paramedics got there, everything used to facilitate her death on the supposed suicide narrative had been moved. McClintock said. The crown case is that the scene was staged. An unexplained piece of rope was on the stairs towards the garage, untoasted bread was in the toaster. Polkinghorn took the belt, wrapped it around in
his hands, put it in the kitchen. There's also blood between her left to index and middle fingers, but no injury to her fingers, which McClintock says doesn't make sense to have come from the bleeding in Hannah's ear. She said that Polkinghorn couldn't explain the rope, such as why there was such a long tail where it was tied, and why there was a piece on the lower stairs. Why did Polkinghorn loosen the rope at the top of the balustrade. He told police it looked awful hanging there,
but when police arrived it was still hanging. He didn't expect to be interrogated like he was, the prosecutor said, and his explanations around the ropes don't add up. As for Hannah's room upstairs, where Hannah slept the night before McLintock said, it doesn't make sense for Hannah to have gone to bed with her room in the state it
was in. The breakfast scene in the kitchen was a facade, she said, and there is an odd collection of items in the washing machine, including an acrylic toenail math traces and the toilet placed polkinghorn in Hannah's bad room.
So bringing all of that together, nothing is in place that there's this scene that should have been in place if.
It was the suicide.
You can't treat this scene as having any sort of validity.
It's been wholly interfed with police.
Spent eleven days there because it had no integrity trying to find out.
What was going on.
It's a big house as well, a lot of rooms. They're doing their jobs, they're being thorough. They're trying to understand why this is said to be a suicide, and yet everything.
About it is out of kilter.
They're trying to figure out what happened because the disease husband couldn't give them any meaningful insight into what happened.
In their house.
McClintock said, there's no one way for the jury to approach this, but she asks them to put aside sympathy and prejudice and analyze the critical issue. Has the Crown proven to you that this was murder? She said that the evidence is there from the prior strangulation evidence thirteen months prior to the faked blood to his duck duck go search, as well as the tensions in their marriage and Polkinghorn's growing attachment to Madison Ashton.
He had the intelligence to do it, He had the arrogance, the drivers, the.
Myth fuelled current.
His relationship with Pauline Henner was done. He had detached from that life. He blamed Pauline Hanner in life for a lot see it me, Lisa, He wrote her. It is the final insult to her to blame her for her own death. I suggest, members of the jury that the evidence that you have heard proves the life that doctor Polkinghorn told when he rut one one one and said that she had home himself. I suggest you can safely be sure on this evidence that he's guilty of murder.
You can listen to episodes of Accused the Polkinghorn Trial through the Front Page podcast feed or find it on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. This series is presented and produced by me Chelsea Daniels, with producer Ethan Seles and sound engineer Patti Fox. Additional production support by Helen King. Additional reporting from The Heralds Craig Capitan and George Block, and for more coverage of the Polkinghorn Trial head to nsidherld dot co dot nz