Philip Polkinghorne at the start of his Auckland High Court trial. Photo: RNZ/Nick Monro
Content warning: This story mentions suicide
A rope at the scene of when an Auckland woman was found dead was too loose to have been used for suicide, a detective told the High Court.
Former eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne has pleaded not guilty to the murder of his wife, Pauline Hanna, who was found dead in their Remuera home on 5 April, 2021.
The Crown argues Polkinghorne's financial situation, drug use and infidelity contributed to an aggressive outburst.
Meanwhile, the former surgeon's defence team claims Hanna hanged herself, though the Crown believed the scene had only been staged to look like a suicide.
Taking the witness stand for the third day in the trial on Wednesday, Detective Ilona Walton described her first impression of the scene.
Polkinghorne had covered Hanna's body with a duvet.
"As I walked up to the duvet, I could see an arm and some hair sticking out of it," Walton said.
"I went past Hanna upstairs... I saw the orange rope tied to the balustrade at the top. I noticed there was a short portion of the rope hanging below the landing... part of it was frayed like it had been cut, but it was in otherwise good condition."
After taking several photos of the scene, she said another officer, Christian Iogha, removed the rope.
"He then performed a tension check on the rope... and it very quickly unravelled," she said.
"He gently pulled it and it started to come down... a gentle, light pull. It didn't just stop when he pulled it, it kept unravelling and coming undone.
"It's not in line with how we would normally expect a ligature of a person who has hung themself to react. It seemed unusual, and not normal that the rope would unravel in that manner."
Polkinghorne's lawyer, Ron Mansfield KC, pressed Walton on why she did not record a video of the tension test.
"Was there any reason why you didn't use your police-issued phone to video what you were about to do?"
Walton replied she and Iogha were not expecting the rope to unravel in the way it did, and did not think to record the test.
Mansfield suggested Polkinghorne had loosened the rope while trying to remove Hanna's body.
"Dr Polkinghorne had acknowledged he had been upstairs and handled the rope," he said.
Mansfield quoted an earlier statement from Polkinghorne noting he had attempted to remove the rope before police arrived.
Iogha took the stand to further explain the tension test.
"Looking at that rope, and the way it was set up, it looked like there was a lot of excess slack," he said.
"I wasn't sure it would hold any weight. I donned a clean pair of gloves... Using my index finger and thumb, I lightly pinched the rope and with minimum tension it started to pull quite easily."
His belief was the rope could not sustain any significant weight and did not appear to have been pulled tight.
Walton said, on their way to the police station, Polkinghorne received a phone call.
"He said something like 'I can't come into the office, my wife's just died,' [his voice] was very business-like, there didn't seem to be any emotion behind it," she said.
She also described Polkinghorne's garage, where two white Mercedes were parked.
"One of the vehicles had its boot open. One with a personalised registration: 'RETINA'."
Walton corroborated previous reports that Polkinghorne appeared to have a forehead wound.
"There was a small shallow cut to his forehead. Horizontal, maybe about one to two centimetres."
Iogha said the wound on Polkinghorne's forehead appeared fresh. "It didn't look like it had been scabbed over," he said.
During the nine-day scene examination, Iogha said police could not find further evidence which confirmed Hanna's death was a suicide.
"[Police typically] look for notes left by the deceased, also looking at electronic devices, seizing those so they can be analysed later. Checking if the deceased has done research on how to take their own life," he said.
"During the course of my entire investigation at the scene, I didn't find any note."
Iogha said police found a belt in the kitchen which lined up with Hanna's wounds.
"[We found] a belt with a unique pattern on it, and that belt pattern matched the markings around the deceased's neck at the time of our attendance," he said.
He described an encounter with Polkinghorne while he was first examining the scene.
"While I was conducting the tension check, Dr Polkinghorne had come up the stairs and walked past me into the walkway and uplifted a belt," he said.
"It was a bit odd that someone had walked past us, so I approached him and introduced myself.
"That's when I found out he was Dr Polkinghorne and I asked him if he could come back outside. It was just a bit odd that he would walk up past the deceased and then past us."
Iogha said police had found a brown stain on some bed sheets while searching the house.
"Just at the foot of the bed, to the right a little bit on that fitted mattress, there was like a brown smudge," he said.
"This smudge was later chroma-tested by Fiona Matheson, which is a test that indicates if there's the presence of blood, and this test came back that there's a highly probable chance that there's blood present."
Crown prosecutor Alysha McClintock asked if this was something which would be examined further at a later time for more conclusive results, something Iogha confirmed.
Iogha also said police found methamphetamine and other related paraphernalia hidden throughout the house.
In the bathroom drawer, he said they found a plastic container. "The contents appeared to be a white crystal substance," he said.
"From my experience... It appeared to be methamphetamine."
In one the bedrooms, "we uplifted the mattress... Had a look through all the stuff located under the bed. [We found] a brown-black box that contained a glass pipe commonly used for smoking methamphetamine"
Polkinghorne had already plead guilty to charges of possession of methamphetamine, which his defence argued was unrelated to Hanna's death.
The trial continues.
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