Day 2 of Auckland’s latest watchathon, the coronial inquiry into the death of Pauline Hanna at her Ōrākei home on April 5, 2021, was devoted to the various attempts of analysis, examination, and guesswork of what went down in the final 24 hours of her life. Not a lot went down. She worked out at City Fitness in Newmarket. She ate lunch at Benson Rd Deli in Remuera. She bought flowers at Palmers Garden Centre in Ōrākei. Such is the boring quotidian nature of our weekend lives – the chores, lamb shanks for dinner – as Pauline went about her business in the bourgeois precincts of east Auckland, but the next morning she was dead, either by her own hand or at the hands of, as the coroners court has delicately put it, “another”.
Her death was the subject of a somewhat fervently reported trial – my own writing was particularly fervoracious – at the High Court of Auckland in the winter of 2024. Pauline’s husband Dr Philip Polkinghorne was found not guilty of murder. He had been accused of killing her in their house and then having the diabolical idea of manipulating her body to look like she had died by suicide. His acquittal has led to a two-week hearing at the coroners court in Newmarket to determine the cause of death.
The hearing is being held in a cold Ministry of Justice courtroom in Newmarket, an epicentre for Mr and Mrs Polkinghorne. It’s a 10-minute drive from their home above the lovely blue oval of Ōrākei basin. Coroner Tania Tetitaha made a scene visit to the house on Monday afternoon; she said on Tuesday afternoon, “Yesterday was a long day. A lot to see. It’s quite a complex house. I didn’t realise how complex.”
She would have inspected the bedrooms, the stairs, the kitchen, the laundry, the entranceway… Pauline was 63. Her death was violent and abrupt. The court was provided with a document headlined Agreed Timeline, detailing events that Easter weekend; only going by those limited facts (which included a text sent by Polkinghorne to his personal trainer that he and Pauline were “all set” to go to the gym on Monday morning), her death seems to have come out of nowhere and did not appear to be the inevitable conclusion of intolerable stresses and despairs which would lead to a self-inflicted death.
On Sunday, April 4, at 10:46pm, she closed her laptop. “This is the last recorded activity on Ms Hanna’s laptop,” the Agreed Timeline statement reads. A minute later, she charged her phone. The document leans into dramatic italics: “This is the last recorded activity on Ms Hanna’s iPhone.” This strongly suggests her next activity was that beautiful state of existence known as sleep.
Polkinghorne, however, was evidently awake from 1:11am to 2:42am, when he made the curious decision to put his phone on airplane mode and engaged with WhatsApp, Notes, Photos and Videos. From the document: “The nature of the photos and or videos is unknown and unable to be determined.”
He looked pretty funky in court, an agile old gent in an open-necked shirt and a charcoal blazer. He sat with his vivid sister Ruth. His son Taine also provided support, sitting in the public gallery, quite some distance from Pauline’s friends, Pheasant and John Riordan. They’re a lovely couple and they warmly greeted Jan of Howick, Robbyn of Raglan, and other members of the so-called Polky Group of concerned citizens who attended most days of the 2024 trial; they form a kind of Greek chorus as loyal watchers of this long, strange tragedy.
Media are prohibited from reporting any evidence about the cause of Pauline’s death, a sensitivity in accordance with Section 71 of the Coroners Act. It means that much of the evidence heard on Tuesday is essentially redacted. The sole witness was Detective Inspector Chris Allan, an officer in charge of the Polkinghorne inquiry, Operation Xian. He was asked by Crown solicitor Alysha McClintock about █████, █████, and █████.
There was no such prohibition when he was asked about a mysterious injury to Polkinghorne’s head. Police called to the Ōrākei house on April 5 noticed a smear of blood in the middle of his head, like a kind of third eye. He did not know how it got there. It was, the Crown suggested at the trial, sign of a struggle.
Much of Detective Allan’s testimony on Tuesday leaned towards regarding Polkinghorne as a person of extreme interest. There was the third eye formed from blood. There was an exhibit found under Polkinghorne’s bed: a glass pipe, with the memorable brand SWEET PUFF. There was the presence of methamphetamine in diluted urine in an unflushed toilet. But in cross-examination, Polkinghorne’s lawyer, Ron Mansfield, made it plain that these and other bits and pieces didn’t add up to a hill of beans. The only subject was death and how it was caused.
Polkinghorne himself was asked about the subject on Tuesday, when the court played segments of a police interview he gave on the afternoon of April 5. It was filmed at the police station on College Hill in Ponsonby. He talked about █████, █████, and █████. He wore jeans and a pink shirt in the interview, with a rather jaunty hat beside him on a two-seater sofa. He spoke very rapidly and at great length. The sound quality of the recording was quite poor and it made it difficult to hear. At one point the audio seemed to pick up a distant wailing. The film came to a sudden stop, and Ron Mansfield got to his feet. The wailing was, in fact, being made in the courtroom, by Philip Polkinghorne. He had broken down in tears. He was permitted to leave and was supported by his sister Ruth. She put her arm around his shoulder as she led him out, with Polkinghorne sobbing and whimpering really very loudly.
It was a freezing winter’s day across the country, and Auckland was no exception. The aircon in the Newmarket courtroom gave very little warmth. But the temperature plunged to an extreme low among the Greek chorus and Pauline’s friends as they watched Polkinghorne walk past them with tears staining his face. They were cold as ice.
