The public gallery at the High Court in Auckland was again full to capacity as the Crown continued to close its case in the Polkinghorne murder trial today.
Crown prosecutor Alysha McClintock, who started her closing address yesterday, told jurors the accused was a nasty manipulator.
The Crown’s closing marked the start of the final stages of the trial for Philip Polkinghorne, who denies murdering his wife Pauline Hanna at Easter 2021.
His defence is that she killed herself, and he woke to find her already dead at their Auckland home.
The trial, originally set down for six weeks, is into its eighth.
Private search clarification
McClintock began today clarifying a comment she made to jurors the day before about Polkinghorne’s use of a private search engine.
The Crown said he used DuckDuckGo to search “leg edema after strangulation”.
McClintock told jurors she said yesterday this was not a way he used before to search the internet.
However, she said the evidence showed police there were other DuckDuckGo searches.
Her point remains, she said: That Polkinghorne chose anonymity at that point in time for what the Crown called a very critical search term.
‘Alarm bells are going to be ringing’
The Crown prosecutor told jurors that “alarm bells were going to be ringing” if Hanna didn’t show for a gym session in Newmarket.
“One of the first things he did that morning after calling 111 is ring her personal trainer,” she said.
Polkinghorne remembered, she said, that Hanna’s appointment was at 9am.
“He knows he’s working to a time limit,” McClintock said.
She also said Polkinghorne was “so active that night” that there was no record of him charging his phone.
“So when you contrast his activity from his phone, in particular from what we know about Pauline Hanna and the lack of activity, that’s telling.”
The police interview
McClintock then shifted the jurors’ attention to Polkinghorne’s voluntary police interview on the day he called 111 to say she was dead.
“Do you think his interview is unusual?” she asked. “Weird, even?”
She told the jury the interview was “an incredible mixture” of self-centredness and jokiness, with periods of breaking down in grief and bouncing back.
“He paints a picture that he’s fast asleep that night when he isn’t,” she said.
“Despite that, he’s verbose about so many things in that interview. The one thing he can’t explain is the rope.”
McClintock called the interview odd.
“He is a nasty manipulator, we know that from other evidence, the interview is just one example of that,” she said. “That interview is fiction.
“Much of that interview is a complete deflection from the truth,” she told the jury.
The scene at Upland Road
McClintock said it was only by understanding “who Dr Polkinghorne had become” that the scene at the couple’s home begins to make sense.
This included issues in his marriage and his willingness to manipulate people and evidence, she suggested.
“The interview was a deflection because the scene that those first responders went to that morning was a deception,” she said.
She singled out Polkinghorne’s 8.07am 111 call when he reported the death as a suicide.
“His lie is revealed in that 111 call,” she said.
McClintock told jurors he could not possibly have cut his wife free and moved her in the time needed.
“It has to have happened in about 10 seconds,” she said.
“He couldn’t possibly have done all of that in that time frame,” she continued, adding there was an “awful lot of activity” that he had to achieve.
She also said blood wedged between Hanna’s left index and middle finger was a piece of circumstantial evidence that does not add up.
“The Crown says all of this is staged,” she said.
The bright orange rope
The Crown then moved to the rope that has featured since the very start of the trial.
“Dr Polkinghorne should have been able to explain that rope, on his account he literally found his wife tied to it that morning” McClintock said.
“She did not die tied to that rope,” she told the jury.
She said that after a one-and-a-half-hour interview with police at his home and a three-hour interview later, there was still no clarity around the rope.
“Photos reveal the lie that it was,” she said.
McClintock said if there had been a suicide, it should have added up – “and it didn’t”.
She said Polkinghorne continued manipulating when his account of what happened was not working.
“He did not expect to be interrogated,” she said. “Dr Polkinghorne’s confused, the police are confused, you’re probably confused.
“And you shouldn’t be, and the reason is it’s a fake rope… She did not hang herself with that rope,” she said.
“Polkinghorne was trying to recount a lie and this was why his account was not making sense,” she suggested.
‘It’s a final insult to her to blame her for her own death’
McClintock ended her address by telling the jurors they would have to assess if the Crown had proved a murder.
“I suggest the proof is there,” she told them. “His conduct after his wife’s death is telling against him, his not being the devastated husband.”
McClintock said again that Polinghorne was a “master manipulator”.
She said it was incredibly hard to fathom Hanna ending her life in the way Polkinghorne said she did.
“His two worlds are fast colliding,” she said.
“He faked a rope so that he could say she hung herself with it, and fakes some toast so he could say he was taking it to greet her with it.
“And he faked some blood to fool you, to cover that mark on his head that has been left by his wife,” she told the jury.
“And he secretly tried to check by DuckDuckGo if he had left a sign of what he had done, strangulation of his wife’s body,” McClintock continued.
“And then he went and met with Madison Ashton, where he saw his future,” she said.
“He had the intelligence to do it. He had the arrogance… the meth-fuelled courage.
“His relationship with Pauline Hanna was done, he had detached from that life,” she said.
McClintock suggested the evidence proves that Polkinghorne was lying when he called 111 back on April 5, 2021.
“It is a final insult to her to blame her for her own death.”
