An Auckland detective has described the moment a “tension check” was carried out on a length of rope at Philip Polkinghorne and Pauline Hanna’s Remuera home – and has been quizzed about why the test wasn’t filmed.
Warning: This article contains content that could be disturbing to some people.
Hanna was found dead on the morning of April 5, 2021. The Crown said she was murdered by Polkinghorne, who then staged the scene to look like suicide – but Polkinghorne said he’s innocent and simply found his wife dead after she’d killed herself.
Detective Ilona Walton was at the scene that day. This morning at the High Court, for day three of Polkinghorne’s murder trial, she testified to a packed room before tense cross-examination from Polkinghorne’s defence lawyer Ron Mansfield KC.
Prosecutor Alysha McClintock questioned Walton first.
The witness described arriving at the scene and looking around before later going up a set of stairs to above where Hanna was found.
A piece of orange rope was tied to a balustrade near the top of the stairs.
Walton went up the stairs with Detective Constable Christian Iogha. She asked him do a test “just to make sure that the rope would hold the weight of a person” – so he “gently pulled it”, she said.
“It just kept going and going and going and going,” she told the court.
“It didn’t just stop when he pulled on it… It just kept unravelling and unravelling.”
Walton described it as a “light pull”. She then went and alerted her superior officer Detective Sergeant Mark Franich “because it’s not in line with what we normally expect”.
“It seemed unusual and not normal that the rope would unravel in that manner.”
Polkinghorne sat watching – next to a court security officer – from the row behind his lawyer.
‘There were some things that weren’t lining up’
Watson defended her evidence during a tense cross-examination by Mansfield, who asked why the test hadn’t been filmed.
She acknowledged that, in hindsight, she should have. Photos were taken of the knot before and after the test, she said.
“I genuinely wasn’t expecting the rope to unravel in that manner,” the witness replied.
Under Mansfield’s questioning, Walton clarified that the knot hadn’t come apart but rather a coil of loose rope on the stairs began to unravel and drop down below.
And Mansfield referred back to Polkinghorne’s initial statement to police, heard by the court yesterday. In that statement, Polkinghorne mentioned that he “went upstairs to undo the knot” before officers arrived.
Mansfield suggested that, if someone had pulled the rope up, it would “logically” easily unravel again.
Police already thought “there were some things that weren’t lining up” before reading Polkinghorne’s statement, Walton said.
Mansfield pressed Walton on why detectives didn’t ask Polkinghorne to clarify his statement then and there.
Walton said she wanted to avoid “any further contamination” of the scene.
Instead, Walton and another detective took Polkinghorne to the Auckland Central Police Station for questioning.
Accused ‘calm’ and ‘business-like’ in car
On the way to the police station, Polkinghorne got a phone call, Walton said.
Over the phone, he told someone his wife had just died, she said, adding he was “calm”.
“He was just very business-like, there didn’t seem to be any emotion behind it.”
Walton and Polkinghorne left the Upland Rd address at about 11.43am and reached the police station at about 12.30pm. They had stopped at a gas station for food and coffee on the way.
Polkinghorne’s video interview – which will be played to the jury later in the trial – began at about 1.11pm and ended just before 5pm.
Asked by Mansfield, Walton said Polkinghorne was “happy” to speak and “didn’t have any hesitation” answering questions.
Mansfield asked about whether Polkinghorne was being treated as a victim at that time.
Walton said she didn’t know at that point that the home was being treated as a potential crime scene.
“I knew there were questions that needed to be answered.”
Second officer on the stand
Iogha later answered questions from the witness stand.
During his testimony, he described conducting another check after the initial tension test.
He went back up the stairs, he said, to take a closer look at the knot itself – which was tied in a loop across three vertical bars of the balustrade.
It wasn’t at the bottom of the bars. Still wearing gloves, using an index finger, he touched it: “I put my finger on top to see if it would slide up and down.”
He said it slid “a little bit”, “with ease” with “minimal” pressure from one finger.
He said the purpose wasn’t to move it the whole way down the balustrade, he just wanted to see if it would stay put.
“At that point I didn’t believe it would sustain any weight.”
He went and told Franich.
Later in his testimony, Iogha recalled finding packets and containers of what was suspected to be methamphetamine in his search of the house in the days after Hanna’s death. Polkinghorne has already pleaded guilty to possessing meth and possessing a meth pipe.
Iogha also said that a brown stain was found on the fitted sheet on the bed that Hanna was sleeping in at the time of her death. A test came back that it was “highly probable” blood was present.
In cross-examination, Mansfield grilled the witness over the police authority to search the address on April 5.
“Had any enquiry been made of Dr Polkinghorne as to whether he might consent to the search?” Mansfield asked.
“You’d have to ask other officers that,” the witness replied.
He said they were initially there under the Coroner’s Act, as it was a suspected suicide.
Mansfield asked if that changed after suspicion arose, around the time of the rope examinations.
Iogha said, at that stage, the death was still “unexplained” rather than “suspicious”.
Mansfield suggested nobody from the CIB had “turned their mind” to the issue of asking Polkinghorne for consent.
“We were there under the Coroner’s Act at that stage, it was a very complex situation,” Iogha maintained.
“Can we agree that no one actually tried?” Mansfield asked.
“To the best of my knowledge, I’m not too sure if anyone did or not,” Iogha said.
At 5.21pm on April 5, Franich said the applicable law changed, the witness said. The search stopped then, he added.
A search warrant was obtained at 9.25pm that night, Mansfield said. There were scene guards in place for the night.
Polkinghorne had been allowed back earlier in the day for a shower and to pick up some personal affects.
Police continued searching the house until April 13.
“That’s a long period of time,” Mansfield said.
“It’s longer than normal,” the witness acknowledged.
The trial continues.
