Speaker 1: Kyota. I'm Chelsea Daniels and from the team behind the
Speaker 1: front page the New Zealand Herald's daily news podcast, This
Speaker 1: is Accused. The Polkinghorn Trial. Over the next six weeks,
Speaker 1: in conjunction with our usual daily episodes, will be bringing
Speaker 1: you regular coverage as one of the most high profile
Speaker 1: trials of the year makes its way through the High
Speaker 1: Court at Auckland. A warning, this podcast contains disturbing content.
Speaker 1: Day three of the trial of Philip Polkinghorn centered around
Speaker 1: a bright orange rope hanging from a balustrade and a
Speaker 1: detailed walkthrough of the scene examination of the couple's remuerra home.
Speaker 1: The former auckland Ie surgeon maintains his wife took her
Speaker 1: own life on the morning of April fifth, twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: and Easter Monday, but the Crown claims he staged the
Speaker 1: scene to look like a suicide. First off, it's important
Speaker 1: to understand the layout of that entrance way and the
Speaker 1: stairs leading up to the second floor. Pauline Hanna's body
Speaker 1: was found at the bottom of four steps on the
Speaker 1: floor of the entrance way. If you were making your
Speaker 1: way up to the second floor from the front door,
Speaker 1: you would walk those steps, turn left on a small landing,
Speaker 1: turn left again, then continue upstairs to the second floor.
Speaker 1: Your left hand would touch the solid wooden hand rail
Speaker 1: on your way up, and as you reach the top,
Speaker 1: the wood connects to a balustrade, a railing made up
Speaker 1: of eleven black rods. Now you're at the balustrade. Imagine
Speaker 1: you're standing there, leaning on the black metal. You'd be
Speaker 1: looking down and you'd see the four initial steps and
Speaker 1: the landing to your left would be the stairs. Had
Speaker 1: just walked up with that solid wooden hand rail when
Speaker 1: officers arrived. Photos show you can see a rope hanging
Speaker 1: overhead a few steps in from the front door that
Speaker 1: just entered. Hannah's body in front of them. The orange
Speaker 1: rope was tied around three of those black iron rods
Speaker 1: that made up the balustrade. That rope could be seen
Speaker 1: hanging above the entrance way where Hannah's body was found.
Speaker 1: Crown Prosecutor Alicia McClintock first called to the stand Detective
Speaker 1: Elona Walton, who was at the scene that morning. Walton
Speaker 1: described walking through the house into the garage where she
Speaker 1: saw two cars, one with its boot open. The court
Speaker 1: heard that one of those cars a Mercedes had a
Speaker 1: personalized number plate alluding to Polkinghorn's successful career as an
Speaker 1: eye surgeonr E t Ina Retina. She described the tension
Speaker 1: check down on the rope hanging from the balustrade. It
Speaker 1: took twenty to thirty seconds, with her colleague, Sergeant Christian Ioga,
Speaker 1: pulling on it gently using a finger and a thumb.
Speaker 2: Whereabouts on that loose end of the rope is he pulling?
Speaker 3: Do you know? I'm somewhere in the middle. Maybe I
Speaker 3: can't specify exactly whereabouts?
Speaker 2: And when he first pulls on that rope just explained
Speaker 2: for us what what you saw happened to the rope, And.
Speaker 3: It just kept going and going and going and going.
Speaker 2: What do you mean going and going?
Speaker 3: When extending out from where he was holding it, so
Speaker 3: it didn't just stop and he pulled on it in
Speaker 3: a jam. Oh sorry, he pulled it, and the rope
Speaker 3: just kept unraveling and coming undone.
Speaker 1: In later photos, instead of the orange rope dangling from above,
Speaker 1: it now touched the white tiled floor of the entrance way.
Speaker 1: Walton said it seemed unusual. It's not like a that
Speaker 1: would normally be found when someone had hung himself. Defense
Speaker 1: lawyer Ron Mansfield cross examined Walton, saying police had, after
Speaker 1: about an hour of being there, already concluded it was
Speaker 1: suspicious because of this test, But he said Polkinghorn had
Speaker 1: already admitted he had handled the rope upstairs in his
Speaker 1: initial statement at the scene, and then within.
Speaker 4: That statement you would have noted that it read I
Speaker 4: did the following things, and because I was so flustered,
Speaker 4: I undid the belt and rope from around Paunan's neck
Speaker 4: and then went upstairs to undo the knock from the court.
Speaker 4: Can you see that.
Speaker 1: He said the fact the rope was easily unraveled was
Speaker 1: because his client had gone upstairs to undo it.
Speaker 4: But given the importance of this tension check, why didn't
Speaker 4: you go and speak to doctor Polkinghorn and ask him
Speaker 4: then and there around some details about when he went
Speaker 4: upstairs and how he handled the rope in order to
Speaker 4: see whether there might be a very logical explanation for
Speaker 4: how the loosely core rope on top of the stairs
Speaker 4: so easily once again just fell downstairs.
Speaker 3: That was why I invited him back to the police
Speaker 3: station to discuss that.
Speaker 4: But why couldn't you've asked him simply then before the
Speaker 4: scene is treated as suspicious.
Speaker 3: Because if the scene's treated as suspicious, you want to
Speaker 3: reduce any further contamination.
Speaker 1: And he asked why Walton didn't just speak to him
Speaker 1: at the home. There could have been a reasonable explanation.
Speaker 1: The detective's answers on how the rope test was conducted
Speaker 1: became less clear as Mansfield ramped up his questioning.
Speaker 5: So, if the detective constable leaned over the wooden railing
Speaker 5: that we can see, which is a solid wooden railing,
Speaker 5: how was he able to grab hold of.
Speaker 4: The rope that we see dangle down in photo nineteen.
Speaker 3: Grabbed? I'm assuming the top part.
Speaker 4: I just pause you there, Why are we assuming?
Speaker 3: Well, he's grabbed the top part of the.
Speaker 4: Rope, So what part did he grab.
Speaker 3: He's grabbed the part of the rope that's dropping down.
Speaker 3: I can't tell you an exact which part of that
Speaker 3: rope he grabbed.
Speaker 1: The knot of the rope sat in the middle of
Speaker 1: those three rods. It was tied around something that raised
Speaker 1: questions would it have slipped down the rods if weight
Speaker 1: had been applied to the rope. Sergeant Ioga tested this
Speaker 1: using a gloved finger.
Speaker 6: I believe at the time that if this was death
Speaker 6: by hanging, that I believed that if there was any
Speaker 6: weight put on it from someone hanging from it, that
Speaker 6: that rope itself would be down the bottom of the
Speaker 6: balustrade before it had any tension. So I wanted to
Speaker 6: make sure to see how tight that rope was, to
Speaker 6: see if it would stay there when any pressure was
Speaker 6: put on it. Yes, So with that still wearing gloves,
Speaker 6: just using my index finger just to the left of
Speaker 6: the knot, I put my finger on top to see
Speaker 6: if it would slide up and down, and again with
Speaker 6: a minimum tension, that rope that's tied around the three
Speaker 6: balustrades slipped down a little bit, and then I went
Speaker 6: back underneath it to pull it up, and it slid
Speaker 6: back up as well.
Speaker 1: McLintock asked for his conclusion. He said, at that point,
Speaker 1: I didn't believe it would sustain any weight. Police then
Speaker 1: decided to leave the rope where it was. The entire
Speaker 1: balustrade was then removed from the landing with the rope
Speaker 1: so the knot and rope could be kept intact for
Speaker 1: further examination later.
Speaker 3: He said.
Speaker 1: By late morning, Walton and another officer took Polkinghorn to
Speaker 1: the police station to give a formal statement. On their way,
Speaker 1: he said the orange rope was used the day before
Speaker 1: by Hannah on her trip to the tip. He hadn't
Speaker 1: eaten that morning, he told officers. The last meal he
Speaker 1: had eaten was the one his wife had made him
Speaker 1: the night before.
Speaker 2: What did he say to you about that?
Speaker 3: I think that was basically that he'd been doing most
Speaker 3: of the cooking at that time while she'd been busy.
Speaker 2: Did he talk to you about what his wife.
Speaker 3: Had cooked them the night before? Pork strips and veggies
Speaker 3: and potatoes that she'd forgotten to serve, That's what he said. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Did he talk to you about either his appetitle who's
Speaker 2: at that point in type?
Speaker 3: Yes, he said his wife had a big appetite and
Speaker 3: it was the largest mail he had in a long time.
Speaker 1: They arrived at the police station at about twelve thirty pm.
Speaker 1: Who was happy to engage in a video interview that
Speaker 1: began at one eleven pm. The interview took about three
Speaker 1: hours and will later be played in its entirety to
Speaker 1: the court. Police scoured every one of the three hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy square meters of the Upland Road home, four bedrooms,
Speaker 1: four bathrooms, the library, kitchen, study, laundry. Sergeant Christian Ioga
Speaker 1: assumed the role of officer in charge of the scene
Speaker 1: until the end of the scene examination on April thirteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, eight days after Hannah's body was found.
Speaker 1: After the main entrance way where Hannah's body was found,
Speaker 1: they first turned their attention to the laundry and the
Speaker 1: bedroom upstairs where she'd slept the night before. A blue
Speaker 1: ottoman was found on its side. The white bed spread
Speaker 1: was disheveled. There was no top sheet, a cup, a
Speaker 1: water bottle, and a mobile phone charging on a side table.
Speaker 1: On another end, two stuffed animals sat. Two pillows were
Speaker 1: on the bed. Others were strewn around the room. At
Speaker 1: the foot of the bed, there was a brown smudge.
Speaker 1: It was later tested and indicated there was a high
Speaker 1: probability it was blood, Ioga said. In the ensuite, liquid
Speaker 1: from the unflushed toilet was taken. Meth traces would later
Speaker 1: be identified. There would later be no evidence of Hannah
Speaker 1: using meth, none in her urine or hair samples taken
Speaker 1: after her death. Ioga detailed the scene examination of the home.
Speaker 1: He noted a pink container with black riding in a
Speaker 1: drawer in an en suite, a container with a red
Speaker 1: lid in the master bedroom, a brown black box under
Speaker 1: the bed with a butane lighter. That is it.
Speaker 2: A box beside it?
Speaker 6: Yes, that is a box beside it. And then upon
Speaker 6: opening the box, as you can see in image ninety seven,
Speaker 6: it revealed a used glass pipe which is commonly used
Speaker 6: to smoke meth and fetamine.
Speaker 1: Thirty seven point seven grams of meth would be found
Speaker 1: in total dotted around the home. Ioga also mentioned items
Speaker 1: had found in the washing machine.
Speaker 6: So the item that was in the dryer was a
Speaker 6: large white colored sheet Demani branded it was a little
Speaker 6: bit damp and this had been seized by Fiona mathieson
Speaker 6: the ESR Scientists on day.
Speaker 2: Two ed was there a range of items in the
Speaker 2: washing machine?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: There was wheat or not wat?
Speaker 2: Did that include a variety of clothing?
Speaker 6: Clothing and tee tails.
Speaker 3: Clothing?
Speaker 2: Did that appear to be female clothing?
Speaker 6: Female clothing?
Speaker 1: The trail continues to You can listen to episodes of
Speaker 1: Accused the Polkinghorn Trial through the Front Page podcast feed
Speaker 1: or find it on iHeartRadio. Or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: This series is presented and produced by me Chelsea Daniels,
Speaker 1: with producer Ethan Siles and sound engineer Patti Fox And.
Speaker 1: For more coverage of the Polkinghorn trial, head to enzidherld
Speaker 1: dot co dot nz