Does Three’s new true crime series about the trial that gripped the nation bring us any closer to knowing what happened to Pauline Hanna?
We all have our vices, and for eight weeks in the winter of 2024 mine was ghoulishly mainlining coverage of the Philip Polkinghorne murder trial. Day after day refreshing the liveblogs, dissecting new episodes of the two concurrent podcasts, ferreting out old Reddit posts from burner accounts supposedly belonging to his lover Madison Ashton, salivating for the next morsel of evidence that might prove one way or another what happened to Pauline Hanna.
It was a simple either/or situation: either the renowned eye surgeon strangled his wife in their Remuera home and staged it to look like a suicide (the Crown’s case), or she killed herself in such an unusual manner that she accidentally framed her innocent husband (the defence). What made it so irresistible is that neither scenario ever seemed entirely plausible.
On its good days the trial was like watching the world’s greatest soap opera – bombshell after bombshell, every session ending on a cliffhanger, the promise of a star witness or incontrovertible bit of evidence just around the corner. More frequently, though, it felt like a cricket test where one side was batting for a draw, which is more or less what the jury ruled it when they issued a precisely-worded question to the judge in advance of their not guilty verdict.
Most of the jury didn’t believe there was enough evidence to support Pauline committing suicide, the note said, but neither did some of them believe the Crown had provided enough evidence to prove Polkinghorne was responsible. Eight weeks and so much personal information later, and no one was any closer to knowing what really happened.
It didn’t help that two of the people best placed to answer all the open questions and explain all the inconsistencies in evidence never took the stand, for different reasons. But would it have ended any differently if the doctor had been obliged to undergo cross-examination, or if his former lover had shown up to court at all?
Three’s documentary series Polk: The Trial of Philip Polkinghorne, which features the first significant on-camera interviews with both major characters, suggests… maybe not as much as we’d hoped.
Polkinghorne agreed to share his side of the story while awaiting trial after persistent requests from the documentary’s executive producer Julia Hartley-Moore. She received a call in her capacity as private investigator in early 2021 from an unknown number, the mystery caller describing a husband who was seeing sex workers and a suspicion there was something going on “closer to home”. They didn’t give their name and never called back, but after reading about her unexplained death several weeks later, Hartley-Moore became convinced the caller was Hanna.
The interview – conducted by an uncredited male journalist, because Hartley-Moore had already come to the conclusion that Polkinghorne “didn’t respect women” – is a more taciturn version of that strange police interview shown at the trial, a hint of the Polkinghorne we might have seen had he taken the stand. At this point in time he’s still maintaining the lie that he didn’t do meth (“I don’t even smoke!”) and suggesting the tens of thousands of dollars worth found hidden around his house must have belonged to Pauline (“I don’t normally hide my meth in the make-up drawer”). The traces of meth found in the unflushed toilet couldn’t have been him, he insists several times, because the toilet seat was down, and he always lifts the seat to pee. (He later pleaded guilty to two charges of possessing methamphetamine and a pipe.)
It’s easy to see why Ron Mansfield KC didn’t let him get anywhere near the stand. The interview is fairly consistent with testimonies presented at the trial, in that he speaks adoringly of his late wife with one breath and is weirdly disparaging of her character the next. He sobs that she was literally “worked to death” by her job on the Covid vaccine rollout, then shares his personal theory (“supported by the literature”) that her own vaccination the day before she died was administered incorrectly, causing her to develop encephalitis, become psychotic and taker her own life – a theory not tested at the trial.
The Crown’s story, that he strangled his wife in the guest bedroom before carrying her body downstairs to stage a suicide – would have been “physically impossible”, he says. “If I did it”, he speculates, veering into OJ Simpson territory, then he must have had an accomplice. “If there was rock solid evidence, why did it take [the police] 16 months to charge me?” Fair question, but also: “I’m surprised they haven’t charged me for climate change as well!”
While the documentary isn’t entirely unsympathetic to Polkinghorne, it’s abundantly clear you can’t trust a word he says. The same might also be true for Madison Ashton, who has come armed not with a smoking gun but a series of one-liners, describing her distinctive look (“porn star body with a movie star face … what you see is what you get, give or take 10kg”) and extensive client list (“so many accountants … if you’re an accountant you’re a client”); it can’t help but feel like the Madison Ashton show from the moment she’s introduced.
Ashton confirms (and has the camera roll to prove) that the version of their relationship presented at the trial was more or less accurate, that they rented an apartment together in Sydney, that that’s where Polkinghorne was the Christmas he told his wife he was at a self-improvement retreat and couldn’t look at his phone. She says he told her he and Pauline had been separated for years, and sensationally claimed that she had broken into his house to commit suicide the morning she died.
The penny dropped that he was likely full of shit shortly after the pair’s much publicised Mt Cook rendezvous, when she went from being Polkinghorne’s lover to his biggest hater, determined to see him brought to justice. In one spectacular dramatic turn, she told police she was willing to wear a wire and attempt to coax a confession out of him. When the cops turned down the opportunity to collaborate she decided to do it anyway, only to spend the whole encounter paranoid that he was trying to poison her drink or push her off the balcony.
Her story might border on the farcical at times, but Ashton’s interview also reveals a certain self-awareness. “Do you think the defence might tear me to shreds”, she recalls asking a police liaison, who responded by laughing yeah of course they would. This and seemingly every other interaction with the police led her to the conclusion that they didn’t respect her very much, which is why she got the pip with them and refused to show up to court.
She’s right that she could have provided further insight into Polkinghorne’s appetite for the meth he claimed he didn’t smoke – in one of the texts shared in the documentary she describes him as a “drug piglet” – and valuable insight into their unlikely relationship. But the police liaison was right too: she would have been eviscerated by Mansfield. It would have made for a huge day on the liveblog, but it’s hard to imagine it significantly changing the trajectory of the trial.
The one pre-trial interview aside, Polkinghorne and his team declined to take any part in the documentary, which means it exclusively features people who unequivocally believe him to be guilty: Pauline’s best friend Pheasant Riordan, her brother Bruce, Crown prosecutor Alysha McClintock all provide compelling statements that support the Crown’s version of events. “Lying piece of shit, burn in hell”, adds Madison Ashton.
Polkinghorne has unsurprisingly described the documentary that makes him look like the guiltiest innocent man alive as “tabloid clickbait”. I described it to one colleague upon returning from the preview screening as “good”. In this instance, both things can be true at the same time.
