Pauline Hanna confided in her boss and friend she broke into her husband’s laptop while he was away when she suspected him of being romantically involved with another woman.
Warning: This article contains content that could be disturbing to some people.
Clare Thompson has been giving evidence in the Philip Polkinghorne murder trial in Auckland.
She described Hanna as a high achiever who took her job as a health administrator very seriously.
“Pauline was a very sociable person, everybody knew Pauline, she was larger than life… she was a happy person,” Thompson told Crown Prosecutor Brian Dickey.
But she recounted a conversation when Hanna came to her in tears.
“She was very upset… she was tearful, which was not like Pauline.”
Polkinghorne was in Northland working at an eye clinic.
Thompson said Hanna told her she was worried Polkinghorne was seeing another woman and also feared her money was being funnelled away, which she wouldn’t be able to access.
The court was told it was up to $2500 per pay cycle and was meant for a retirement fund.
“She’d said Philip had asked her to sign some forms she didn’t understand… and when she’d asked about what they were for, he had become evasive,” Thompson said.
Hanna was worried Polkinghorne “was doing something underhand”, Thompson added.
Pauline Hanna then saw Thompson again a couple of days after the tearful conversation and said she had got into her husband’s laptop and found photos of another woman.
“She said she knew she shouldn’t have done it, but she was so upset,” Thompson said.
“Obviously, this was something preying on her mind.”
The friends had spoken about Hanna hiring a private investigator.
Thompson also said Hanna had openly discussed graphic, intimate details of her sex life with Polkinghorne.
She said Hanna’s own words were that her husband was “sexually demanding”.
Thompson had known Hanna for about 10 years before she died but had become much more familiar with her within the last five years.
The first time she met Polkinghorne was at the funeral home after Hanna’s death in 2021.
Thompson appeared agitated under cross-examination from defence lawyer Ron Mansfield, who had asked her if she was shocked at hearing about parts of Hanna’s life.
“It wasn’t for me to judge… I was listening to an upset friend,” she replied.
Polkinghorne, a retired eye surgeon who’s now 71, is charged with murdering his wife by strangling her.
His defence is that he found Pauline Hanna dead after she took her own life at Easter in 2021.
He was charged 16 months after she died.
‘Philip’s become beastly,’ Hanna told friend
Another friend and health work colleague who gave evidence on Friday, Margaret White, described Hanna as amazing, bright, capable, determined, and absolutely reliable.
“She took hold of really tricky situations most people couldn’t or wouldn’t touch, and she would see it through – if something needed to be done, she would make sure that was the case,” she said.
But Hanna had also spoken to White about her life outside of work.
“Certainly, things didn’t seem great at home for Pauline,” White told Dickey.
White said things had got a lot more tense in the time before Hanna died.
“Mostly the whole time I’ve known Pauline, certainly as we became friends, she had always talked of his infidelities, you know, that was something she was very unhappy about but seemed to accept it, bizarrely,” she said.
One time, the pair were working on a project together.
“About a year or so before her death, she messaged me to say, ‘Sorry I can’t work on it tonight, Philip’s become beastly’,” White detailed.
“She wanted me to know if anything happened.”
Dickey asked what Polkinghorne was doing to be described as beastly, but White did not know.
“It was clear that he had become enraged,” she said.
White detailed things becoming “increasingly stressed and pressured” at home.
“He was disappearing, things would get very tense… she would say to me: ‘I don’t know where he’s gone’, and then he would return, and all would be lovely, and he would be loving, and she would be unbelievably forgiving.”
White also referred to Christmas 2019, which fellow witness Clare Thompson also discussed.
“She had Christmas with the whole family, and no one knew where he was,” White said.
White cried in the dock when asked to recall a text message Hanna sent her.
It said: “Happy Easter Bunny”.
“That was Pauline to a T, so lovely.”
She also said Hanna spoke a number of times of that Polkinghorne “expected it every morning”.
“She would say that she would just lie back and sometimes pretend she was just sleeping, then he would bring her marmalade on toast,” White told the court.
White said Hanna was not fond of her husband’s extra-martial relationships.
“She didn’t like it, it made her feel… she felt old and actually not attractive enough for her husband to want to be with her, and only her,” White said.
She also confirmed knowing Hanna had taken part in a threesome with her husband at least once in Australia.
“She indicated on this occasion that he expected her to partake, so she drank a bottle of wine and then just went along with it,” White said.
“So certainly there was no suggestion she was a willing participant.”
White said there were periods when Polkinghorne was very unhappy, which made his wife unhappy.
She told defence lawyer Mansfield things “had definitely turned” in the years leading up to Hanna’s death.
White said when the couple was good, they were good.
“Pauline was so happy and understandably would want that to last, but it didn’t last.”
