inquest<\/a> into her death.<\/p>\nHe did not testify during the trial.<\/p>\n
His lawyer, Ron Mansfield, asked him to explain why he had deleted pictures and data from his phone after Hanna’s death.<\/p>\n
“It was embarrassing. I wanted to keep it private.”<\/p>\n
There were also messages from other sex workers, he said.<\/p>\n
“It had compromising material that I didn’t want anyone to see,” he said.<\/p>\n
Polkinghorne said he had gone to the police station to be interviewed the same day he found his wife.<\/p>\n
He got a call midway through from his friend, defence lawyer Tony Bouchier, who told him his house was a crime scene and he was likely a suspect.<\/p>\n
Police had not told him that, he said.<\/p>\n
“I felt I had been betrayed and that they had taken advantage of my vulnerability,” he said.<\/p>\n
Polkinghorne started his testimony today by reading written evidence, breaking down several times, before being questioned by his lawyer.<\/p>\n
Some of the details he remembered from the morning, particularly physical evidence at the scene did not match what he was later told by police or saw in photos.<\/p>\n
Much of that cannot be reported because of suppressions.<\/p>\n
When he looked back, he was shocked and confused, Polkinghorne said<\/p>\n
Mansfield asked him about his state of mind the morning he found Hanna.<\/p>\n
“I was absolutely devastated and I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t get my phone to work. I mean how pathetic is that?” Polkinghorne said.<\/p>\n
“I knew she was cold. I wanted to cover her up… She was dead. She didn’t need a blanket.”<\/p>\n
The next sequence of events was unclear to him but he remembered calling 111, and then calling his sister, Ruth, he said.<\/p>\n
![\"Philip](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/philip-polkinghorne-speaks-at-the-inquest-SP5QROALBZESVBWDZUAJV4K5SU.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Philip Polkinghorne speaks at the inquest (Source: Pool\/ RNZ )<\/p>\n
He answered questions from Mansfield about whether he had used methamphetamine the night before Hanna’s death.<\/p>\n
He raised his voice as he answered: “No.”<\/p>\n
He also denied using the bathroom of the room where Hanna had slept and where traces of methamphetamine were found.<\/p>\n
In 2024, he had been convicted for possession of methamphetamine.<\/p>\n
Polkinghorne spent some of his evidence talking about the stress Pauline had been under in the lead up to her death.<\/p>\n
She was part of the Covid-19 vaccine roll out and had been working very hard, he said.<\/p>\n
Emails on many days were sent over a 13-hour period.<\/p>\n
His voice cracked when he said, one day, they had spanned 20 hours.<\/p>\n
The day before she died she had gone to the gym, then gone straight to work in her gym clothes, he said.<\/p>\n
That was unusual.<\/p>\n
“She was always pristine and well presented and would not normally be seen in gym gear or what she would wear at home,” he said.<\/p>\n
Counsel for police Alysha McClintock has begun cross examining Polkinghorne, asking him why he had previously given three descriptions of the scene where he found Pauline Hanna.<\/p>\n
He is expected to continue answering questions this afternoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Philip Polkinghorne says he began to delete photos and data on his phone from sex worker Madison Ashton…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,135,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-565399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}