{"id":568075,"date":"2026-08-13T19:02:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T19:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/568075\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T19:02:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T19:02:14","slug":"pauline-hanna-inquest-unused-polkinghorne-documentary-footage-shown-at-coroners-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/568075\/","title":{"rendered":"Pauline Hanna inquest: Unused Polkinghorne documentary footage shown at Coroner’s Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

Footage from the cutting room floor of a documentary about Philip Polkinghorne’s criminal trial has been played at the inquest into Pauline Hanna’s death.<\/p>\n

Polkinghorne was found not guilty of murdering Hanna, his wife, in 2024.<\/p>\n

Now, a coronial inquest is attempting to determine how she died and the circumstances surrounding her death.<\/p>\n

Excerpts of interviews with Polkinghorne, filmed in 2022 inside the Remuera home where Hanna was found dead the year before, were included in a Blonde Razor Productions series. It aired in 2025.<\/p>\n

At the time of the interviews Polkinghorne was charged with murder. He has since been acquitted.<\/p>\n

In unused footage shown at the Coroner’s Court in Auckland on Thursday, Polkinghorne told the documentary interviewer he did not use any electronic devices after watching TV with Hanna and going to sleep in separate bedrooms – the last time he says he saw his wife alive.<\/p>\n

“She went to bed, and then I went to bed thereafter. I’d finished with a laptop and went to sleep. I didn’t use any electronic devices that night to my recollection, didn’t take my laptop to bed or anything like that.”<\/p>\n

Giving evidence at the inquest on Tuesday, Polkinghorne discussed evidence showing he was on his phone until about 2am the morning Hanna’s body was found.<\/p>\n

\"Pauline<\/p>\n

Polkinghorne at the inquest on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

RNZ \/ Marika Khabazi<\/p>\n

He said he often stayed up late watching YouTube and it was a “bad habit” of his.<\/p>\n

Polkinghorne also denied deleting WhatsApp messages between him and sex worker Madison Ashton.<\/p>\n

“I discovered when I was in the police station, the day Pauline died, that my phone [messages] had been deleted. Who deleted it, how it was deleted, I don’t know.”<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Polkinghorne admitted to deleting the messages<\/a>, saying they were embarrassing and unrelated to his wife’s death.<\/p>\n

Police counsel Alysha McClintock watched intently, having earlier accused Polkinghorne of changing his evidence several times since he was first interviewed by police, the details of which can’t be reported on.<\/p>\n

In another clip, Polkinghorne told the interviewer about his police interview the day Hanna was found, and what led him to walk out.<\/p>\n

“I did not have a support person, I was freezing, I did not have access to a lawyer; I didn’t know I needed one. I didn’t have any access to anything, I wasn’t given my rights.<\/p>\n

“I was interrogated and videoed for five or six hours that day.”<\/p>\n

He got a call midway through from his friend, defence lawyer Tony Bouchier.<\/p>\n

“He told me to walk out of the police station. I said ‘no, I’m trying to help them Tony, I’m trying to help them discover what went wrong’.”<\/p>\n

He said police then accused him of lying about something which cannot be reported because of suppressions made by the Coroner.<\/p>\n

“I thought this is enough and I just walked out.”<\/p>\n

On Friday, Polkinghorne is set to take the witness stand for the last time at the inquest and answer questions from Hanna’s brother, Bruce Hanna, and sister, Tracey Hanna, under oath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Footage from the cutting room floor of a documentary about Philip Polkinghorne’s criminal trial has been played at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-568075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568075","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=568075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}