cradling his wife on the floor<\/a>.<\/p>\n“The first thing I saw when I entered was Pauline lying with her feet to the door. She was covered in a dressing gown or a blanket, and she was lying on her left ear. Pauline is quite tall, and her feet were about one and a half metres from the door which I entered through.<\/p>\n
“Philip was in his dressing gown. He was wailing, and he had his head down and his arms around Pauline.”<\/p>\n
![\"Philip](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/philip-polkinghorne-speaks-at-the-inquest-TIV6KKVJG5BCLJGY3NTKCTN6FQ.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Philip Polkinghorne speaks at the inquest (Source: Pool\/ RNZ)<\/p>\n
She said she also rang 111 to help direct emergency services.<\/p>\n
“I asked Philip who he had called and if the police needed to be contacted. He said he dialled 111, but he said that he, quote: ‘Can’t even use his phone’. He said he had contacted them on a landline.”<\/p>\n
During his cross-examination, Polkinghorne’s lawyer, Ron Mansfield, asked Hughes what that morning was like for her.<\/p>\n
“It was so catastrophic. It was just utterly devastating. It’s something I never wish to experience ever again, seeing my brother in the state he was in, seeing Pauline.”<\/p>\n
Some of Hughes’ evidence cannot be reported because the media are prohibited from publishing details about a possible cause of Hanna’s death, in accordance with section 71 of the Coroner’s Act.<\/p>\n
Hanna died in the Remuera home she shared with her husband who was interviewed for a documentary. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
Hughes shared that she had a close relationship with her brother.<\/p>\n
“My girls call him FUP, which stands for favourite Uncle Philip.”<\/p>\n
But she said her relationship with Pauline was “very light”.<\/p>\n
“We shared a medical partnership\/friendship because of her work. A lot of the people she worked with at Counties [Manukau], I knew through my nursing experience.<\/p>\n
“We used to give her a hard time about her cooking.<\/p>\n
“She was just as people portray her: this very chic lady. I think she probably thought I was a little bit rough around the edges, but she adored Philip and he too. We used to say she was the glue for their family.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Philip Polkinghorne’s sister has described a “catastrophic” scene upon entering his Remuera home on the day Auckland health…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[51,67,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-572467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-auckland","tag-crime-and-justice","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\/572467","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=572467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}