Philip Polkinghorne looked up "leg edema after strangulation" the day after his wife's death, a court has heard. The former Auckland eye surgeon is on trial, accused of murdering his wife Pauline Hanna in 2021 and staging it as a suicide. The Crown argues Polkinghorne strangled his wife and went to great lengths to stage her death as a suicide.
But his defence argues Hanna ended her life after after struggling with depression for many years. Police detective Andrew Reeves told the High Court in Auckland on Friday that Polkinghorne used the search engine Duck Duck Go to get information about strangulation on 6 April 2021. Reeves said Duck Duck Go was designed to be untraceable, but police were able to recover the search result.
After seizing Polkinghorne's electronic devices, Reeves said police also found he accessed WhatsApp minutes before calling police the day Hanna died, but these messages were deleted. Reeves said all of Polkinghorne's WhatsApp messages before 5 April were deleted, which he found odd. After his first police interview on 5 April, Detective Reeves said Polkinghorne searched on Safari how to delete iCloud storage.
Polkinghorne deleted phone call logs three days after Hanna died, Reeves said. Reeves also analysed USB drives belonging to Polkinghorne. He said one had saved images of knot-tying techniques.
Another had a photo of a meth pipe with "Sweet Puff" written on the side. Polkinghorne could be seen in the reflection of the photo. "He's naked while taking.