Philip Polkinghorne during his Auckland High Court trial. Photo: RNZ By Jessica Hopkins of RNZ Content warning: Mentions of suicide and domestic violence. A friend of Philip Polkinghorne said she felt manipulated by him after he showed her a supposed suicide note from his wife.
Pauline Hanna was found dead in her Auckland home in April 2021. Polkinghorne has pleaded not guilty to murdering his wife and staging her death as a suicide. Speaking at the High Court in Auckland on Wednesday, Alison Ring, a close friend of the couple, said she supported Polkinghorne after Hanna's death and after he was charged with her murder.
Ring said the retired eye surgeon seemed distraught after his wife's death. "He said: 'I've let her down, I wish I was dead, I wish I was with her'." Like Polkinghorne, Ring's husband worked as as an ophthalmologist.
The couples occasionally had dinner together and had been on work trips to France. Ring said after Hanna's death, she and her husband wanted to support Polkinghorne and told him he was welcome at their home any time. She said one evening, Polkinghorne told them a small amount of methamphetamine had been found in his home and that it belonged to Hanna.
She said she told him: "Do you expect me to believe that, because I won't". Polkinghorne pleaded guilty to possession of the class A drug and possession of a pipe at the beginning of the trial, which is in its third week of six. Ring said three weeks after his wife died, Polkinghorne said police had .