April 14, 2025 • 13 mins
Pauline Hanna on a boat, sea breeze, big smiles.
It’s the image filmmakers of a new three-part documentary into her death, and subsequent murder trial of her husband, decide to open on.
Philip Polkinghorne was found not guilty of strangling his wife and making it look like she’d taken her own life.
The Front Page covered the mammoth nine-week trial in the series: Accused: The Polkinghorne Trial.
Today on The Front Page, executive producer Mark McNeill is with us to talk about the trial, the documentary, and the life of Pauline.
Follow The Front Page on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
Host: Chelsea Daniels
Sound Engineer: Richard Martin
Producer: Ethan Sills
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Yielder.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. Pauline Hannah
is sitting on a boat sea breeze, big smiles. It's
the image. Filmmakers of a new three part documentary into
(00:26):
her death and subsequent murder trial of her husband, decide
to open on. Philip Polkinghorn was found not guilty of
strangling his wife to death and making it look like
she'd take in her own life. The Front Page covered
the mammoth eight week trial in the series Accused the
Polkinghorn Trial, but today on the Front Page, executive producer
(00:48):
Mark McNeel is with us to talk about the trial,
the documentary and the life of Pauline Hannah. So, Mark,
you've kept it down to three episodes. You and I
sat through the trial, so we know how difficult that was.
(01:09):
How can you explain to the public or anyone watching
these episodes for the first time, how much footage you
actually had to troll through to cut that down.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
That's a really good question. Well, I have actually done
this number myself.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
I did it one stage, just just out of interest.
So we were there, I think for eight weeks, eight
fives or about forty days or I think about eight
hours a day, whatever that goes to. It's a hell
of a lot of footage. I was there every day
and I was literally taking notes because we had anticipated
(01:45):
this issue. I was taking notes and writing down time code,
time of day so that when the director and editor
had to go.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Through and find stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
I on my notes, you know, I indicated who was
speaking when they started this was I thought this was
a really good point or really interesting point.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
But it was a huge, huge job.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
And the other thing, as you will well know, Chelsea,
is that court sometimes proceeds at a glacial pace, so
someone's evidence can be out, you know, given over a
couple of days, and you have to boil it down
to the conclusions. But yet it was a real challenge,
and I think if we had more episodes, we probably
(02:31):
would have spent a bit more time in court with
some of those things, because there were some wonderful moments
in court that you know, we didn't have time for.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
So you had to sit down interview with Philip Poulkinghorn himself,
but it was filmed before the trial. Hey did he
not want to speak to you again?
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Mark?
Speaker 3 (02:48):
No. I.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
So we had that interview, and that was an interview
conducted over a couple on a couple of days, so
it wasn't just one interview, it was two interviews and
just for.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
A bit of background.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
So you know, I mean, at that stage, we had
no idea what the prosecution's case was or the defense's
arguments were.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
We just knew that he had been charged.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
So you know, like it's kind of very different looking
back at it with the benefit of hindsight after the case,
but at the time we just, you know, in good faith,
we filmed him and his account of it all. And
after the trial I contacted him and asked him if
he would do a post trial interview and he said
to me, it was a phone call. I would have
(03:35):
to my lawyer, Ron Mansfield, would have to okay it.
So of course I immediately seized on that, as you
would and when so, does that mean if Ron says yes,
you would do the interview?
Speaker 3 (03:46):
And he went yes.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
I suspect he might have been using Ron as a
convenient excuse to say no, and I would understand PEAPs
went didn't. But I contacted Ron, and Ron in the
end came back and said that he was advising his
not to do interviews.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
So Madison Ashton reveals to you guys what she would
have said if she'd made it to the stand during
the trial, but of course we know that she didn't
because she was away in Europe during which what did
she say to you guys? Do you reckon she would
have said anything that would have really affected the case
at all?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Really hard for me to say.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
You know, I look, the one place that we never
were and I would have loved have been is in
the jury room. So I have no idea where the
Madison's testimony would have changed the trial.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
You know, I just don't have any idea.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
I mean, if she had been in the trial, she
would have been probably cross examined pretty intensely by Ron Mansfield,
and you know, you've got no idea how that would
have gone. And to be honest, I don't know whether
it would have made a difference. I mean, I don't
think she didn't have any sort of smoking gun evidence,
So I don't know, is the short answer to that.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
And it's probably a long answer as well.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Some people have seen that it's an Ashton, You're nothing
but a gold diggate.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Do you have to say to those people, are.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
You a no?
Speaker 5 (05:12):
No, only poor people say that I'm a gold digger.
I've never ever met a man who has not wanted
a woman for his money if he's moneyed. That's the
whole point of men making money is to be wanted
by a greater pool of women. Philip was just a
nerd doctor on a on a good income.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
So you are you saying you earn like eight hundreds yet?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (05:38):
So it and he worked for it and so did I.
Speaker 5 (05:42):
So yeah, so when it comes to the gold digger thing,
it's just it's just poor people saying poor people's stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Well, and she's really a character. It's quite nice to
see her in her full element, you know, showing off
a glitzy shoe collection ten thousand dollars a shelf. She says,
what was it like, kind of getting a glimpse into
her life?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
I suppose, yeah, I mean it was fascinating and she
was very open with us. And she is a real character.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
As you say, she works in an industry that I
really don't know anything about, and so she kind of
demystified a lot of that, and of course she just
had a huge amount of information and background about Philip
and her relationship and with Philip and the events that
you know over years that preceded Pauline's death.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
So it was just it was fascinating.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
And I suppose that back and forth as well the
videos during COVID that you get to see in the
documentary between the two of them, and the fact that
it does look like a loving relationship between Madison and Philip,
whereas in the trial, because she wasn't there, it was
kind of more of a client sex worker kind of relationship.
But through the documentary and through what you guys put
(07:04):
to the audience, it doesn't really seem like that was
spoken about during the trial, the relationship part of it, right.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Well, my impression of the defense's point of view was
that they were trying to play down that that they
were trying to portray Madison and Phillip's relationship as if
it was simply professional as a sex worker and a client.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
I think when people see all that.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
All those video calls and those messages and all that
kind of stuff, you can see that in a different light.
And I think that again I'm speaking from my impression
of the prosecutions case was they were trying to establish
that Philip did, you know, had a romantic relationship with Madison,
and they wished to say that she might have been
(07:54):
a motivation for him to wanting to leave Pauling. But
certainly if you look at watching all those those interactions
between Madison and Philip, there seems to be a lot
of affection between the.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Two of them.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
What do you make of Polkinghorn coming out and saying
that it's tabloid click bait and that he was deceived
by you guys.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Ah, Look, we just showed his life and the events
surrounding his life and lead up to that.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
You know, that's what his life was like. We're just
telling it like it was.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
And now the rest of the media pick up on that,
and the tabloids do, but we didn't. We just showed
Philip's life as it was.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
The fact of the matter is that his life involved math, sex,
sex workers, and lot of money.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Yes, yeah, which is tabloid an amazing as everybody said that.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
You know, like in a lot of trials, there are
one of those elements and in this one you sort
of add all of them and it's sort of a
kind of an amazing combination from the point of view
of the media, they couldn't resist it, and to be fair,
public interest was huge as well. And also I think
(09:27):
it's not so often that you see a highly respected
member of the establishment charged with murder, and so you
know that often, you know, we see trials in the
media and they don't often necessarily involve medical specialists in
that situation.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
So I think that really captured people's interest as well.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
And now, which in grees netpol in rest and peace
that is best if we can possibly give her baking.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
The case put a spotlight on Pulkinghorn's most personal affairs,
revealing the remu Era eye surgeon as a meth user
with a fondness for escorts, but a wife killer. A
jury decided he was not.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
And I guess throughout this whole thing and how tabloidy
it is, just in its general nature, people tend to
think about Pauline Hannah. Pauline Hannah died that day, and
I thought something you said stuck with me that we
mustn't forget that this is about Pauline Hannah's life and
the way that you edited the film and you really
(10:44):
wanted to pay homage to her and her work and
her life and her loved ones. Tell me a little
bit about that process, kind of making sure that Pauline
Hannah's memory was respected throughout.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Yes, the trial and the case was in some respects
quite bonkers, and it was easy to get caught up
in that, but when you have to start condensing it,
you do realize that, you know, you're aware that this
is because a person's died. And we were really really
conscious of that, and we had a meeting before we started,
(11:19):
you know, that very first meeting you have when you
before you start production, and we talked about that and
we wanted to never lose sight of that because I
think that in some true crime and I hate use
that word, you know, true crime, but in some documentaries
that involve people who have died or in murder trials,
(11:40):
sometimes the dead person gets forgotten. And we didn't want
to do that. We wanted to just, I don't know,
remember her and that and so, as you said, it
is it's deliberate that the first and the last images
you see of Pauline, and we did also wish to
(12:01):
be respectful of her family as well.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Of course, all of those images of Pauline, I mean,
they were really special, weren't they because you spoke to
her brother Bruce for the documentary as well.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Hey, yes, Interfeasant, Yeah and they and they were good
enough to provide us with photos and some video of Pauline.
For me, when I heard her speak in the Longlands tape,
she really became real. You know, you see photos of
someone and you kind of have an idea, but when
(12:34):
you hear them speaking and their cadence, and she seemed
like a really sharp, kind of lively woman and probably
a lot of fun to meet and be around. I
got a really lovely you know, for the first time,
I got a real sense of her and that was great.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
What's the reaction been like to the series so far?
Speaker 1 (12:55):
It's been positive. I mean I'm getting loads and loads
of texts and messages from people and we you know,
with everybody, and the production team is getting those as well,
and far more than I would normally ever get.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
So I think that it's been a really good reaction
so far.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Thanks for joining us, Mark, You're welcome. That's it for
this episode of the Front Page. You can read more
about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzdherld dot
co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan
Sills and Richard Martin, who is also our sound engineer.
(13:37):
I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the front page on iHeartRadio
or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in on
Monday for another look behind the headlines.
Yielder.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. Pauline Hannah
is sitting on a boat sea breeze, big smiles. It's
the image. Filmmakers of a new three part documentary into
(00:26):
her death and subsequent murder trial of her husband, decide
to open on. Philip Polkinghorn was found not guilty of
strangling his wife to death and making it look like
she'd take in her own life. The Front Page covered
the mammoth eight week trial in the series Accused the
Polkinghorn Trial, but today on the Front Page, executive producer
(00:48):
Mark McNeel is with us to talk about the trial,
the documentary and the life of Pauline Hannah. So, Mark,
you've kept it down to three episodes. You and I
sat through the trial, so we know how difficult that was.
(01:09):
How can you explain to the public or anyone watching
these episodes for the first time, how much footage you
actually had to troll through to cut that down.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
That's a really good question. Well, I have actually done
this number myself.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
I did it one stage, just just out of interest.
So we were there, I think for eight weeks, eight
fives or about forty days or I think about eight
hours a day, whatever that goes to. It's a hell
of a lot of footage. I was there every day
and I was literally taking notes because we had anticipated
(01:45):
this issue. I was taking notes and writing down time code,
time of day so that when the director and editor
had to go.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Through and find stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
I on my notes, you know, I indicated who was
speaking when they started this was I thought this was
a really good point or really interesting point.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
But it was a huge, huge job.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
And the other thing, as you will well know, Chelsea,
is that court sometimes proceeds at a glacial pace, so
someone's evidence can be out, you know, given over a
couple of days, and you have to boil it down
to the conclusions. But yet it was a real challenge,
and I think if we had more episodes, we probably
(02:31):
would have spent a bit more time in court with
some of those things, because there were some wonderful moments
in court that you know, we didn't have time for.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
So you had to sit down interview with Philip Poulkinghorn himself,
but it was filmed before the trial. Hey did he
not want to speak to you again?
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Mark?
Speaker 3 (02:48):
No. I.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
So we had that interview, and that was an interview
conducted over a couple on a couple of days, so
it wasn't just one interview, it was two interviews and
just for.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
A bit of background.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
So you know, I mean, at that stage, we had
no idea what the prosecution's case was or the defense's
arguments were.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
We just knew that he had been charged.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
So you know, like it's kind of very different looking
back at it with the benefit of hindsight after the case,
but at the time we just, you know, in good faith,
we filmed him and his account of it all. And
after the trial I contacted him and asked him if
he would do a post trial interview and he said
to me, it was a phone call. I would have
(03:35):
to my lawyer, Ron Mansfield, would have to okay it.
So of course I immediately seized on that, as you
would and when so, does that mean if Ron says yes,
you would do the interview?
Speaker 3 (03:46):
And he went yes.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
I suspect he might have been using Ron as a
convenient excuse to say no, and I would understand PEAPs
went didn't. But I contacted Ron, and Ron in the
end came back and said that he was advising his
not to do interviews.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
So Madison Ashton reveals to you guys what she would
have said if she'd made it to the stand during
the trial, but of course we know that she didn't
because she was away in Europe during which what did
she say to you guys? Do you reckon she would
have said anything that would have really affected the case
at all?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Really hard for me to say.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
You know, I look, the one place that we never
were and I would have loved have been is in
the jury room. So I have no idea where the
Madison's testimony would have changed the trial.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
You know, I just don't have any idea.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
I mean, if she had been in the trial, she
would have been probably cross examined pretty intensely by Ron Mansfield,
and you know, you've got no idea how that would
have gone. And to be honest, I don't know whether
it would have made a difference. I mean, I don't
think she didn't have any sort of smoking gun evidence,
So I don't know, is the short answer to that.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
And it's probably a long answer as well.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Some people have seen that it's an Ashton, You're nothing
but a gold diggate.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Do you have to say to those people, are.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
You a no?
Speaker 5 (05:12):
No, only poor people say that I'm a gold digger.
I've never ever met a man who has not wanted
a woman for his money if he's moneyed. That's the
whole point of men making money is to be wanted
by a greater pool of women. Philip was just a
nerd doctor on a on a good income.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
So you are you saying you earn like eight hundreds yet?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (05:38):
So it and he worked for it and so did I.
Speaker 5 (05:42):
So yeah, so when it comes to the gold digger thing,
it's just it's just poor people saying poor people's stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Well, and she's really a character. It's quite nice to
see her in her full element, you know, showing off
a glitzy shoe collection ten thousand dollars a shelf. She says,
what was it like, kind of getting a glimpse into
her life?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
I suppose, yeah, I mean it was fascinating and she
was very open with us. And she is a real character.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
As you say, she works in an industry that I
really don't know anything about, and so she kind of
demystified a lot of that, and of course she just
had a huge amount of information and background about Philip
and her relationship and with Philip and the events that
you know over years that preceded Pauline's death.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
So it was just it was fascinating.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
And I suppose that back and forth as well the
videos during COVID that you get to see in the
documentary between the two of them, and the fact that
it does look like a loving relationship between Madison and Philip,
whereas in the trial, because she wasn't there, it was
kind of more of a client sex worker kind of relationship.
But through the documentary and through what you guys put
(07:04):
to the audience, it doesn't really seem like that was
spoken about during the trial, the relationship part of it, right.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Well, my impression of the defense's point of view was
that they were trying to play down that that they
were trying to portray Madison and Phillip's relationship as if
it was simply professional as a sex worker and a client.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
I think when people see all that.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
All those video calls and those messages and all that
kind of stuff, you can see that in a different light.
And I think that again I'm speaking from my impression
of the prosecutions case was they were trying to establish
that Philip did, you know, had a romantic relationship with Madison,
and they wished to say that she might have been
(07:54):
a motivation for him to wanting to leave Pauling. But
certainly if you look at watching all those those interactions
between Madison and Philip, there seems to be a lot
of affection between the.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Two of them.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
What do you make of Polkinghorn coming out and saying
that it's tabloid click bait and that he was deceived
by you guys.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Ah, Look, we just showed his life and the events
surrounding his life and lead up to that.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
You know, that's what his life was like. We're just
telling it like it was.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
And now the rest of the media pick up on that,
and the tabloids do, but we didn't. We just showed
Philip's life as it was.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
The fact of the matter is that his life involved math, sex,
sex workers, and lot of money.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Yes, yeah, which is tabloid an amazing as everybody said that.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
You know, like in a lot of trials, there are
one of those elements and in this one you sort
of add all of them and it's sort of a
kind of an amazing combination from the point of view
of the media, they couldn't resist it, and to be fair,
public interest was huge as well. And also I think
(09:27):
it's not so often that you see a highly respected
member of the establishment charged with murder, and so you
know that often, you know, we see trials in the
media and they don't often necessarily involve medical specialists in
that situation.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
So I think that really captured people's interest as well.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
And now, which in grees netpol in rest and peace
that is best if we can possibly give her baking.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
The case put a spotlight on Pulkinghorn's most personal affairs,
revealing the remu Era eye surgeon as a meth user
with a fondness for escorts, but a wife killer. A
jury decided he was not.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
And I guess throughout this whole thing and how tabloidy
it is, just in its general nature, people tend to
think about Pauline Hannah. Pauline Hannah died that day, and
I thought something you said stuck with me that we
mustn't forget that this is about Pauline Hannah's life and
the way that you edited the film and you really
(10:44):
wanted to pay homage to her and her work and
her life and her loved ones. Tell me a little
bit about that process, kind of making sure that Pauline
Hannah's memory was respected throughout.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Yes, the trial and the case was in some respects
quite bonkers, and it was easy to get caught up
in that, but when you have to start condensing it,
you do realize that, you know, you're aware that this
is because a person's died. And we were really really
conscious of that, and we had a meeting before we started,
(11:19):
you know, that very first meeting you have when you
before you start production, and we talked about that and
we wanted to never lose sight of that because I
think that in some true crime and I hate use
that word, you know, true crime, but in some documentaries
that involve people who have died or in murder trials,
(11:40):
sometimes the dead person gets forgotten. And we didn't want
to do that. We wanted to just, I don't know,
remember her and that and so, as you said, it
is it's deliberate that the first and the last images
you see of Pauline, and we did also wish to
(12:01):
be respectful of her family as well.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Of course, all of those images of Pauline, I mean,
they were really special, weren't they because you spoke to
her brother Bruce for the documentary as well.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Hey, yes, Interfeasant, Yeah and they and they were good
enough to provide us with photos and some video of Pauline.
For me, when I heard her speak in the Longlands tape,
she really became real. You know, you see photos of
someone and you kind of have an idea, but when
(12:34):
you hear them speaking and their cadence, and she seemed
like a really sharp, kind of lively woman and probably
a lot of fun to meet and be around. I
got a really lovely you know, for the first time,
I got a real sense of her and that was great.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
What's the reaction been like to the series so far?
Speaker 1 (12:55):
It's been positive. I mean I'm getting loads and loads
of texts and messages from people and we you know,
with everybody, and the production team is getting those as well,
and far more than I would normally ever get.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
So I think that it's been a really good reaction
so far.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Thanks for joining us, Mark, You're welcome. That's it for
this episode of the Front Page. You can read more
about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzdherld dot
co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan
Sills and Richard Martin, who is also our sound engineer.
(13:37):
I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the front page on iHeartRadio
or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in on
Monday for another look behind the headlines.
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