August 18, 2024 • 42 mins
On the show today the guys spoke with crime reporter Steve Braunius about his new book "The Survivors", and ended up doing a fascinating deep dive into the Polkinghorne murder trial!
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Speaker 1 (00:16):
It's good.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
As the nineteenth of August and the year of Our
Lord twenty twenty four. Welcome all you bespoke, you donkey
is to the Daily Bespoke Podcast. We've got a GISs
on the pod today, Steve Brunius, Yes, author of The
Survivors and the Throst of Death in Dispiration.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
And here you come to look at that. He's coming
out there.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
He is now Steve Bronius.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
As we as we as, I love and breathe.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Matt and Steve just having a hug.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Steve just shaking Jerry's hand.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Hello, mate, I'm r. We're recording as live right now. Yeah,
we've got this new initiative on the met in Jury
podcast where we just we leave it all out there
the introduction. It's sort of.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Deconstructionalized, showing the workings we like to show. We like
to show the workings.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Yeah, Steve Brawny is you are taking time away from
the Polkinghorn trial, the trial of the century. I measine
it must be hard to drag yourself away from that
this morning to come in here and have a chat
to us.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
I'm not dragging myself. Hey, there's no court today.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
See that's why you booked today, boy, that that trial
has been a sensation, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yeah, it has is exactly the halfway mark, or could
be more. And I'm already kind of dreading the day
when it's when it's over. Actually, yeah, it's it's it's
a trial for the ages.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
It's it certainly is. And there seems to be layers
and layers to that. As you peel the layers of
the onion off, there's more and more. It's a bit
rotten at the court, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Well, the core, of course, is you know, a tragic death.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yes, And we sometimes forget that, don't we when we
celebrate the who's we I sometimes forget that when I'm
celebrating the salacious details.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
I think you've defined the way I'm writing about the case.
I am trying to sort of catch up with myself
all the time and remind myself that at the core
of it, a woman is dead and we don't know
whether it was by her own hand or her husband's,
and that's for the jury to decide. And yeah, they've
(02:43):
got they've been been, you know, they've hurt a lot,
they've heard a hell of a lot, and yeah, much
more to go. Of course, there's one more week officially
of the prosecution case, and heaven knows who they're going
to call this week.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Where is the lover from Australia, the Sydney based lover
who he was then in a situation Philip Pongingham was
in in a situation twenty days after his wife had
either been murdered or had taken her own life.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
As you said, he's.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
Down at Mount Cook enjoying a weekend away with her.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Where's she? Because I thought she was going to be
called by the prosecution.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yeah, the Mount Cook, the Mount Cook Lodge and the
Marta Ricki Room. Yes, yeah, just sort of an update
on the Lenn Brown.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
And the Nutty Fattala Roo room, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah? Great rooms of New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Why always Now you're saying that the Survivor's Book is
the last of your trilogy. Maybe that could be your
next book. Room Trust, Trust Rooms, Rooms with great trusts
in them.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Well, you know it's been talking about that that book.
The sort of central thesis of this book anyway is
undone crime writing.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
I thought that because I went to your book launch
for this and that was sort of that was sort
of the theme of the whole launch with all the speeches.
I'm out, I've done it. I want to move on.
And now you've sort of in the most high profile
your name is everywhere around this trial. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
I think around three days after the book launched, the
Folking Trials, they dragged me back in. Well, I mean,
it is an extraordinary case and and apropos, these these
sort of grand claims I made for The Survivors being
the last book of my crime writing is that, you know,
(04:39):
the reason I didn't want to do anymore. One of
the reasons I didn't want to do anymore is that
I was becoming I was feeling really very remote from
the people being accused of terrible crimes and very often
were in fact, did perpetrate those terrible crimes.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
You know, I.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Couldn't relate to them, and I couldn't I couldn't really
relate to their families, and I was feeling as though
I didn't really belong to this social scene. You know,
I didn't understand the language. It was the kind of
a language of for example, extreme poverty, extreme myth amphetamine use,
(05:24):
and yeah, it was very very bleak, and I wasn't
living their lives and I had never lived those lives,
and while as a journalist or any kind of writer,
your job is to sort of enter into those wills
with empathy and some kind of degree of human understanding,
it kind of just got too much and I didn't
(05:46):
feel as though I could sincerely continue this, however, disagwayed.
Although I'm not Vadovi's living in Rebuera as wealthy as
doctor Philip John polking Horn, I can much more easily
relate to the right. This is why mischief. He's being
(06:08):
canceled on an extreme scale by the prosecution for his
his private life, which is not private at all, obviously
so incredibly public. And yeah, doctors, lawyers, you know, we
hear about Polkinghorn. You know, got the Orcan's best events,
(06:31):
best divorced lawyer before Pauline was died, and all these
kinds of things. And I can relate to all of that,
And you know, and I think this is one of
the reasons that's touching such an emotional chord with people
around the country and why people are transfixed to it.
(06:51):
They can relate to it. This is not the fulthy few,
This is the ruling class. This is people who we
recogniz eyes and yeah, you know, Polkinghorn made a you know,
quite a contribution to society. You know, he was an
expert in he was the last ditch when you were
(07:11):
losing your sight, but he worked on the back of
the eye. And there's a lot to admire about him.
He's very funny person. He's very good sense of humor.
You know, it's sort of I probably shouldn't go too
much into it, but you know, I have the odd
chat with him during the trial, and yeah, he's funny.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
There's always a desire though, don't you think, Steve, that
people always want to think that the high are somehow
as well operating something else behind closed doors. Like there's
another more devious part to these people. So when all
of a sudden, someone like Philip Polkinghorn, who has seen
(07:54):
to have succeeded, he seemed to be very, very wealthy,
all of a sudden it turns out that he's living
this insane set life and it turns out as an
absolute demon for the methamphetamine. Like he just he really
is a he loves the methamphetamine.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
We love the hypocrisy.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yeah, that's love that It's alute part of it. I
think that's a big there's a big drive there.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Just a small point here. It hasn't been proved that
the methamphetamine was his and that he himself was hitting
the glass barbage, small point about point.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
I think that is possibly relevant.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
But just back to that case. Back to that just quickly.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
I do find it on you. I've been following the
trial very close. I've been reading all of your all
of your articles on it, and I do find it
very interesting that a guy who, let's just say he
did that, he did stage the suicide, that it would
be a very interesting move to then call the police
and leave thirty seven grams of methamphetamine around the house,
(08:58):
because clearly the police are going to have a look
around your house. Like that's a big oversight.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
That is a hell of a lot, isn't it. And
I mean almost to contradict myself that the trial began
with them pleading guilty to position of myth and the
before didn't he he only.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Did that days before the trial, the morning of the trial,
the morning of the trial.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Yeah, yeah, that's how it began. Yeah, how do you
believe for meth and guilty? Anyway, let's go rout to
the murder. Yeah, KD of thing. So, yeah, the we
love a double life. Yeah, we double life. It's going
back to Darren McDonald. It's going back to Plumbley Walker,
which is the real sort of antecedent of this case,
(09:43):
is it not?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Do you think?
Speaker 4 (09:45):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (09:45):
I think so.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
We did a four part everything but Hooker Falls. We
did a four part investigation to Peter Pumley Walker, four
part crime podcast on Peter Pumley Walker. Earlier this year.
We went that went, we went, we went deep. I
think there's only men stew Grieves know more about the case. Now.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
We went to rot to Mahana Terrace, we looked at
the very place and we went deep. Is it partly
with the double life? Is it partly because we're all
secretly living double lives? Yes?
Speaker 1 (10:12):
I think it is.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
We are like all of us are.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Really.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
I think that goes to the fascination with many, many,
many murder trials. Anyway, it's that kind of there but
for the not grace of God, but there but for
my sense of reason and my sense of calm, I
did not lash out. It doesn't take very long to
kill someone, Yes, But I.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Always think it's interesting when it comes to things like
people's sexual activities and stuff. Yes, we kind of act
like it's all on the same. If someone's doing something
that's illegal or wrong here, then they're capable of something else.
And I'm always not sure if the link is as
clear as people say. I mean, you could be a
massive sexual deviant but not a murderer, you know what
(10:54):
I mean?
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Like, you're can you can you expand on this? I'm
liking where you're going.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Well, well, just going with it? Where am I going
with it? Well, I'm just saying that there are two
different things. Like there's the idea that you pull back
the layers of someone life and you prove that they
weren't what they said they were, and that's enough for
people to go, oh, this person is just a person
of terrible moral character. But you can you could be
a person of terrible morals in some area, but not
(11:21):
be a murderer. You know that, it's not like you
just get you get all the sins at once and
all the you know, it's not a blanket. One doesn't
mean the other.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
No, But I'd also argue something else, which is if
you were every single person, if you really went and
if their sex life was really exposed, and every detail
of your sex life, for your whole life, The worst
moments of your sex life, for the most sorted, were public.
How many people would put up their hand and say, yeah,
I'm happy to have all of the things that I've
(11:50):
done about it.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Would be over? Would would be so over?
Speaker 2 (11:54):
You know what?
Speaker 4 (11:55):
Naturally slightly you know, sort.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Of What are the fascinating sort of hypocrisies of the
trial itself is that, you know, the Crown begin with
this terrific opening address, laying it all out, and then
they say, well, good, this is not a court of morals. Yeah,
it's much a life, all know, it's a live.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Exactly, a total court of morals because what is.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
All the sex with polkinghorn apropos? You know what, what
does it buy into that he was such a dirty,
frotting dog. What does it buy into? What is the
relevance to the murder charge?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Yes, exactly, and.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
You know the Crown are drawing a bow and the
defense are saying this is a terrible distraction. And indeed,
I think Ron Mansfield Casey, his defense lawyer, said in
his opening address, they have turned my client's life upside down.
And if you accept that, you know it is kind
of horrifying to think. God, you know, if the defense
(13:02):
is true what they're claiming is true about Pauline, then
the s guy wakes up, finds his wife's ye and
his terrible, scandalous, rutting life is then revealed for for
no really good reason.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yeah, and it's quite possible that you can have a
terrible second life of being a sexual all these things
they said about him and still really love your wife
at home. That's not that has not that is not
something that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Yes, yes, indeed, that that's that's a central sort of
plank of the defense. That's right. He's talking that they
had an open marriage. They were both aware of everything
that was going on, and that's certainly contestable.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
But even now, even if he's innocent, he's already paying
a huge price that you that you can't come back from.
You can't. There's there's no to this around you know.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Well, you got a wonder, you know, where do you
go to after this? You know?
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Me in this Australia and his family is involved if
he's found. If he's found, not goeat Australia.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
I mean Christmas fur Christmas with the kids is kind
of weird after that, isn't it?
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Can we take a break and come back in a
moment with we'll all share the worst sexual thing that
we've ever done.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
In our life.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
That's funny.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
I was thinking.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
I was thinking of the break before we share the
worst sexual things we've all done. I was thinking about it,
and I thought about this long time, like why murder mysteries?
You know, you know, I guess the Christie novels they
are also sitting mentions for wealthy people. And and one
of your other books, The Scene of the Crime, you
kind of point out that a lot of the scenes
of murder in New Zealand are so I'm not sure
(14:45):
exactly how you.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Describe it, but suburban. It's suburban.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
It's it's no glamour, there's no it's it's well one
of them was, you know, in one book, your house
featured in one of suburban.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Dixon.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Yeah, so it is interesting that that we have one
that is yeah, we found out, Agatha Christie.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah, because even when you scratch the.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Service of Peter Plumbey Walker, it is as grim and
and lowly. I always thought that twenty eight a Mahna
Terrace was a dungeon, like like they went downstairs and
it was a stone dungeon and there was all that
part of it. You find out it's just a two
bedroom unit.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
It's a unit. It's a duplex, a duplex. Yeah, yeah,
so it's just and it was just a room.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
They've just nailed a couple of like things to the wall,
the most half assed B and D dungeon univer.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
And it was not an upstanding He was not some
toisy toysy fancy guy. He was driving a you know,
a Ford Falcon. No it was it was it was
a it was Aina.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Courteena Corteina station wagon, a gold Quarte. And he was
living in a unit as well in Herne Bay. But
it was just a one bedroom unit. But we elevated
him to the level of and he wasn't really it
wasn't an international umpire. He was just someone that went
down to the domain at a club cricket. But we
elevated Peter Palmley Walker because of the mustache. We put
(16:15):
him up on the level of the highest of the
English aristocrates aristocracy. And we added, in my mind anyway,
this this this deep sort of eyes wide shut sexual
underbelly of New Zealand. But all of it was really
low rent.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Right who had suddenly been disrosed perch Ben. In fact,
he was not doctor Polkinghorn driving a white merk with
the Garish lincense plate Retina.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
What a cooling card.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
I mean. We heard early on on the trial about
how he would go to an apartment building in North
kit called lyrically enough, Melrose Court, which instantly makes you
think of Melrose Place, and it was very much like that.
There was a swimming pool in the middle of lush vegetation,
and he was going every Friday to meet a sex worker.
(17:07):
And of course everyone in the apartment building knew that
this woman worked in that trade. And there's Polkinghorn pulling
up every Friday and his white merk with retina. So
it's not exactly discreet, is it. You know, this is
not this is not hidden. Yeah, But speaking of settings,
you know with the polking Horn home, which is not
(17:29):
that the Plumbly Walker one bedroom unit in Herne Bay.
It was extraordinary that I've never done this, I've never
experienced this before in all my years of court reporting.
There was a scene visit, never been on a scene visit,
and we all got taken. The jury got taken in
a little mini van Pacific Pacific Vans. Bit of advertising
(17:55):
there for them and the media. The judge came up
and a clapped out Toyota only in New Zealand with
with the CODs, no photos as we step out of
our vehicles skirts already. What was that the judge's actual
car was it clapped out tweeta may have been court property,
(18:16):
but yeah, maybe he was trying to make a statement
kind of underwhelming.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
And do you know, because you know in the OJ trial,
Johnny cockran famously before the court for the jury visit,
took down all the pictures that were on the wall
and replaced them with more sort of morally and also
to push the race issue, so there was more things
out of Africa and there was less bikini shots on
(18:41):
his wall, so that they redid the whole house to
fit the narrative that they were they were trying to
put across of OJ.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
So, I mean, do you know, do you know that
the scene was as it was a.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Year There were crime scene photographs which we've been showing
time and time again, and so when we went on
the scene visit, the media were lead through the front door,
which I thought was very fair. Yeah, a little stand
there fools peering in which of course we all did,
and nothing much seemed to have changed. We identified the
(19:14):
same awful artwork on the walls that were there at
the crime scene.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Found guilty of bad taste.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Yeah, yeah, Well, you know, there's a strong whiff of
the nouveau here there there.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
You're walking around with retina, then you're.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
It's not classic.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
There's also something about the Aqui Basin. I grew up
around that area and there's something about the basin which.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Will tell me it's always I mean I smoked some of.
Speaker 4 (19:43):
My first cigarettes down there in the Qi Basin as
a as a twelve year old Windfield So it's not
blues they were, So it's.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
No stranger to crime.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Then the main streets of Upland Road.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
Yeah, there's and that my one of my best friends
lived and dal Av which is just just doubt. In fact,
you could hit You could throw a cricket ball from
his house to this place in an Upland Road.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I know that house and.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
There have been a number of crimes that have been
committed in around there. I mean his next neighbors involved
in something there was something that happened across the road,
and then now there's something that's just across the road
and down a little bit there on Upland Road. There's
something about that little bit of.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
How far is it from Mahana Terrace?
Speaker 4 (20:29):
It's oh quite, it's about two case from Maha Harris
if you just kind of go over up and right,
it's not far, but it's it was quite a big.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Yeah, it's a huge, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
But there's something about that. There's something about that area.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
This is a kind of a Bermuda triangle of the
very rich. It's not that it was you get sucked
into mayhem, chaos, sudden acts of violence.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Yeah, it's it's it's just a part of it's kind
of in the deep dark kind of recess. It's like
in the Army were almost that little zone through that,
I mean Lucian Road, which is not very far. Some
beautiful properties there look out yeah over Odicky Basin very flash.
But even there's something about that little part of it.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
It feels it's a bit of a no man's land,
isn't You don't know which suburb you are exactly in,
but can I ask you the sort of chronology of
crime that you're thinking of back in that area? Didn't
anything resemble the central accusation against Pulkinghorn that he killed
(21:32):
his wife? And then, I mean, this is more extraordinary, really,
isn't it than a murder. It's simple to murder someone,
and it's easy and quick to murder someone. But what
the police allege what happened next? That's the extraordinary thing,
isn't it. You're rushing around the house, fussing around with rope,
(21:54):
with belts, with chairs, and yet you don't think to
get rid of thirty sevens grabs of myth.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
I just find that but very unusual.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Does that go towards? Does that go towards innocence? Did
he have?
Speaker 4 (22:07):
Well that I think it goes towards potential innocence. But
I know that looking at that police interview that he
that he did. When I watched that police interview with Polkinghorn,
that was a man who I mean, from my own perspective,
from my own point of view, that was a man
who had was suffering the effects of methamphetamine. I mean
(22:31):
it looked garbled, really striving.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
You don't necessarily make the greatest decisions if you are
I mean, I don't know, if.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
You don't, if you haven't slept for days, you haven't slept,
and you know, yeah, famously you make terrible decisions. Maybe
there was more methamphetamine in the house. Maybe he did
get rid of it. I mean, who knows, But there
might have been a whole lot more. And that was
the bits that he couldn't remember, because that's the other
thing from and more experience of mine with friends who
have been addicted to metham fiatamine.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
They leave things around, they don't. They lose track of
a whole lot of stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
And that was a lot to find.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
You know, quite a few of the amount, quite.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
A few of the containers of meth am fietamine. And
they seem, by the way, to be in those cute
little plastic containers that you get for your kids lunches
from New World, the.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Little screwy ones with the different colored lists. Yeah, they
seem they're very cute.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
But quite a lot of them were found in drawers
and so forth belonging to Pauline. So maybe, and if
I'm allowed to sort of say this out loud, he
didn't think to look there. Maybe maybe he did get
rid of other stuff. You're right, maybe there was fifty
seven eighty.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Is there a suggestion that she was enjoying methm fetamine
as well?
Speaker 1 (23:46):
I'm pretty sure that suggestion has been made already by
the defense, and so when it can maybe further advanced
when it comes.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
To the motivation that they're saying, or the motive is
it just sort of just sort of insanity, like not insanity,
but like a moment of or just things out of control,
because it doesn't seem to be for me, a big
purpose in it.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
The crown never has to prove motive. That's their big thing.
They are drawing bows, of course, and one of them
is they're trying to draw a general picture of the
intolerable pressure that he was under. And one of those
pressures and you will not be surprised to though, this
(24:29):
comes down to money. When you're in the ruling class,
money is huge to you. It's huge to everybody, but
there's a lot more to lose because you have more,
you know, And he was feeling a lot of pressure.
And I think he has pretty much conceded this in
the evidence which has come out so far. It was
feeling a lot of pressure that he wasn't getting the
(24:50):
payout he deserved from Auckland I where he worked as
a surgeon, and which is a.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Very successful medical business, very successful.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
It's usually successful. And he was one of the co
founders again you know, incredible sort of contribution, and he
worked as ringof you know, these people, they really work hard.
Pauline who was also would surely have been pulling down
quite a lot of money. We've heard that she was
putting away two five hundred dollars with every pay packet
(25:20):
into her retirement, which seems to be quite a bit
more than I would be putting away.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
And she was working.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Incredibly long hours, so also under you know, huge pressure.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
And well that's one of the defense. What was her profession?
Speaker 3 (25:36):
She she she worked for the DHB.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
She worked for the DHB, and she was, like what
had a major role in Auckland's response to the COVID
nineteen pandemic. So she was doing the vaccine rollout. That
was a trivial guide of job. So they both had
a lot of pressure and Polkinghorn was under you know,
a lot of pressure financial actually, he was really stressed
(26:01):
that he was going to miss out on a hell
of a lot of money, and so the quarter advancing that,
and that goes towards this kind of finishing line where yeah,
he snaps. This is what Alisha McClintock, the Crown prosecutor
said in her opening address. It all drew to this point.
(26:23):
And we don't know, we don't know when she died.
That hasn't been advanced that they're talking about. They said
indeed in the opening defense that Pauline Pauline Hannah died
on or around April four and five. Five fifth of
(26:45):
April twenty twenty one was Easter Monday, and that's when
Polkinghon calls one one one, and that's when they discover
her body. The Crown suggesting that perhaps she was killed
sometime in the night before midnight on the fourth and
that gave them, therefore extra time to run around with
ropes fashion. This incredible. It's basically an incredibly elaborate hoax,
(27:07):
isn't it. That's the suggestion, I mean, what a hoax
to pull.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
You could with ropes, so you could with cheers, or you.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Medically that advance that you would know how to make
it look like a suicide. He's a doctor, But what
talking about pressure? You if you have done this and
you come up with this incredible decision, this brutal, evil
idea to cover it up and then go about staging it.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
So you've heard evidence from the pathologist, Steve, and it
doesn't seem like the pathologist has been able to say
exactly how Pauline died. It doesn't look like there was
a big struggle.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Well, that's right, Jeremy, Yeah, that was. That was one
of the more fascinating days of the trial. A lot
of it has been about sex, some of it's been
about drugs, some of it's been about money. A core
of the trial has got to be about the science,
doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
You got to be like, it's a big deal if
the way you died was by hanging or what is
the what's the other way.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Year strangulation And they're advancing the idea that it was
some kind of choker hold, because there's there's no evidence
that she was strangled with two hands, you know, in
the classic manner. But yeah, when the pathologist showed up
and this was going to be a crucial day, one
where in one way or another, and certainly you could
(28:53):
think after the end of that and he suffered a
crutal cross examination, the likes of which I've rarely seen.
The last one I've seen like that was when the
Crown prosecutor, a guy called Gareth Kay's, Yeah, Gareth Kay's
cross examined Malcolm Raber in his defense of the murder
of Susan Boudette, and he just wiped the floor with him.
(29:16):
It was you kind of wanted to look away a
little bit. It was so brutal, very much similar to
this he had. He had the pathologists kind of raving
and saying strange things which were not apropos the murder
at all. At one point he turned to the prosecutor,
Alicia McClintock and asked her what color her eyes were,
(29:36):
to which you sort of gasped in an astonished way, Hazel,
this is how rattled he was. And yeah, there were
The defense asked all these questions, you know, were the
were there certain marks on her body? And he asked
each specific question over and over and over, and all
(29:56):
the questions were all the answers were No, there weren't.
There was nothing consistent with a lot of the signs
you would expect from someone struggling when they're being assaulted,
when they're being strangled. When they're being killed, there is
a huge absence of them. There's a few signs of something.
(30:19):
This is Polkinghorn's famous cut on his forehead. Isn't there
a little nick? It's been called so many things in
this trial. An abrasion, a cut, a scratch, a scrape.
It goes on and on, and he is unaware of
it when emergency services arrive and police arrive, and I think, yeah,
(30:41):
somebody asks them about it at the house before he's
taken away by police and say, what's that cut.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
On your head? And you go, what.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Wasn't aware of it? Could be a perfectly innocent expert.
He's cutting knife down. As you say, is you're bound
to be stressed to them?
Speaker 2 (31:04):
I mean, I mean about these things like right now,
I've got a cut on my finger, and if there
was I was accused of a murder, then that in
the next forty eight hours this cut would have a
lot more significance than just me cutting my finger.
Speaker 4 (31:16):
Last week, I had a on my forehead when I
went to work and the makeup I said, oh, you've
got you've got a scratch on your thing, And I
said do I? And I have I was definitely not
in a scuffle with my partner or I was not
in a scuffle with anybody, And I don't know.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
How that got there.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
You still don't to the stand no idea. I don't
have any idea. I feel like maybe I scratched myself
in the night or something weird.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
I don't even know. It's quite so, you know, if everything.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Has so much significance, how quickly do you think they
changed from this as a suicide so this is potentially
a murder worth trying?
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Yeah, really good, christ, really good question. It would seem
extremely quickly.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
I feel the police often go in somewhere and they go,
I reckon. And I've actually experienced this because I had
an office that was robbed and we went in and
the police were in there and they're talking to us
about the office and what they thought were happening, and
then they looked at a few things and they said,
this guy Chris that was working for us, had it
looks like he's got a gambling problem because they saw
a couple of things, and I go, I think this
is probably and this police and the two police officers
(32:20):
did this whole thing, and then what happened was Chris
had been working really late. We finally got through to him,
and what they had come up with was like basically
a kidnapping, like gambling problems. They were talking about everything
that was so clear in the scene, and what it
actually was was someone had just come through the front door,
grab some stuff, pulled it out. You know, it was
completely pedestrian what had happened. But I watched these police
(32:42):
come up with this verbally, this huge, huge conspiracy of
what had happened. So I often wonder that a little bit.
I think often the police are completely correct when they
come into a scene.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
But yeah, well they're being accused of tunnel vision by
the defense on this one, and it was pretty swift.
The first thing which absolutely, you know, triggered them was
the rope. And this is this kind of seems a
little bit weird, but one of the cops went up
(33:16):
to the rope and without taking a photograph of what
he was doing or a video video of what he
was doing, he tugged on it. He gave it a
tention test, and the rope unraveled, at which point they go,
oh my god, this could not have supported the weight
of a body. And one of the cops, we're not sure,
(33:36):
which writes something on the palm of his hand and
its police code for suspicious. And he shows this to
the other cops and so that was pretty quick, and
the defense go, well, we've heard the one one one
call Polking Morden's instructed by the operator to cut his
(33:57):
wife down, and he goes, he goes okay, and he
gets off the phone and you hear him moving around
the house and grunting and whatnot, and he cuts the rope.
He undoes it not or two. So yeah, yeah, of
course it cannot support a weight because he has loosened it.
He has loosened it to get his wife's body freed
(34:18):
from this from what he says killed.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
And in defense of him as well, in defense of
the police officer, you do have to decide quite quickly
whether or not it is suspicious because it's got to
be a crime scene. So in that situation you need.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
To don't touch the crime scene. He touched the crime scene.
He gave the rope of freaking big yank without taking
any pictures of it.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
That is actually pretty bad from the prosecution point of view,
isn't it as well?
Speaker 3 (34:46):
It's not great if.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
The evidence was there that you could have actually tested
and proven that there was an argument. But now, I mean,
it's so easy for the defense saying, what we're doing,
yanking on the rope? What are you talking about?
Speaker 4 (34:57):
That it took sixteen months, didn't it before they came
up with before they decided to change Exactly right, it's
a long time.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
The suspicion was quick, the charge was enormously slow. And
you know, they always surely would have known this is
a hard one to get across the line. And there
must have been a day where they met with Crown
Prosecution and said, right, we've got to make a move
on this one way or another. And you know, if
they're all thinking this son of a bitch did it, Yeah,
(35:25):
would have been full of you know, righteousness and good
on them for doing so. You know, they did not
forget it. They wanted to prosecute this guy who they
were convinced.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
And they would keep finding more layers of the sort
of scandal that's coming out now, which would be fuel
for their fire that there's more to the story. Let's
keep going.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Going to Mount Cook and knocking on the door of
the Martariqi Rube at the large fighting polking On there
with the escort matters twenty five days or twenty days.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
But he was having sex with these people while he
was merit, while Pauline was alive. So to me, the
fact that he had sex with these people when she
was dead was no, I don't think that's either way.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
That doesn't any when people deciding how people are going
to grieve, it is a really interesting I mean, look
at the Mark Lundey.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
I wonder whether you've got to men sure that that's right.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Yeah, this isn't how people grieve. It's like, well, how
do people grieve?
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Well, that's new. Zella never forgave Lundy for grieving too
visibly and vocally. Well, with Polkinghorn, they're attacking him because
he didn't grieve enough at the crime scene. He was
strangely calm, he was recollected, and then you hear what
was he like that the whole time?
Speaker 3 (36:41):
No, he was weeping.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Okay, so that's not adding up to a lot, is it? What? What?
What it is adding up to a lot? In the
first you know, three weeks of this trial, surely there's
a lot of reasonable doubt. But how the juris operate,
we don't know that any institutions, and maybe pretty quickly
(37:03):
they took one look at the guy and said, we
think you're a cunt.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Yeah guilty. Yeah, it can happen.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
That happens.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
That can definitely happen, because I think in the end,
you hear a lot of evidence, and there will be
some people that will go on the evidence and as
you said, there's been so much of it, they're going
to be inundated with stuff.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
And then you just have seen you go with you
if your gut and all.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Of us that are following the trial and think about it,
we have things in our heads that we stick through
that are stronger.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Than anything anyone says.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
We're like, yeah, where was the suicide note? And I
don't actually know any stats on how often there's suicide
notes and how often there isn't but you go, where's
a suicide note? And then you're in a dura and
that's the thing you can't get past.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
You go, where is a suicide note? You go, why
would a woman like Pauline hang herself? You know, she
took huge pride in her appearance, she was immaculate. Would
she this is the kind of the diva theory? Would
she not have taken a huge overdose and God knows
she had enough pills there to kill her horse, you know,
(38:01):
and lay down on the bed in a beautiful gown
and a beautiful dress instead of this tatty old dressing
gown of nothing beneath it.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Yeah, so there's that theory.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
And these are not sciences, are they? No, they're not,
but you know, I mean it's a beautiful thing in
a way. The criminal justice system a jury. These are
twelve complete strangers lifted off the street. You watch them
in jury selection. There's forty people come in. A few
of them get challenged by the defense, thrown off. Quite
(38:32):
a few of them went to the judge and whispered
in his head it said, for some reason or an other,
I can't do this trial, and we don't know what
that is. And you end up with twelve people dragged
them off the streets, a jury of your peers. That's
where that comes from, isn't it. And it's up to them,
And there's something kind of beautiful about it, you know.
It's not up to a judge with his learning, his
(38:57):
comprehensive understanding of science of how prosecution works and how
defense works. He's a twelve people with no professional capacity
with justice, and they're just there to go yeah, nah
you did it, or yeah no, I don't know, let
him go. This is really what it comes down to,
and there's there's something, there's something beautiful in society affirming
(39:21):
about it, and yet at the same time, of course
I get it to be wrong. Well, I mean, Thomas etcetera.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yeah, Tina Poorer, Oh my god. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
We had Chuck Kinwood on the show the other thing.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
You really really I just reviewed his book. What was
he like?
Speaker 2 (39:37):
He was a top guy, really, yeah, very very empathetic guy.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Is he witty? What's he like? Is he fast thinking?
What's he like?
Speaker 2 (39:44):
He's he's pretty, He's pretty witty.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
He's a nice guy.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
He'd had a hit. He sort of the earth guy
he had. I think he had a raging hangover from
catching up with his Auckland mates the night before. Was
on the back foot a little bit.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
But really with Catfish, Spud and Lammo, Chuck was.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
The kind of man that that he's he there was
a sort of manliness about him. It was definitely a
manliness about it, that man.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah, but you know, just to quite He's thought through everything,
so well, and and what I got from him was
just the tension of you talk about the righteousness and
you know with all those rapes that were happening in
that area, how how much it got to him and
how he had to do something about it.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Yeah. Yeah, in his book, it's a very good book.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Yeah, I loved it.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
It's unput downable. Actually, it's a like a lifeless punishment.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
You just can't push similar. You take it with you
everywhere year go.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
It might have had a bigger effect on society than me,
but we'll leave that toss of the coin.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
But yeah, he writes about, you know, the terrible crimes
that were occurring during the reign of terror that Joseph
Thompson had, and he keeps, he continue is writing, got
to stop it, got to stop it.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
And you know that that is sincere, it's sincere to
this day and his and his regret of what he
couldn't do, you know, and you know is that right? Well, well,
how many how many things happened after he because you know,
if you don't get there quick enough, then more of
these things were happening, if you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah,
of course, so so as much as you you're excited
(41:26):
by it, by by solving it, you're still like, we
could have done that quicker.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Of course. Yeah, but yeah, no, I'm glad you bought that.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Good cop, unequivocally a good good cop.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Steve.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
The book The Survivors is out now in New Zealand's
award winning true crime writer Steve Browney's stories of death
and desperation.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Thank you so much for coming ers, Fellows.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Yeah, and they've got you back in the game. But
you're back. You're back, You're back in the game. But yeah,
no one writes about about these subjects in New Zealand
in the way that you do. And it's just fantastic
to read. But the heart you put into it, and
the and the and yeah, and the ability to see
both sides of everything is phenomenal. So this five US
(42:13):
good book
It's good.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
As the nineteenth of August and the year of Our
Lord twenty twenty four. Welcome all you bespoke, you donkey
is to the Daily Bespoke Podcast. We've got a GISs
on the pod today, Steve Brunius, Yes, author of The
Survivors and the Throst of Death in Dispiration.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
And here you come to look at that. He's coming
out there.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
He is now Steve Bronius.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
As we as we as, I love and breathe.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Matt and Steve just having a hug.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Steve just shaking Jerry's hand.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Hello, mate, I'm r. We're recording as live right now. Yeah,
we've got this new initiative on the met in Jury
podcast where we just we leave it all out there
the introduction. It's sort of.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Deconstructionalized, showing the workings we like to show. We like
to show the workings.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Yeah, Steve Brawny is you are taking time away from
the Polkinghorn trial, the trial of the century. I measine
it must be hard to drag yourself away from that
this morning to come in here and have a chat
to us.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
I'm not dragging myself. Hey, there's no court today.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
See that's why you booked today, boy, that that trial
has been a sensation, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yeah, it has is exactly the halfway mark, or could
be more. And I'm already kind of dreading the day
when it's when it's over. Actually, yeah, it's it's it's
a trial for the ages.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
It's it certainly is. And there seems to be layers
and layers to that. As you peel the layers of
the onion off, there's more and more. It's a bit
rotten at the court, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Well, the core, of course, is you know, a tragic death.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yes, And we sometimes forget that, don't we when we
celebrate the who's we I sometimes forget that when I'm
celebrating the salacious details.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
I think you've defined the way I'm writing about the case.
I am trying to sort of catch up with myself
all the time and remind myself that at the core
of it, a woman is dead and we don't know
whether it was by her own hand or her husband's,
and that's for the jury to decide. And yeah, they've
(02:43):
got they've been been, you know, they've hurt a lot,
they've heard a hell of a lot, and yeah, much
more to go. Of course, there's one more week officially
of the prosecution case, and heaven knows who they're going
to call this week.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Where is the lover from Australia, the Sydney based lover
who he was then in a situation Philip Pongingham was
in in a situation twenty days after his wife had
either been murdered or had taken her own life.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
As you said, he's.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
Down at Mount Cook enjoying a weekend away with her.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Where's she? Because I thought she was going to be
called by the prosecution.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yeah, the Mount Cook, the Mount Cook Lodge and the
Marta Ricki Room. Yes, yeah, just sort of an update
on the Lenn Brown.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
And the Nutty Fattala Roo room, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah? Great rooms of New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Why always Now you're saying that the Survivor's Book is
the last of your trilogy. Maybe that could be your
next book. Room Trust, Trust Rooms, Rooms with great trusts
in them.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Well, you know it's been talking about that that book.
The sort of central thesis of this book anyway is
undone crime writing.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
I thought that because I went to your book launch
for this and that was sort of that was sort
of the theme of the whole launch with all the speeches.
I'm out, I've done it. I want to move on.
And now you've sort of in the most high profile
your name is everywhere around this trial. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
I think around three days after the book launched, the
Folking Trials, they dragged me back in. Well, I mean,
it is an extraordinary case and and apropos, these these
sort of grand claims I made for The Survivors being
the last book of my crime writing is that, you know,
(04:39):
the reason I didn't want to do anymore. One of
the reasons I didn't want to do anymore is that
I was becoming I was feeling really very remote from
the people being accused of terrible crimes and very often
were in fact, did perpetrate those terrible crimes.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
You know, I.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Couldn't relate to them, and I couldn't I couldn't really
relate to their families, and I was feeling as though
I didn't really belong to this social scene. You know,
I didn't understand the language. It was the kind of
a language of for example, extreme poverty, extreme myth amphetamine use,
(05:24):
and yeah, it was very very bleak, and I wasn't
living their lives and I had never lived those lives,
and while as a journalist or any kind of writer,
your job is to sort of enter into those wills
with empathy and some kind of degree of human understanding,
it kind of just got too much and I didn't
(05:46):
feel as though I could sincerely continue this, however, disagwayed.
Although I'm not Vadovi's living in Rebuera as wealthy as
doctor Philip John polking Horn, I can much more easily
relate to the right. This is why mischief. He's being
(06:08):
canceled on an extreme scale by the prosecution for his
his private life, which is not private at all, obviously
so incredibly public. And yeah, doctors, lawyers, you know, we
hear about Polkinghorn. You know, got the Orcan's best events,
(06:31):
best divorced lawyer before Pauline was died, and all these
kinds of things. And I can relate to all of that,
And you know, and I think this is one of
the reasons that's touching such an emotional chord with people
around the country and why people are transfixed to it.
(06:51):
They can relate to it. This is not the fulthy few,
This is the ruling class. This is people who we
recogniz eyes and yeah, you know, Polkinghorn made a you know,
quite a contribution to society. You know, he was an
expert in he was the last ditch when you were
(07:11):
losing your sight, but he worked on the back of
the eye. And there's a lot to admire about him.
He's very funny person. He's very good sense of humor.
You know, it's sort of I probably shouldn't go too
much into it, but you know, I have the odd
chat with him during the trial, and yeah, he's funny.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
There's always a desire though, don't you think, Steve, that
people always want to think that the high are somehow
as well operating something else behind closed doors. Like there's
another more devious part to these people. So when all
of a sudden, someone like Philip Polkinghorn, who has seen
(07:54):
to have succeeded, he seemed to be very, very wealthy,
all of a sudden it turns out that he's living
this insane set life and it turns out as an
absolute demon for the methamphetamine. Like he just he really
is a he loves the methamphetamine.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
We love the hypocrisy.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yeah, that's love that It's alute part of it. I
think that's a big there's a big drive there.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Just a small point here. It hasn't been proved that
the methamphetamine was his and that he himself was hitting
the glass barbage, small point about point.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
I think that is possibly relevant.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
But just back to that case. Back to that just quickly.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
I do find it on you. I've been following the
trial very close. I've been reading all of your all
of your articles on it, and I do find it
very interesting that a guy who, let's just say he
did that, he did stage the suicide, that it would
be a very interesting move to then call the police
and leave thirty seven grams of methamphetamine around the house,
(08:58):
because clearly the police are going to have a look
around your house. Like that's a big oversight.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
That is a hell of a lot, isn't it. And
I mean almost to contradict myself that the trial began
with them pleading guilty to position of myth and the
before didn't he he only.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Did that days before the trial, the morning of the trial,
the morning of the trial.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Yeah, yeah, that's how it began. Yeah, how do you
believe for meth and guilty? Anyway, let's go rout to
the murder. Yeah, KD of thing. So, yeah, the we
love a double life. Yeah, we double life. It's going
back to Darren McDonald. It's going back to Plumbley Walker,
which is the real sort of antecedent of this case,
(09:43):
is it not?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Do you think?
Speaker 4 (09:45):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (09:45):
I think so.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
We did a four part everything but Hooker Falls. We
did a four part investigation to Peter Pumley Walker, four
part crime podcast on Peter Pumley Walker. Earlier this year.
We went that went, we went, we went deep. I
think there's only men stew Grieves know more about the case. Now.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
We went to rot to Mahana Terrace, we looked at
the very place and we went deep. Is it partly
with the double life? Is it partly because we're all
secretly living double lives? Yes?
Speaker 1 (10:12):
I think it is.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
We are like all of us are.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Really.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
I think that goes to the fascination with many, many,
many murder trials. Anyway, it's that kind of there but
for the not grace of God, but there but for
my sense of reason and my sense of calm, I
did not lash out. It doesn't take very long to
kill someone, Yes, But I.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Always think it's interesting when it comes to things like
people's sexual activities and stuff. Yes, we kind of act
like it's all on the same. If someone's doing something
that's illegal or wrong here, then they're capable of something else.
And I'm always not sure if the link is as
clear as people say. I mean, you could be a
massive sexual deviant but not a murderer, you know what
(10:54):
I mean?
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Like, you're can you can you expand on this? I'm
liking where you're going.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Well, well, just going with it? Where am I going
with it? Well, I'm just saying that there are two
different things. Like there's the idea that you pull back
the layers of someone life and you prove that they
weren't what they said they were, and that's enough for
people to go, oh, this person is just a person
of terrible moral character. But you can you could be
a person of terrible morals in some area, but not
(11:21):
be a murderer. You know that, it's not like you
just get you get all the sins at once and
all the you know, it's not a blanket. One doesn't
mean the other.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
No, But I'd also argue something else, which is if
you were every single person, if you really went and
if their sex life was really exposed, and every detail
of your sex life, for your whole life, The worst
moments of your sex life, for the most sorted, were public.
How many people would put up their hand and say, yeah,
I'm happy to have all of the things that I've
(11:50):
done about it.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Would be over? Would would be so over?
Speaker 2 (11:54):
You know what?
Speaker 4 (11:55):
Naturally slightly you know, sort.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Of What are the fascinating sort of hypocrisies of the
trial itself is that, you know, the Crown begin with
this terrific opening address, laying it all out, and then
they say, well, good, this is not a court of morals. Yeah,
it's much a life, all know, it's a live.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Exactly, a total court of morals because what is.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
All the sex with polkinghorn apropos? You know what, what
does it buy into that he was such a dirty,
frotting dog. What does it buy into? What is the
relevance to the murder charge?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Yes, exactly, and.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
You know the Crown are drawing a bow and the
defense are saying this is a terrible distraction. And indeed,
I think Ron Mansfield Casey, his defense lawyer, said in
his opening address, they have turned my client's life upside down.
And if you accept that, you know it is kind
of horrifying to think. God, you know, if the defense
(13:02):
is true what they're claiming is true about Pauline, then
the s guy wakes up, finds his wife's ye and
his terrible, scandalous, rutting life is then revealed for for
no really good reason.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yeah, and it's quite possible that you can have a
terrible second life of being a sexual all these things
they said about him and still really love your wife
at home. That's not that has not that is not
something that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Yes, yes, indeed, that that's that's a central sort of
plank of the defense. That's right. He's talking that they
had an open marriage. They were both aware of everything
that was going on, and that's certainly contestable.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
But even now, even if he's innocent, he's already paying
a huge price that you that you can't come back from.
You can't. There's there's no to this around you know.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Well, you got a wonder, you know, where do you
go to after this? You know?
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Me in this Australia and his family is involved if
he's found. If he's found, not goeat Australia.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
I mean Christmas fur Christmas with the kids is kind
of weird after that, isn't it?
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Can we take a break and come back in a
moment with we'll all share the worst sexual thing that
we've ever done.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
In our life.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
That's funny.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
I was thinking.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
I was thinking of the break before we share the
worst sexual things we've all done. I was thinking about it,
and I thought about this long time, like why murder mysteries?
You know, you know, I guess the Christie novels they
are also sitting mentions for wealthy people. And and one
of your other books, The Scene of the Crime, you
kind of point out that a lot of the scenes
of murder in New Zealand are so I'm not sure
(14:45):
exactly how you.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Describe it, but suburban. It's suburban.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
It's it's no glamour, there's no it's it's well one
of them was, you know, in one book, your house
featured in one of suburban.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Dixon.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Yeah, so it is interesting that that we have one
that is yeah, we found out, Agatha Christie.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah, because even when you scratch the.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Service of Peter Plumbey Walker, it is as grim and
and lowly. I always thought that twenty eight a Mahna
Terrace was a dungeon, like like they went downstairs and
it was a stone dungeon and there was all that
part of it. You find out it's just a two
bedroom unit.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
It's a unit. It's a duplex, a duplex. Yeah, yeah,
so it's just and it was just a room.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
They've just nailed a couple of like things to the wall,
the most half assed B and D dungeon univer.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
And it was not an upstanding He was not some
toisy toysy fancy guy. He was driving a you know,
a Ford Falcon. No it was it was it was
a it was Aina.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Courteena Corteina station wagon, a gold Quarte. And he was
living in a unit as well in Herne Bay. But
it was just a one bedroom unit. But we elevated
him to the level of and he wasn't really it
wasn't an international umpire. He was just someone that went
down to the domain at a club cricket. But we
elevated Peter Palmley Walker because of the mustache. We put
(16:15):
him up on the level of the highest of the
English aristocrates aristocracy. And we added, in my mind anyway,
this this this deep sort of eyes wide shut sexual
underbelly of New Zealand. But all of it was really
low rent.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Right who had suddenly been disrosed perch Ben. In fact,
he was not doctor Polkinghorn driving a white merk with
the Garish lincense plate Retina.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
What a cooling card.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
I mean. We heard early on on the trial about
how he would go to an apartment building in North
kit called lyrically enough, Melrose Court, which instantly makes you
think of Melrose Place, and it was very much like that.
There was a swimming pool in the middle of lush vegetation,
and he was going every Friday to meet a sex worker.
(17:07):
And of course everyone in the apartment building knew that
this woman worked in that trade. And there's Polkinghorn pulling
up every Friday and his white merk with retina. So
it's not exactly discreet, is it. You know, this is
not this is not hidden. Yeah, But speaking of settings,
you know with the polking Horn home, which is not
(17:29):
that the Plumbly Walker one bedroom unit in Herne Bay.
It was extraordinary that I've never done this, I've never
experienced this before in all my years of court reporting.
There was a scene visit, never been on a scene visit,
and we all got taken. The jury got taken in
a little mini van Pacific Pacific Vans. Bit of advertising
(17:55):
there for them and the media. The judge came up
and a clapped out Toyota only in New Zealand with
with the CODs, no photos as we step out of
our vehicles skirts already. What was that the judge's actual
car was it clapped out tweeta may have been court property,
(18:16):
but yeah, maybe he was trying to make a statement
kind of underwhelming.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
And do you know, because you know in the OJ trial,
Johnny cockran famously before the court for the jury visit,
took down all the pictures that were on the wall
and replaced them with more sort of morally and also
to push the race issue, so there was more things
out of Africa and there was less bikini shots on
(18:41):
his wall, so that they redid the whole house to
fit the narrative that they were they were trying to
put across of OJ.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
So, I mean, do you know, do you know that
the scene was as it was a.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Year There were crime scene photographs which we've been showing
time and time again, and so when we went on
the scene visit, the media were lead through the front door,
which I thought was very fair. Yeah, a little stand
there fools peering in which of course we all did,
and nothing much seemed to have changed. We identified the
(19:14):
same awful artwork on the walls that were there at
the crime scene.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Found guilty of bad taste.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Yeah, yeah, Well, you know, there's a strong whiff of
the nouveau here there there.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
You're walking around with retina, then you're.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
It's not classic.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
There's also something about the Aqui Basin. I grew up
around that area and there's something about the basin which.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Will tell me it's always I mean I smoked some of.
Speaker 4 (19:43):
My first cigarettes down there in the Qi Basin as
a as a twelve year old Windfield So it's not
blues they were, So it's.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
No stranger to crime.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Then the main streets of Upland Road.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
Yeah, there's and that my one of my best friends
lived and dal Av which is just just doubt. In fact,
you could hit You could throw a cricket ball from
his house to this place in an Upland Road.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I know that house and.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
There have been a number of crimes that have been
committed in around there. I mean his next neighbors involved
in something there was something that happened across the road,
and then now there's something that's just across the road
and down a little bit there on Upland Road. There's
something about that little bit of.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
How far is it from Mahana Terrace?
Speaker 4 (20:29):
It's oh quite, it's about two case from Maha Harris
if you just kind of go over up and right,
it's not far, but it's it was quite a big.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Yeah, it's a huge, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
But there's something about that. There's something about that area.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
This is a kind of a Bermuda triangle of the
very rich. It's not that it was you get sucked
into mayhem, chaos, sudden acts of violence.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Yeah, it's it's it's just a part of it's kind
of in the deep dark kind of recess. It's like
in the Army were almost that little zone through that,
I mean Lucian Road, which is not very far. Some
beautiful properties there look out yeah over Odicky Basin very flash.
But even there's something about that little part of it.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
It feels it's a bit of a no man's land,
isn't You don't know which suburb you are exactly in,
but can I ask you the sort of chronology of
crime that you're thinking of back in that area? Didn't
anything resemble the central accusation against Pulkinghorn that he killed
(21:32):
his wife? And then, I mean, this is more extraordinary, really,
isn't it than a murder. It's simple to murder someone,
and it's easy and quick to murder someone. But what
the police allege what happened next? That's the extraordinary thing,
isn't it. You're rushing around the house, fussing around with rope,
(21:54):
with belts, with chairs, and yet you don't think to
get rid of thirty sevens grabs of myth.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
I just find that but very unusual.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Does that go towards? Does that go towards innocence? Did
he have?
Speaker 4 (22:07):
Well that I think it goes towards potential innocence. But
I know that looking at that police interview that he
that he did. When I watched that police interview with Polkinghorn,
that was a man who I mean, from my own perspective,
from my own point of view, that was a man
who had was suffering the effects of methamphetamine. I mean
(22:31):
it looked garbled, really striving.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
You don't necessarily make the greatest decisions if you are
I mean, I don't know, if.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
You don't, if you haven't slept for days, you haven't slept,
and you know, yeah, famously you make terrible decisions. Maybe
there was more methamphetamine in the house. Maybe he did
get rid of it. I mean, who knows, But there
might have been a whole lot more. And that was
the bits that he couldn't remember, because that's the other
thing from and more experience of mine with friends who
have been addicted to metham fiatamine.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
They leave things around, they don't. They lose track of
a whole lot of stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
And that was a lot to find.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
You know, quite a few of the amount, quite.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
A few of the containers of meth am fietamine. And
they seem, by the way, to be in those cute
little plastic containers that you get for your kids lunches
from New World, the.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Little screwy ones with the different colored lists. Yeah, they
seem they're very cute.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
But quite a lot of them were found in drawers
and so forth belonging to Pauline. So maybe, and if
I'm allowed to sort of say this out loud, he
didn't think to look there. Maybe maybe he did get
rid of other stuff. You're right, maybe there was fifty
seven eighty.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Is there a suggestion that she was enjoying methm fetamine
as well?
Speaker 1 (23:46):
I'm pretty sure that suggestion has been made already by
the defense, and so when it can maybe further advanced
when it comes.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
To the motivation that they're saying, or the motive is
it just sort of just sort of insanity, like not insanity,
but like a moment of or just things out of control,
because it doesn't seem to be for me, a big
purpose in it.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
The crown never has to prove motive. That's their big thing.
They are drawing bows, of course, and one of them
is they're trying to draw a general picture of the
intolerable pressure that he was under. And one of those
pressures and you will not be surprised to though, this
(24:29):
comes down to money. When you're in the ruling class,
money is huge to you. It's huge to everybody, but
there's a lot more to lose because you have more,
you know, And he was feeling a lot of pressure.
And I think he has pretty much conceded this in
the evidence which has come out so far. It was
feeling a lot of pressure that he wasn't getting the
(24:50):
payout he deserved from Auckland I where he worked as
a surgeon, and which is a.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Very successful medical business, very successful.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
It's usually successful. And he was one of the co
founders again you know, incredible sort of contribution, and he
worked as ringof you know, these people, they really work hard.
Pauline who was also would surely have been pulling down
quite a lot of money. We've heard that she was
putting away two five hundred dollars with every pay packet
(25:20):
into her retirement, which seems to be quite a bit
more than I would be putting away.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
And she was working.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Incredibly long hours, so also under you know, huge pressure.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
And well that's one of the defense. What was her profession?
Speaker 3 (25:36):
She she she worked for the DHB.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
She worked for the DHB, and she was, like what
had a major role in Auckland's response to the COVID
nineteen pandemic. So she was doing the vaccine rollout. That
was a trivial guide of job. So they both had
a lot of pressure and Polkinghorn was under you know,
a lot of pressure financial actually, he was really stressed
(26:01):
that he was going to miss out on a hell
of a lot of money, and so the quarter advancing that,
and that goes towards this kind of finishing line where yeah,
he snaps. This is what Alisha McClintock, the Crown prosecutor
said in her opening address. It all drew to this point.
(26:23):
And we don't know, we don't know when she died.
That hasn't been advanced that they're talking about. They said
indeed in the opening defense that Pauline Pauline Hannah died
on or around April four and five. Five fifth of
(26:45):
April twenty twenty one was Easter Monday, and that's when
Polkinghon calls one one one, and that's when they discover
her body. The Crown suggesting that perhaps she was killed
sometime in the night before midnight on the fourth and
that gave them, therefore extra time to run around with
ropes fashion. This incredible. It's basically an incredibly elaborate hoax,
(27:07):
isn't it. That's the suggestion, I mean, what a hoax
to pull.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
You could with ropes, so you could with cheers, or you.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Medically that advance that you would know how to make
it look like a suicide. He's a doctor, But what
talking about pressure? You if you have done this and
you come up with this incredible decision, this brutal, evil
idea to cover it up and then go about staging it.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
So you've heard evidence from the pathologist, Steve, and it
doesn't seem like the pathologist has been able to say
exactly how Pauline died. It doesn't look like there was
a big struggle.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Well, that's right, Jeremy, Yeah, that was. That was one
of the more fascinating days of the trial. A lot
of it has been about sex, some of it's been
about drugs, some of it's been about money. A core
of the trial has got to be about the science,
doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
You got to be like, it's a big deal if
the way you died was by hanging or what is
the what's the other way.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Year strangulation And they're advancing the idea that it was
some kind of choker hold, because there's there's no evidence
that she was strangled with two hands, you know, in
the classic manner. But yeah, when the pathologist showed up
and this was going to be a crucial day, one
where in one way or another, and certainly you could
(28:53):
think after the end of that and he suffered a
crutal cross examination, the likes of which I've rarely seen.
The last one I've seen like that was when the
Crown prosecutor, a guy called Gareth Kay's, Yeah, Gareth Kay's
cross examined Malcolm Raber in his defense of the murder
of Susan Boudette, and he just wiped the floor with him.
(29:16):
It was you kind of wanted to look away a
little bit. It was so brutal, very much similar to
this he had. He had the pathologists kind of raving
and saying strange things which were not apropos the murder
at all. At one point he turned to the prosecutor,
Alicia McClintock and asked her what color her eyes were,
(29:36):
to which you sort of gasped in an astonished way, Hazel,
this is how rattled he was. And yeah, there were
The defense asked all these questions, you know, were the
were there certain marks on her body? And he asked
each specific question over and over and over, and all
(29:56):
the questions were all the answers were No, there weren't.
There was nothing consistent with a lot of the signs
you would expect from someone struggling when they're being assaulted,
when they're being strangled. When they're being killed, there is
a huge absence of them. There's a few signs of something.
(30:19):
This is Polkinghorn's famous cut on his forehead. Isn't there
a little nick? It's been called so many things in
this trial. An abrasion, a cut, a scratch, a scrape.
It goes on and on, and he is unaware of
it when emergency services arrive and police arrive, and I think, yeah,
(30:41):
somebody asks them about it at the house before he's
taken away by police and say, what's that cut.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
On your head? And you go, what.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Wasn't aware of it? Could be a perfectly innocent expert.
He's cutting knife down. As you say, is you're bound
to be stressed to them?
Speaker 2 (31:04):
I mean, I mean about these things like right now,
I've got a cut on my finger, and if there
was I was accused of a murder, then that in
the next forty eight hours this cut would have a
lot more significance than just me cutting my finger.
Speaker 4 (31:16):
Last week, I had a on my forehead when I
went to work and the makeup I said, oh, you've
got you've got a scratch on your thing, And I
said do I? And I have I was definitely not
in a scuffle with my partner or I was not
in a scuffle with anybody, And I don't know.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
How that got there.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
You still don't to the stand no idea. I don't
have any idea. I feel like maybe I scratched myself
in the night or something weird.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
I don't even know. It's quite so, you know, if everything.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Has so much significance, how quickly do you think they
changed from this as a suicide so this is potentially
a murder worth trying?
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Yeah, really good, christ, really good question. It would seem
extremely quickly.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
I feel the police often go in somewhere and they go,
I reckon. And I've actually experienced this because I had
an office that was robbed and we went in and
the police were in there and they're talking to us
about the office and what they thought were happening, and
then they looked at a few things and they said,
this guy Chris that was working for us, had it
looks like he's got a gambling problem because they saw
a couple of things, and I go, I think this
is probably and this police and the two police officers
(32:20):
did this whole thing, and then what happened was Chris
had been working really late. We finally got through to him,
and what they had come up with was like basically
a kidnapping, like gambling problems. They were talking about everything
that was so clear in the scene, and what it
actually was was someone had just come through the front door,
grab some stuff, pulled it out. You know, it was
completely pedestrian what had happened. But I watched these police
(32:42):
come up with this verbally, this huge, huge conspiracy of
what had happened. So I often wonder that a little bit.
I think often the police are completely correct when they
come into a scene.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
But yeah, well they're being accused of tunnel vision by
the defense on this one, and it was pretty swift.
The first thing which absolutely, you know, triggered them was
the rope. And this is this kind of seems a
little bit weird, but one of the cops went up
(33:16):
to the rope and without taking a photograph of what
he was doing or a video video of what he
was doing, he tugged on it. He gave it a
tention test, and the rope unraveled, at which point they go,
oh my god, this could not have supported the weight
of a body. And one of the cops, we're not sure,
(33:36):
which writes something on the palm of his hand and
its police code for suspicious. And he shows this to
the other cops and so that was pretty quick, and
the defense go, well, we've heard the one one one
call Polking Morden's instructed by the operator to cut his
(33:57):
wife down, and he goes, he goes okay, and he
gets off the phone and you hear him moving around
the house and grunting and whatnot, and he cuts the rope.
He undoes it not or two. So yeah, yeah, of
course it cannot support a weight because he has loosened it.
He has loosened it to get his wife's body freed
(34:18):
from this from what he says killed.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
And in defense of him as well, in defense of
the police officer, you do have to decide quite quickly
whether or not it is suspicious because it's got to
be a crime scene. So in that situation you need.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
To don't touch the crime scene. He touched the crime scene.
He gave the rope of freaking big yank without taking
any pictures of it.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
That is actually pretty bad from the prosecution point of view,
isn't it as well?
Speaker 3 (34:46):
It's not great if.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
The evidence was there that you could have actually tested
and proven that there was an argument. But now, I mean,
it's so easy for the defense saying, what we're doing,
yanking on the rope? What are you talking about?
Speaker 4 (34:57):
That it took sixteen months, didn't it before they came
up with before they decided to change Exactly right, it's
a long time.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
The suspicion was quick, the charge was enormously slow. And
you know, they always surely would have known this is
a hard one to get across the line. And there
must have been a day where they met with Crown
Prosecution and said, right, we've got to make a move
on this one way or another. And you know, if
they're all thinking this son of a bitch did it, Yeah,
(35:25):
would have been full of you know, righteousness and good
on them for doing so. You know, they did not
forget it. They wanted to prosecute this guy who they
were convinced.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
And they would keep finding more layers of the sort
of scandal that's coming out now, which would be fuel
for their fire that there's more to the story. Let's
keep going.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Going to Mount Cook and knocking on the door of
the Martariqi Rube at the large fighting polking On there
with the escort matters twenty five days or twenty days.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
But he was having sex with these people while he
was merit, while Pauline was alive. So to me, the
fact that he had sex with these people when she
was dead was no, I don't think that's either way.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
That doesn't any when people deciding how people are going
to grieve, it is a really interesting I mean, look
at the Mark Lundey.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
I wonder whether you've got to men sure that that's right.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Yeah, this isn't how people grieve. It's like, well, how
do people grieve?
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Well, that's new. Zella never forgave Lundy for grieving too
visibly and vocally. Well, with Polkinghorn, they're attacking him because
he didn't grieve enough at the crime scene. He was
strangely calm, he was recollected, and then you hear what
was he like that the whole time?
Speaker 3 (36:41):
No, he was weeping.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Okay, so that's not adding up to a lot, is it? What? What?
What it is adding up to a lot? In the
first you know, three weeks of this trial, surely there's
a lot of reasonable doubt. But how the juris operate,
we don't know that any institutions, and maybe pretty quickly
(37:03):
they took one look at the guy and said, we
think you're a cunt.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Yeah guilty. Yeah, it can happen.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
That happens.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
That can definitely happen, because I think in the end,
you hear a lot of evidence, and there will be
some people that will go on the evidence and as
you said, there's been so much of it, they're going
to be inundated with stuff.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
And then you just have seen you go with you
if your gut and all.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Of us that are following the trial and think about it,
we have things in our heads that we stick through
that are stronger.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Than anything anyone says.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
We're like, yeah, where was the suicide note? And I
don't actually know any stats on how often there's suicide
notes and how often there isn't but you go, where's
a suicide note? And then you're in a dura and
that's the thing you can't get past.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
You go, where is a suicide note? You go, why
would a woman like Pauline hang herself? You know, she
took huge pride in her appearance, she was immaculate. Would
she this is the kind of the diva theory? Would
she not have taken a huge overdose and God knows
she had enough pills there to kill her horse, you know,
(38:01):
and lay down on the bed in a beautiful gown
and a beautiful dress instead of this tatty old dressing
gown of nothing beneath it.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Yeah, so there's that theory.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
And these are not sciences, are they? No, they're not,
but you know, I mean it's a beautiful thing in
a way. The criminal justice system a jury. These are
twelve complete strangers lifted off the street. You watch them
in jury selection. There's forty people come in. A few
of them get challenged by the defense, thrown off. Quite
(38:32):
a few of them went to the judge and whispered
in his head it said, for some reason or an other,
I can't do this trial, and we don't know what
that is. And you end up with twelve people dragged
them off the streets, a jury of your peers. That's
where that comes from, isn't it. And it's up to them,
And there's something kind of beautiful about it, you know.
It's not up to a judge with his learning, his
(38:57):
comprehensive understanding of science of how prosecution works and how
defense works. He's a twelve people with no professional capacity
with justice, and they're just there to go yeah, nah
you did it, or yeah no, I don't know, let
him go. This is really what it comes down to,
and there's there's something, there's something beautiful in society affirming
(39:21):
about it, and yet at the same time, of course
I get it to be wrong. Well, I mean, Thomas etcetera.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yeah, Tina Poorer, Oh my god. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
We had Chuck Kinwood on the show the other thing.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
You really really I just reviewed his book. What was
he like?
Speaker 2 (39:37):
He was a top guy, really, yeah, very very empathetic guy.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Is he witty? What's he like? Is he fast thinking?
What's he like?
Speaker 2 (39:44):
He's he's pretty, He's pretty witty.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
He's a nice guy.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
He'd had a hit. He sort of the earth guy
he had. I think he had a raging hangover from
catching up with his Auckland mates the night before. Was
on the back foot a little bit.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
But really with Catfish, Spud and Lammo, Chuck was.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
The kind of man that that he's he there was
a sort of manliness about him. It was definitely a
manliness about it, that man.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah, but you know, just to quite He's thought through everything,
so well, and and what I got from him was
just the tension of you talk about the righteousness and
you know with all those rapes that were happening in
that area, how how much it got to him and
how he had to do something about it.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Yeah. Yeah, in his book, it's a very good book.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Yeah, I loved it.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
It's unput downable. Actually, it's a like a lifeless punishment.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
You just can't push similar. You take it with you
everywhere year go.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
It might have had a bigger effect on society than me,
but we'll leave that toss of the coin.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
But yeah, he writes about, you know, the terrible crimes
that were occurring during the reign of terror that Joseph
Thompson had, and he keeps, he continue is writing, got
to stop it, got to stop it.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
And you know that that is sincere, it's sincere to
this day and his and his regret of what he
couldn't do, you know, and you know is that right? Well, well,
how many how many things happened after he because you know,
if you don't get there quick enough, then more of
these things were happening, if you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah,
of course, so so as much as you you're excited
(41:26):
by it, by by solving it, you're still like, we
could have done that quicker.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Of course. Yeah, but yeah, no, I'm glad you bought that.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Good cop, unequivocally a good good cop.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Steve.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
The book The Survivors is out now in New Zealand's
award winning true crime writer Steve Browney's stories of death
and desperation.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Thank you so much for coming ers, Fellows.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Yeah, and they've got you back in the game. But
you're back. You're back, You're back in the game. But yeah,
no one writes about about these subjects in New Zealand
in the way that you do. And it's just fantastic
to read. But the heart you put into it, and
the and the and yeah, and the ability to see
both sides of everything is phenomenal. So this five US
(42:13):
good book
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