Latest news with #SteveBraunias
1News
20-07-2025
- 1News
Sex, drugs and tragedy on the eastern slopes: the Polkinghorne trial changed NZ
Veteran journalist Steve Braunias has covered many murder trials but none contained the privilege and depravity that captivated New Zealand during the eight-week Polkinghorne trial. Below is an exclusive extract from his new book, Polkinghorne, released today. His name was Polkinghorne. Polkinghorne, first introduced to the nation as 'a person of suspect', as he put it in his typically anxious and mangled English; Polkinghorne, whom the police quickly suspected of murder and then slowly, not altogether competently, went about investigating the amazing, very distracting, and apparently criminal extent of his sex life, finally arresting him for the murder of his wife Pauline sixteen months after he made a 111 call on the frantic morning of 5 April 2021, saying she had hanged herself in their strangely impersonal white complex above a beautiful shining lagoon on the mansioned eastern slopes of the Auckland isthmus; Polkinghorne, acquitted and let free to wander the Earth by a jury at the close of an epic, shockalicious eight-week murder trial like none before it in our island history — and surely none after it, unless some other surgeon or likewise high-earning urban professional, whose hobbies include hookers and methamphetamine, is accused of something so diabolical that it's of an even lower moral order than murder; Polkinghorne, that long, drawn-out, perky, improbable name, became a kind of household brand in the winter and spring of 2024, something everyone recognised and regarded with a mixture of rage, awe, wonder, fascination, scorn, distaste, zero sympathy and close to 100 per cent actual downright hatred; Polkinghorne, those three syllables thrown together almost at random, forming a name that will remain fixed as a garish icon in the psychic territories of the New Zealand mind, will achieve a sordid immortality but an immortality nonetheless, supernatural and haunting. Say his name three times into a mirror and you might see him suddenly appear behind you, small and enthusiastic, a blue-eyed voodoo doll, a demon of wealth and white privilege hopping up and down on his madly socked feet — Polkinghorne, Polkinghorne, Polkinghorne. The prosecution team including Auckland Crown Solicitor Alysha McClintock enter Polkinghorne's Remuera home during the trial. (Source: 1News) I got to quite like Dr Philip Polkinghorne. We chatted constantly in an upstairs courtroom at the High Court of Auckland during his murder trial that began in July and ended in September of 2024. I have interviewed people accused of murder quite a few times — including a Chinese guy who killed two men with a knife he had last used to divide a pizza — but had never just casually chatted with them in a courtroom, never during their trial. 'Morning, Phil,' I'd say when I came into courtroom 11 to take my seat at the press bench directly behind this tiny figure dressed in a limited range of tiny dark suits and an unlimited range of crazily patterned socks; he'd respond with a wink and a cheerful word. Friends knew him as Polk or Polky. It was an appealing diminutive but I refrained from using it. 'See you tomorrow, Phil,' I'd say when I left, and he'd affectionately place his hand on my arm. In between times we gossiped, joked, laughed, made small talk, sometimes made big talk; he always stood up when I came over for a yarn, made that kind of gentleman's polite gesture. It was all very collegial, although many times I thought I ought to feel I was in the presence of evil. Philip Polkinghorne in the Auckland High Court. (Source: 1News) ADVERTISEMENT Most murder-accused are marooned throughout their trial in the dock. It must feel like one of the loneliest places in the world, and yet one of the most public. It's a glass box, with a little waist-high door that leads to the downstairs cells. It's a room of accusation, a purgatory, a bad place to find yourself ordered to sit inside for everyone to stare at and judge. Polkinghorne was not confined to this chamber of prejudice. He was landed gentry, owner of a block of real estate in the form of a row he had all to himself, behind his legal team in courtroom 11; the only times he appeared in the dock were at the beginning of the trial, to enter his plea, and at the very end, to hear the verdict. They were cameo appearances. Otherwise, he was part of the general courtroom population. Steve Braunias has written a book about the trial, in which Philip Polkinghorne was found not guilty of murdering his wife Pauline Hanna. (Source: Breakfast) But it was more than just the geography that made him so accessible and allowed our tête-à-têtes. It was a class thing. Finally, after years of reporting on murder trials of damaged colonised peoples, or of low-lifes and the financially illiterate, I was able to relate to someone accused of depriving someone else of their life. 'Oh yes, I know who you are,' he said when I first introduced myself. He could read. He stood up, we shook hands, he said, 'Philip Polkinghorne.' It was all very formal, like men meeting at a function or a conference, and it was easy to assume a connection. We were men of a pension demographic — I was 64, he was 71 years old — and we shared the same cultural references as everyone in the white New Zealand middle class. Polkinghorne was found not guilty of murdering his wife Pauline Hanna. (Source: Supplied) The point of my conversational ingratiations was to size him up. He was not of great size. One day when we were talking, I was trying to describe one of the witnesses: someone from his former eye clinic's executive team. I couldn't remember his name. 'Bit taller than you,' I said. ADVERTISEMENT 'Everyone's taller than me,' he said, and put on a hapless expression; he presented himself as Charlie Chaplin, little comical tramp. The terrible thing about the trial was that it was so wildly entertaining. It ripped up the deep puritanical contract that New Zealanders signed up to when white settlers went about establishing the new colony. It liberated the country from shame. Polkinghorne was shameless. He was a sex machine in miniature. He maintained a furiously busy roster of sex workers, but it wasn't as though he wasn't getting it at home; in his only police interview, he casually revealed that he and his wife of 24 years had sex every day. The trial heard about group sex and professional orgies. A detective at the trial recited the synopses of the videos he watched on Polkinghorne's phone. 'She performed a sex act on him', etc. There was a balance sheet of Polkinghorne's sex spend, when a forensic accountant totted up the sums he gave to prostitutes. It echoed the self-service robot voice at supermarkets: Do you wish to print a receipt? The figure was wonderfully exact and certainly very generous: $296,646.23. (Source: Supplied) Extracted from Polkinghorne: Inside the trial of the century, by Steve Braunias (Allen & Unwin Aotearoa New Zealand, RRP $37.99). Available today, July 15.
RNZ News
14-07-2025
- RNZ News
Steve Braunias: Inside the Polkinghorne trial
Photo: supplied It was a trial that all but dominated the news agenda for two months - former eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne accused of murdering his senior health administrator wife, Pauline Hanna. It had all the features that grab attention; a high flying, wealthy couple, sex workers and drugs use. Philip Polkinghorne's defence was that his wife committed suicide. He was found not guilty of her murder. But what can a book on the trial add to all the wall to wall reporting at the time? Herald columnist, Steve Braunias was at the High Court for eight weeks writing a diary of the case. Now his book has been published. He joins Kathryn to talk about the experience of the trial and the individuals involved. POLKINGHORNE -Inside the trial of the century by Steve Braunias, published by Allen and Unwin NZ Recommended retail price: $37.99
NZ Herald
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
‘Kinky red pants': The photo of Polkinghorne that changed everything
In an exclusive extract from his new book Polkinghorne, award-winning journalist and author Steve Braunias wrote about a photo he believes turned New Zealand hearts against Philip Polkinghorne, and revealed him 'a bondage warrior, enjoying every bit of his midlife crisis'. The High Court of Auckland is a white-turreted castle
Newsroom
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsroom
The Sunday Poem, by Brian Turner
Note from ReadingRoom literary editor Steve Braunias: Victor Billot is taking a leave of absence from his Sunday Ode to pursue his political destiny at the local body elections. In his place, for the next three months, ReadingRoom invites new and established poems to email their work for consideration to stephen11@ Brian Turner begins the series with an epic poem. New Zealanders, a Definition Born here, buggered it up Taken with kind permission from Brian Turner: Selected Poems (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35), available in bookstores nationwide.
NZ Herald
01-07-2025
- NZ Herald
Steve Braunias: An ode to Auckland
Steve Braunias: "Auckland is never the road less travelled. Every road is glued with traffic." Auckland held the two of us in a state of awe. We drove – very well, she drove; I sat in the passenger seat, the closest I have ever come to the action in my long non-driving life – across the isthmus on a recent Thursday afternoon, in the smoky light of winter, father and daughter having nothing better to do than hang out with each other in traffic. I was so happy. Our outing felt like a family holiday. We chatted about travelling to England together one day and I imagined that we were already tourists in somewhere like Cornwall or Yorkshire. In fact, we were headed for East Tāmaki. Auckland has it all, as in it has all the sticky mangrovial creeks you could ever want, creating a giant kind of wetland interrupted by housing. No, she said, she never gets homesick. She loves Dunedin. She wears Speights jerseys to Highlanders games – she was shown on the big screen at one game, cheering, an avid blonde fan raised in West Auckland on the Te Atatū Peninsula. I suggested we drive out that way or maybe Henderson. She suggested East Tāmaki. Her cousin Nina told her it had great op shops. I would have said yes to anywhere. I am forever haunted by thoughts of parents who never see their kids, who don't know their kids – the scariest word in the English language is estranged. Auckland is never the road less travelled. Every road is glued with traffic, a city of automobiles often not very mobile at all, stuck on motorways and at the lights – but such is the price you pay for living in New Zealand's best and biggest city, with its grassy volcanic cones and hibiscus blooming pink and orange even in winter. We headed south. East Tāmaki is veering towards the airport. She asked what I'd like to listen to and I said Taylor. She sang along to Fearless beneath the flight path. Auckland is many Aucklands, moneyed and broke, living in mansions and in TENANTS PARKING ONLY units, cocktails at harbourside and sitting with a cup of tea on front porches watching trains rattle past their fence. East Tāmaki was something else altogether. It was six-lane highways with warehouses on either side. No one walked the pavements. I saw one person in a bus shelter – he looked as though he'd been waiting there for five or six years. We shopped and chatted, travelled and chatted, played Red and chatted. All parents develop patterns and languages with their kids; I tried to get us back to our old reliable dynamic, in which I play the idiot and she scolds my stupidity, but she had got too old for it. She wanted actual conversation. Auckland is 1.65 million people (2023 census), including the happy Vietnamese woman who manages Country Roast next to the SPCA op shop in East Tāmaki. I ordered chips and a cup of tea, and got to talking. She said she worked from 9am until 9pm, six days a week. She had two kids, aged 16 and 13. 'They say, 'We never see you!' But we spend Sundays together.' I asked, 'Doing what?' She said, 'Drives.' I was lucky. I had a carefree Thursday to share with my kid, 18, on the yellow brick roads of Auckland's damp, magical Oz. Auckland twilight has a fragile beauty in winter; in East Tāmaki, the sky sad and lonesome above Shower Solutions and Universal Granite Ltd. We headed home. I asked, 'What are the five most monumental moments of your life?' Her answers were like an edited highlights package of a happy childhood growing up in pretty, ambitious, desperate, watery, hard-working, hanging-in-there, traffic-jammed Auckland.
