THE ADULT children of convicted double murderer Hazel Stewart – Lisa and Andrew Buchanan – have stated that they cannot accept she was guilty of killing their father Trevor Buchanan in 1991. They also expressed their continuing love for their mother.
Lisa and Andrew Buchanan, then respectively aged eight and seven, were asleep in their beds at the time of their father’s death.
Stewart’s second husband, former senior police officer David Stewart, has also stated that he will stand by her and that he too does not accept the jury verdict that his wife, in a joint enterprise with dentist Colin Howell, murdered Mr Buchanan and Howell’s wife Lesley.
Lisa and Andrew Buchanan in an interview broadcast last night on BBC Northern Ireland’s Spotlight programme spoke of their horror when earlier this month the jury at Coleraine Crown Court returned its guilty verdict. Lisa said she felt “just sick”, adding, “it was an awful, awful moment”.
Andrew said he could not believe the verdict. “Did I actually hear that? I just could not believe it. Just disbelief,” he said.
“We love our father and our mother,” said Andrew, adding: “We are not taking any sides. We would not have wanted what happened to our dad ever to happen. But we lost our dad and this nearly feels like we are going to lose our mum. We can’t move on. This is the beginning for us of our lives, trying to adapt to what is going to happen.”
The children said they were devastated at having their mother “vanish from their lives”.
Mr Stewart, a former chief superintendent, also refused to accept the jury’s verdict, contending that Howell manipulated his wife.
She was like a “frightened rabbit”, he said. He added that he would stand by his wife and told the programme that he had been determined to find out from her exactly what happened at the time of the murders.
“I had no doubt that I had to know what happened,” he said.
“It was not going to be a comfortable ‘I didn’t do it, David’ and I accepted that. That is not how I think I question things.
“Over a period of at least a month, maybe longer, I asked Hazel questions. I am not going to say it was relentless. It might have been 10 minutes one day, it might have been an hour another day . . . But I asked her every question in every area that I could think of to get to the truth,” said Mr Stewart.
In May 1991 Howell murdered his wife at their home in Coleraine, Co Derry, by poisoning her with carbon-monoxide fumes. He then travelled to the Buchanans’ house in Coleraine where Stewart admitted him to her home. There he similarly gassed to death Trevor Buchanan. Their deaths were made to look like suicide.
Lisa and Andrew Buchanan were asleep in their beds at the time.
Last week Mr Justice Hart sentenced Stewart to a minimum period of 18 years in prison for the killings. She had pleaded not guilty. Howell, who admitted the murders in a separate case last year, is serving a minimum term of 21 years.
The judge said Stewart conveyed little real remorse. “Rather the sorrow and regret which she expressed to the police was largely because of the situation in which she found herself, and not for the events in which she played her part,” he said.