THE DAUGHTER of Hazel Stewart, who was convicted earlier this year of the 1991 double murder of her then husband and another woman, has said her mother was “wrongfully” taken from her.
Lisa Buchanan was eight when the bodies of her father, Trevor Buchanan and Lesley Howell, the wife of Ms Stewart’s former lover and accomplice Colin Howell, were discovered in car in Castlerock in what at first appeared to be a double-suicide pact.
However, police reopened the investigation after Mr Howell confessed to the killings in 2009.
In a documentary broadcast on Channel 4 yesterday Ms Buchanan spoke of her mothers conviction. She and her brother have previously said that they cannot accept that she was guilty of killing their father. “I probably wish that this had never come out . . . I suppose it’s different for the other side of the family, for my Dad’s brothers and sisters, for them, you know, it’s probably very important that they have the truth, yes, I probably agree with that but for my life . . . and Andrew’s life it just feels like we lost our Dad and now Mum has been taken away wrongfully and we struggle to cope with that every day,” she said.
Ms Stewart’s current husband, David Stewart, accepts that his wife helped cover up the murders, but does not accept that she is guilty of murder.