A DENTIST and lay preacher has been sentenced to two life sentences for the murders of his wife and his ex-lover’s husband. They died in a fume-filled car in Co Derry nearly 20 years ago.
Colin Howell (51) yesterday changed his plea at Belfast Crown Court and admitted the 1991 killings which police first thought was a suicide pact.
In a short hearing at Belfast Crown Court, he pleaded guilty to murdering his wife and mother-of-four Lesley (31) and Constable Trevor Buchanan (32). Their bodies were discovered in a car in Castlerock.
Howell, also from Castlerock, had denied the two charges since his arrest last year when the case was reopened by the PSNI, but owned up to the double murder when he stood in the dock as relatives of his victims looked on.
His former lover, Hazel Stewart, who was married to Constable Buchanan at the time, is due to stand trial for the two murders in Coleraine, Co Derry, next Wednesday.
Mrs Stewart (47), a mother of two from Ballystrone Road, Coleraine and who later remarried, was in the Laganside court building yesterday, but was not in Court 12 as her co-accused changed his plea.
Howell, dressed in a grey suit, white shirt and tie, spoke only three times during the 10-minute hearing – once to confirm his name and to answer guilty to each charge in turn.
Mr Justice Anthony Hart told him: “You have pleaded guilty to two charges of murder. The only sentence the law allows is one of life imprisonment which I now sentence you.”
At the time, it was believed the two victims had taken their own lives because of depression over an affair between Howell and Stewart. But detectives reopened the investigation in January last year when they interviewed Howell.
Howell and his co-accused, as well as their partners, were all members of Coleraine Baptist Church at the time of the deaths. But when he was arrested last year, he was a member of a north Antrim-based church group called the Barn Christian Fellowship.
Mrs Stewart had been attending Portstewart Baptist Church with her second husband, former police Chief Supt David Stewart, once a staff officer to ex-RUC chief constable Sir Hugh Annesley.
As well as the two murders, Howell was also questioned about the death of his father-in-law Harry Clarke (69) an ex-Royal Marine regimental sergeant major and company director, who collapsed and died at Howell’s home 12 days before the bodies of his daughter and Constable Buchanan were found.
Howell categorically denied he was responsible. Mr Clarke, who had been suffering from flu and staying in the Howells’ spare bedroom, is believed to have had a heart attack in the kitchen of the house at Knocklayde Park, Coleraine.
It was in Mr Clarke’s garage behind his home in Castlerock that the bodies were found by two members of Coleraine Baptist Church, one of them an off-duty police officer.
A year after the police launched an investigation, a coroner’s court inquest said the deaths were suicides, both victims having been poisoned by carbon monoxide fumes.
Howell’s wife Kyle (44), a US divorcee, has moved to Florida with the couple’s five children and has filed for divorce. She was not in court yesterday.
Soon after Howell’s arrest she left Northern Ireland and the couple’s luxury home at Glebe Road, Castlerock, where her husband had been detained by investigating officers. He had been living away from the house, staying at a caravan site in the village.
Howell has already admitted indecent assault charges against three of his patients in April and July 2008 at his clinic in Ballymoney, Co Antrim.
The judge told Howell, he would decide later on the minimum tariff he must serve of the life sentences before it is considered safe for him to be released back into the community.