“TAKE HER away.” Three quietly spoken words from Mr Justice Hart towards the condemned woman in the dock could barely be heard above the wailing of her distressed son and daughter in the adjacent gallery.
Lisa Buchanan wept copiously and gasped, “It’s not fair, it’s not fair,” shaking her head as the jury foreman calmly told the clerk of its unanimous verdict of murder against her mother.
Her younger brother, Andrew, kept his head in his hands from the moment the jury returned to the unbearably tense courtroom No 2 in Coleraine Courthouse. As his mother stood for sentencing for murdering his father and the wife of her former lover, he broke down loudly and painfully.
David Stewart, Hazel Stewart’s current husband, only just visible below the rail of the gallery, cried into his hands, which hid his face. Around them other family members sobbed quietly as the judge, in a matter-of-fact way, told the court he had no option other than a life sentence, “which I now give”.
Opposite them, the Howells and the Buchanans, all relatives of the murder victims, supported each other silently.
The judge said Stewart, who stood composed though breathing heavily as her shoulders rose and slumped, could see her immediate family before she was taken to prison.
It took the jury just under 2½ hours to find her guilty of the double murder of her first husband, Trevor Buchanan, and of Lesley Howell, wife of her former lover and accomplice, Colin Howell.
Howell and Stewart had been conducting an on-off affair for a year before the murders in May 1991.
Howell poisoned the pair with carbon monoxide piped from his car as they slept in their homes. He then set up a scene to look as though they had taken their own lives because they could not cope with the affair between himself and Stewart.
Howell, a former lay-preacher, pleaded guilty to the murders after first confessing to church elders in January 2009. He was convicted of the murders in a separate case last December and agreed he was the “mastermind” behind the plot.
Stewart pleaded not guilty and did not give evidence during the 15-day trial. Shortly after the prison van containing her drove off towards Hydebank Wood prison, Gordon Buchanan, whose brother Trevor had been gassed by Howell, headed his family delegation as they prepared to face the media glare.
“This is a day of very mixed emotions for the Buchanan family,” he said. He referred to the “immense satisfaction” that justice was done. “There is no sense of victory and no cause for celebration, as nothing can bring Trevor and Lesley back to us.”