18 November 2010
It took almost twenty years for Colin Howell to stand up and publicly admit his guilt – and just under ten minutes for a judge to sentence him to life imprisonment.
The prison van which had brought him to Belfast Crown Court arrived late, after making a detour to avoid flooded roads in the Antrim countryside – but everybody was ready and in place in the courtroom on the fourth floor when the cell door opened. The prisoner wore handcuffs as he made his way to the dock and, after what seemed like an eternity, a woman warder turned a key to free his wrists. He sat, grey and gaunt, wearing a pressed light-grey suit with a white shirt and brown-and-navy tie, and braced himself for what was to come.
Howell spoke just three times: to confirm his name, and then, when the two murder charges were read out by a court clerk, to reply ‘Guilty’ in each instance − just loud enough for those in the crowded public gallery behind him to hear. Trevor Buchanan’s two sisters, Melva and Valerie, and his five brothers, Gordon, Victor, Jackie, Raymond and Robert, were all there, as were Lesley’s brother Chris and her son Dan and daughter Lauren. The hearing was adjourned.
Six days later, plans to swear in a jury for the start of Hazel Stewart’s trial had to be delayed after it was confirmed that Howell had made a new and lengthy statement to police which ran to forty-three pages. He had agreed to be the so-called ‘star witness’ to testify against his former lover – raising speculation that he was going into the witness box in return for a reduced sentence. But, as was later confirmed, there had been no such ‘deal’ in place.
29 November 2010
At Howell’s pre-sentence hearing, the formidable Richard Weir, QC, said he had been instructed by Howell to express his profound regret and deep remorse. These were not merely hollow words, since his client had made a voluntary confession long after the murders had been committed and when the wisp of suspicion had completely faded. Weir continued: ‘The perfect crime is an unwholesome concept, and if its definition is the evasion of prosecution and a subsequent pronouncement of guilt, then Colin Howell’s crime fulfilled that. But that definition leaves out the existence and action of conscience which is what we say ultimately led to these crimes being admitted.’
Anyone knowing the bare facts of the case could legitimately describe the crimes as monstrous, Mr Weir acknowledged. But, he continued, anyone knowing Colin Howell before and after the murders would find it unimaginable that he could do such monstrous things, because he was an upstanding, effective and worthy member of society – not a monster: ‘It was quite plain that it was grossly distorted thinking which led to this appalling and monstrous crime. The distortion of reason might be viewed as bad enough, but the plan which sprang from it − and the activation of that plan − was caused by Colin Howell’s departure from all that was his true self – a decent, upstanding, hard-working, religious and valuable member of society … Whatever chemistry there was between him and Hazel Buchanan, one of its by-products was undoubtedly the toxin that enabled the plan, not just for him to kill his wife, but to kill them both and for them to be together. He always accepted his role in the planning and conduct of the crimes and he had never attempted to minimize that.’
After the murders, as Mr Weir told the court, Colin Howell had been visited by unhappiness, discord and tragedy, brought on by himself. Having escaped detection, he did not live happily ever after. He made a revelation to his second wife Kyle in the late 1990s, and later to the police. It was a demonstration of someone whose conscience had eventually ruled him and brought him to this point. Howell regarded the death of his son Matthew in an accident as another awful outcome from the sins he had committed and concealed. He also went on to invest in a scheme in the Philippines which was almost transparently a fraud: ‘The court might take the view, or at least ask the question – was that a symptom of Colin Howell seeking out his own destruction, his downfall?’
Mr Weir’s concluding remarks asked for due consideration to be given to Howell’s sense of remorse and the fact that he had been moved to confess to his crimes, albeit so many years later. ‘He accepts entirely how bad and monstrous these matters are, but there is a man there, not a monster − a man who allowed distorted thinking, a loss of reason, and illicit passion to completely destroy the lives of his victims. On any reading he will be a very old man before he is even considered for release … There must be some significant credit for the fact that he has confessed, and confessed without any external force upon him. Only by reason of conscience and knowledge that he is a fraud of the worst kind, who had destroyed people’s lives, family life. That is an indicator of the genuine remorse he has.’
3 December 2010
Just before he handed down the length of the sentence, Mr Justice Anthony Hart, one of Northern Ireland’s top judges, revealed that had Howell been convicted by a jury, he would have sent him to jail for a minimum of twenty-eight years. Then, for the best part of the next half-hour, the prisoner closed his eyes and sat, head bowed, as the judge detailed how he had murdered innocent people and deprived six children of the love of their mother and father.
Judge Hart summed up: ‘These were truly heinous crimes, constituting as they did the cold-blooded, carefully planned and ruthlessly executed double murder of two people who Howell saw as standing in the way of his adulterous desire to be with Hazel Buchanan. Each murder was carried out when the victim was asleep and thus entirely defenceless. Even when they stirred in their sleep, Howell did not draw back and spare their lives, but physically subdued their faint signs of approaching consciousness, thereby ensuring their deaths.’ The judge recounted how he had studied a number of confidential statements from relatives in both families, all of which showed that many lives had been gravely affected for many years by the murders. By staging the deaths as suicides, Howell had caused further irreparable damage in the lives of the children of Lesley and Trevor: ‘The reputations of their innocent parents, who had already been wronged by Mr Howell, were further stigmatized by the false implication that they had taken their own lives in a suicide pact.’
The only mitigating factor in the case, the Judge said, was Howell’s confession and his willingness to give evidence for the prosecution. The confessions were a factor that had to be taken into account in his favour, not least because, had he not confessed, he would never have been brought to justice for the crimes. He had accepted his guilt and given practical expression to his remorse. The judge concluded: ‘Unpalatable though it may seem to many, the courts recognize that criminals who plead guilty should receive a lesser sentence than would have been the case had they been convicted after a trial, because by doing so they publicly accept their guilt. Tragically, murders of those who are seen as standing in the way of the fulfilment of lustful desires are not uncommon in this jurisdiction.’
Judge Hart then sentenced Colin Howell to life with a minimum jail term of twenty-one years.
19.
A ‘joint venture’? – The Hazel Stewart trial, Part One
Hazel Stewart had always been a smart dresser – designer labels only, if she could afford them. And in the months before her arrest, she had never looked better. On the night of the Police Chief Constable’s Ball, 5 December 2008, when the great and the good on the North Coast sat down to a sumptuous meal and then danced until the wee small hours at Portrush’s Royal Court Hotel, she had looked dazzling. That evening, Hazel was in her element as she moved about the pre-dinner reception, nursing a glass of white wine, her usual tipple. At her side was her husband, an ex-Chief Superintendent who, long divorced from his first wife but now hopelessly in love again, had persisted in his efforts to persuade Hazel to marry him. For a woman with such deep religious convictions and heady social aspirations, surely life could not get much better?
Just a few short months later, Hazel Stewart was a changed woman, however, in circumstances which could not have been more different. The tanned good looks and shapely figure, which she maintained with regular sessions in the gym
at Fitness First, where she once attracted so many admiring glances as she worked out in her lycra all-in-one, had gone. The woman who appeared at Coleraine Magistrate’s Court on Monday, 2 February 2009, was pale, gaunt and drably dressed – and so distressed that she could hardly get to her feet when called to rise so she could be formally charged.
By this time, Stewart was living in a beautifully fitted-out, recently built, detached house in the countryside on the Ballystrone Road, Macosquin, a few miles outside Coleraine. This was where she had been arrested the previous Thursday by the same three police officers who had arrived on Howell’s doorstep. Sergeant Soren Stewart and Detective Constables Kidd and Parish were met at the front door by David Stewart, who invited them in. His wife, he told them, was at the dentist’s, but would be back soon. The officers would not tell him the reason for their visit and asked Stewart not to contact his wife because they feared she then might not return to the house. They sat waiting for forty-five minutes in a small room. Eventually the woman of the house pulled up in her black Golf VW. She was wearing a cream-coloured three-quarter-length coat, dark jeans and ankle boots – but the colour drained from her face when she realized who was waiting for her. The police officers did not even have to introduce themselves: she knew why they were there. It was what she had always feared: the knock on the door, the tap on the shoulder which would signal the end of life as she knew it. Hazel began trembling and fell into a chair with a look of resignation. She was allowed a few private minutes with her husband and was then taken to the waiting police car. As she was driven to Coleraine police station, she did not say a word. When they arrived at the reception desk, she asked: ‘Am I going to be here long? Will I be getting out later today?’
Although Howell had been remanded in custody when he had been charged, Richard Wilson, the district judge, took a different view in Stewart’s case, despite police objections to bail. Detective Inspector Magee said that the application to refuse bail was based on the grounds of Stewart’s welfare and safety: ‘There is a clear intimation to me, and my team, that, should she be released, she may well take her own life. It would be my main concern.’ While he acknowledged that she had the support of her husband, he added: ‘It is very difficult to keep an eye on someone twenty-four hours a day.’
David Stewart, who addressed the court, insisted that their home would provide Hazel with a much safer environment than the women’s prison at Hydebank in Belfast – a view shared by Stewart’s solicitor, Stephen Hastings. Stewart declared that he was convinced that his wife would not cause him or her children any difficulties if she were allowed to remain at home with them: he would do everything to keep her safe. His wife, he said, had an extremely close relationship with the children; they considered her to be their best friend.
District Judge Wilson said he was prepared to grant bail, provided that certain conditions were met. Stewart would have to surrender her passport, report daily to the police in Coleraine, and sign off on bail terms totalling £15,000: a sum which would be forfeited if she failed to turn up for her next court appearance.
Stewart returned home in a deep depression. In the weeks that followed she lost weight, found it difficult to concentrate and sleep, and her family were gravely worried about her general health and mental state. Obviously bewildered by the turn of events, David Stewart asked his wife over and over again to explain her actions: what exactly had happened that night in May 1991? The questions would continue over a number of weeks – sometimes for as little as ten minutes at a time, but generally for longer. He repeatedly asked one question in particular: ‘Why did you not shout and scream and warn Trevor when Howell came to the house?’ Stewart’s son and daughter, Lisa and Andrew, also struggled to comprehend and come to terms with the truth of the circumstances of their father’s death, but they never for a moment, it seemed, entertained the idea that their mother was culpable. They remained unwaveringly a hundred per cent loyal to Hazel: as far as they were concerned, Howell was solely and completely to blame.
Meanwhile, Stewart’s sisters took her for walks on mostly deserted nearby beaches in an effort to try to raise her spirits. Of necessity, but by choice too, she became a virtual recluse. She no longer frequented the gym in Coleraine which she had so zealously attended previously. She also stopped going to services at Portstewart Baptist Church with her husband.
Eventually, Hazel’s mood picked up. She began travelling to Omagh to visit her mother Peggy – her father Jack died in October 2007 – and even though this was not the Hazel of old, she gradually got out and about again, taking herself off to places where she would not be instantly recognized. She was once spotted in some of Belfast’s fashion shops wearing a large pair of sunglasses. Later, she even felt confident enough to return to her part-time job as a clerk for a local pharmaceutical company – Nicobrand, a company involved in the manufacture of nicotine gum and various nicotine active pharmaceutical ingredients designed to help people stop smoking. Hazel had been working there for several years before her arrest. All talk of her predicament was banned in the office, as one of her then colleagues confirms: ‘[Hazel] was likeable, efficient and very good at her job. Nobody was allowed to speak with her about the case.’
As the date of her trial for the murders drew ever closer, Stewart’s sense of apprehension began to loom large once more. Although the date for the hearing was scheduled for November 2010, Mr Justice Hart agreed to postpone the case going before a jury until the following February after a last-minute change to her legal team.
Paul Ramsey, QC, was in charge of the defence. A former pupil of St Mary’s Christian Brothers’ Grammar in West Belfast, Ramsey is known among his friends and colleagues as an ethical advocate with a demonstrably keen intellect – a good man to have on your side.
The trial turned out to be the most dramatic and sensational in Northern Ireland for many decades. While Hazel might have been beginning to regain a little of her old sparkle, she cut a sombre figure as she took her place in the dock at Coleraine Crown Court. Thin and drawn, she was a shadow of her former self. She was dressed in dark slacks and a plain tweed coat, tightly buttoned, and the only adornment she wore was a rather prominent silver cross around her neck.
From the beginning of the court case, Hazel Stewart just sat there, day after day, expressionless, her head tilted to one side, never making eye contact with the former in-laws sitting to her right, or with Howell as he swept past her to take the stand. The only time she seemed to show any signs of animation was when she peered over at the strained faces of her husband and two children on the left of the courtroom, seeking to make eye contact and, when she did, mouthing as if to say, ‘Don’t worry. I’m all right.’
She was searched every time she presented herself at the entrance to the dock and would hold her arms wide as one of the warders ran her hands down her sides, before she sat down – just left of centre – on the wooden bench. Two officers, sometimes both female, sometimes one of them a man, sat on either side of her.
The jury was chosen in less than an hour. No objections were raised by Ciaran Murphy, QC, counsel for the Public Prosecution Service, or by Mr Ramsey. Each of the twelve jurors was offered the choice between taking the oath and making an affirmation. All took the oath. The jury was composed of nine men and three women.
Mr Justice Hart then requested that all the Crown witnesses in attendance be brought into the courtroom. As Stewart caught sight of some of the familiar faces of those who crowded into the court, it must have seemed like a Coleraine Baptist Church reunion from the days when so many young couples and their children, some of them new to the borough, took their places each Sunday in the Abbey Street church. There was Linda Brockbank, who had been so good to her at the time of Trevor’s death; Derek McAuley, husband of Hilary, her then best friend, and the man who had steamed open the letter Howell had given him to deliver to Hazel on the day of Lesley’s funeral; Dr Alan Topping, who discovered the affair was back on again and was a great friend of Trevor�
�s. There was Topping’s wife Margaret, who had visited Lesley just days before she was murdered; and Jim Flanagan and former detective David Green, the two church elders who had found the bodies that fateful morning.
Some of Lesley’s closest friends were on the list as well. They included Shirley McPhillimy and Carolyn Young, Gillian Alcorn and Ruth Middleton, also Tania Donaghy and Betty Bradley. Leslie Clyde, the former police colleague of Trevor Buchanan, and Trevor McAuley, Hazel’s loyal companion of eight years, were also among the witnesses who crowded into the courtroom.
Mr Murphy began by outlining the prosecution case. He ran through the shocking and gruesome details of how Lesley and Trevor had met their deaths almost twenty years previously, as a result of a ‘joint plan’ conceived by the two accused; he spoke of how the murders had been covered up by Howell and Stewart; he touched upon the way in which Stewart, when confronted by arresting officers in 2009, had exclaimed: ‘What? What? What evidence? What has been said?’ In conclusion, Murphy summed up the key premise of the line the prosecution would be taking: that ‘Hazel Stewart knowingly entered into this agreement and assisted Colin Howell in ensuring he could safely kill her husband, and afterwards they both covered up the whole thing.’
The first of the prosecution witnesses were called: Jim Flanagan and David Green, the ex-detective who went on to open an art gallery in Coleraine. Green spoke of the suspicions he had had from the outset, and Flanagan described Howell’s demeanour after he had been told that his wife was dead: ‘There was no overwhelming sadness as one might have expected.’ Margaret Topping disclosed how Lesley believed Howell had tried to electrocute her as she was having a bath; she also spoke of her friend’s dismay at the affair, telling the court: ‘She was very sad, embarrassed, very hurt and kept asking: “Why was I not number one?” ’
Let This Be Our Secret Page 26