Let This Be Our Secret

by Deric Henderson

  The jury retired at 10.47 a.m. on Wednesday, 2 March. They examined the transcripts, deliberated and had lunch, before returning to the court. Looking at his watch, a court official was able to calculate that it had taken them exactly two hours and twenty-nine minutes to reach their decision. The foreman got to his feet. The court clerk asked him: ‘Have you reached a verdict on count one?’ [the murder of Lesley Howell].

  The reply came quickly: ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is your verdict – guilty or not guilty?’

  ‘Guilty.’

  ‘Have you reached a verdict on count two?’ [the murder of Trevor Buchanan].

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is your verdict – guilty or not guilty?’

  ‘Guilty.’

  The distress of Hazel Stewart’s two children was painful to witness. Lisa cried out: ‘Oh no. Oh no. It’s not fair. No, it’s not fair. It’s not fair.’ Hazel reached for her handkerchief to rub her eyes, and for a moment seemed not quite sure what to do next. Her son, husband and sisters all looked towards her, weeping as well. Some of the Buchanan family sitting on the opposite side of the room hugged one another. One or two shed tears, but there was no sense or sign of triumphalism – just relief that justice had been done, had been seen to be done, and that this long nightmare was nearing an end at last.

  Once the verdicts were announced, Mr Justice Hart wasted little time in passing sentence. The defendant was asked to stand. He told her she had been convicted of two murders and the only sentence open to the court was that of life imprisonment. It was mandatory and the length of time she would have to serve in jail would be determined at a later date. He then beckoned two prison officers on either side. ‘Take her away.’

  16 March 2011

  For the sentencing of Hazel Stewart, Court 12 of Belfast Crown Court was packed with relatives and friends, as well as many other people who had no connection with anyone involved and who were there out of sheer curiosity. Solicitors and barristers involved in cases in adjoining courtrooms on the fourth floor also congregated at the door. To the left of the dock was the senior police officer who headed the 2009 investigation. Detective Superintendent Raymond Murray had taken time out from his annual leave to be there. Beside him was his number two on the inquiry team, Ian Magee.

  Stewart had three prison officers sitting with her this time. She looked more drawn than ever, desperately tense and fearful, her face pale and without evidence of make-up, her eyes lowered and fixed on the ground in front of her. Only occasionally did she lift her head to look at the Judge. She was dressed in grey slacks and her customary buttoned-up, plum-coloured coat. Just before she was asked by a court official to take her seat ‘with his Lordship’s permission’, she turned and looked over her left shoulder to seek out familiar faces in the crowd behind. Unlike the day she was convicted, this time there was no drama or tears.

  As the hands on the wall clock directly above the dock approached 10.23 a.m., Chris Clarke, whose flight from Liverpool had been held up because of fog, rushed into the courtroom, just in time to hear the Judge announce the sentence.

  It took Mr Justice Hart twenty-two minutes to deliver his judgment in The Queen v Hazel Stewart, which ran to seven pages. He said that by its verdict, the jury had accepted that she and Howell ‘were in it together’. Stewart’s culpability was ‘exceptionally high’, because she knew in advance what Howell was going to do and did nothing to prevent the killings: ‘She could have told someone else. She could have told the police and, even after Lesley Howell had been murdered, she could have prevented Howell from entering the house and killing her husband by any one of a number of actions, such as not opening the garage door to him, locking the door against him, waking her husband, ringing the police or alerting her neighbour, to mention but a few. Whilst she knew Howell was murdering her husband in another room, she waited and did nothing to save his life. Had she had a spark of compassion for her husband, even at that late stage, she would have tried to prevent his murder.’

  Howell, the judge continued, had planned and carried out the murders and persuaded her to take part. She could not claim any reduction in the minimum term, because she had pleaded not guilty. She had repeatedly lied and persisted in attempting to evade responsibility and, while she had expressed sorrow and regret during police interviews, that was more about the effect of the events on herself, her children and her present husband, than the effects of the murders on all the others whose lives had been ended and blighted.

  Her former lover, the Judge declared, was undoubtedly a charismatic, manipulative and hypocritical man with a very considerable sexual appetite, to whom Hazel had initially been attracted because he offered the excitement which she felt her marriage lacked. ‘She then fell in love with him and was driven by that love, and by intense sexual desire, to allow herself to be persuaded by Howell to play her part in these dreadful crimes, despite her fear that they would be caught, a part which she then concealed for many years. Despite her protestations to the police that she was controlled by Howell, his unchallenged evidence during the trial was that they continued their clandestine and highly active sexual relationship for several years after the murders, and that even after she refused to marry him and they decided to end their relationship, Stewart tried to persuade him to have sex.’

  Mr Justice Hart said he had been provided with a number of statements from people, including her two children, asking him to show leniency. One of the letters was from employees of the company where she worked, which read: ‘We are as shocked as others by the events of 1991 and this letter should not be construed as any attempt to exonerate Hazel, but we feel that Hazel has had very little positive representation and we are anxious for the Court to be aware of how those who have spent every day for many years with Hazel have thought and still think of her. From our daily dealings and close friendship with Hazel, we can say that Hazel, who has been portrayed as a manipulative, unfeeling, selfish, amoral, devious and wicked woman, bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Hazel we have come to love and respect.’

  The Judge concluded: ‘Tragically, the consequences for Stewart’s children and her husband are part of the legacy of the conduct of both herself and Howell. Those factors, and the fact that she has a clear record, cannot carry great weight when placed in the balance when fixing the minimum term for such crimes, but I have given them, and the positive side to her character spoken of in the passage previously quoted, such weight as I can. Taking all of the factors to which I referred into account, I consider that the minimum term that Stewart should serve before she can be considered for release is one of eighteen years’ imprisonment.’

  22.

  A time of reckoning

  Colin Howell has settled well into life at Maghaberry. He gets on well with the staff and most of the other prisoners. He has his own accommodation inside the prison hospital, with a television set in his cell. He also has access to a computer – but not to the online pornography which once held so much of his attention. The former dentist goes to church on a Sunday and studies the Bible every day, also delighting in ecclesiastical visits now and again from a few friends from his church-going days on the North Coast. He occasionally has a go at the crossword in The Times newspaper, which he reads six days a week. After signing up for creative writing classes organized within the jail by writer-in-residence Carlo Gebler, Howell is a prolific writer, specializing in Christian-themed children’s books. Compulsively driven and needing to be occupied, he no doubt welcomes the distraction. An outrageous proposition to the prison authorities – that he could open a dental practice for the staff and inmates – was rejected out of hand, even before he was struck off by the General Dental Council and declared bankrupt.

  Howell complies with the prison regime, but he has few real friends inside the jail. Some of the inmates believe him to be arrogant, with a lofty, superior and sometimes snooty attitude. This was evident when he delivered food when working as an orderly in the hospital, but especially duri
ng the trial of Hazel Stewart. He left Maghaberry early in the prison van to make sure he was in Coleraine in time; and on each of the four days, when he returned it seemed Howell was in his element, glorifying in the media attention. One prisoner said: ‘He strutted about like some kind of gladiator. He loved the fact he was in the limelight. He strolled about the prison like a movie star who knew he was the man in the big picture.’

  One of Howell’s closest friends in jail is another murderer who also almost got away with it. Ken McConnell, a former police inspector and notorious womanizer, strangled and robbed a frail, asthmatic and defenceless elderly widow, Annabella Symington, at her south Belfast home on Halloween night, 1989. He stole the money to pay his gambling debts. With unbelievable callousness, he stuffed a cardigan into his seventy-seven-year-old victim’s mouth to stop her screaming. Unlike Howell, McConnell never confessed to his crime; he was caught in January 2010, after police were able to match his DNA with that found under the pensioner’s fingernails. He was jailed for eighteen years.

  Hazel Stewart is being held in a women’s jail at Hydebank Wood on the southern outskirts of Belfast. She is planning to appeal her conviction, but in the meantime, according to staff, she has settled in well after a difficult first few months. She uses the gym four or five times a week. Like Howell, she reads her Bible daily and prays at her bedside every night. Stewart was heartbroken that she missed her son Andrew’s wedding, in May 2011. On the day her son married, she asked prison staff to leave her alone in her cell, no doubt imagining how the ceremony and reception would be going without her at the top table.

  Colin Howell earned £20 a week working as an orderly in the prison hospital. After his spectacular fall from grace he is financially ruined, with hardly a penny to his name. He owes former patients an estimated £230,000 which they paid in advance of getting treatment at his clinic. After his arrest, staff at the surgery found a £20 IOU note in Howell’s petty cash box.

  He retains a substantial property portfolio, with his name still on the deeds of his seven-bedroom house outside Castlerock, the half-share of a derelict building in Granada, Nicaragua, and the flat at Queen Street, Ballymoney, as well as a share of the rest of the building. After Howell was jailed, the Public Prosecution Service, which claimed he had assets as well in Singapore and the Philippines, set out to recover all he owned under the Proceeds of Crime Order (Northern Ireland) 1996. The application was later withdrawn without explanation. It is understood, however, that the decision not to proceed was taken because the murders were carried out in 1991 and, as such, assets belonging to Howell and Stewart could not be recovered under this legislation, since it has no provision for retrospective confiscation.

  Both Howell and Stewart defrauded insurance companies. Outstanding mortgages on their homes were paid off under the terms of the families’ respective endowment policies. Stewart also received a police widow’s pension between 1991 and 2005, when she remarried, as well as a special children’s allowance for several years. Howell has known for some time that one day the insurance companies would come looking for their money; just before he confessed to the murders he did some rough calculations about what he might have to pay back. Also during this time he destroyed one of his computers. Howell used a screwdriver to remove the laptop’s hard drive which he then smashed to pieces and dumped in various litter bins in Castlerock. The laptop had contained details of his financial affairs, including his bank accounts and the ill-fated venture in the Philippines. He had promised the friend who encouraged him to invest in the project that he would never reveal to anyone the names of those involved in it – he was told that to do so would put their lives in danger, especially that of ‘Alan’, the man in Manila.

  The 2009 inquiry which followed Howell’s confession was a highly sensitive and exhaustive police investigation which was headed up by Superintendent Murray. One of the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s top detectives, with twenty years’ experience and a Master’s in Criminology from Cambridge University, Murray, forty, is meticulous and demanding. He was also determined that, unlike in 1991, there would be no mistakes and oversights this time around. His was a textbook investigation.

  Early on, investigating officers considered contacting the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States to discuss staged suicide scenes. They also looked closely at whether or not to exhume the bodies of Lesley and Trevor from Coleraine Cemetery. The final decision was to leave the graves alone, primarily because the self-incriminating statements made by the accused were so consistent and watertight, and also so damning. When considering the possible exhumation, officers had spoken with Simon Cosbey, the toxicologist who carried out the original blood tests in 1991. They all concluded that carrying out further tests would most likely serve no useful purpose: apart from the carbon monoxide fumes as well as traces of prescription drugs, what other toxins were likely to be found, to strengthen the case of two people being deliberately poisoned? The feelings of the families of the deceased and the further trauma they would face were also major factors in the decision against exhumation.

  Murray’s team consulted Adrian West, the UK’s leading criminal psychologist, when Howell was being questioned about the death of Harry Clarke. West has worked as a profiler on many police investigations in Britain, including the murder in April 1999 of the BBC presenter, Jill Dando. Howell has always emphatically denied that he murdered his former father-in-law. But some, including Harry’s son, Chris Clarke, still remain sceptical about Howell’s plea of innocence.

  Many of those who sat in the congregation with the Howells and Buchanans to listen to Pastor John Hansford’s sermons are no longer members of Coleraine Baptist Church. They have moved on to other places and different churches. But they, and those who stayed on, will surely have reflected on how this tragic affair was handled. Hansford insists he has no regrets: ‘I often wondered why I didn’t pick up on Colin’s lies, but then he lied to a colossal number of people. I don’t feel too bad that I missed the signs. I would scrutinize my conscience in many ways and, as I look back, I feel everything was done that could have been done, humanly speaking, at the time.’

  He says that he feels desperately sorry for Howell, whom he describes as a Jekyll-and-Hyde character. ‘We saw one side of him in the life of the church, and yet there was another life going. It is hard to make head or tail of his Christian commitment, and how it all played out in his life …’ The pastor’s attitude to Hazel Stewart has changed over time, as he explains: ‘I think Hazel schemed. I picked up that her marriage to Trevor lacked sparkle and was not very exciting. She was looking for far more … There are many women who find themselves in that position, but didn’t go out and do what she did. Hazel would have come across to me as being a victim of circumstances, particularly of Colin’s dominant personality. Looking back now – and this is a personal assessment and judgement – I wonder whether that was true … Initially, one felt the whole blame resided with Colin, though not exclusively, because it takes two for this to happen. I can see now that Hazel was far more a participant in what happened than she led us to believe at the time. She portrayed herself to be an innocent in the whole thing, but my reading of the situation now is that I don’t think she is. I would see Colin Howell now as a very broken man. I hope a very repentant man. I still believe there is forgiveness and grace available if there is true repentance.’

  The pastor’s final thoughts are for the children whose lives have been so badly damaged: ‘I feel desperately sorry for his kids. After telling them their mother took her own life, they had to come to terms with the fact that their father murdered their mother. I want the kids to know the part I played in all this. I want them to know that I have tried, as far as possible, to be as truthful about the whole thing.’

  While some in the Baptist Church have had misgivings and concerns, it is the close relatives of Lesley Howell and Trevor Buchanan, above all, who have suffered anguish of an unimaginable level. A number of them have described t
heir feelings in interviews for this book, as well as in personal letters, known as impact statements, which Judge Hart studied carefully before he passed sentence. Their testimonies are moving and sometimes heart-breaking.

  At her home near Omagh, just a year after Howell and Stewart were arrested, Valerie Bleakley, Trevor’s oldest sister, would confide, in a quiet, halting voice: ‘I can’t describe what it has done to me. The only way I can describe what I feel is that something inside me has died. A lot of the time I’m quite emotional. I have a pain in my chest all the time. I can’t cry and I can’t laugh since last January. There has been such deep, deep pain.

  ‘I just couldn’t believe that Hazel was involved. I could believe it, but I couldn’t believe it. Surely she couldn’t have been that stupid. But she was. It was just as if Trevor had died all over again. The emotions were even stronger. That first week, I drifted between shock, anger and at times hatred. Other times, strangely enough, I felt sorry for her. I couldn’t work out my feelings, because on the day of the first court appearance I was almost relieved when she was not put in prison that day … but could not understand why. I do have a certain amount of compassion. I think the worst scenario for me would be going to prison and the isolation of it. I just couldn’t bear to think of that for anybody. It didn’t make me feel jubilant, but she deserved to go to prison because justice must be done and she has murdered my brother. How could she do such a thing and deprive her children of a father who loved them passionately? I think about what were Trevor’s last words: who heard them, what did he say in those last moments. There are only two people who can answer that.’