A mother’s unanswered questions about her involvement in the murders of her husband and ex-lover’s wife in Northern Ireland 20 years ago cried out for an explanation, a jury heard today.
Crown lawyer Ciaran Murphy QC claimed at Coleraine Crown Court that Hazel Stewart (47) was part of a plan that she helped execute to sacrifice the life of her policeman husband as well the killing of her then lover’s wife with carbon monoxide fumes.
Mother-of-two Stewart did not give evidence in her defence in the trial, now in its 13th day.
Mr Murphy said she had failed to answer questions and challenge the evidence, although he conceded she had no obligation to do so. But the questions, he said, were crying out for an explanation.
He told a jury: “The reason why she did not place herself in the position where she could be asked those questions is because she does not have the answers to suit her.”
Ms Stewart, from Ballystrone Road, Macosquin, Coleraine, who has denied the two murders, sat impassively in the dock as Mr Murphy in a closing submission urged the jury to find her guilty.
Her husband, Pc Trevor Buchanan (32), and Lesley Howell (31), the wife of her lover, dentist Colin Howell, were found dead in a car filled with carbon monoxide fumes in a garage behind a row of houses known as the Twelve Apostles in the seaside town of Castlerock, Co Derry, in May 1991.
At first, police thought they had died in some sort of suicide pact because of the distress over their spouses’ affair.
It was only when Howell (51) first confessed to his church elders and then police in January 2009 that he had murdered them that Ms Stewart was arrested by investigating detectives.
Howell, a father of 10 from Glebe Road, Castlerock, is serving a 21-year jail sentence after pleading guilty to the murders.
He first gassed his wife as she slept on the sofa of their home in Coleraine. He then drove her body to the far side of the town, where he then murdered PC Buchanan by the same method before taking the two bodies away to stage-manage the suicide.
PA