HAZEL STEWART feared her lover Colin Howell would kill her if she refused to go through with his plan to murder her husband and his wife so that they could be together, her murder trial has heard.
Ms Stewart (47) denies murdering her 32-year-old police officer husband Trevor Buchanan and Lesley Howell (31). Their bodies were found in a fume-filled car in Castlerock, Co Derry in May 1991.
Her lover, dentist Colin Howell, has already dramatically confessed and pleaded guilty to the murders and is serving a 21-year sentence.
Tapes of interviews Ms Stewart gave to police in 2009 following her arrest in the wake of Howell’s confession were played to the jury of nine men and three women at Coleraine Crown Court yesterday.
In the interviews she says that Howell emerged as a different type of person from the one she first got to know when they started their secret, intense affair. She also told police she could not understand why he wanted to kill.
Regarding plans to kill their respective spouses, the court heard her recorded interviews in which she said: “He didn’t get my approval and I would not agree with him. I would not go alongside. He is someone who is very controlling. He gets his own way, in one shape or form.” She portrayed Howell as an influential individual.
“Whether he fools you, or cons you, whatever, he will get you. If he wants something he will get it. As the relationship went on, there was other things that was coming out in him that scared me. He’s just devious, and I mean that. You can ask people outside of here. You don’t have to ask me that. People will say that about him. A strange character.” The court heard her tell her police interviewers: “He can work his way. He’s very good at it. At the beginning when I did meet him, yes I felt ‘this guy is great’, loved him and all that.” She also revealed to police that she acted out the role of a grieving widow at her husband’s funeral but inside she felt a hypocrite. She said her life was never the same again.
Her mother and father and other members of the family were among mourners at Coleraine Baptist Church who believed Trevor Buchanan and Lesley Howell died in a suicide pact.
She told police: “I can remember going there, walking up the aisle. I didn’t exactly see what Colin did, but I knew he had killed them. I knew that and for me to walk into a church . . . yes, I feel a hypocrite. My whole life personality is different.”
Ms Howell’s funeral had taken place in the church earlier that day. Afterwards, Ms Stewart said she tried to explain to her two children Andrew and Lisa.
“I tried to talk to them as much as I could and build up a very close relationship with them. I have devastated them in a way that they never knew. I never wanted them to know.
“Sometimes Andrew would want to maybe say something about his dad, or ask something. But it was difficult for me to talk about him. It was difficult, very difficult.” The trial continues.