Murderer Colin Howell is a monster who killed his wife for her money and only murdered his lover’s husband to help build his alibi, his former mistress’s trial in the North heard today.
The dentist did not plot the deaths of Lesley Howell and Trevor Buchanan with Hazel Stewart, but acted on impulse and has since peddled the lie it was a bloody pact struck so they could be together, her defence lawyer told Coleraine Crown Court.
On Howell’s last day of four testifying against the mother-of-two in her double murder trial, Paul Ramsey QC challenged the one time lay preacher, who he claimed was motivated to give evidence to feed his own ego and in the hope the courts would look favourably on him.
“You have lied about what the accused did and you have elevated what she did to one of joint enterprise and as an accomplice to you,” he said. In the last line of this marathon 12-hour cross-examination, the lawyer declared: “I put it to you that you are a monster Mr Howell.”
The father of 11, who two-years-ago admitted to the May 1991 murders, which were at the time believed to be suicides, ended his time in the witness box as he began it, with a profession of repentance.
“I was a monster and I was a killer but I’m not any longer and that’s part of my confession,” he said calmly.
Howell has claimed that Ms Stewart (47), from Ballystrone Road, Coleraine, was a willing participant in a murderous plot to rid them of their spouses - charges she denies.
Wearing a plum coat, she occasionally glanced at her former lover from the dock as his testimony against her approached 17 hours.
During his last day on the stand he insisted he only told detectives he killed on impulse in an effort to trick psychiatrists so he could get off on lesser manslaughter charges.
It also emerged that during his mental breakdown in prison months after his confession, he was convinced he was either “Noah or Moses” and feared being attacked with spears and swords by warriors like the “Romans, Spartan and Aztecs”.
Today he also told the court that only last night he remembered a second face-to-face meeting with Ms Stewart to discuss the killings in the days beforehand; he originally claimed there had been only one.
But Mr Ramsey rejected the dentist’s assertion that Ms Stewart was a willing accomplice and alleged he killed his wife spontaneously for her inheritance, a sum he claims amounted to more than £400,000.
The lawyer said Howell then needed to come up with a story to explain her death and settled on the theory of a suicide pact with Mr Buchanan because neither could cope with his and Ms Stewart’s affair.
“That’s why Trevor had to die,” Mr Ramsey insisted.
“So that Hazel and I could be together,” Howell responded.
“No,” said the lawyer, “that was a by-product, it was so you could have the money.”
Howell, who said he only made £212,000 out of Lesley’s death, insisted love, not cash was his and Stewart’s motive.
PA