A dentist who poisoned his wife and ex-lover’s policeman husband and then covered it up as a double suicide was jailed for a minimum of 21 years today.
Colin Howell (51) from Glebe Road, Castlerock, Co Derry, was told by Mr Justice Anthony Hart at Belfast Crown Court that he will remain in jail until 2031.
Last month he was sentenced to life imprisonment after pleading guilty to the murders of his wife Lesley (31) the mother of their four children, and police constable Trevor Buchanan (32) husband of the woman with whom he had been having an affair at the time in May 1991.
Hazel Stewart (47) a mother of two from Ballystrone Road, Coleraine, Co Derry, who later re-married, is due to stand trial next February for the two murders. She denies the two charges.
Mr Justice Hart said: “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.”
He said each murder was carried out while the victims were asleep and defenceless.
“Even when each 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 added.
Howell, dressed in a grey suit, gave no reaction as the sentence was handed down.
Howell first killed his wife and later constable Buchanan at their homes in Coleraine when he attached part of a baby’s feeding bottle to a garden hose to poison them with carbon monoxide fumes from a car.
The judge said many factors aggravated the crimes including the fact that they were a double murder.
He added two innocent people were murdered and six children deprived of the love of their mother and father. He added they had to live with the false belief that their loved ones had died in a suicide pact and Howell allowed this to continue for many years.
“He is an intelligent man who knew exactly what he was doing throughout,” the judge added.
PA