A new inquest into the deaths of Lesley Howell and Trevor Buchanan will set the record straight after their partners were jailed for their murders, a coroner’s court hearing in Northern Ireland was told today.
A second hearing will take place before the end of next month - about 20 years after their bodies were found in an apparent suicide pact.
The pair were found gassed in a car on the north coast in May 1991 and the original inquest ruled they had taken their own lives.
Dentist Colin Howell and Sunday school teacher Hazel Stewart have recently been convicted of their murders.
Gordon Buchanan, brother of one of the victims, told the Belfast inquest preliminary: “What the Buchanan family wish is that the record is set straight and that any record is accurate and reflects the truth of what happened.”
Howell (52), and Stewart (48), concocted a story at the inquest which covered up the truth that they murdered their spouses.
Howell used a hosepipe attached to a car exhaust to gas the pair while they slept at their homes in Coleraine, Co Derry. He then drove them to a garage in Castlerock where they were later found. Stewart did nothing to stop him as he arrived to kill her husband.
Howell’s daughter, Lauren Bradford, said the Howell family echoed the views of the Buchanan family. “It would also be our wish that the record be set straight.”
PA