THE JURY in the trial of the Coleraine woman accused of the murders of her police officer husband and the wife of her former lover is expected to retire to consider its verdict later today.
Hazel Stewart, who turned 48 yesterday, was a willing partner alongside dentist Colin Howell to murder his wife, Lesley, and her husband Trevor Buchanan in May 1991 so that they could continue their affair, counsel for the Crown has alleged.
She denies the charges.
Howell has admitted killing both victims by poisoning them in their own homes with carbon monoxide fumes before taking their bodies to the home of his late father-in-law in Castlerock, Co Derry, and making their deaths look like suicide. He is serving a life sentence with a 21-year minimum tariff and has claimed Ms Stewart was his willing accomplice.
Paul Ramsey QC, defending, said in his summary that while Ms Stewart had withheld information and destroyed evidence, she was not charged with these.
He rejected prosecution charges that she was involved in joint enterprise alongside Howell to murder, insisting that the dentist acted spontaneously and was motivated by money as he stood to gain from his wife’s death.
“There was no plan,” he told the jury. “This was never a joint enterprise, these were crimes carried out by this ruthless man who had passed the point of no return.”
His client had “no part to play in the murder of Lesley Howell”.
Referring to Ms Stewart’s admission that she let Howell into her home on the night of the killings so that he could gas her husband as he lay drugged in their bedroom, Mr Ramsey said she acted out of fear.
“She let him in, she did not stand up to him, she was afraid for herself and for her children.”
The murders, he added, were “a tragedy, but we must not compound that tragedy by a miscarriage of justice. I would ask you to consider the evidence in this case should give you cause to hesitate, to pause and to resist the headlong urge to convict that the crown have urged upon you.”
Mr Ramsay concluded: “We ask you members of the jury to return the right verdict, the proper verdict, the just verdict and the only verdict. We ask you to find Hazel Stewart not guilty.”
Mr Justice Anthony Hart asked the jury not to be influenced by the sensation surrounding the case. Defining legal principles, he said joint enterprise did not have to mean that Ms Stewart had carried out either of the murders, she only had to be part of the plan.