Life Sentences For 'Suicide' Murders

A bizarre case against a dentist who also a lay preacher has seen the Co Londonderry professional handed down two life sentences for the murders of his wife and his ex-lover's husband.

Although at first thought to be a double suicide, when the victims died in a fume-filled car nearly 20 years ago, 51-year-old dentist Colin Howell yesterday changed his plea at Belfast Crown Court and admitted the 1991 murders.

He pleaded guilty to murdering his wife and mother-of-four Lesley, 31, and Constable Trevor Buchanan, 32, after their bodies were discovered in a car in scenic Castlerock.

Howell, also from Castlerock, had denied the two charges since his arrest last year when the case was reopened by the PSNI, but admitted the double murder on Thursday.

His former lover, Hazel Stewart, 47, who was married to Constable Buchanan at the time, is due to stand trial for the two murders in Coleraine, next Wednesday.

Mr Justice Anthony Hart told him: You have pleaded guilty to two charges of murder. The only sentence the law allows is one of life imprisonment which I now sentence you."

Howell and his co-accused, as well as their partners, were all members of Coleraine Baptist Church at the time of the deaths. But when he was arrested last year, he was a member of a north Antrim-based church group called the Barn Christian Fellowship.

A year after the police launched an investigation, a coroner's court inquest said the deaths were suicides, both victims having been poisoned by carbon monoxide fumes.

(BMcC/GK)