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00:00This is an AVP and tape recorder working in a background in the room at Korean PlayStation.
00:13The day is Thursday the 29th of January 2009, the time taken from the clock on the wall is 20.03 hours.
00:20This evening I am interviewing, could you please stay before me?
00:23Colin David Heil.
00:30For almost 20 years it was believed to be suicide.
00:36Two people devastated by the breakdown of their marriages.
00:40The real truth lay hidden.
00:42The Valley Money dentist Colin Heil murdered his wife and his lover's husband,
00:46but staged it to look like a suicide pact.
00:51He'd got away with this for two decades.
00:54I was just told that Colin Heil looked at the police station and handed himself in.
01:00Actually I did it. Casual as you like.
01:05I would suggest that anybody who has an affair will always think they'd be better off without their partner.
01:12I do believe that thoughts of murder are immediately connected to that.
01:17Wealthy, middle class, from that sort of Bible belt of Northern Ireland,
01:21preaching the church on a Sunday and planning a double murder.
01:24I'd agreed that what I would do would be that I would pipe the fumes of the car from the garage into the house.
01:33The full confession, every bit of detail.
01:37And then every bit of detail on Hazel Stuart.
01:39Hazel's role then was to clear up and I gave her the hose pipe and she cut it into sections and burnt it in the fire.
01:46To get rid of that part of it.
01:49This was all my idea.
01:51With which she cooperated.
01:53What turns a Sunday school teacher into someone who's an accomplice to a double killing?
01:59Why did it stay sacred for so long?
02:02And what really is the story behind this story?
02:04Not in my wildest dreams could I have suspected two people like that.
02:10Carrying out the most vile, vile, heinous crime.
02:16Now the burning question, Colin.
02:18Why are you here?
02:20Why are you sitting in a synonym being interrogated by two murders that you carried out nearly a two years ago?
02:25When I first decided to come here, I believed it was the right thing to do.
02:35I knew it would be big.
02:37I didn't have the vision to see how big it would be.
02:55I started the engine and left the garage.
03:09I remember running along the beach at Castle Rock.
03:16I got my bicycle and cycled home.
03:18The next morning I waited, it was a Sunday morning.
03:37I remember phoning Antrim police, traffic police I think it was, or Palomino traffic.
03:44And asking, have there been any accidents reported?
03:48Because now I was beginning to fabricate an idea that I was alarmed that Leslie wasn't present.
03:54So that was the next part of my thought.
03:57Which was a spontaneous idea.
03:59I didn't pre-think that one, although I planned it.
04:01Most things, everything, she'd say.
04:06I phoned and he said no, there's nothing reported.
04:11So I did that again as a cover, just, why would I get up?
04:16I also phoned the Baptist church.
04:20I said something like, Leslie's gone missing.
04:25She left last night and she had taken alcohol and I was concerned.
04:35So that passed across to him the whole concept of Leslie's missing.
04:44He said, where could she have gone?
04:48And I said, well, one of the places you might, I said, her dad, who had died fairly recently before that.
04:56I said, maybe she'd gone out there.
04:58That morning I got a phone call that said there had been two bodies found in a car in Castle Rock.
05:17And I immediately got into the car and drove to the location.
05:26Assuming that it was just another two murders and troubles.
05:31So when I got there, I met a detective there that I knew and I said to him, this is a bad job.
05:36And he says, you'd not believe it, he says, who it is?
05:40He says, it's Trevor. We can him.
05:44And I thought, oh my God, I just, I couldn't believe it.
05:47And I immediately thought he'd been shot by terrorists.
05:51But I didn't know who the second person was or what.
05:54And at that point in time I thought, met him and his wife.
05:57They might have taken the two of them out.
05:59So that was my immediate reaction.
06:01At that point in time I just felt that, no, I can't do this.
06:03I can't stay here any longer. I just have to go.
06:07I couldn't deal with it. I couldn't handle it.
06:34On the Sunday morning, I had went to church.
06:40My wife then was making the dinner.
06:44And I said, look, I'm going to take my daughter Gemma out for a walk.
06:48And we were on up the footpath.
06:56And lo and behold, there is wee Matthew Howell sitting with his head in his hands crying.
07:06And I says, are you all right?
07:08And he said to me, I remember the words stand out so distinctly.
07:13And he says, my mummy's dead.
07:20And I remember turning around and coming back home with Gemma.
07:24And I remember saying to Sharon, there's something going on at Howells.
07:27And to relay the story of what had happened.
07:29And she says, sure, look, why don't you?
07:32I knew Trevor and Hazel was friendly with the Howells.
07:37And she says, why did you ring Trevor?
07:40And made the phone call.
07:42And somebody, I was expecting Trevor or Hazel to answer the phone.
07:46And this strange voice, never heard before, male voice said to me,
07:49I'm sorry, we can't talk. There's been an awful tragedy.
08:12I was shot to the core.
08:14It affected me in the fact that it was my friend or a friend.
08:20And that I didn't see it coming.
08:23And it was shocking.
08:26And it was guilt-inducing in me and thinking, you know,
08:30could I have played a part?
08:32Could I have done something that maybe would have stopped it all?
08:35And it really affected me in that way.
08:38And we just were, had to accept it.
08:41And then as the investigation went on,
08:45it became apparent that it was obviously a very tragic incident.
08:52Total and utter disbelief and the horrendous tragedy there was.
08:58A really decent young policeman and Lesley
09:03dying in the most terrible circumstances.
09:11I was at home at that time.
09:12I got the call.
09:14And my wife was in Lourdes.
09:16And was on her way back from Lourdes.
09:18And I just couldn't,
09:20I couldn't wait quick enough to tell Liz that Trevor had died.
09:26And I couldn't believe it.
09:29And Liz couldn't believe it.
09:31She just couldn't take it in that the man that we knew could possibly have done that.
09:34So we were just devastated.
09:41I just can't remember coming to the house.
09:47And the whole process of faking the surprise to people, to church people, to family.
09:54And receiving sympathy and support when I was the perpetrator.
10:07Then, when you're told, hold on a minute, there is a suicide note.
10:14Lesley was really struggling with some emotional issues.
10:24After the death of her father, she was really very, very low.
10:29They'd been very close.
10:31And he was a real protector of her.
10:33And she always felt, I think she felt safer with him in the world.
10:37And suddenly, very suddenly, he was gone.
10:40And she wrote a letter one evening.
10:44A little short letter saying that basically she'd had enough.
10:47And she wasn't, she just couldn't do it anymore.
10:49But she didn't give it to anybody.
10:51She hid it away.
10:53But Colin came across it.
10:55And then he hid it.
10:57In his little plot.
10:59He thought that might be a useful time to come.
11:02There was a note in my kitchen that I had left there on the floor.
11:16And the note was put out as a suicide note.
11:21But what the note actually was, it was a, it was more of a, Leslie would have written reflectively, but more of a depressive sort of a note.
11:35It was on paper that was kind of like blogging paper.
11:38And I remember reading it and thinking it's reflective.
11:44And it just was an idea that I had.
11:46And I came across it accidentally amongst her stuff.
11:51We had a very untidy house, so there was letters, papers, documents, everywhere.
12:07And just like an extra, when I was plotting this, an extra idea that if I put this in, that it would add to the credibility that it was a suicide.
12:17Yeah.
12:21Colin Howell seized it.
12:23And he jumped on it.
12:24And he hid it.
12:25And then he used it.
12:27Here.
12:28Here's the letter she wrote.
12:29She's written a suicide letter.
12:32This is her goodbye.
12:34I mean, that's sick.
12:37That is sick.
12:48Ultimately, the thing was all passed to the coroner.
12:54So we were all, at the end of it all, after the coroner's inquest, well, that's it.
12:59That's an end to it.
13:01A very tragic affair.
13:03And it's something that we put down to, you know, we've lived through it, lost a friend.
13:09Very tragic circumstances, and really, it's something you move on from.
13:22Right, we need to clarify a couple of points.
13:25Yeah.
13:26That's very important.
13:29They, they predominantly relate to the plan, and Hazel Buchan's part in it.
13:40Or, no measure of it.
13:44Now, I'll ask, let me ask you, and I'll get something as I can on the question here, and I'll turn it over like a yes round answer.
13:52Okay.
13:56Did Hazel Buchanan know the full details of your plan?
14:03No.
14:04No.
14:06Did Hazel Buchanan know the method by which you were going to carry out the plan?
14:12Physical method?
14:14Yes.
14:15So, can I expand that then by asking you, did Hazel Buchanan know that you were going to prepare the garden hose apparatus?
14:29Or, did Hazel Buchanan know that your plan was to cause the death of your wife and Trevor by carbon monoxide poisoning from a car itself?
14:43Yes.
14:47Yes, I discussed that plan with her.
14:50Did you give Hazel Buchanan the sleeping tablets to administer to your husband?
15:02Yes.
15:03Did you give these tablets to her some days or weeks in advance of the date of the 19th of May?
15:15Yes.
15:16How did you inform Hazel of this chosen date, or when did you inform her of it?
15:21It would have been probable that, for example, and this is not an answer of definite, but I'm sorry, but it's probable that I could have done that even a week before, in the sense that next Saturday night is a night when this could happen because we know the cycle is on late shift.
15:34Colin, I'm going to cut the chase here.
15:35Yeah.
15:36You started answering that by, for example, so we can't really take it as an answer, as you rightly say.
15:37Yeah.
15:38Now, in the last interview you mentioned about the ramifications of your decision 18 years later.
15:39Yeah.
15:40And those, the outcome of that is we have arrested Mrs. Hazel Buchanan.
15:43We have arrested, Mrs. Hazel Buchanan.
15:44We have arrested, Mrs. Hazel Buchanan.
15:45In the sense that next Saturday night is a night when this could happen because we know
15:46the cycle is on late shift.
15:47Colin, I'm going to cut the chase here.
15:48Yeah.
15:49You started answering that by, for example, so we can't really take it as an answer, as you rightly
15:54say.
15:55Yeah.
15:56Now, in the last interview you mentioned about the ramifications of your decision 18 years later.
16:05The outcome of that is we have arrested Mrs. Hazel Stewart for the murder for her husband.
16:15Now, I want you to understand that and the implications, the massive implications of that
16:23for the wider, for her and for her, for her new family, her new husband or whatever.
16:29So, I think, I think you need to understand that and if you don't know the answer, don't
16:38say, for example.
16:39Okay.
16:40If you don't know the answer, say you don't know the answer.
16:43Okay.
16:44Well, I don't know.
16:45But, tamper that with the fact that this happened and it's not a shot.
16:52It's not a joyride.
16:54It's a murder.
16:55It's, you don't do anything bigger in your life, criminally, than that.
17:01Mm-hmm.
17:02So, it's fatally important that if you can find it somewhere, you find it.
17:08Mm-hmm.
17:09That woman is 10 feet from us.
17:14Mm-hmm.
17:15Arrested for murder.
17:17Okay.
17:18Her defence in this case, at the start, I think, other than to say, well, he made me
17:25do it, there wasn't really much other detail.
17:27I don't think a lot was known about coercive control at that time.
17:31But I was always interested to hear exactly what had went on.
17:35The initial reporting of Hazel had been very pointed in one direction.
17:42Hazel had been this femme fatale who used her attractiveness, used her well, to convince
17:48this man to kill her husband so she could move on with a new relationship.
17:51This was this, you know, attractive woman who bewitched men with her beauty and got them
17:56to do whatever it was she wanted them to do.
17:58And the Hazel Stewart that I met is far from that person.
18:07As you can imagine, she's in prison, so she didn't look the same.
18:10She has brown hair now.
18:12She doesn't have the, you know, expensive highlights in her hair that she did when she
18:15first appeared in court.
18:16She was wearing a denim jacket and a hooded sweatshirt underneath it.
18:19She was very casually dressed.
18:21She is very small and she is very shy.
18:24It took her a while, I think, to warm up and speak to me.
18:29Once she warmed up and started telling her story, and I, albeit, it is her story and her
18:35version of events, and I'm not trying to portray it as anything else.
18:38It was only her version of events, but it was the first time that she had ever, in her
18:42own words, told her version of events, and that was what I found so interesting.
18:49What she'd said to me when I eventually did speak to her was, she was terrified that he
18:53would do the same thing to her that he did on his wife and her husband.
18:57She was terrified of him.
19:02Hazel Stewart had said that after the death of her husband and Colin Howell's wife, that
19:09when they started an affair, that the guilt that she felt, and that he would drug her before
19:14that they would have sex.
19:15After the murders of Trevor and Leslie, one of the ways that, one of the techniques we
19:29used for, which Hazel enjoyed, for, to, consensually, to relax, she would have, when this is after
19:36hours, she would have breathed the laughing gas, and you would have had sexual activity, while
19:43she was in a relaxed state with that.
19:47So, in other words, the laughing gas was used as a, as a relaxant sedative, to, I suppose,
19:58enhance her enjoyment of the sexual activity.
20:03Not everybody would enjoy that, but somebody, at her house, the sedative drug, the Valium derivative,
20:15and injected it into her, and, what I, told her was that this is, erm, this is relaxing,
20:32and you probably will enjoy it more.
20:35So, I gave her that in her bedroom.
20:38And, she, had a state of conscious sedation, which means that she, was conscious, and, communicating,
20:51just by mumbling.
20:53But, erm, during that time, that she was very lifeless, in the sense of responsive to sex,
21:05and, erm, I had sex with her.
21:26On one occasion, she says that he drugged her, and she thinks that he may have given her a higher dose,
21:30or something else, and she became completely hysterical, and she ran towards the window in the surgery,
21:34and she wanted to jump out of it.
21:36She thought, the only way I will ever escape this, this relationship is if I kill myself.
21:41It's the only way to go.
21:42And the only thing that stopped her was her children.
21:44Now, the obvious question was, why didn't you go and confess?
21:47Why didn't you go?
21:48If you felt so bad, go and tell the authorities.
21:50Say, this is what happened to me.
21:52And, at this point, she said that she had considered that every single day of her life.
21:57But what she realised were, that if she was to go to prison, while her children were still small,
22:02that they would have no one.
22:03They had already lost their father, and that they would have lost her,
22:06and that she doesn't know what would have happened to them then.
22:08And it was only her children, because she said her own life didn't feel worth living at that point.
22:13He controlled every aspect of her life to protect him from what they had done.
22:17He wasn't controlling her to protect her. He was controlling her to protect him.
22:20Definitely as a person, she was a victim.
22:27Now, so there was a cooperation, but arising from, you've told me, I didn't know she had a fear,
22:36but obviously it's clear she had a fear, and didn't know how to escape from it.
22:41So, yes, she responded and did certain things that she now, at the time, and even especially now, regrets.
22:49But in terms of the driving force as to why these things happened, she's been a very unfortunate victim of Colin Hoyle, and I regret that.
23:19The Court of Appeal has heard what was described as fresh evidence in the case of double killer Hazel Stewart.
23:26It concerned her mental health and the claim she was under the coercive control of her ex-lover Colin Howell
23:32when they murdered her policeman husband and his wife.
23:36The former Sunday school teacher is hoping to mount a fresh bid for an earlier release from jail.
23:41Serving a minimum of 18 years, she's now hoping that sentence could be reduced, maintaining that she'd been under the coercive control of Howell at the time of the murders.
23:56Today is a huge day for Hazel Stewart and her family. They've waited for a very, very long time to come to this point.
24:02Hazel has gone back to the Court of Appeal again, and this time, significantly, it's an appeal against sentence only. It's not an appeal against conviction.
24:11We always felt that there ought to be a greater disparity in terms of sentencing between her and Colin Howell, the co-accused.
24:19Howell was the mastermind behind these appalling atrocities, and Hazel Stewart, of course, was involved and was convicted, rightly so, by a court of law.
24:30However, history, the legacy of all of this, is utterly distorted and needs recalibrated.
24:38And that's what we have been trying to do for a number of years.
24:41And we're using Dr Harding's expertise, where he basically says, in his two reports from 2024, that Hazel Stewart was suffering from coercive control by Colin Howell.
24:58I think it's, in terms of the relationship between Hazel and Colin Howell, I think it's clear that there was control.
25:10I mean, it's peppered throughout documents. It's mentioned in, you know, almost every stage.
25:18You don't have to look far to see the idea of coercive control being there.
25:23At the time, our understanding of coercive control, it wasn't, it wasn't, it was poorly understood in the criminal justice system.
25:33We can put it that way. Poorly understood because it hadn't been tested as an offence in court.
25:39Looking at everything in the round, particularly the hospital records in the prison over the last 11 years, gives you an indication of the mental state at the time, you know.
25:49The prosecution are attempting to say that really the report of Dr Harding is neither here nor there, because this is a latter-day retrospective rewriting of information and evidence about Hazel Stewart that was already known.
26:08And that just because he makes that retrospective analysis today is neither here nor there. Well, we take great issue with that.
26:16They saw her 20 years after the crime, practically 15 years after the initial offence, and I saw her a bit later.
26:22When I'd seen her, there was more information for me to use, you know, so I think I was better informed because I also had all the records up until the point I saw her from the prison, you know.
26:32So they give the key to the whole case, really, in the medical records.
26:36He doesn't come to those findings lightly. He comes to that critical assessment after much, much detailed analysis.
26:45And engagement with Hazel herself. We're at a position today where that simply can't be ignored.
26:54It's not to say that Hazel wasn't culpable, but I think it's about the degree of culpability.
26:59And these are really, these are not questions really for me to consider.
27:03These are questions for the Court of Appeal to consider.
27:07But for me as a forensic psychiatrist, knowing the case in the depth that I do now and seeing the huge amount of information that's been written about this in terms of reports for courts, assessments that were done afterwards, you know, assessments leading back all the way back into the 90s, I think I'm in a very strong position to have a holistic view.
27:28With this idea of coercive control now as an offence and to provide some information that might help the court understand what's going on.
27:37If she keeps bringing up these appeals, why not at least, at last, accept what you've done and take the consequences?
27:50Rather than this, she tells about this under coerced and various things, but she made her own decisions.
27:57She was convicted of the crime that she took part in, very much so, and as equally as guilty as her partner in crime, joint enterprise and they don't it together.
28:09And they don't it together.
28:10So tell me about the relationship after.
28:24For from how long?
28:26Five years.
28:27Five years.
28:28Yeah.
28:29It kind of obviously was something that wasn't popular because of the, that we would have a relationship.
28:37So initially that was done secretively as well, in the initial months, and it progressed to the point where we would have done events with the children, included them.
28:54Like trips to the beach or trips to the beach or whatever.
28:58Regularly, it became a regular Friday night event, eventually, for me to go around to her house on a Friday evening.
29:07And I'd bring a bunch of sweets and watch the TV and get sweets and play games and stuff like that.
29:14For about two years it became almost like a, another family but we lived apart.
29:19So that's kind of until it ended and it was Hazel who ended that relationship.
29:28It fizzled out.
29:29The whole thing just fizzled out.
29:30Because it was rotten at the core.
29:32It was black at the very core of this.
29:34Hazel went her way, she remarried and Colin went his way.
29:49He's not in good form today, he hasn't slept very well.
30:14Colin invited me for dinner with his family and my first impression was, you know, what an amazing family.
30:21You know, the older kids are helping with the, you know, younger kids, putting them to bed, sitting at table for dinner, everybody saying grace together.
30:29Everybody helping each other, it's like, you know, what a nice dynamic and, you know, what a lovely family.
30:35He was married to Kyle and they've had a few kids together.
30:43A nice woman, always smiling, very, just really nice, yeah.
30:49Everybody was talking really highly about Colin, how an amazing dentist he was, how he was an amazing person.
30:54You know, he would see, okay, you know, maybe you're not making enough money, let me send you, you know, patients privately, do some feelings on them.
31:01He was, you know, he was looking after me as, you know, the newbie basically in the practice.
31:07He was, you know, a good boss, you know, amazing dentist, amazing family man, this religious man.
31:13But yet, that guy who I thought was, you know, a good human being, but he's definitely not.
31:23It's interesting that Howell's confession only came after Howell's life started to unravel.
31:31So we know that he got involved in this, you know, mad money making scheme, this implausible scheme, which was a scam and he could scam by it.
31:39I became involved in a, um, an overseas business adventure that promised a lot of financial return.
31:53And I invested in it. It was in the Philippines and I flew there.
32:00And when I met face to face the guy who was, who was responsible for taking all the money, the money of others, I knew it was a fraud.
32:10And I knew that I was a fraud.
32:17So he had lost all his money, he had lost his livelihood, and then the death of his son.
32:27I remember having conversation with Colin about his son, Matthew.
32:31And, uh, I remember that his dad was saying maybe it would be good for Matthew to go to Jordan to study Arabic.
32:38And then, uh, for some reason he ended up going to St. Petersburg, to Russia.
32:43And then I heard that he was, he died tragically, he fell down in a stairwell.
32:49And, uh, it was devastating, you know, for the family, for all of us to, you know, for someone to lose his son, you know, his eldest son as well, at that young age.
33:03It was quite devastating.
33:08The death of his son, I think, hit him hard in the fact that we know when he was killing his wife that his, her son's name was the last thing she said.
33:16And so for this child then to die, for Matthew to die in such tragic circumstances as he did, he felt that this was God punishing him.
33:29Now the burning question, Colin.
33:31Why are you here?
33:34Why are you sitting in a sitting field and being interrogated about two murders that you carried out nearly 18 years ago?
33:4017 years ago?
33:4117 years ago.
33:42Over the last, um...
33:43Over the last, um...
33:44Over the last, um...
33:45Over the last, um...
33:46Over the last, um...
33:47Over the last, um...
33:48Yeah.
33:49Are you...
33:50Are you...
33:51I want to...
33:52I've asked...
33:53I've asked this question again, because I asked it, I asked it a few interviews ago.
33:58Are you 100% lucid and clear, mentally, about what you are doing here?
34:04About what this is all about?
34:06It's unfolding.
34:07Um...
34:08And what the consequences of it are.
34:09Do you grasp that?
34:10No.
34:11It's unfolding.
34:12What do you mean by unfolding?
34:13It means that when I first decided to come here, I believed it was the right thing to do.
34:29Um...
34:30Knew it would be big.
34:32I didn't have the vision to see how big it would be.
34:36Are you glad by how big it's wannabe?
34:37No.
34:38I'm absolutely sickened.
34:39It's horrific.
34:40I see...
34:41I see how I've awakened hurt, pain, and imposed it on my children, my wife.
34:44The tragedy of Matthew's death, him losing all his money in the scam in the Philippines.
34:51He was having an affair with one of the nurses and then Kyle found out and kicked him out and he was in a caravan.
34:58living in a caravan after that, I think as well some of his colleagues were telling me that he started to do mistakes at work.
35:02He's not there, mentally.
35:03He's, I think, overwhelmed by all these things.
35:06And then he decided to stay there up and he was, I mean, to cut up.
35:08The tragedy of Matthew's death, him losing all his money and the scam in the Philippines.
35:13living in a caravan after that.
35:16I think as well some of his colleagues were telling me that he started to do mistakes at work.
35:21He's not there mentally. He's, I think, overwhelmed by all these things.
35:26And then he decided to confess.
35:43There were changes in my world. Yeah, that was very sudden.
35:49There were financial changes. There were marriage changes.
35:58There was a realisation that my treatment of patients, I had, I just couldn't.
36:06There was a sudden inability to function with patients.
36:21Because at this stage, Hazel did look like she was having a nice life.
36:25She had the support of her children. She had a new husband.
36:27She seemed to be living, albeit a very quiet and suburban life,
36:30but a life that I think he envied, a life that showed that she had the love of her children
36:34and the love of a new husband. He had none of these things.
36:37His marriage was unravelling. His livelihood was unravelling.
36:40And so I suppose his last act of revenge against her was,
36:43I'm going down, but you're coming down with me.
36:49So I realised that I was a Christian and I was a fake.
36:54And at the same time then, when I realised I was a fake,
37:01everything about me was a fake.
37:07And, yeah, my world fell apart.
37:09And I walked in here probably believing that this was the only way
37:14that I could be real and that I would put right what was wrong.
37:22And so I confessed. That's why I came and confessed.
37:27On the day that Colin Howell confessed to the police that he had murdered two people,
37:54he confessed to Kyle, his wife.
37:57Introduce yourself, please.
37:59I'm Kyle Jurgensen Howell.
38:01Yes.
38:02Wife of Colin Howell.
38:03The reason that we're coming here today is that it has come to our attention today
38:09that your husband, Colin, has made certain disclosures about matters that occurred
38:16some 17 years ago, perhaps 18 years ago now.
38:21He said, I can't because if it comes out, it'll hurt people.
38:25And I said, no, you must say, I said, I was quoting scripture.
38:29I said, the truth will set you free.
38:31The truth, the truth will set you free.
38:33And he said, no, no, no, no, I can't, I can't.
38:36You can see her quite animated in this video explaining how she had kept saying
38:41the truth will set you free, Colin.
38:43And how he was, you know, saying, I can't, I can't confess.
38:47So there's quite a lot of drama, quite a lot of histrionics around this
38:51and how she had just kept saying to him, you have to, Colin, you have to.
38:55You know, it's the truth. You must get it out.
38:57I said, I'm here, I'm here for you. Tell me, tell me the truth.
39:00And then he said, and I can't remember word for word, but it was very short.
39:06He said, when Leslie and Trevor Buchanan died, everybody thought it was suicide.
39:13And I said, what happened? What happened? What happened?
39:18And he said, I can't, I can't. He started, I just can't, I can't say it.
39:23I can't say it. I don't think I'll say it. I can't say it.
39:26And I said, you know, it was about five minutes of me saying, please,
39:29say it. You must say it. You'll never be free until you say it.
39:34You will never be free. And, and he said, I did it.
39:42I did it. And that's, that's where that ended.
39:47And I just went, oh.
39:49There was one little piece of information that Kai left out.
39:52And that was that she knew about this for 10 years.
39:55She had known for 10 years.
39:57He had confessed to her 10 years, a decade earlier.
40:00And she hadn't told anybody.
40:03Now, prior to this last few weeks and your confessions with the church elders, did you or Hazel confide in anybody in those four or five years, or indeed in the 18 years, 17, 18 years since, did you stop confiding anybody as well about what you'd done?
40:30Yes, I did.
40:32Yes, I did.
40:33Yes, I did.
40:34How did you confide him, bro?
40:35I confided in my wife, Kyle.
40:39I hoped you wouldn't ask me that, by the way.
40:43Okay.
40:44When did this take place?
40:45It was 10 years ago.
40:46How did I go down?
40:47Kyle is the most truthful, straightforward person that you meet.
40:52And what I didn't know, well, her reaction was, you've got to go to the police, and she was married to me.
41:13She was already married two years, and I kind of knew that she was right, and I agreed with her that we would do that.
41:26And what I didn't know was, she had just, she was new to, you know, she was American, she was young, and I experienced that.
41:36And we began a process of, sort of, what would we do, you know, with my dad and her dad, and we began to work out the implications, and she said, I'll stick with you, I'll visit you in prison.
41:51This is hard to explain, except to say that I just got a Christian conviction that it was forgiven, which I shared with Kyle, and Kyle agreed with me.
42:08Not only had she sat with that information for a decade, she had gone on to have five kids with Colin Howell, knowing that he had murdered his wife, and that he had murdered his lover's husband.
42:21So, this is hard to explain, because of that, he said, he said, I'm not going to keep him.
42:24I've never remembered.
42:26Not only had she had in prison, but it never had he been a man, he was born to know a mother, he lived from the hospital now.
42:33I didn't know, he was something to come to try, but he didn't know how to do that, but we have to wait on him.
42:40So, anyway, we were, I was watching this day, and I was like, I'm waiting for a photo of this film here.
42:45And I was like, I'm waiting for you to watch the film.
42:48And then, of course, I just saw the film set with him.
42:49And I was like, when I was like, I'm going to be a great move.
42:50A man and a woman have been charged with murdering two people whose deaths 18 years ago were treated as suicides.
42:59Trevor Buchanan, who was a 31-year-old policeman, and Leslie Howell, who was 30 and the wife of a dentist,
43:05were found dead in a fume-filled car in a garage at Castle Rock in County Londonderry.
43:10A 50-year-old man who contacted the police last Thursday had been charged with murder, as has a 45-year-old woman.
43:20I remember I was at a Young Farmers event, and somebody walked in and said to me,
43:29have you heard the news? And I said, what news?
43:32I was just told that Colin Howell looked at the police station and handed himself in, basically, and said he was guilty.
43:39A bit of a shock. But I was even more shocked when I discovered that Hazelwood was involved in it as well.
43:43I just thought, my God, I just can't believe it, that this has happened.
43:47And I remember I was driving across the old bridge in Corain here, and it came on the news.
43:53That's the first I knew of it. And I thought, my goodness.
43:58Again, it was a shock. I slapped the face, and I thought, what is this? What is happening?
44:05Is this right? Am I hearing it right?
44:07Not in my wildest dreams could I have suspected two people like that would even comprehend carrying out the most vile, vile, heinous crime at all.
44:24I never, ever, from day one, ever thought it was a suicide.
44:29I was convinced, in my own mind, that it certainly wasn't a suicide.
44:34I was talking about, you know, a tissue.
44:36It's just hard to believe that the two bastards killed him, you know?
44:52It really is.
45:13It's only really that recently that I've understood what this is about, and that's why I'm here today.
45:20The police didn't just rely on Colin Howell's confessions to solve the crimes.
45:25They, of course, were into an in-depth investigation into other aspects of his life and other areas of his life.
45:31It included, you know, looking at his work life.
45:34And what they discovered was, and he confessed to, the sexual abuse of his clients and patients in the dental chair.
45:41While I was performing as a prominent dentist and prominent Christian in a church,
46:01I had also, during that time, been involved in, um, just intermittent sexual behaviours with, um, with patients.
46:17He confessed to abusing these women.
46:31Um, the police knew then that they had an awful lot more work to do,
46:34so they just kept on going, kept on going, and they discovered a series of computers in and around the home and the workplace.
46:43And on one of those computers, the police found something very, very dark.
46:47That's how it would have been submitted into, uh, into my office for the domination period.
47:09Okay, I'm, uh, setting up a screen here, if, um, just, if you could just, can I confirm for me, Colin, that you can, you can see, that's the back of it.
47:23Too close, too.
47:24It's better to come back up here.
47:25Oh, I'm clearing off.
47:28Okay.
47:30There's a number of images have been found on that computer.
47:39Now that I've seen these before.
47:43Would you agree with me that those are, they're young, young children?
47:47Absolutely.
47:48Would you put in, possibly put in age on them for them?
47:52Well, they're prepubescent, are they not?
47:54I would, I would agree, I would say that they're, um, around, uh, possibly seven of it, um, years of age.
48:02I've never seen that before, I didn't know they existed on my computer.
48:04On my computer.
48:06Have you...
48:07Can you date those?
48:07Well, have you ever, have you ever, have you ever, first of all, have you ever accessed any, um, child pornography?
48:16No.
48:16I've never seen anything like that before.
48:19Even whenever you've been, say, going through...
48:21Accidental?
48:22You know, accidental.
48:24Something that you believe may have popped up.
48:26But you say you've never seen, you've never seen them before on...
48:29Anywhere.
48:30Anywhere.
48:30You haven't seen them on any...
48:31I've never in my life seen anything like that.
48:33That's the first experience I've had, I've seen images like that.
48:39And what's that, what, you know, having, having nice evening, what's, you know, what's your, what's your view on what you've, you've just seen?
48:45They're underage children, they're murderers, I would, isn't that the word you use?
48:49Oh, yes, yes.
48:49Yeah, yes.
48:50There's no doubt.
48:51But what, I mean, what, what, what does that, having seen those images, how does that make you feel?
48:55Um, you know...
48:57Well, it makes me feel who, who, who did, who, who am I, who has been looking at those, you know, who downloaded those, you know, I don't know.
49:09You've never, you say you haven't, you haven't searched for that sort of material?
49:15No, I've never searched for that, no.
49:17You've never seen that?
49:18I've never seen anything like that before.
49:19Anything like that at all?
49:21Male or female, never, yeah.
49:23Okay, or anything even that you would consider would be, would be coming?
49:26Not even close to it, not even close to it, no.
49:30Nowhere, nowhere would it be even close to that.
49:32I think I've emphasised about the images that I've seen, that they're, they're absolutely nothing to do with me.
49:37I don't know who has been using that computer to download those.
49:42He tells the police he's never seen them before, and he tells the police he doesn't know anything about them.
49:47He says they're nothing to do with me.
49:56I don't think that's her, that she, that I feel she'd be recognised by any court.
50:10I think that she should serve the complete sentence that she was given.
50:25And I think for somebody to do something like that, they deserve to serve every single minute of their sentence inside a prison.
50:33I like to see the good in people.
50:34I mean, our Lord's is there, but the grace of God go away.
50:37So I look at it in that point of view.
50:39Hazel was just an unfortunate person who met someone who was evil and turned her to be evil.
50:46I mean, I still think a word of Hazel, I still think a word of her family, but I just think that she was an unfortunate that met up with somebody who destroyed her life and destroyed Trevor's life and his own wife's life.
51:02It's a stick to my crow, really.
51:06She'd done the crime and it's very apt and fitting that she should do the time and every hour of it.
51:11Good evening, welcome to BBC Newsline.
51:16A double murderer, Hazel Stewart, has failed in a legal bid to secure a reduced jail sentence for murdering her policeman husband and the wife of her ex-lover.
51:26Lady Chief Justice Dame Siobhan Keegan ruled that Stewart's minimum 18-year term was neither wrong nor excessive.
51:34Adding that this was a double murder of spouses in the cruelest of circumstances.
51:38We come away from today's ruling having been dismissed.
51:45It would be easy to take a critical stance and say, you know, that the court was harsh, etc.
51:52But I'm not going to say that.
51:54The court did a forensic deconstruct of the background to this case.
51:59And I want to thank the court for that.
52:01So I wouldn't be trying to run away from anything the court has said or done in terms of its assessment of this case.
52:09We knew what we were facing when we embarked on this.
52:13Yeah, it's disappointing.
52:14To be honest, probably not overly unexpected.
52:17I mean, we had just a very difficult high bar to reach here today.
52:20The judge also added that this was the third appeal by Hazel Stewart and that this will have caused considerable distress to the deceased's relatives.
52:31She also added that the court found no merit in the appeal and Hazel Stewart's sentence remains unaltered.
52:38I received a lot of criticism for interviewing Hazel Stewart.
52:50At no point did I believe Hazel Stewart should not have been convicted and went to prison.
52:53Of course she should have went to prison.
52:55She was clearly assistant and offender.
52:57She was clearly responsible for helping him.
53:00And she helped him keep that cover up for all those years.
53:04But was she the main instigator?
53:08He was the one who came up with a plan.
53:10He was the one who sourced the drugs.
53:14He was the one that killed both his wife and Hazel Stewart's husband.
53:20He was the one that moved their bodies.
53:22He was the one that arranged their bodies to look like a suicide.
53:27Her role in that was very reduced compared to what his role in it was.
53:33I think in different circumstances, had she never met Colin Howell,
53:37she would never have seen the inside of a prison cell ever in her life.
53:40She'd still be teaching Sunday school somewhere.
53:44Colin Howell is an expert, coercive controller.
53:48But he needed, as he said in this dance of death,
53:51he needed a partner to do this.
53:54And Hazel Stewart was that partner.
53:56There is a movement in the whole of the world, and I am fully behind it,
54:02where we are now standing firm against coercive control,
54:06and we're saying this is not an acceptable element of our community.
54:11But Hazel Stewart, for me, does not tick the right boxes.
54:15She's claiming that she didn't have any free will.
54:19But the shift pattern was really important to the murder plan,
54:27because Colin Howell couldn't afford to slip up with Trevor Buchanan.
54:33It was really important that Colin knew what the shift pattern was,
54:37and he wouldn't have been able to get that shift pattern.
54:39It had to come from Hazel.
54:41One of them had to dress Trevor Buchanan out of whatever he was wearing in bed
54:49and put clothes on him.
54:52Hazel Stewart put a set of clothes for her husband to be put into after he died.
54:57She got them out of the hot press in the bathroom and set them aside.
55:01That was preparation.
55:04She was the one who disposed of the hosepipe.
55:07She also knew her husband had taken a sleeping towel.
55:10So there's calculation on that.
55:14And she admitted to the police that she could have stopped this.
55:23Having taken the click-click telephone message from Colin Howell
55:26that told her, I've sorted Leslie, I'm on my way.
55:31When he arrived, that was her moment to say,
55:36you're not coming in.
55:38This has gone too far.
55:40You're not coming in.
55:45And I don't believe she was a victim, of course, of control.
55:49I think she was a willing participant.
55:53And he had filled her head with all their plans.
55:57But she was on with those plans as well.
55:59She stayed with him for five years afterwards.
56:03They're as bad as each other.
56:04I'm not the best person to evaluate why I'm here today.
56:23Because I only do it from my own perspective.
56:28Maybe the direct question, do you regret that I did this?
56:31The steps of regret began years ago.
56:41I'm beginning to see the impact.
56:43You know, it's happy that I had an idea of the impact.
56:49But of course, you know, it's expanded so much
56:52beyond what I saw the day that I walked in.
56:55I just wish to say that
57:01I just pray that the consequences
57:06of this confession will be
57:09bearable
57:12to the people who I've said sorry to.
57:15And
57:22my justice
57:24in the law
57:26will be deserved.
57:31It's finished.
57:33OK.
57:33Time is now 28.52.
57:37So the views turned out.
57:39And I'll switch off the views.
57:40Details of organisations
57:52offering information and support
57:54with sexual abuse and violence
57:55or if you've been a victim of crime
57:58are available on the BBC Action Line website.
58:00Point.
58:01Point.
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