Hazel Stewart broke down in the dock today as she listened to a tearful police recording of her admitting to and saying sorry for plotting the murders of her policeman husband and lover’s wife.
Ms Stewart held her head in her hands and cried as the emotional confession to detectives was played to a packed Coleraine Crown Court on the 11th day of her double murder trial.
Hazel Stewart has pleaded not guilty to the murders of her policeman husband Trevor Buchanan (32) and Lesley Howell (31) the wife of her lover, dentist Colin Howell.
The pair's bodies were found in a car filled with carbon monoxide fumes in the seaside town of Castlerock in May 1991.
After a series of denials over the course of two days of intensive interrogation after her arrest in early 2009, the mother-of-two finally acknowledged her involvement in the murderous plan conceived by her then lover Colin Howell to poison her husband PC Trevor Buchanan and his wife Lesley, and make it look like suicide.
Ms Stewart's children Lisa and Andrew and second husband David sat in the public gallery as the tape was played to the jury.
Detective Sergeant Geoff Ferris, who described the crimes in May 1991 as "nearly the perfect murder" during the interview in Coleraine police station, put it to her: "Colin Howell could not have done this on his own and you could not have done it on your own Hazel, this had to be a joint enterprise between the two of you, the two of you had to work together to make this plan come to fruition, do you accept that?"
She replied: "Yes."
The officer added: "Sorry, just for the benefit of the tape."
Stewart repeated her answer again, twice: "Yes, yes."
The 47-year-old secretary, from Ballystrone Road, Coleraine, who today wiped her eyes with a handkerchief as she sat in the dock in her familiar plum-coloured coat, now denies being part of a joint enterprise to murder her husband and Mrs Howell.
But on the last of 15 taped interviews two years ago, she cried as she apologised for her actions.
PA