Hazel Stewart and Colin Howell accused their partners of beating them in bogus statements they gave to police following their deaths, a court in the North heard today.
The lovers claimed they were both victims of domestic violence in the false accounts they provided detectives in the days after the funerals of their spouses Lesley Howell and Trevor Buchanan, the court was told.
Ms Stewart (47) denies murdering her RUC officer husband Trevor Buchanan (32) and Lesley Howell (31) in May 1991. The former playschool assistant appeared before the court in Coleraine, Co Derry, yesterday following the decision by her former dentist lover, Colin Howell (51), to plead guilty to the double murder 18 years after the crimes.
He is serving a 21-year sentence and is expected to be called to give evidence.
Antrim Crown Court today heard Ms Stewart has already admitted to police that she and Howell concocted alibis to make officers believe that her husband and his wife had taken their own lives, when in actual fact they were murdered.
But as the full transcripts of those original statements were read out at the mother-of-two’s double murder trial in Coleraine, it emerged they also told the police they had been beaten by their partners. Both claimed they struck them in anger over their infidelity.
The court also heard a friend of Colin Howell steamed open and photocopied a letter the dentist wrote, part of which read: “I have taken a mother from her children, but God will provide another for them. I only hope and pray it will be you.”
Derek McAuley said that after he copied the letter he showed it to John Hansford, the pastor at Coleraine Baptist Church. He believed the pastor was annoyed with Howell and probably felt he had been duped. He also knew the pastor and a detective, David Green, had their suspicions about Howell.
He later put the letter away in a wallet and forgot about it, until his memory was jogged by a police officer who interviewed him after Howell’s arrest in January 2009.
Howell had handed over the letter on the day of the funerals, either to Mr McAuley or his wife Hillary. It was inside an envelope and Howell asked that it be passed on to Hazel Stewart.
Mr McAuley told the court: “I opened the letter because I felt that, even after all what happened, that this guy was still pursuing Hazel. I felt it incredible. He was also receiving counselling from the pastor, saying one thing, but doing another.”
PA