THE POLICE investigation into the murders of the spouses of two double killers in the North was “deeply flawed, lacked objectivity and let down the families of both victims”, a new report by the Police Ombudsman has stated.
Trevor Buchanan and Lesley Howell were found dead in a fume-filled car in a garage in Castlerock, Co Derry, in May 1991 in what was initially regarded as a double suicide after the revelation that their partners were having an affair.
However, the pair’s former spouses Colin Howell and Hazel Stewart (nee Buchanan), who met while attending Coleraine Baptist Church, were later revealed to be the killers. Howell pleaded guilty to both murders and staging them to look like suicides in November 2010, and Stewart was convicted of both murders in March 2011. They were both sentenced to life imprisonment. Stewart has since lodged an appeal.
A report released yesterday by the Northern Police Ombudsman’s office into the handling of the initial investigation into the deaths of Lesley Howell and Trevor Buchanan, an RUC constable at the time of his death, said police “missed evidential opportunities”. Ombudsman Al Hutchinson said he had seen “very little evidence” that the early assumption of suicide was subject to testing by the investigators.
“For nearly two decades family members and close friends were left to cope with the thought that Trevor and Lesley had chosen to take their own lives. The families may never have had to live through this pain had the police conducted a thorough, searching investigation when they had the opportunity in 1991.
“Evidential opportunities were overlooked or ignored, lines of inquiry were not fully explored and police did not consider the inconsistencies and discrepancies in the evidence which began to emerge. They accepted the accounts provided by Howell and Buchanan [about the cause of death] despite the fact that from quite early on in the investigation both were shown to be lying.
“These failures are all the more difficult to accept or understand given the fact the investigation was conducted by two experienced senior detectives. I can only conclude police failed the victims’ families,” he said.
In his confession, Howell admitted gassing his wife at home before travelling to the Buchanan home, where he gassed his lover’s husband while he slept, before putting their bodies into the car.
The Ombudsman’s report found police did not deal with the murder scene properly, with the car not being forensically examined and many items in the garage not being checked for fingerprints.
In addition, the pipe was only loosely fitted into the car’s exhaust and also had a kink in it, the driver’s window of the vehicle was fully down, the door was open and Trevor Buchanan’s leg was sticking out.
“The police did not fully investigate the inconsistencies which faced them,” added Mr Hutchinson. “This would indicate from an early stage they accepted the suicide theory and showed an investigative bias which was to pervade the investigation which followed.”
The report also stated that although Howell had made three attempts to direct people to the car to “find” the bodies, police failed to challenge him as to why he was so adamant they could be found there, and that although police established early that both Howell and Buchanan had lied to them about their affair, the pair continued to be treated as credible witnesses.
“There was other information provided to the police at the time,” said Mr Hutchinson, “which suggested Howell had been giving his wife medication, and had on one occasion dropped an electric cable into her bath, and that he was having financial difficulties. All of these issues were disregarded.”
Responding to the report, Lauren Bradford who is Colin Howell’s daughter, said it provided little comfort but was important to the memory of her mother that it be carried out.
In a statement the family of Trevor Buchanan said the report makes it clear there was a catalogue of failings and errors in 1991 that led to a deeply flawed investigation that let down the families of both victims.