Killer dentist's ex-lover denies double murder

A woman accused of a double murder told a Northern Ireland court that she lived in fear of the dentist who has already confessed to both killings. Hazel Stewart, 47, denies murdering Trevor Buchanan and Lesley Howell in Castlerock in May 1991. Stewart's former lover Colin Howell has already pleaded guilty to the charges and was jailed for 21 years. Coleraine court heard that Stewart had told police she was scared of Howell and scared for her children. The bodies of Stewart's husband, Trevor Buchanan, 32, and Howell's wife, Lesley, 31, were discovered in a fume-filled car in Castlerock in May 1991. At the time the Royal Ulster Constabulary believed the deaths were due to a suicide pact. Two years ago Howell, 51, confessed to the killings after a discussion with members of his church. The former dentist said he gassed them while they slept in their own homes before driving the bodies to the house of his wife's late father and staging an elaborate scene to make it look as if they had taken their own lives. At the opening of the hearing the prosecution told the jury about a series of interviews Stewart gave to police when she was arrested in January 2009. She initially denied plotting with Colin Howell to gas or murder their partners. However, the prosecution said, her account did change. Stewart first said to police that Howell had told her the only way they could be together was if they killed their spouses, and that on the night he carried out the killings he had arrived at her home unannounced and told her to get into a room and stay there. By the 12th interview she admitted that she knew a date had been set for the killings, that it was to be from carbon monoxide poisoning and that she had cut up and burned the pipes used to gas their spouses, the prosecution said. The court also heard that she told police there was a phone signal between the two to alert her that Howell was coming round in his car with the body of his wife in the boot, and that she heard her husband struggle with Howell as he was being gassed in the bedroom. She denied drugging her husband and she said she did not cry out because she feared for her life and those of her children, who were asleep in another room. The court heard that in summer 1990, Stewart went to England for an abortion and was accompanied by Colin Howell. The accused also told police she had seen Howell in secret after the funerals and continued to do so for up to five years after the killings. She said the only reason she did that was because she was afraid of him. Crown lawyer Ciaran Murphy QC told the court the murders were "a joint plan discussed in advance" by Stewart and Howell. "We say that Hazel Stewart knowingly entered into this agreement and assisted Colin Howell in ensuring he could safely kill her husband, and afterwards they both covered up the whole thing," he said. The trial is expected to last up to four weeks.