Transcript: 23. In the Name of the Father (Colin Howell & Hazel Buchanan) | Ireland

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Matthew Howell, a 22-year-old St Andrews student who went to Russia on an exchange programme, was the eldest of nine children. His mother had died when he was five and his father had remarried. 

One fateful night in May 2007, as Matthew and his fellow student and friend, Geoff, left their accommodation in St Petersburg, they were goofing around as young students do. Then tragedy struck. Matthew lost his grip on a stairwell railing and fell to his death, down four floors onto a concrete floor below.

When his father, who lived in Ireland heard of the tragic news, he was devastated. Matthew was his pride and joy – the perfect son. In an interview with the media, Colin Howell said:

"Faith is getting us through this. People ask 'why'; it's the eternal question. We trust God with understanding more than we do. Not everyone will understand that, but some will."

Matthew’s deeply religious father felt that he understood exactly why Matthew had to die. This young man’s accidental death would expose one of the darkest and most sinister crimes that happened in his hometown of Coleraine 17 years before. Was Matthew the ultimate sacrifice, atoning for the sins of his  father?

>>Intro Music

Colin Howell was born on the 14th of March 1959 in the Northern Ireland town of Portadown – southeast of Belfast.

He was a bright and passionate young man and chose to study dentistry at Queens University where he met a nursing student, Lesley Clarke from Plymouth. The couple married in the summer of 1983 and moved to the beautiful town of Coleraine. 

Coleraine is 55 miles (or 88 kilometres) northwest of Belfast. It is a picturesque town known to have the highest house prices in Northern Ireland. Elegant gold courses grace the countryside and the seaside is only a short drive away. The coastal village of Castlerock has a beach and an inlet leads right to the marina in Coleraine. The greater area is known as the Causeway Coast and it attracts millions of visitors every year.

In 1921 Ireland became independent from Britain, but the predominantly Protestant Northern Ireland remained under British rule. This was at the heart of the conflict in the late 20th century, known as “The Troubles”. 

Broadly explained, Catholics in Northern Ireland wanted to be reunited with the rest of Ireland, while Protestants were content to remain a part of the United Kingdom. Clashes between the groups escalated in violence and bombings and killings became a part of everyday life in Northern Ireland. Although it wasn’t a religious war as such, but rather a social and cultural issue, the division between the two groups were clear. Practicing religion in Coleraine was a matter of deep rooted pride and principal. Everything revolved around the church.  

Colin and Lesley Howell had a picture perfect life. They were in their early thirties and had three children, with a fourth one on the way. Colin had a dental practice in the nearby town of Ballymoney, Causeway Dental Implant Clinic, which afforded them a home in a good neighbourhood, called Knocklayde Park.

The family was very involved in their local church, Coleraine Baptist Church, so much so that Colin sometimes led sermons, filling in for the pastor. Both Colin and Lesley were well-liked and respected in the community.

Lesley’s father, Henry Clarke lived with them at the time and was generous if the family needed financial support, as Lesley had to stop working to care for their children. Lesley adored her children and loved every minute of being a mother. 

Colin was a doting father too, but his attentions were elsewhere. Despite being a devout Christian who preached family values, he had a dirty secret. As much as he tried to deny it, he was obsessed with pornography. Author Deric Henderson, who wrote the book Let This Be our Secret – about Colin Howell’s story, remembers that Colin… 

“…would go to London and stand outside massage parlours wanting to go in. He’d call up members of his church to say he had the urge again. The Baptists tried to wean him off porn. His life was a mess.”

This made him a horrible hypocrite, as he wouldn’t allow Lesley to have magazines like Cosmopolitan in the living room, as he felt the content was suggestive and provocative. 

This Paso Doble with himself and illicit sexuality, was a ticking time-bomb. Colin Howell’s roving eye was disguised behind seemingly kind-hearted care and attention to female congregation members. One in particular: Hazel Buchanan.

Hazel was married to a local Royal Ulster Constabulary (or RUC) officer. Trevor Buchanan was a steady man from a family of farmers who enjoyed working in law enforcement. He wasn’t necessarily ambitious, but he was a thoroughly good man who cared for his wife and family above all else. 

Hazel also grew up in a farming family and married Trevor in July 1981 when she was 18 and he was 22. Five years later, they moved to Coleraine and settled in the family friendly neighbourhood of Charnwood Park.

Hazel was blonde and beautiful, but quite shy and reserved. She had two children and a kind and caring mother. She taught Sunday school at the Coleraine Baptist Church and also worked as an assistant at a childcare facility, run by the church. 

This is how she met Colin Howell, as his three children attended the centre. He became infatuated with her and made his move in the summer of 1990.

As part of the Baptist Church child care service, Colin volunteered to accompany Hazel in taking children on excursions to a local swimming pool. Soon Colin also showed up at Hazel’s house, supposedly to teach her to play the guitar. In fact, he was seeking out any excuse to spend more time with the attractive Hazel.

Their passionate affair was in stark contrast to their relatively dull marriages, with all the focus on children, church and routine life. It didn’t take long before they became completely obsessed with each other. They used to meet in secret at Castleroe Forest, where they had sex in either his or her car. 

Hazel would also visit Colin’s dental practice in Ballymoney where he would give her laughing gas before having sex in his dentist chair. He once even gave her an overdose, causing her to go wild and threaten to jump out the window. He managed to calm her down, without incident. But the danger of nearly being exposed as lovers only fuelled the fire of their attraction to each other.

When Hazel fell pregnant, she did not know for certain if the child was her husband’s or Colin’s. Colin did not want to leave anything to chance and arranged for an abortion. He accompanied her to a clinic in London where he had taken Lesley in the past. 

At this point, Colin confessed to Hazel that Lesley had had three abortions in the year before they were married and two inside the space of seven months after they were married. That is five abortions in a very short amount of time. The stress on Lesley’s body must have been tremendous. For Colin, on the other hand, it meant that he had a quick solution for Hazel’s ‘problem’.

About six months into the affair between Colin and Hazel, a member of their congregation spotted the lovers together at Castleroe Forest. The church elders were informed and they in turn put pressure on Colin and Hazel to end their affair and repair their respective marriages by attending counselling sessions at the church.

Colin and Hazel stopped seeing each other, but the damage was done. Lesley and Trevor were shocked and devastated, but both of them agreed to try and work things out with their cheating spouses, with the guidance of the church elders.

Trevor Buchanan did not want to lose Hazel and did whatever he could to move past the crisis in their marriage. He attended counselling with her, hoping that things could go back to the way they were before.

Lesley Howell, who had just have Colin’s fourth child at the time, felt trapped and couldn’t see a way out of the marriage. She was dependent on her husband and she did still love him. But she found it hard to forgive him for humiliating her and bringing another person into – what she thought – was the holy sanctuary of their marriage.

Then, on a morning in May of 1991, Henry Clarke, Lesley’s father, passed away unexpectedly. He collapsed in Lesley and Colin’s home and it was suspected that he had suffered a heart attack. Henry’s death was such a shock to Lesley and her brother, Christopher, that Colin arranged the wake and cremation.

Lesley was inconsolable. She was very close to her father; he was the one person she could count on. And with her marriage on the rocks, she fell into a state of depression. From the outside in, Colin appeared to be supportive of his wife, but he was not. Lesley’s grief for her father and anger towards him made his home life unbearable. 

All he could think about, was Hazel Buchanan. So, four months after their affair was exposed, despite all their promises and intentions, Hazel and Colin started seeing each other again. Colin felt whole again, Hazel made him feel alive. 

Meanwhile, his wife, Lesley had a lot on her mind too. One night, before going to sleep, Colin claimed that she told him:

“This is going to be over soon. I am going to go to heaven. Maybe you and Hazel are meant to be together. I’ll never get over this. Trevor will never get over this.”

Colin saw this as a veiled request: Lesley WANTED to be dead. Killing her would be doing her a favour. As for Trevor… He would probably also be better off in the afterlife. That is when he told Hazel about his idea to end their suffering. 

At first Hazel protested, but not for too long. Colin had put a lot of thought to the murder-plan, which he referred to as ‘The Procedure’. Like the surgical removal of something unwanted. His plan was logical and to Hazel it seemed fool-proof. Eventually, she agreed, and the pair went to work to plan the demise of their respective spouses. 

The day Colin mentally diarised for the murder was on the 18th of May 1991. This was also the birthday of one of his kids. After the party guests had cleared off and the house had been tidied up, Lesley had a glass of wine and laid down on the sofa. Things were still murky between the couple and Lesley felt that she did not have much support in grieving her father.

Colin felt that it was the perfect opportunity to go ahead with his plan and informed Hazel that he was ready. Without any second thoughts, Colin slipped some tablets into Lesley’s wine without her knowledge. It didn’t take long to knock her out and she found herself unconscious on the couch in front of the TV.

Colin got to work and went to the garage, through a door off the living room. In the days leading up to this night, he had fashioned a murder weapon of sorts. He used a garden hose, which he attached to the exhaust of his car with one of his baby’s bottles. The bottle being the connector between the hose and the exhaust. Earlier that day, Colin made sure to reverse the car into the garage, so it would be easier to reach Lesley on the sofa. 

After connecting the hose to the exhaust, Colin started the car and dragged the hose inside  the living room where Lesley was sleeping. He stuck the hose into her mouth, making sure she inhaled exhaust fumes. When she woke up she tried to fight him off. She was confused and scared and called out her five-year-old son’s name repeatedly. Matthew. Matthew. 

Colin was determined to finish what he had started and asphyxiated her with a blanket. When Lesley finally stopped fighting, when it was all over, he took her pyjamas off and dressed her in her everyday clothes. Then he carried her and threw her in the trunk of his car before he drove to Hazel and Trevor Buchanan’s house, leaving his own children at home, sleeping.

The plan for Trevor’s murder was pretty much identical to how Colin had killed Lesley. Colin gave Hazel some sleeping tablets to put in Trevor’s food. That fatal night, she made her husband a tuna sandwich laced with the tablets. She kept an eye on Trevor as he went to sleep, knowing that he would never wake up again.

She waited for Colin to arrive. In preparation, Hazel had parked her car outside, so Colin could reverse his car into the garage at the Buchanan home, which also had a door leading into the home. When he arrived in the dead of night, Hazel opened the garage door and Colin reversed in. 

Colin went straight to work and Hazel mechanically followed his instructions. Again, he attached the hose to the exhaust, using the same baby bottle. He started the car, then dragged the hosepipe into the house where Trevor was sleeping and inserted the hose into his mouth. Then Trevor woke up, and instinctively fended his attacker off. Remember, Trevor was a police officer – he was tall and strong and had he not been drugged, Colin would not have been able to subdue him. But on that night, Trevor had no chance. After a brief, but violent fight, his wife’s lover got the better of him and forced the hose into his mouth, until he too was no longer breathing.

All the time, Hazel was standing a couple of feet away. Instead of helping her husband, she simply covered her ears to block out the sound as Trevor gasped for breath. Her children were asleep in the room next door while their mother and her lover’s diabolical plan played out.

Colin came out of the bedroom and instructed Hazel to burn the hosepipe in the fireplace, clean the bedsheets and bring some of Trevor’s clothes. He dressed Trevor (as he did with Lesley) and placed his body in the trunk of his Renault, bundled in with Lesley’s body.

Part one of their plan was complete. Both their spouses were dead. 

As Colin drove off with her husband’s body, Hazel closed the garage door behind him and destroyed the evidence. Colin drove six miles (or 10 kilometres) to the coastal town of Castlerock, where he parked the car at Lesley’s father’s cottage, which had been uninhabited for a while.

Colin pulled the car into the garage at Castlerock and staged the scene of a suicide-pact. Lesley was lying on the back seat, holding the photos of their four kids in her hands. Colin put a cassette with her favourite gospel music in her Walkman and placed the headphones on her head. 

Trevor was in the driver’s seat. Colin opened Trevor’s door, so it would seem that he had last minute thoughts, and wanted to get out of the car, but that it was too late… Colin attached a vacuum pipe to the exhaust, led it into the car, started the car and closed the garage door behind him.

He cycled back home in the early morning hours and was home before his four children woke up. Hazel was waiting for the final call, telling her that it was over – everything had been taken care of. 

Colin and Hazel rehearsed their version of events and set in play the final chapter of their heinous and heartless crime. 

The morning after the murders, Colin Howell called the church elders and told them that his wife was missing. He had no idea where she could be, but he suspected she was with Hazel Buchanan's husband, Trevor. 

The elders accompanied police to the Howell home where Colin informed police about the affair with Hazel. He said that their respective spouses must have found out that they were together again and left.

Police went to the Buchanan home to see if Trevor was home, or if he had any information about Lesley Howell’s whereabouts. But a frazzled Hazel told officers that her husband was gone when she woke up and she didn’t know where he was.

All police vehicles in the area were notified about the missing mother of four and RUC officer. Off-duty officer, David Green, was also a member of the Baptist Church. He decided to go to Lesley’s father’s cottage at The Apostles in Castlerock to see if Lesley was taking refuge there. That is when he discovered Colin Howell’s car with Lesley and Trevor’s bodies inside the garage.

The church elders arrived at Colin’s house to break the news and Colin acted shocked. He then told his children that their mother was never coming home again. 

At the Buchanan’s home, the pastor arrived with the news and Hazel managed to play the part of the shocked, but guilty wife. Not guilty because of his death, but seemingly guilty that her actions – the affair with Colin Howell – had pushed her husband over the edge. It was the perfect cover – they could both appear guilty and stressed. They had good reason to be – in the view of the community and the church. 

It was made to appear that the two deceased spouses had made a pact to end it all, in the wake of the affair that damaged both marriages beyond repair. Colin even presented a suicide note that Lesley had written on a previous occasion when she tried to end her life.

After a brief investigation, police came to the conclusion that Lesley Howell and Trevor Buchanan had ended their own lives. Their families didn’t question it, everybody knew how much hurt the affair between Colin and Lesley had caused. The shame brought on by the affair was tremendous and both Lesley and Trevor struggled immensely to work through it. 

Lesley’s brother had just lost his father, now his sister was gone too. He couldn’t believe that she would take her own life, but the truth of what happened was far too sinister to even imagine.

Colin and Hazel were quietly relieved. They had gotten away with murder and they were confident they would never get caught. 

At the time of Lesley’s death, Colin was facing bankruptcy. But thanks to a life insurance policy on Lesley’s life, he inherited £414,000. He was single, had some money to spare and he had Hazel Buchanan all to himself. Things were exactly the way he had wanted it to be.

From the outside in, Colin and Hazel carried on as two separate single parents, coping bravely in the wake of the tragedy of their spouses’ suicides. But behind closed doors, their steamy relationship continued. 

Colin, ever the man of God, used a biblical reference to sooth his own conscience. He saw himself as King David and Hazel as Bathsheba. 

The story of their love affair, began one balmy night, when David was walking on the roof of his palace. With a view of the town below him, he saw a beautiful woman bathing and he was mesmerised. He made it his mission to find out the identity of this woman and learnt that her name was Bathsheba. She was married to a soldier called Uriah.  

David could not get her out of his mind and seduced her, as her husband was away at war. When Bathsheba fell pregnant by David, he realised that their affair would be exposed. As king, he ordered Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, to come home. The idea was that Uriah would sleep with his wife and she would claim the baby was his. 

However, this plan didn’t work, as Uriah was a dedicated soldier who refused to leave his post. His whole regiment stayed at the palace gates to protect the arc and their king. Desperate to find a solution, David gave orders to General Joab. 2 Samuel 11, verse 15:

 “Put Uriah out in front where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die.”

By sending this order, David effectively signed Uriah’s death sentence. Uriah followed the order and died protecting David’s kingdom.

Shortly after Uriah’s death, David married Bathsheba. But they did not live happily ever after. David felt that God was punishing him for ordering Uriah’s death so he could be with his wife. David repented in front of God and begged for forgiveness. 

God spared David’s life, but he did punish him. David would never again have peace in his house, he would be publicly shamed for his private sin. But worst of all, David and Bathsheba’s first child became severely ill and he died one week after birth. 

As time went by, cracks formed in Colin and Hazel’s relationship. She could not live with the guilt of what they had done. Having sex with Colin became insufferable – how could she have pleasure when she knew what they had done. To help her cope with the guilt, Colin would sedate her by injecting her, so they could make love. He, however, needed no sedation at all. And sleeping with his unconscious lover did not bother this church-going father of four.

By 1996, Colin was frustrated with playing the part of a grieving widower and suggested to hazel they relocated to Scotland to start over. They could join a church and live openly as a blended family. But Hazel refused. She did not want Colin in her life anymore and broke off the relationship. 

Hazel started a long term relationship with another man, which also didn’t work out. Eventually, she married retired senior police officer, David Stewart, taking his last name to become: Hazel Stewart.

Colin also moved on. When he met American divorcee Kyle Jorgensen at bible study, he was ready to make a commitment. It was five years after Lesley had died and Hazel assured him that there was no future for the two of them. Kyle and Colin married after dating for a while and they had five children together.

Two years into their marriage, Colin confessed to Kyle about the murders. He simply came out and told her that he had killed Lesley and Trevor. Kyle was in a horrible position, she was living in a foreign country and had just had a baby. She was 100% dependent on her husband. If he went to jail, how would she support her family?

Kyle urged her husband to go to police. But as Hazel was involved, Colin felt that he had to inform her before he gave himself up. He was of the intention of getting his and Hazel’s respective families together at a hotel in Newcastle and confess everything, but that never happened.

Kyle had nowhere to turn and went to the church elders to seek advice. Astonishingly, they did not follow up with law enforcement. Their stance was that God will Judge Colin when the time comes, eternal damnation is a much bigger punishment than any earthly court could give. They told Kyle that Colin’s sin was “before the Cross.” 

Perhaps they were right, perhaps the Lord wanted to punish Colin as he had punished King David. Everything in Colin’s life started turning upside down with the death of his eldest son, Matthew. 

Colin was mortified when he learnt of Matthew’s accidental death in Russia. In an interview, he said:

"I trust God. I believe that with God there are no accidents. That gives me a grief and a certain comfort."

All those years ago, when Colin smothered Lesley to death, as she was gasping for air, it was Matthew’s name she called. Was Matthew’s death God’s way of punishing Colin, as he had punished David in the bible?

But Matthew’s death was only the first setback in a sequence of events that led to Colin Howell’s downfall.

He had serious financial problems. He had about 100,000 British Pounds (about 130,000 Dollars) tax debt and had spent most of the life insurance money he was awarded after Lesley’s death. He lost 100,000 Pounds when he invested in a bizarre scheme involving Japanese gold that was supposedly buried in the Philippines during WWII. In the end, all he got for it was rusty pieces of metal. Colin felt stronger than ever that God was punishing him. 

In the end, it was a woman at church whose words had caused him to fess up. She told him that ‘his sins had already been forgiven by God’. Up to this point in time, Colin and Hazel had gotten away with murder. 18 years after killing Lesley and Trevor, Colin decided to come out with the truth. He first went to the church elders to confess his sins. This time, they did not leave judgement up to The Divine, but rather encouraged him to do the right thing and go to the police.  

On Friday the 30th of January 2009, Colin Howell went to Coleraine Police Station to confess to the murders of his wife, Lesley Howell and his mistress’ husband Trevor Buchanan. However, he was not repentant or ashamed. This sometimes-preacher was as self-important as ever, exuding confidence. He told detectives:

"I know I lived in a world of believing I could do anything, like a fantasy world where I could do anything and so I probably believed I could do it and get away with it."

When Colin Howell was charged with murder in February 2009, his lawyers advised him to plead not guilty, which he did. 

Police couldn’t help but wonder if there were other crimes committed by Colin, seeing as he felt he could get away with anything.

In March 2009, police announced that they were re-examining the death of 27-year-old Alexandra Hickman-Smith, whose body was found in a caravan park in Castlerock. Colin Howell also had a caravan at the site. Alexandra’s family had originally been told she had died from diabetes and that her death was not being treated as suspicious.

This investigation went nowhere and Alexandra’s family found themselves fighting off the scandal that came with mentioning the young mother’s name in connection with Colin Howell. In the end, authorities confirmed that Alexandra’s death was related to her diabetes after all. Alexandra never knew Colin Howell and had nothing to do with him.

A year and a half after confessing to the murders of Lesley and Trevor, Colin was also charged with 17 counts of indecently assaulting six women at his dental practice over a 10-year period from 1998 to 2008. The six women claimed Colin attacked them at his Ballymoney practice.

He admitted that he had sedated the women – as he had done with Hazel on occasion. Once they were unconscious, he would assault them, right there in the dentist’s chair. The dirty dentist further admitted to taking more than £200,000 in treatments he did not complete. For all of these offences, he only received a five and a half year sentence. 

Much to the egotistical Howell’s surprise, his second wife, Kyle Jorgensen, didn’t stand by him to face the music. She filed for divorce, taking her seven children back to the USA. In an interview with UK tabloid, The Mirror, Kyle said:

“He abused patients, he is a compulsive liar, he was an adulterer in our marriage and murdered two people. Everyone thought he was this great Christian guy but they were so wrong. He was a monster.”

Once Kyle and her children had settled in Florida, she enquired if she had any claim on Colin’s pension, as she needed money to support their children. After her request, the National Health Service (or NHS) looked into Colin’s case and announced that he would be denied his half a million pound pension.

Colin had nothing more to lose. He had lost his good standing in the community, his family, his money... And ultimately he had lost Hazel. He changed his plea and pleaded guilty to the murders of Lesley and Trevor in 1991. 

Colin Howell was sentenced to life with a minimum of 21 years in December 2010.

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Two months after Colin’s sentencing, it was time for Hazel Stewart’s trial. She pleaded not guilty, but admitted to knowing about Colin’s plot to kill their respective spouses. She admitted that she did nothing to prevent the murders and that she helped Colin to cover it up. 

Everyone could see that Hazel was in denial. She could have stopped Colin from killing her husband at any point, but she chose not to. Instead she drugged her husband, made sure that he was sleeping, then she opened the garage door for Colin, knowing full well what his plan was. 

Things did not look good for Hazel at all. She was fortunate that her second husband and adult children decided to support her during her trial in 2011. 

David Green, the RUC officer who found Lesley and Trevor on the morning of May 19th 1991 testified. He said:

"I had great suspicions after discovering the bodies. I was very unhappy... I believed something had happened that was not good." 

What had raised suspicion with officer Green was the fact that a pipe from the Howell’s vacuum cleaner was loosely attached to the exhaust of the car. He didn’t think the concentration of carbon monoxide would have been strong enough to kill both victims.

Hazel’s barrister brought out a statement made by Colin to police during his initial confessions in 2009. Colin said that Hazel was frightened of him and that she was ‘kind and innocent’, the kind of person who was easily led.  

The whole nation watched as Colin Howell was brought in to testify against his former lover. In court Colin admitted to being the mastermind of the plot and that he was without a doubt the leader in the relationship. 

But Colin had no intention of going down by himself, his testimony against Hazel would bind the couple together as partners in crime forever. He explained that when they went to London for the abortion of their unborn child, they had made a blood pact – the experience connected their souls for eternity.

Colin made it clear that Hazel understood her part in the murders before they were committed. When she took the tablets to drug Trevor, the contract was signed. Colin knew that he could count on her to see the plan through with him.

Always the eloquent speaker, Colin said that he and Hazel had been "waltzing in time". He painted the picture of an intimate dance, between two lovers:

“Two people waltzing together in time – I may have been the lead partner, but she was not dragging her feet. She was in step and in harmony.”

Like the biblical Bathsheba, Hazel’s intentions and feelings throughout the whole torrid tale was unclear. Some speculate she was a victim of a man in power, others believe she was an equal partner who provoked him to kill her husband. 

In the end, Hazel Stewart was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 18 years without parole. She appealed her sentence, but lost the appeal in January of 2013. She maintains her innocence, saying that she was intimidated by Colin.

During his cross-examination the defence put it to Colin that he was a monster. He simply replied: 

"Yes, I was a monster and I was a killer, but not any longer. "

Hazel Stewart is currently embroiled in a legal battle over police pension benefits she inherited from Trevor Buchanan. The National Crime Agency took her case to the High Court to seek an order for her to repay funds she received after Trevor’s death. 

Lesley Howell’s brother, Christopher Clarke, has also aired his suspicion of Colin regarding his father’s death. The fact that Henry Clarke died in the Howell home, 12 days before Lesley was murdered, made him wonder if his father’s sudden death was caused by his brother-in-law. At the time no autopsy was performed, as his cause death was assumed to be due to heart failure. However, Henry Clarke was quite healthy at the time and had no history of heart problems. Police have questioned Colin Howell about the accusation, but he denies having had anything to do with his father-in-law’s death. Because Henry was cremated – on Colin’s insistence – authorities were not able to exhume his remains.

To the end Colin convinced himself that he was a good guy who did things for the greater good. He always hid behind God’s will… He believed (and tried to convince Hazel) that God created their feelings for one another, so in loving each other, they were living out God’s will.

His children had to deal with the truth: their father killed their mother so he could be with his lover. He lied to them for many, many years. Lesley and Trevor’s friends and family have dealt with the guilt of losing loved ones to suicide. 

The Police Service of Northern Ireland issued an official apology to Lesley and Trevor’s families for the shortcomings of the 1991 investigation. Both families have expressed their disappointment in the way the case was handled.

Colin felt God took away his eldest son and punished Colin by causing him to lose all of his money. He begged God to forgive him, instead he received God’s wrath. In Colin’s eyes, the fact that he came forward and admitted to the murders, the sexual assaults and the fraud, makes him a good and honourable person. The truth has set him free. 

He believes that his confession will give him a clean slate in the eyes of the Lord. 

[Lines from Psalms 32 and 51 – cut in editing like a mumbled prayer]

Psalm 32:5

 “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
     and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. 

Psalm 51:9

Hide your face from my sins,
    and blot out all my iniquities.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,

Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,
     O God of my salvation,
     and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.

O Lord, open my lips,
     and my mouth will declare your praise.
16 For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
    you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

One can wonder why Colin Howell really came forward in the end… So that God would stop punishing him? Or did he simply want a last waltz with the women who stole his heart? 

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