Original subtitles

This interview is being recorded in the background interview room at Corian Police Station.

The date is Thursday the 29th of January 2009, the time taken from the clock on the wall is 20.03 hours.

This evening I am interviewing, could you please state your full name?

Colin David Heil.

For almost 20 years it was believed to be suicide.

Two people devastated by the breakdown of their marriages.

The real truth lay hidden.

The Valley Money dentist Colin Heil murdered his wife and his lover's husband,

but staged it to look like a suicide pact.

He'd got away with this for two decades.

I was just told that Colin Heil looked at the police station and had it himself in.

Actually I did it. Casual as you like.

I would suggest that anybody who has an affair will always think they'd be better off without their partner.

I do believe that thoughts of murder are immediately connected to that.

Wealthy, middle class, from that sort of Bible belt of Northern Ireland,

preaching the church on a Sunday and planning a double murder.

I'd agreed that what I would do would be that I would pipe the fumes of the car from the garage into the house.

The full confession, every bit of detail.

And then every bit of detail on Hazel Stuart.

Hazel's role then was to clear up and I gave her the hose pipe and she cut it into sections and burnt it in the fire to get rid of that part of it.

This was all my idea. With which she cooperated.

What turns a Sunday school teacher into someone who's an accomplice to a double killing?

Why did it stay sacred for so long?

And what really is the story behind this story?

Not in my wildest dreams could I suspect it.

Two people like that carrying out the most vile, vile, heinous crime.

May the burning question call.

Why are you here?

Why are you sitting in a sentence of you and being interrogated by two murders that you cried out nearly 18 years ago?

When I first decided to come here, I believed it was the right thing to do.

I knew it would be big. I didn't have the vision to see how big it would be.

It might be a little easier for me.

What's the time?

Five to walk. We'll be done.

That's fine.

I worked with Colin Howell from August 2005 until August 2008.

Colin and the practice, they used to take us for away days, basically for team building.

The whole team used to go together. It was, yeah, really good fun.

I think Colin was always taking the limelight. He likes to be center off stage, which he was good at.

I think that that's what I feel about the whole practice is that, although there's about 50% of the people here are new, staff, it's getting better and it's maturing and it's going forward.

It's like a good team and I really appreciate everybody who's here.

And so welcome to today, welcome to the future.

Hope next year that we're not happy ever going.

We were good friends, you know, I was good friends with him. He was, you know, a good boss. You know, it felt really, really sad to leave because, you know, I stayed three years and I wanted to do something else.

There's a picture from, yeah, 30th of August 2008. So this was my leaving due.

We were all sitting on one big table, everybody together, you know, dinner, speeches, drinks, things like that.

And after dinner, you know, Colin came and sat beside me and he asked me, like, you know, in Islam, do you have forgiveness?

And I said, of course, you know, in Islam, you know, God is forgiving, but it depends on what is to be forgiven.

You know, so I just said to him as an example, you know, if someone kills someone, if, you know, murder someone, you know, I don't think, you know, God will forgive him for that.

And immediately his face color just changed. And he said to me, excuse me. And then he went to the bathroom, came back, changed the subject completely, didn't mention it again.

Five months after that conversation, Colin walks into a police station and confesses to a double murder.

And then he was a double murder.

We were arrested by my colleague, I think you spoke twenty past one this afternoon, isn't

that correct?

Right.

On suspicion of this double murder.

I believe it stems from certain conversations that you had with church elders or persons

within your community.

So we just invite you now, is there anything you want to tell us, Mr Howe?

I contacted my phone to say, have you heard about the situation in Coleraine?

He said, there's a fella has been locked in the church and he's confessed to murder.

And I'm like, who could this be?

I thought, was it paramilitary?

Was it, what on earth had happened?

And I hadn't heard about any murder that had happened in recent days.

And he said, no, no, no, this is a murder from years ago.

And then he said, it's a double murder.

I got up to cool rain pretty quickly.

And by that stage, Colin Howell had confessed to the murder of his wife, Leslie, and of his

then lover's husband, Trevor Buchanan.

I think that one of the things that's recently happened and part of the reason that I'm here is that I know that I have lived in a, in a, an unreal world.

A fantasy world almost being one thing deep down and not even knowing that I'm, that I'm a fake in a sense.

That's one of the awarenesses that I've had every, in the last month.

Um, is just, there's a lot about me that's fraud.

This was a case that was being treated as suicide and had been treated like that for years.

And someone walked in and confessed to murders, which weren't even on the police's books as murders.

A 50 year old man who contacted the police last Thursday had been charged with murdering two people whose deaths 18 years ago were treated as suicide.

The bodies of Trevor Buchanan and Leslie Howell were found in a fume filled car in a garage in Castle Rock in County Londonderry in 1991.

What I knew at that stage was there were two victims to the murders, physically victims to the murders.

There were two people involved, but there was only one person being held anywhere.

So then there was the kind of scurry of who's the other person.

Today, a man and a woman are being questioned on suspicion of murder.

They are Colin Howell and Hazel Stewart, who was formerly Buchanan.

Hazel Stewart did not know what was going to come down her road that day.

She was having a normal day.

She got a knock on the door and the next thing she is being questioned by the police about a double murder.

Hazel Stewart hid her head in her hands and cried as the two charges were put to her.

Resident Magistrate Richard Wilson released her on her own bail of £5,000.

The people who were going to be affected, Hazel, his church, people from the past, people who have moved on and become a family.

The earthquake that it was going to cause.

And just the problem was created by doing the right thing 18 years too late rather than doing the right thing 18 years ago.

You know, so the magnitude of the shock.

So yeah, it is the right thing.

But it's the delay. It makes it the monumental thing.

And all of a sudden this sort of seedy, sort of underbelly of suburbia starts sort of coming out.

And you realise, you know, that these people who are preaching the church on a Sunday were also having this torred affair and planning a double murder.

So that could continue. I mean, that is an explosive story.

I just thought, this is the time in my life to not be in control anymore.

You know, to do what is right.

You know, to do what is right.

Hazel Stewart didn't confess. And that court in Colerain over those two weeks when she was being tried was an incredible.

Hazel Stewart didn't confess and that court in Coleraine over those two weeks when she

was being tried was an incredible piece of real-life drama. Hazel Stewart seen here in the green coat

denies she is a murderer. Today the prosecution outlined their case against her. They say she is

an accomplished liar and wholly complicit in the murders of her first husband RUC officer Trevor

Buchanan and her former lover's wife Leslie Howell.

Every time Hazel Stewart was in court paper sales increased dramatically. People could

not get enough of this story they wanted to know every aspect they wanted to know who she was,

who he was, they wanted to know what had happened, the involvement of the church.

The sort of life that these people, that many of us that are completely alien to you know the life

of these people in this Baptist church in Coleraine, what was going on behind the scenes and people

wanted to know every single bit of it. They read every single line of the court copy. It was a story

that as a journalist you were being stopped in the street by people and saying what else is

happening. You know they wanted to know the unprintable parts of the story as well.

The Buchanan family have been in mourning since Trevor's death in 1991. While there's immense satisfaction that justice for Trevor has finally been achieved,

there's no sense of victory and no cause for celebration as nothing can bring Trevor and Leslie back to us. And all families connected to this matter have been grievously impacted.

We mourn our mother Leslie and are pained at the time and the memories that we have been so denied. We rejoice in the contribution our mum made to our lives in the short time we had together.

We know her to have been a loving, devoted mother and we bitterly regret the horrible way in which she was taken from us.

We're a little further to her mother.

From a human interest point of view, you're covering the day and dailies of a murder trial,

but you couldn't help but think something else is going on here behind the scenes.

I mean, these children showing up to protect their mother,

and we know, you know, the bond between a mother and child is very strong,

but when she's accused of killing their father, there's clearly a story behind the story.

We love our father and our mother, you know, so it doesn't, we're not taking any sides.

We wouldn't have wanted what had happened to her dad ever to happen.

But we've, you know, we lost, we lost our dad, and this nearly feels like we're going to lose our mum.

We lost our mother, so it does not look like we're going to lose our dad.

And you know, you are born, but the story is that our father would have been pure enough for us to give a life for us.

So this is good.

At the heart of this appeal is the claim that we're making that Hazel Stewart was suffering

from coercive control on the part of Colin Hall at the time of the commission of these

offences.

I think it's very telling that Hazel Stewart's family have been totally supportive of her.

I think it says a lot that they've all stood by her and that solidarity and support reflects

I think what they really believe happened here.

Yes, she was complicit in a scenario that led to the horrible outcome of the death of

two people, but I think they accept and understand that the level of complicity, if that's the

right way to put it, was so much different than what was stated in the court and the legal

proceedings so far.

Colin Hall was quite an overpowering figure.

He was someone who was very intelligent, very educated.

I think that he understood how women, especially women in his world, in that very religious world

thought and how he could control them and he controlled them a lot through religion and

their faith.

The issue or the concept of the crime of coercive control had not fully evolved or developed

back in the day.

You're talking over 20 years ago now.

And of course, in the last number of years, that has emerged as a very serious criminal issue,

which is now regularly cited and referenced when it comes to all forms of abuse by one

partner over another or all sorts of other relationships.

It is a criminal offence.

What we're trying to do, a couple of decades on after this, is to try to recalibrate the

whole position in Hazel Stewart's case and in her defence.

So these are sort of things that are 18-year memories, you know, I just can't remember.

I'm not intentionally holding back because that's not what I'm doing in any of the information

I'm giving you.

I've known about this story for more than 15, 16 years.

As a journalist, it has absolutely fascinated me all of that time.

I've been working in journalism for 36 years and it has been one of the most fascinating

areas of my career.

When you listen to these tapes, they're very detailed, they're very, very calm.

You know, his calm creates turmoil and he's very polite.

He's very helpful.

He's very mannerly.

His grammar is perfect, you know, and his accent and his sort of very middle class demeanour

of his speech within these confessions, I find that fascinating.

This shows who Colin Howell is, who he was, who he pretended to be, all the different aspects

of Colin Howell are in these tapes.

They're incredible and this is the first time the public will have heard these.

And I think most people will find them as fascinating as I have found them.

In the tapes, we've got Colin's version of events and Colin's version then triggered Hazel

Stewart's version and Hazel Stewart's version is different to Colin's version.

When I first decided to come here, I believed it was the right thing to do, knew it would

be big, didn't have the vision to see how big it would be.

Castlederic has suffered more than most towns at the hands of the terrorists.

Over the years, there have been 30 bomb attacks in the town centre and more than 80 people

have been murdered in the area.

In the late 80s, Castlederic was almost a siege town.

The centre of the town was all blocked off and they were high security because we were

only within a mile of the Irish border.

Trevor was a police officer in the time.

He was a people person, he got on wonderful and children just loved him.

Hazel would have come and taken some of our boys up to Trevor's to go on the trikes and

that and Trevor would have shown them the police car and that, all the gadgets and all the

radios and all that and he even showed them how the guns and all worked.

And me and our children were just drawn like a magnet to Trevor and to all the things that

he showed them.

It was part of our home.

I was very friendly with Trevor and really nice, nice guy, quite quiet actually.

We all went out together, times were hard and we'd done long hours, maybe we finished at

8 o'clock at night, sometimes 12 o'clock, headed out for a few beers and just a good,

really, really good guy, liked by everybody.

Army bomb experts resumed a detailed search of the area in daylight, finding one unexploded

mortar at the firing point.

I was involved in a bomb explosion and I was transferred and got a chance to go elsewhere and I headed

up to North West and I ended up, arrived up in Coleraine.

I used to go down and call with him, he says, look, you've got around a bit now, why do you

not stick in a transfer and see about getting up there?

And he put it off for a while and I remember sitting down with him and Hazel and he said,

do you know what somebody says?

I think I will.

So he moved to Coleraine for the benefit of himself and his family, so that he'd be away

from Castledere, my troubles and that they'd be all much safer there.

You're in a different world entirely.

Derry's over the mountain, Belfast is up the motorway and you could be really a million

miles away.

And that's why people come here is to relax and sort of take it easy.

In comparison to some of the other places like Derry or Belfast, South Iron Mar, Fermanagh,

a place like that, it was relatively safe and a place where you felt comfortable.

It's a dramatic area, dramatic scenery, dramatic Atlantic Ocean.

It is spectacular, it's a fantastic backdrop to life, holidays, work, it's a beautiful

place.

It's a bit of paradise and people really aspire to live there.

I think it's really the big characteristic is friendship.

People are just so outgoing and so friendly.

No matter where you go, people just talk to you and, you know, if you meet them in the

street, they'll always say hello, they'll always, they won't walk past you, they'll always

say hello, how's it going?

It is a culture of people that are very different to lots of other parts of the world.

John Howell lived about 75 metres from me in the same park as me, it was a place called

Knockley Park.

All were new homes.

And he was my dentist.

He was a seven enough guy, very professional, very good, very well respected.

He was, he wasn't your average dentist, by any means that he had a very, very strong,

good business going in Ball of Money.

Very popular in Ball of Money, I know that for sure, he was a popular guy and he was very

heavily involved with the church.

You know, he was a part of our community and he really was a part of the society.

He was very charismatic, he was very charming.

Leslie Howell was clearly someone who had also been charmed by Colin Howell.

He had charmed her, she had married him and probably thought, you know, this was her life

set.

She was with this very successful dentist.

Money was no object, they live in a very nice home.

And she had four children who she absolutely adored and we know that.

She was a completely and utterly devoted mother.

The house would be full of the smell of baking or painting.

She didn't seem to mind about the mess, it was just so long as they were enjoying themselves.

She wanted the best for her children and she really was a very good mother.

I remember one day she came in with her group of friends and she said to her friend, my, your

wee boy is just gorgeous, he is beautiful, almost as nice as my Daniel.

And she just took such pleasure in them when Lauren was born, says come and see my little

princess.

And she just adored her.

Pretty much middle class, you know, backgrounds, children at good schools, just very, you know,

very ordinary approach to life and nobody took them onto their notice.

You know, it's just, it's just a feeling that I've lived a life for a long time, the hypocrisy

of me and the way that I've lived my life, of having an image and doing a good job of creating

that image.

But yes, reputation of being a good dentist, but that's probably what I survived on was

a good image when deep down in the core of my heart, I was someone who was willing to

take the life of two people.

When they moved to Claraine, Hazel Buchanan didn't know anyone.

She wasn't familiar, particularly with that area.

She isn't someone that had a lot of female friends anyway, but she decided that they would

join the church and this was how they socialised.

Their whole lives revolved around the church.

Well, Trevor, when they came here, they sort of became more religious and got involved with

the church.

He gave us testimony at some stage, you know, it was where you declare that they're saved

and that was his commitment to the religion and he would have been a man that sort of exemplified

Christianity, you know, that was his ethos and that was what you would expect from a

good Christian man to be.

The religious element is very strong in the North Coast.

There's a feeling of wholesomeness, let's put it that way.

There's an atmosphere and a feeling of, this is wholesome, you know, this is natural, this

is authentic.

A steady place, a place of where good work is done, not too much fuss made about anything,

and we glory in our surroundings.

Religion up here is just something else like, I mean, people are, you know, they really are

into the church.

Church is a massive thing for them and they'll be regular attenders.

Hazel and Colin Howell met at Coleraine Baptist and had sat pretty close to each other, you

know, they had their own seats, family seats, and they could see each other from their family

seats.

They were there on a weekly basis and then they had done prayer meetings and she was involved

in Sunday school and his kids were at Sunday school.

It was all very wholesome on the outside.

But Hazel was one who always remained aloof.

Sometimes the chat that Trevor and I might have had, just on general things, would have

given you the impression that Hazel felt that Trevor should be moving in the upper class

circles and she might have thought that he should have aspired to be something of a superintendent's

rank or chief inspector at least or something which set him apart from the hoi polloi.

I don't think she'd ever met a man like Colin Howell before and was completely, I think,

under his spell quite quickly.

Her husband, Trevor, despite the fact that he was a policeman and we know that he had,

you know, a career in the RUC, he was quite quiet and he was quite timid and he wouldn't

have been someone who would have been flirtatious or charming in the way that Colin Howell would

have been, who immediately, I think, set sights on her and decided that she was going to

be someone that he was going to target for an affair.

There's an intensity about him, there's a red hot intensity about him, but it goes

white hot when he meets Hazel and he decides, there's the girl for me.

Well, it would be fair to say that your relationship then had been fairly intense, passionately intense,

you were extremely emotionally attached to her, isn't it?

I would say, yeah.

Yeah.

Was your relationship sexual?

Yes.

Did you ever at any time tell that you loved her?

Yeah.

And did she say the same to you?

Yeah.

There were secret phone calls, there were secret codes, everything was clandestine,

they met in secret, then they got caught.

Someone in the Baptist church had seen our cars at the forest at Castle Row, just saw them

together and he phoned me and said he'd seen the cars and wanted to know if I wanted to say

what it was about or would he have to do that?

Which is then I went to the pastor of the church, John Hansford, and made a confession as such.

I heard Colin make his apology to Trevor for his adultery with Hazel.

And I also witnessed Trevor accepting that apology from Colin.

And then they in some way reached out to each other, shook hands and in a measure lightly,

as far as I can remember, hugged each other.

It seemed like an incredible success story of Christian counselling.

It's the way things ought to be.

When there's wrongdoing there should be repentance, forgiveness and restoration, that's the absolute

ideal.

It's not normal that church people would act like that.

In other words, I do know that I was an aberration and a now disgrace to church people because

of this behaviour, because it doesn't represent a normal church or even normal human person,

community person.

For the people in the church, this type of scandal wasn't something they wanted associated

with their church.

They wanted to associate it with their members.

And so those people who did know said nothing, you know, they closed down.

They might have, you know, in an evening or on a Sunday, silently, you know, in church might

have prayed for the souls of these people, but they certainly weren't for going out into

the street and talking about what they had done because it was such a closed community.

You could say that the church were protective of the church.

The confession to Lesley was, was set, not set up, but was organised through the pastor,

John Hansford.

And so it was arranged that I was, make the confession and he was, he withdrew.

So he wasn't in the house at the time, I was alone with her.

And that's when she, when I told her she exploded and went to the bathroom and took tablets.

Scattered a lot of them, took some of them and drove off.

I phoned John Hansford right away and he came up to the house.

And then in, in a few hours or whatever, I was informed she was at the pool and having

her stomach pumped.

This is where I think that Lesley Howell was really let down.

She had complained on several occasions.

People knew she was in a very unhappy marriage.

People knew he was a philanderer.

People knew that he was not being kind to her and her four children.

They knew that she was struggling and yet nobody thought to put an arm around her.

Instead it was, let's try and keep this as quiet as possible.

When Lesley did the suicide attempt and planted the seed, that would be good for me if that happened.

I would suggest that anybody who has an affair will always think they'd be better off without

their partner.

I do believe that thoughts of murder are immediately connected to that.

As I say, not everyone takes action on it.

But it's the concept of that person, life would be better without them.

So easy questions on this, but why don't you leave her?

Would that have been far better?

Well, you know, it's an office for me to make.

It's a much easier thought, I would suggest it's a much easier thought.

I would find it much easier to think enough and walk out the front door than to sit and think.

She said she'd be better off dead.

And then to go through, she's right, you know.

You know, that's a good, that is right.

I don't disagree with that.

That would have been a better thought and an easier thought.

And my mind began to hatch a plot of how I might make this happen and cover it up as

a suicide.

What I would do would be that I would pipe gas, sorry, the fumes of the car from the

garage into the house, both front of my house and then at Trevor Buchanan's house.

Leslie regularly would go to bed well dosed up with temazepam, I think it was, temazepam

and alcohol, and it helped her sleep.

It was her way of dealing with the pain.

My parents sometimes stayed at my house and they had left behind some other sleeping tablets.

So I gave some of those to Hazel and asked her to mash them up and put them in something

that Trevor would eat.

The concept for me was that books would fall asleep deeply, that I would put this gas pipe

after starting the car up beside him and then they'd fall asleep quietly.

That was my understanding of what would happen.

I met with Hazel.

She came in her car and obviously there was this great fear we'd be caught so it was kind

of, she was very terrified of that, of being caught and I know that she didn't want, she

wanted to meet me but she didn't and I would begin by saying that my influence on her was

already strong and great.

Her role was more limited than mine so she didn't, she didn't need to know everything

that was happening.

She didn't need to know, in a sense, my strategy.

Well I did tell her my strategy, what I would do.

She didn't need to be concerned about how I would do it so much as what she had to do.

I was not someone who was looking for what was really in her heart.

So, on the basis that things like Eddie Mayfair was, as we discussed earlier, was driven

by me, albeit with her cooperation, it's highly likely that she didn't want to do it.

But she did obviously co-operate, that can't be denied, it was a co-operation, she did,

but did she really want to?

I think it's hugely significant that, despite the heinous nature of the terrible atrocities

that took place in this case, and the involvement of Hazel Stewart in those horrible acts.

There's been a real deficit though, that the full background and circumstances under which

she was in that position, and how she came to find herself in that position, that that

has never been fully brought out in any court, and key to that is highlighting and identifying

and specifying that what she went through back in the day, when she was in a relationship

with Howell, was that she was under coercive control. And we've identified and located

a well-known expert in this field.

Colin Howell, husband of the second deceased, clearly guilty to both the murders of Trevor

and his wife Leslie. The prosecution alleged that the applicant was partly to the joint enterprise

murder of both deceased.

I'm Duncan Harding. I'm a consultant forensic psychiatrist. I'm also a specialist member

of the parole board for England and Wales. I sit on about 120 parole hearings a year. What

it means is that I'm very experienced in seeing people who've been in prison for a long time,

and have been in a system, in an institutionalized system. And I'm really used to assessing those

people at length.

Background, new line. On 2nd of March 2011, applicant was convicted of the murders of both

her husband, Trevor Buchanan…

What's interesting in this particular situation is that if we look at the original trial, and

we try and find the voice of Hazel Stewart, it's markedly absent. And then we can think

of the appeal, and we can think of the narrative of the way that this case has progressed.

My sense, and again, this is broad brushstrokes, because I haven't looked at all this in a huge

amount of detail, but my sense is that she's been lost within that system. And I think if

you see an example of systemic control in that way, where her voice is lost, which is the heart

of coercive control, it's what coercive control is, the person that's been controlled loses

their voice essentially. And so if she's lost her voice in the system, it's possible she lost her voice

in that interpersonal dynamic with that other person, with her co-defendant.

The fact that this thing came out of the blue, apparently, for me personally, does not make

me think, gosh, then in that case, she must have been controlled. It doesn't make me think

that at all. I would be very skeptical. What I can do as an expert, though, is I can look

back at someone's past, and I can think about it with my, you know, with the credibility of

being a child and adolescent forensic psychiatrist. I can dissect into her past, and I can, you

know, I can make a comment about whether, in my view, it's likely or not that this would

have occurred just out of the blue, or is it more likely that she was pulled along by

another person who perhaps, if you were to look into his past, would be a very different

story, and she was controlled in some way.

We see this case, subject to the outworkings and content of Dr Duncan Harding's report,

we see this case on its way back to court.

She can say, and she has said, through her lawyer, I didn't know what I was doing, I

didn't have any choice, I was coercively controlled, we didn't know about coercive control back in

the day, which, in fact, of course we did. And Colin Howell planned everything meticulously,

and then he found another little helper who can plan with them, and was able to work alongside

him to ensure that they got their own way. And Hazel Stuart was that person.

Should have been me, I asked you to do this. The house is obviously a lot of time has passed

and, er, you've moved out of the house. Oh, great. Could you draw me just a, er...

Sketch. Sketch. And like a floor plan, if you like, if you're a bungalow.

If you really want to concentrate, just maybe on the living room.

Yeah.

Kitchen.

Tell your own carriage.

Yeah.

Try the house.

Yeah, if it will. It's just, er, just, it's just the bearings, you know, for a second.

I'll do it on a carriage.

I'll do it on a carriage.

I'll do it on a carriage.

Okay.

Thanks.

Um, then, uh, I'll quit four pounds of the piano set.

Car.

You're kitchen.

Oh, fire.

Fire.

Fire.

Fire.

Fire.

Fire.

Fire.

Fire.

Fire.

Fire.

Fire.

Fire.

Fire.

Fire.

Fire.

Fire.

Fire.

Fire.

Fire.

Fire.

Fire.

So, starting with Leslie, I came out the side door of the garage, through the back door,

through the kitchen, through the nearest room, which was the living room, which had fallen

asleep. I'm sure if you pace that out, it would be 25 paces. It's hard to remember,

and I can sort of see it, but I can't guess. I think it was the full length of the hose.

I don't think I cut it short, but I feel like it was the full length. I set the hose beside

her, right up beside her, and she was deeply asleep. And I went back to the garage and started

the engine. My concept, as I say, would have been she had fallen asleep, but then she didn't.

One of the things that happened when she arrived was she called out Matthew, my son's name.

And that's one of the memories that haunts me, is that she called his name, because I didn't

expect her to be awake.

So, I suppose I panicked, because I knew that if she'd wakened up and seen what was going

on, she'd have had him caught. So, we ran in and just put the hose closer and put it over

her head, whatever it was, quilt, over her head. I think at that point, I had a reality

check of what was happening. It was like a, a thing. Almost disbelief that it was happening,

that it was a, I think it was a change in the, it was the fact that I had to do something

more than just leave it there for it if I was to eat for the kid and create a panic.

I wrapped that all up and brought her body to the car. She threw something over a blanket

or something. I set my bicycle on top of that. Then, in the OBT phone lines, if you pick up

the phone, dial the number, and there's a little click before you hear the dial tone, there's

a little dink that goes in the other phone. So, this was a communication that I had learned

during the affair. And so, I made that communication with Hazel that you knew that you heard that

dink at that time that the event had actually happened. And then, I drove over to Buchanan's

house.

I just knew I had to keep going. And, because I had a, part of the plan was that the times

of their deaths would be as close as possible together, that it might not be interpreted as

just being separate.

And so, I drove over to her house and reversed into her garage. And she was there. I think

in disbelief, I'm sure. That's for her to comment on. And repeated the event.

To stop you there, how did you know it was safe to do that?

To go in?

How did you know it was safe to reverse, to go to Charmwood, reverse your car into the

driveway and into the garage, and to start your procedure?

Right. The obvious answer, and it's not that I know it is the answer, but I must have had

some communication from Hazel that it was safe. And did she call me when I made the little dink?

Without trying to withhold anything, I don't remember that right at this point, but yes, if that's...

It's another fundamental part of your plan, isn't it?

It would have to be.

Have to be.

Have to be.

So it must make sense.

Any significant part of your plan?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, you know, you used the click method to say that you had successfully acquired your

part.

What, what, you know, without, without having some sort of knowledge that it was safe, you're

going to see if you're taking one heck of a risk?

That's right.

That's correct.

I remember saying, obviously, she would have confirmed that Trevor was asleep in bed.

The door was ajar and looked in and Trevor was asleep on the far side of the double bed in

the bedroom.

It was the top end of the hall, the left hand side, an unrolled hose and quietly leaning across

and set it inside the door.

It was probably in the, um, I probably got across as far as the pillow, this, the pillow

and, um, he was lying face down.

I went back out and closed the door, but couldn't close the door because the hose was

through, but closed as far as it went.

I think Hazel hid away at that point.

I don't remember seeing her.

During this part of it, I don't know where she hid because I wasn't looking.

It was, I mean, went to the car, started the engine again.

And, again, I put the pipe up beside him while he slept.

And, um, again, the same thing happened here, awakened, even though he was, um, sedated.

And I had to do the same for him and hold the pipe to his mouth while he died.

I knew I was really very freaked out at the whole idea of, of my plan.

And instead of being this quiet, my concept was, was quiet, falling asleep.

It became actually something I had to physically do.

And that was a new, that was something that I just didn't plan on.

And it made me realize the wheels were coming off everything that I had, in a sense, imagined would happen.

Hazel had left out some clothes for him, so I dressed him in his clothes.

I, I, I lifted his body from his bedroom into the spare bedroom to rest him.

And carried his body into the car beside Leslie's, into the boot of the car.

And, I think my bicycle was, I lifted it out and then set it on top.

Hazel's part role then was to clear up and I gave her the hose pipe and she cut it into sections and burnt it in the fire.

In the fireplace, to get rid of that part of it.

Um, so she, that I, I had organized all this.

So if this was all my idea, with which she cooperated.

I, I, I then drove the car to the bottom of the, I think it's called the Cranner Road.

Left off my bicycle, threw it into the grass, just at the railway crossing.

And drove to the Twelve Apostles, which was now empty because my father-in-law had died.

There was a garage there, I reversed him.

This one and the.

Great.

Is.

That Whoa!

We.

We.

We.

And.

We.

We.

We.

We.

We, we.

We.

We.

We.

We.

We.

We.

We.

We.

We.

We.

We.

We.

I lifted Trevor's body from the boots

into the driver's seat and set it there.

Now, I was aware, his,

I couldn't get him right in.

His leg was partly out the door.

And I knew that later on that led to the idea

that maybe he tried to change his mind

and tried to get out.

But it wasn't intended that I'd put him that way.

That's just the way he fell,

and I couldn't change it.

It was kind of stuck there.

There had been an old broken hoover in the car

that lay on it for a long time,

and I, again, just hooked that up

to look like it had been piped in

just as part of the cover-up.

For Leslie, I put earphones on.

She just had a Sony Walkman,

and I put on whatever was in it

and switched it on

to make it appear she had died

listening to music.

I then started the engine

and left the garage.

so

so

so

I remember running along the beach at Castle Road.

I got my bicycle and second home.

I probably had calculated it would take about two hours.

I think it took near four hours because daylight was breaking just as I, and it was May, so

I know it was light very early in May.

I had done it, and the relief factor was probably stronger than the remorse factor for me.

Looking back now, you're safe in your mind that you murdered two people?

Yes.

It's like asking a child if you know the difference between right and wrong.

I'm asking you, you know, are you clear in your mind that you murdered?

Is it not a fantasy?

Yeah.

You're clear in your mind you murdered Leslie Howell, your wife, and Trevor Buchanan, his husband?

Yes.

100% clear, isn't it?

I'm clear of that, yes.

Her house is a sedative drug, which is a Valium derivative.

I injected it into her.

But she was very lifeless in the sense of responsive to sex, but I had sex with her.

I'm clear of that, yes.