Your grief for Trevor: I agree that we might have underestimated this response in our hearts. The length of time it takes to get over this will determine when we get together. During this time, we must not see or talk to each other. When we miss each other, we must look at Trevor and Lesley’s things and photos to concentrate our feelings on their grief. I miss Lesley and am so sorry that I didn’t love her enough, and for all the sins I have done to her. I need time to sorrow [sic] for that before we can be together. But once it’s done (although maybe never completely gone), we can give ourselves to each other without looking back. The pastor says you would go to pieces a few months after we were married. Do you agree? I think I know you better than he does and believe he is wrong, if you have time alone now to sorrow for your guilt and loss.
Your family: I was so glad when you told me your dad hugged you for the first time. I know how important that is to you, and we will do nothing to set that back. If enough time passes, and when they see how much I care for you and will look after you, they will accept both of us. All they are worried about now, and will ever be worried about, is that you are happy and that you will have someone who really loves you. They see how bad things went for Winifred [Hazel’s sister] and they are scared for you. The reason I disagree this is a reason, is that they don’t know me. To them, I am the one who made the daft phone call which caused so much trouble. I also am the one who got you to this position. So obviously all their advice will be against me. I have talked for hours to my Dad and my sister Maud about whether there would be acceptance for you and me in our family, and they have said (even in these early days) that the most important thing would be how well you cared for me, and [that] they would accept you with a great welcome if you loved me. So don’t be scared of families. The most important thing is that we must wait a long time. But I will wait for you if you decide, and are convinced in your mind that these things are correct.
Coleraine and the Church: For the sake of the Church, we must not [make] contact while we are both in Coleraine. Here I am going to say the hardest thing to take. If you decide the pastor is right, then you will probably always stay in Coleraine. If you decide that we can one day be together, then we both must leave Coleraine eventually. I will probably leave the Church immediately but I may also leave Coleraine, even if you decide our future is together. I will definitely leave by September if you are still convinced by the pastor. Consider this seriously. If you decide that you and I will be together one day, then I think that by September (new school term), I should move away to Portadown and you should move to Omagh. Lisa and Andrew will be surrounded by the security of family, and so will my children. The main reason for saying that is this: when we get together, you would be making the children move because of me if they stayed now in Coleraine, and there is a chance they would blame me for the move. If you say yes to me about our future, we will talk a lot more about this. So don’t feel any pressure about it. There may be more important reasons for staying.
If in your heart Hazel, you really think it is over for us, then you must say it. If you can say without doubt that we can overcome these problems given by the pastor, then say yes to me and don’t look back. We will meet with the pastor and tell him our plans – we will ask him to council [sic] us if he agrees. We will be honest and open and not secretive. We will lose many friends who won’t accept us, but we can walk down the street together, proud of each other, because from now on, we are forgiven and will be disciplined and will honour God. And we won’t lose all our friends, if we take our time.
I have taken a mother from my children, but God will provide for them and I only hope and pray it can be you. But only if you can accept in your mind, as well as your heart.
Love, Colin
But Derek McAuley did not pass on the letter to Hazel straight away, most likely because of all that was going on with the two funerals. Before he handed it over a few days later, he decided to steam open the envelope. Once he had read Howell’s letter, he made a photocopy of it, then gave Hazel the original without telling her what he had done. McAuley then showed the copy to his wife and also to Pastor Hansford; he was convinced that the minister was being misled by the duplicitous Howell. McAuley then filed the photocopy away with other papers.
The letter wasn’t seen again until McAuley handed it over to detectives who had reopened the investigation into the deaths after the dentist’s confession to the murders. When questioned, McAuley told police: ‘I remember when I read the letter, thinking Colin Howell was crazy – talking about him and Hazel, and blaming Pastor John Hansford for their problems, despite the fact that Pastor Hansford was involved in counselling the two couples …’ When he was asked to give his interpretation of the last paragraph of the letter (which began with the words: ‘I have taken a mother from my children …’), McAuley replied: ‘I can only say that I thought Howell was referring to his affair with Hazel Buchanan and [how] this affair had led to his wife, their children’s mother, committing suicide. I just couldn’t believe that, after all that had happened, Colin Howell was still pursuing Hazel Buchanan. I never mentioned the content of the letter to Hazel Buchanan. I have thought over this matter a lot since Colin Howell’s arrest, and can say I honestly believed that Colin and Hazel discontinued their relationship after the deaths of Lesley and Trevor.’ Sometime after the deaths, McAuley met the dentist by chance in Portstewart and he took the opportunity to challenge him about the affair, telling him: ‘You overstepped the mark. Hazel’s a good-looking woman, but she was Trevor’s.’
In the weeks following the funerals, Howell spoke with friends and apologized for what had happened. Some believed he felt genuine remorse about Lesley’s death and the fact that his infidelity might have pushed her to suicide. Others, however, suspected a PR offensive on Howell’s part in a bid to regain some credibility and support. One of them later told police: ‘Everybody was crying and distraught at the funeral. Colin didn’t appear sad at the time. I felt he was putting on an act. I felt he wasn’t sorry she was dead.’ Another, who also spoke to police, recalled having an instinctive feeling that something was amiss: ‘We called with him at the house and he gave me a hug. I had this awful feeling, down the back of my neck. I felt very uncomfortable, it was horrible. Colin was talking about starting a new life, that it was an opportunity for us all to start again. Lesley was just dead and I couldn’t believe he was saying this.’
Howell asked Ruth Middleton and Carolyn Younge, another friend of Lesley’s from her nursing days, to help go through his wife’s belongings. He offered them some of his wife’s jewellery. Ruth accepted a locket and she took some other small items as keepsakes to give to Lesley’s old Belfast housemates, Ann Kempton and Linda Patterson. Ruth recalled that Howell’s mother and two sisters, Pauline and Maud, were in the house at the time. She also remembered clearly how, when she remarked on how awful it was that Trevor had also died, Howell had replied loudly: ‘He took my wife away.’ As she would later comment to police: ‘It was said over his shoulder and was inappropriate. It seemed to be said for the benefit of the rest of the house.’ Howell gave Margaret Topping one of Lesley’s watches, and to Linda Brockbank, another friend, he presented one of his wife’s neck chains. Before the deaths, Linda had known that he and Hazel Buchanan were very much in love, and she would later tell police: ‘I think everyone would have known that at the time. Hazel would have told me that she knew it was wrong, but she had a strong love for Colin.’
Ruth Middleton wasn’t the only one who felt that Howell’s actions and words in the immediate aftermath of the deaths were inappropriate and at times bizarre. Chris Clarke was angered and disconcerted when his brother-in-law offered to give him the Adrian Snell tape which Lesley had supposedly been listening to as she waited to die. Howell was insistent that Chris should have the tape as a memento of his sister. But Chris, who did not share his sister’s religious convictions, felt it was a rather ghoulish gesture: ‘Firmly and increasingly impolitely, I said “No”. I
didn’t particularly want a religious tape of music, and actually it was something which was fairly horrific for me. I wasn’t going to have fond memories. I thought it was hugely inappropriate and very strange.’
Howell, it seemed, wanted nothing more to do with any reminders of his late wife – not even the shared memories of her former girlfriends. One of them later penned a collection of reminiscences about Lesley which she wanted Lauren to have as a cherished reminder of her mother and how much they all thought of her. The hardback notebook, which was given to Colin, was never passed on to the child, it seems. One of the friends in question speculated: ‘I don’t think he ever gave it to her. I believe he kept it in the safe at his surgery.’
Howell’s infidelity to his late wife had become a hot topic of conversation in Coleraine circles. There was sympathy in some homes, but none in others, where people blamed him for driving his wife first to drink and then to suicide. In the weeks which followed the deaths, it seemed that the grieving widower’s focus was much more firmly fixed upon himself and his efforts to garner support from those around him than on his grief. One couple, who also belonged to Coleraine Baptist Church at the time, were stunned when he called unannounced to see them one night to defend himself and his reputation. The woman of the house recalls: ‘Colin wanted to explain himself. He didn’t come to unburden himself or seek emotional support. He just wanted to set out the facts as he saw them … I detested him because of the affair and what he did to Lesley. She was devastated, an emotional wreck. Before the deaths, I could take him or leave him. I would never have said he was a nice man. Nobody actually said anything at the time, but I actually guessed he had been having an affair. The pastor tried hard to manage the situation and, under the circumstances, he did as best he could. It was extremely difficult to handle.’
Another member of the congregation remembers that Howell did manage to win over some people in their church community: ‘One of the elders felt Colin had been badly treated. Colin would have convinced him of that, and the elder berated John Hansford and accused him of not being fair. Anyway, Colin came back to John Hansford and apologized. I was there that night and Colin was unemotional, cold and detached. He never showed a sign of remorse … He wasn’t a broken man. His father Sam was there. He understood Lesley had been having an affair with Trevor, which was nonsense, and he said the church had been a tower of strength to Colin … The tensions and ill-feelings were all suppressed. Nobody openly talked, or was seen to be judgemental of Colin. But there were a lot of feelings at the time.’
A few days after the funeral, two of Hazel’s friends stayed with her for a night. As they sat up into the early hours, the telephone rang. The two women went out of the room to give Hazel some privacy. Afterwards she told them that it had been Howell but she did not go into any further detail about the conversation.
The women of the Bible study group rallied to offer help to both families, inviting them for lunch and, in Howell’s case, arranging to look after his children. But, as one of Hazel’s friends at the time recalls, Trevor’s widow was finding it very difficult to cope and she felt isolated and shunned in the streets by people she knew. Parents whose children attended the same school as Lisa and Andrew were aware that the young mother clearly found it embarrassing and awkward when any of them tried to engage her in conversation outside the school gates. One of the parents recalls: ‘She would have little eye contact with me. It was as if she didn’t want to speak to you.’ Another mother, one of whose children was in the same class as Lisa at the Irish Society Primary School, remembers getting little response when she tried to commiserate: ‘I remember the first time I tried to talk to her. I went up to say how sorry I was. She just hung her head. I could never get over that. She just snubbed me and everyone else. She didn’t have any social graces … I was friendly with a completely different crowd. I might meet her from time to time down town, but she would never have acknowledged you … She was the talk of the town. People felt sorry for her, but as they say: “The bigger the Bible, the bigger the rogue.” She was walking about as if she was innocence personified, but yet she had been having an affair … Here she was professing to be a great Baptist, walking up and down the Mountsandel Road, hardly able to look you in the face. We all knew she had something about her looks. She was a very vain girl and she knew she had this power over men … Everybody thought she was good-looking.’
Meanwhile there was a crisis brewing within Coleraine Baptist Church. Although the fallout from the deaths was certainly not the sole factor, the first signs of a rift within the congregation started to emerge around this time, as John Hansford came under increasing pressure from the elders, who were not happy with the way he had handled the situation, according to some members.
Howell and Hazel were shamed into leaving. She started to attend Limavady Baptist Church, which was sixteen miles away and where Jim Smyth, who had previously been based in Omagh, was pastor. Howell found a place in The Barn Fellowship, a small independent church near Ballymoney. But even though the controversial couple had gone, repercussions continued to be felt within the congregation they left behind. One member recalls: ‘Relations between Hansford and the elders broke down. Everybody knew there were all sorts of ill-feeling which divided the church … The elders were not helpful, because they had either lost faith in Hansford, or were trying to oust him. They had another agenda going on in the background. Perhaps it was convenient. It was a bit of a mess, because it gave them more leverage and an opportunity to beat him over the head … Hansford went off with stress. There was a meeting of members which was conducted by one of the elders. All sorts of bland terms were being used, like everybody was working hard to resolve issues. They had meeting after meeting in the church. The elders were not happy … with the direction the church was going in. The divisions which happened in the church didn’t begin until the following year or 1993, although the suicides may have been a contributory factor. Hansford resigned and went to Belfast. No one really knew why.’
But this version of events is challenged by Willis McCloskey, a businessman and also an elder at the time, who had been easing himself out of church affairs because his wife was terminally ill. McCloskey explains how he saw things: ‘It was a new situation for the church. We were knocked back, stunned. There wasn’t a question of hiding anything or keeping anything under wraps. People did think there had been a pact between Lesley and Trevor. This situation was new to everyone and it was difficult to handle. At the time, everyone was so sad and grieving. I wouldn’t say the church would, or should, have handled it any differently. There was positive intervention by Pastor Hansford. The church took action when the whole thing surfaced, but the matter wasn’t swept under the carpet. There was a lot of sympathy towards the families. A lot of people were hurting. There was concern for the children, but the church responded sympathetically and responsibly.’
Incredibly, even in the days and weeks which followed the deaths and throughout everything else that was happening, Howell and Hazel were still maintaining contact. It seemed that the fervent appeal Howell had penned in his letter so soon after his wife’s death had not missed its mark. They had sex within six weeks of the murders, when Howell cycled across the town to the Buchanans’ house and climbed in through a bedroom window to join his lover under the duvet. Despite their attempts to keep the continuing liaison secret, to those who lived near by the tell-tale signs were there. Howell could be seen parking his car off the Mountsandel Road and then walking the short distance to the Buchanan house, hoping none of the neighbours would notice. But they did. Alan Topping once wrote to Howell to express his displeasure about his continuing affair with Hazel, and after the deaths he told Howell he hoped he would see fit to move away from Coleraine. Some years later, Howell wrote to him, telling him that God had forgiven him, and that he too had forgiven Topping and his wife.
And towards the end of 1991 – not much more than six months after the tragedy of the apparent double suicide – the
undoubted friendship was there in full view for all to see. The American singer-songwriter Don Francisco, who specializes in contemporary Christian music, was giving a concert at Belfast’s Maysfield Leisure Centre, and sitting in the audience, four or five seats apart on the ground floor, were Howell and Hazel. They shared an interest in guitar music, but on this particular night they were only interested in each other. Observers sitting in the balcony spotted the lovers passing and exchanging notes on pieces of paper. Again, Howell denied there had been any contact, and later, when she was questioned back in Coleraine, an angry Hazel had insisted: ‘It wasn’t paper. It was sweets.’
Yet, in the months after the deaths, the controversial couple continued to put on a good show of grief and general devastation for their respective families and social circle. Friends who called at Howell’s house for Sunday lunch a few months after the deaths found him in a distraught state. He detailed how Lesley had killed herself, relating how he had been in bed but hadn’t heard her getting up. How he had assumed she didn’t want to waken him and, rather than cause any noise by starting the engine of the Renault Savanna, she had pushed the car out of the garage and on to the road. One of the women who was there that day remembers: ‘His eyes were watery and we felt really sorry for him. He hugged me and said: “What am I going to do?” ’
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