Let This Be Our Secret

by Deric Henderson

  Howell then spoke about Lesley’s overdose in October 1990 and claimed the marriage was subsequently marred by frequent displays of anger and sometimes physical violence by his wife, who often referred back to the attempted suicide. He confirmed that Lesley and Trevor Buchanan had stayed in touch since the revelation of the affair: ‘She seemed to be in regular contact with Trevor and on an occasion I know Trevor rang our home.’ It became obvious, Howell continued, that Trevor also shared Lesley’s mistrust that the affair would start again. Howell described his wife’s response to her father’s death as being of disproportionate magnitude and claimed that her attitude to the stability of the marriage changed for the worse after the bereavement. She suggested separating and on one occasion said that he would only be happy if she and Trevor cleared off to leave him and Hazel with the children.

  Next Howell gave his detailed version of the events of the night of the deaths. He claimed that on the Saturday evening Lesley had returned home at 7.50 p.m. with a three-litre case of red wine and had begun to drink. For the previous two weeks, he said, she had been drinking excessively and taking tablets. He left the house for ten minutes and when he got back at 10 p.m. he said she was finishing off a telephone conversation. When he asked her, she denied that Trevor had been on the line. She became irritable and made accusations towards him about his affair with Hazel. Now in her pyjamas, she told her husband he couldn’t realize the depth of pain he had caused her and Trevor. He also got dressed for bed but stayed up to watch TV. However, the atmosphere in the room, he said, was uncomfortable and Lesley told him to go to bed. Later, he said, he heard Trevor in the house.

  Howell’s account of Trevor’s alleged visit to their home on the night of the murders was nothing if not convincing: ‘I assumed he had entered by the rear door, as the front door bell hadn’t rung. I went to the family room and saw Trevor and Lesley standing there. When he saw me, he referred directly to my relationship with Hazel in strong language. At the same time, he stepped towards me as if to grab me, but I grabbed hold of him and restrained him. He immediately responded by regretting what he had just said and offered no more resistance … Lesley, in equally strong language, rebuked [sic] his apology to me and abruptly made me aware they wanted to talk alone and I left the room. He was gone in less than ten minutes and when I entered the room afterwards, Lesley was lying on the settee in the same room.’

  It was now about 11.40 p.m., according to Howell. He tried to reconcile with Lesley but she wanted to be left alone. She seemed drowsy and calm and he went back to bed at about ten minutes past midnight. He awoke at 8.20 a.m. and assumed his wife was still asleep on the settee. He saw that the garage door was open and his Renault was gone. He then entered the kitchen and found a few pages of a notepad normally kept beside the telephone, with Lesley’s handwriting. It was difficult to read. This was the alleged ‘suicide note’. Howell explained to the court: ‘I read the note several times to understand that there was an implication of suicide stated. My immediate thoughts went to the missing Temazepam tablets and my first action was to contact the police to enquire if she had been in an accident, being aware of the amount of alcohol and tablets taken the previous night.’

  Howell then identified for the hearing Lesley’s handwriting on a calendar which was kept by the kitchen phone. On it she had recorded her father’s death on Tuesday, 7 May – which was of course the actual date Harry Clarke had died. But she had noted his death again in an entry for Thursday, 9 May. On Friday, 10 May, she recorded her father’s funeral, but had written the wrong time –1 p.m., rather than 11 a.m. Her confusion seemed to suggest that she was a woman in the throes of disintegration, who had lost track of herself.

  Hazel was shaky and nowhere near as self-assured and confident as her lover as Mr Hastings listened to her evidence. She managed nonetheless to confirm the main facts of her statement. After giving a short account of how she and Trevor had first met and what their marriage had been like, she went on to describe the impact her affair with Howell had on her husband: ‘Trevor during this time was made aware of the affair, and found it most difficult to reconcile with. He was generally unable to accept what had happened and could not genuinely forgive me or Colin for both of our infidelity.’

  Hazel claimed that her husband did not respond favourably to the counselling with Pastor Hansford. Life in the house became very difficult, with many arguments, some of much greater intensity than others: ‘Trevor, up until the end, could not come to terms with what had happened in our marriage. Trevor always feared any of his friends at work would get to hear of the affair. He didn’t want anyone at the station to know of it, including his supervisors. It was always a big issue with him to keep the affair a secret … Some weeks before the end, Trevor was meeting Lesley to discuss the problem. After Lesley’s father died, our marriage situation got worse generally.’

  Hazel then recounted in her statement how she had spent the final hours with her husband. They spent a few hours in Lisburn on the afternoon of Saturday, 18 May, but had returned home at around 5 p.m., much earlier than had been planned because of the general unpleasantness. Sometime after 9.15 p.m. she had made supper and watched TV in the same room as Trevor. With the exception of a few sharp outbursts of annoyance with each other, she said they were uncommunicative. She had gone to bed at 10.15 p.m., but Trevor had stayed up, she claimed.

  The next part of Hazel’s testimony to the court must have been the most difficult to deliver, because she knew that it was a tissue of lies: the story that Howell had concocted to convince everyone that the deaths had been the result of suicide. But she managed to continue: ‘I fell asleep and sometime later heard voices in the house. I knew it was Trevor’s voice and I recognized the other as being that of Lesley Howell. I don’t recall what they were saying, and both were talking at a normal level. I can’t be sure of the time, but it was certainly the early hours of the morning, maybe 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. I only heard them briefly. I didn’t intervene, as I did not want to confront Lesley, as we just hadn’t talked of late.’

  Hazel then recounted how she had fallen asleep and had woken up some one and a half hours later, getting up at 5 a.m. Trevor was not in bed. She had looked outside and saw the family car parked at the front of the house. Trevor normally kept it in the garage. She said she couldn’t settle. She tidied the house and didn’t want to telephone anyone to alarm them, especially the police. Jim Flanagan called after 9 a.m. to enquire if Trevor was at home and she told him he had been away part of the night. At lunchtime, she was informed that the bodies of her husband and Lesley Howell had been found in Castlerock.

  The court then heard from Pastor Hansford and David Green, then a serving police officer as well as a member of the Baptist Church in Coleraine, who had been accompanying Jim Flanagan when they had found the bodies, and Una Fitzpatrick, a police scenes-of-crime officer attached to the CID in Coleraine. There were statements as well from Dr Hazel Siberry, the local GP who had formally pronounced Trevor and Lesley dead, and Inspector Hutchinson, whose report for his sub-divisional commander concluded with the statement: ‘It is believed the deaths were brought about as the result of an affair by the spouses of the victims, initially over the period of March–October 1990 and indeed afterwards, even up until the time of the suicide incident. Neither of the suicide victims, despite reconciliation attempts by the church being made principally by Reverend Hansford, could come to terms with their spouse’s infidelity. Lesley Howell had made previous suicide attempts. This was most likely the motivating factor in both of them taking their lives.’

  The inquest verdict recorded that both Lesley and Trevor died of poisoning by carbon monoxide fumes. In the case of Lesley, the court’s findings read: ‘The deceased was emotionally upset by difficulties which had arisen in her marriage and by the recent death of her father. She was found dead in the back of her car at 6 Cliff Terrace, Castlerock, which had a hosepipe from the exhaust into the car. Another person was dead in the front seat of the car.�
� The wording of the verdict for Trevor’s case was almost identical: ‘The deceased was emotionally upset by difficulties that had arisen in his marriage and he was found dead in the front seat of a car in a garage at 6 Cliff Terrace, Castlerock, which had a hosepipe from the exhaust into the car. There was another person dead in the rear of the car.’

  The coroner signed off the verdict with his signature, R. R. Hastings, dated Thursday, 14 May 1992. This effectively brought closure of the investigative process into what appeared to have been a terrible tragedy. For Colin Howell and Hazel Buchanan, however, it meant that they had successfully negotiated another giant hurdle in their bid to get away with murder. Or so they thought.

  After the arrests of Howell and Hazel in relation to the murders in 2009, Mr Hastings, who retired as a coroner in 1997, spoke for the first time about the inquest tribunal and the police investigation at the time. He remembered querying the pathologist’s report in relation to the traces of drugs which had been identified. But he insisted all the procedures had been correctly followed and that he did not believe that the integrity of the police investigation or of his judgement at the time could have been called into question. He was adamant that all possible avenues had been explored, and that the police could not have done any more.

  At his home in Portrush, Mr Hastings said that he had clearly believed the evidence of Hazel and Howell at the time, but now accepted that he had been duped. He recalled of Hazel: ‘She was a pleasant sort of woman, but obviously she had to be devious as well, because she certainly knew what had happened, and went with the cover-up.’ Of Colin Howell, he said: ‘He wasn’t a nice man. He was just a chancy fellow, a smart arse. That is the impression I got of him.’ The couple’s evidence at the inquest had been convincing, he admitted: ‘I had no hesitation in believing them, but we didn’t get the full story then. I suppose if you want to kill someone and you don’t want to be caught, then, as murderers go, they had to be smart murderers. When they were charged, I was shocked. I’ve known quite a few murderers in my day … but this was just cold-blooded. It was nasty. It was shocking.’

  The former coroner was very clear about one more issue: that the Baptist Church wanted a lid kept on the whole affair. He said he had a strong memory and was ‘quite confident’ that they wanted it kept quiet.

  David Green has however admitted that he always had his suspicions about the circumstances of the deaths. A church elder and detective who was stationed in another police division at the time, Green did not disclose his doubts at the inquest in May 1992. It was not until he made a statement to police just before Christmas 2009 – almost a year after Howell and Hazel were arrested – that it emerged just how deep his misgivings had been.

  Green told the first hearing that he had checked the bodies for signs of life before alerting police. He had the impression that Lesley and Trevor, whom he knew, had been dead for some time. Privately the detective was far from convinced by Howell’s version of what actually happened that night but, as he later insisted, his first statement was factually correct. His second, however, was considerably more detailed, and gave some insight into why he had decided to stand back from the original police investigation.

  Green has twice refused requests for an interview with the author of this book, but this is what he told police in 2009: ‘I have always been suspicious of the circumstances of this case, maybe because of my background as an investigator, but I’m not aware of anybody else having similar suspicions. Obviously I wanted to help the investigation, but because I was stationed in a different police division, I didn’t want to stand on anyone’s toes or make a nuisance of myself. But I was really very concerned that something bad had happened. In my own mind, I did not accept what happened at face value.’

  Ex-colleagues have described Green, who opened an art gallery in Coleraine after retiring from the force, as a first-class officer who was thorough in his work. He knew the Howell and Buchanan couples and had been aware of their marital difficulties. Green recalled that the feeling within the church at the time was one of sadness – sadness for the families and the children left behind. He said he spoke with the pastor in the aftermath: ‘After the deaths I had discussions with Pastor Hansford about the whole scenario and that I was concerned that something bad had happened.’

  Eight days after the bodies were discovered, the church elders held a meeting. It appears that the letter which Howell had written to Hazel and handed over for delivery to Derek McAuley was discussed, and it is clear that Hansford and Green were not the only members who had their suspicions that something was amiss. Alan Topping had doubts as well.

  In his 2009 statement, Green said that he had expressed his concerns to the 1991 investigators on a number of occasions, hoping and assuming their inquiry would be robust and thorough. He kept rough personal jottings on his theories and thoughts, as well as notes about possible inconsistencies, but he realized that he had to step back: ‘After a period I tried to sort of keep a loose hold of the whole thing, but because I wasn’t the investigator or part of the investigation team, it was all I could do.’ But his doubts lingered and kept niggling at him.

  He held on to a copy of an article which appeared in the Police Review magazine of August 1993 entitled ‘Making Murder Look Like Suicide’. The article focused on the case of a heavily pregnant woman, Mrs Paula Gilfoyle, who was found dead in Merseyside in June 1992, hanging from a roof beam in the garage of her home in the Wirral. The deceased had left a lengthy note telling her husband Eddie that he was not the father of the child she was bearing, and that she could no longer live with the lie. Even though her neighbours and friends said they could not believe that such a lively, happy and popular woman, who was looking forward to having her first child, could have taken such drastic action, Birkenhead detectives had considered it an open-and-shut case of suicide. That was until they discovered that Mr Gilfoyle, a theatre technician at a private hospital, had told his wife he was attending a course on the causes and effects of suicide. To help him with the project, he asked her to write suicide notes. He even took her to the garage to show how a suicidal person would put up a noose. It turned out to be part of a well-rehearsed plot.

  Gilfoyle had been cheating on his wife with a female work colleague who ended the relationship after Mrs Gilfoyle found out and warned her to stay away from her husband. An embittered Gilfoyle had murdered his wife and then made it look like a suicide. He had used one of his wife’s handwritten letters which suggested he was not the child’s father to try and convince the police the death was as a result of her own actions. The inquiry team consulted a psychologist who specialized in psycholinguistics – which applies psychology to the use of language. He was able to confirm that the note was a fake. Police reconstructions also showed that Mrs Gilfoyle, who was 5 ft 8 in. [1.73 metres] tall and eight months pregnant, could not possibly have reached the 10 ft 2 in. [3.1 metres] beam to secure the rope. In addition to this, the position of her feet on a small set of stepladders was also inconsistent with her having carried out the ‘suicide’.

  So, Green wondered, was the so-called ‘suicide note’ which turned up in Howell’s house on the day Lesley’s body was found authentic? Could it have fitted in with the timing of her overdose, months previously? Had Howell been conditioning his wife with drugs? That might explain her apparently poor memory which Green said he once discussed with his wife. He noted how quickly Howell had Lesley’s effects cleared from the house. The sudden death of Harry Clarke just days earlier concerned him as well. Was a post-mortem examination carried out, he wondered.

  When the bodies had been found, why, Green asked himself, was the rear light of the vehicle on and one of the wing mirrors pushed back? Did the police check Howell’s financial affairs? Green said he remembered that Lesley had informed her husband he was not getting any of the money which had been left to her by her father. Was the dentist in debt? Howell had an injury on his forehead – how did he sustain it? Why had the dentist not heard his wife l
eaving their home and how could she have done so, if she had been drugged up? He noted that Lesley had told Margaret Topping that Howell was in charge of the drugs; and she had informed Pastor Hansford that her husband was giving her drugs to help her sleep, so that he could go and see Hazel while Trevor was on night duty.

  There were other questions in Green’s mind. Trevor Buchanan had booked a family holiday. He had invited a police colleague, Leslie Clyde, to join him at church on the day he had died. Surely those were not the actions of a man contemplating suicide? And why was Trevor, a man who was always immaculately dressed both on and off duty, dressed in only jeans and a T-shirt when he was found?

  Green’s 2009 statement concluded: ‘I had very serious doubts about Colin Howell and his possible involvement in something very nasty in relation to Lesley, Trevor, and Lesley’s father. I passed on these concerns, and even my gut feelings, to Detective Inspector Hutchinson and Detective Superintendent Houston. I passed on everything I knew, even though I realized that my thoughts and concerns about this tragic case could be considered bizarre, insensitive and beyond belief, given the apparent tragic circumstances.’

  Hamilton Houston, who appointed Hutchinson to take charge of the 1991 investigation, is adamant that if officers had been aware of the letter which Howell wrote to Hazel and which contained the comment about ‘taking a mother from her children’, then they would have launched a murder investigation. ‘Had this letter been made available in 1991, the police investigation, on behalf of the Coroner, would have become a murder investigation. I have no doubt the letter contained the key which could have unlocked the truth, and most likely the Buchanan and Howell families would have been spared a cruel ordeal.’