Let This Be Our Secret

by Deric Henderson

  There was never any doubt in the minds of the police investigation team as to his culpability, not even when he pleaded ‘Not Guilty’ when sent for trial the following year. The plea did not, however, represent a change of mind on Howell’s part. The lengthy delay in publicly admitting what he had done was due to a legal process which required his state of mind to be investigated. Could the accused have been suffering from some form of diminished responsibility when he gassed his wife and Trevor Buchanan?

  After he was charged, Colin Howell was remanded in custody to Maghaberry Prison, where he would stay for almost two years before the completion of the legal process which would enable his sentence to be determined. Although Howell would become a model prisoner, settling relatively well into his new surroundings, there was a time, shortly after he was first incarcerated, when life in jail became unbearable for him. He had to undergo a series of psychiatric examinations, first to establish if he had suffered some sort of breakdown following his arrest, and then later to determine what his mental state was like at the time he murdered.

  Howell was in turmoil and in deep depression in the months after he was charged, when Kyle left him without any farewells and returned to the United States with their five children, with the intention of beginning divorce proceedings. He had more or less anticipated that she would leave the country but the manner of her departure without warning left him devastated.

  He was found one day sitting in a chair in his cell, rocking backwards and forwards and sighing from time to time, with his head in his hands. Later, in the prison hospital, he tried to push his head under the handle of an oxygen trolley. He had lost weight and looked unkempt. Medical staff worried about his deteriorating mental state and general well-being. He was considered a suicide risk and was admitted for an extended period to the prison’s healthcare unit for close observation and psychiatric assessment. Howell was claiming he had been bullied and threatened, and that he was being watched and followed. He had difficulty sleeping and became acutely agitated, expressing thoughts of a dramatic and nihilistic nature, and claiming that he heard intrusive voices ‘telling him to kill, cook and eat his family members, and then himself’.

  The series of psychiatric examinations as part of his defence were to be conducted by Professor Nigel Eastman and Dr Philip Joseph, both from London, as well as by Dr Helen Harbinson from Bangor, County Down; each consultant would carry out their own independent assessment. Eminent and highly respected psychiatrist Dr Harbinson met with the prisoner six times. She first assessed him in May 2009, when he was still in the throes of his mental breakdown. Howell was not considered to be in a fit state to face further questioning by the police, who wanted to enquire in greater detail into allegations of inappropriate behaviour with some of his female patients.

  Dr Harbinson, who noted that the prisoner had no previous psychiatric history, found him to be tense and perplexed throughout their exchange. His speech was slow and very hesitant, and it was difficult to follow his train of thought. He had lost his appetite and, accordingly, a lot of weight. Before he was admitted to jail, medical records showed that he had weighed eighty-five kilos but, the consultant noted, the clothes he wore now looked loose. He had difficulty sleeping, and during the day felt tired and tormented. He had vivid dreams of destruction, hell and demons.

  In her report on this first session, Dr Harbinson recorded Howell’s repeated claims that everything had a meaning, and that the meaning in each case related to the matter of his destruction. Television programmes referred to him. For example, in soap operas, there was always a character who tried to trivialize how he had treated others, until he was suddenly confronted with the reality of his life. Such men had no friends and no family support and Howell believed there was a message for him in this. He then went on to insist: ‘My whole life has been on television,’ describing a film called The Truman Show starring Jim Carrey. The chief character in this film, he explained, had been on television since birth, but did not discover this fact until he was in his mid-forties. Dr Harbinson recorded: ‘He believes his life is like that and did not realize it until he came into prison. He believes his whole life has been scrutinized since he was born.’ Howell claimed that he was the only one who did not know he himself was on TV.

  He told the consultant that he struggled with denial and reality: ‘At times, I see clearly and can say certain things to certain people. Most of the time, I hide from what’s happening.’ He described his dreams as hellish and himself as ‘forced into resistance’. He now believed he should have taken time and learned how to live with people in his life. When asked who he thought was scrutinizing him, he replied: ‘God sees everything and we all have to give an account to Him some day.’ God’s attitude towards him, he claimed, was one of destruction and that would not change. His future was not good. God was in control and had chosen to destroy him. This annihilation would take the form of some sort of ritualistic event when he would be burned or attacked by warriors from a sect or group, using knives or swords. The ritual, Howell explained, would be the sort which would have been engaged in by the Romans, Spartans or Aztecs.

  Howell was asked if he thought of killing himself. He said he was not in control of that, but that it was not in God’s plan for him, and even if he tried, it would not work. Torment was God’s plan for him and there was a ‘whole system’ geared against him. He said that it was hard to describe this system: it was unreal, he explained, and yet most of the time it was happening. He concluded: ‘It’s as if I’m the focal point of everyone’s future. My destruction is part of that future.’ Everyone in the world thought his destruction would save the world, he said, but he knew it would not. He was intimidated and controlled by others, and that too was part of God’s plan. The fact he had been given medication against his will was part of the plan, he told the doctor. He was on antidepressant medication but, he told Dr Harbinson: ‘No medication will fix this.’

  Howell said he wondered if Satan controlled his mind, or if he could control it himself. He described his mood as more ‘oppressed’ than ‘depressed’. It did not matter, he claimed, what choice he made – the outcome would always be negative. When asked by the psychiatrist to give her an example of what he meant, he told her that he got up early one day and felt he ought to clean the ward bathroom. He stopped cleaning, however, because he had a bad feeling about it. A prisoner, he said, told him that he had disturbed a dragon’s den, and so he decided not to clean any more. He believed the prisoner was right and that it was all connected with his dreams of demons and torments.

  When Dr Harbinson asked Howell if he believed that he deserved to be tormented, he replied: ‘There should be a limiting factor. This punishment may not have a limiting factor.’ What did he deserve to be punished for, she queried. Howell responded darkly: ‘I had a purpose and calling. That would have prevented billions of people from being destroyed.’ He said he was not sure whether he was like Noah, who rescued a small number of people, or Moses, who rescued a whole nation. He was then asked if he deserved to be punished for killing his wife and Trevor Buchanan. Howell replied: ‘I didn’t go back that far.’ He said he believed the system would set him up, but he was not sure if he had been set up already. God was behind the system.

  Howell said he could often hear a voice inside his head, and that at times it was his wife’s voice (he did not say whether it was the voice of Lesley or of Kyle). His concentration was poor. He jumped from one thought to the next. He could not read a newspaper. His memory was poor and he was frequently forgetful. He did not talk to staff or other prisoners. Howell then told Dr Harbinson that he had been spending a lot of time in bed, ‘hiding, but not hiding’, and concluded: ‘You can’t hide from your thoughts.’

  It had been a very strange interview. Dr Harbinson’s report concluded that Howell had ‘depressive, religious, grandiose and persecutory delusions’. But was he really, as the highly experienced psychiatrist suspected at the time, going through some kind of psychotic
episode? Or was it merely a case of the scheming and manipulative Howell at work again, trying to bluff the authorities by preparing the groundwork for a psychiatric defence? The various claims and convictions he had voiced were bizarre in the extreme, almost the stuff of casebook psychosis as sometimes featured in horror films and TV dramas. Was Howell play-acting, trying to create the impression that he was suffering from some form of madness? On one occasion, displaying the classic symptoms of paranoia, he asked staff if he could see Dr Harbinson in a storeroom in the prison hospital, because he feared the area where the visits normally took place was bugged. The psychiatrist refused.

  During Hazel Stewart’s trial, some eighteen months later, Howell admitted that during his early psychiatric assessments he had indeed adopted a strategy in a bid to get a reduced sentence – although he also conceded that he had been in a very fragile mental state at the time. Before he had surrendered himself to the police, he recounted, he had powered up his computer and Googled prison tariffs, to check the length of the sentence he could expect to receive for a double murder. He discovered that if he pleaded guilty to manslaughter because of diminished responsibility, he might get eight to ten years, instead of the thirty he anticipated the court would otherwise impose. It was an option he seriously considered. Kyle was no longer in the country, and he had thought to himself: ‘Who is going to catch me?’ As he told the court: ‘I became seduced into the whole idea [of securing a lighter sentence] because I was mentally sick, so I went through a phase of manipulating and deceiving, knowing that I had something going wrong and I was distressed mentally – but also manipulating and deceiving something in the legal system that I knew would be a huge benefit to me.’

  He had cheated the legal process before, but ultimately he decided that he would deceive no more. There would be no more lies. He was now on a journey of truth: ‘I wanted to be free from all of the delusion that you can fall into, that psychiatrists bring you into. It’s a personal conviction. It’s a system that is used and can be abused.’ And then he would add, as only he could: ‘I have been told not to preach by my [legal] team, but I have to say it. Based on my faith and based on what the Testament said, if you confess your sins to God, Jesus is faithful and just, and will forgive your sins and cleanse you from all of the unrighteousness …’

  When Dr Harbinson examined him again the following month, she found his condition considerably improved – although, she recorded, he continued to be distressed by the loss of his freedom, the consequence of the murders, and the impact it was having on the families involved. Although he was intelligent, Howell told her he had little insight or wisdom. He did however try to rationalize his confession: ‘He thinks that perhaps he confessed because, at some level, he realized the need to come into prison to appreciate fully the consequences of what he has done. At the time of his arrest, many things in his life were out of control, including his finances and his marriage.’

  Unlike other prisoners, Howell told the consultant, he was giving evidence against himself and was finding his decision difficult: ‘I’m struggling with the consequences.’ He was still on suicide watch but, he insisted, that was not necessary because he had no intention of committing suicide, as Dr Harbinson’s notes confirmed: ‘He wants to experience the consequences of his behaviour. Therefore he will not take his life. He said to do so would be like shooting himself in the foot. Had he been going to commit suicide he would have done so, instead of confessing.’ Howell said he now felt less tormented and he believed he had been mentally ill and that there was a spiritual dimension to it. Demons, he believed, could manifest as illness, in the way they did in the Bible – such as epilepsy, deafness and lameness. The mind could also be altered by demons, but helped by medicine, although medicine was not a cure.

  Howell told Dr Harbinson that when he killed his wife and Trevor, he had a choice but he did not feel at the time as if he had. Similarly, while he now had to face charges of indecent assault, he had not, he insisted, wanted to sexually assault any of his victims and he had regretted it afterwards: it had been like an addiction. He had known it was wrong, and so he had to hide it. Since going into prison, he was now saying, he had gained logic. Everyone had areas of weakness, and sex was his Achilles heel. With hindsight, he realized that what he had done was avoidable. He had now lost the compulsion and fully understood the consequences of his actions.

  Howell also told the doctor that he was no longer experiencing any auditory hallucinations. As for his paranoia, he now believed there had been an understandable reason for it. Before he was transferred to the prison hospital, he explained, he had been frightened by a number of Polish prisoners who were playing pool. One of them had been staring at him incessantly and then a number of them slowly manoeuvred their way across the room and blocked one of the CCTV cameras. He felt that it had been rehearsed and that he was at risk. He had heard rumours that he would be harmed, and he believed that had he stayed in the same position he would have been attacked. So he moved. He mentioned it to another prisoner, who told him he was paranoid. At the time he believed he heard a voice telling him to move, but he was no longer troubled by voices.

  Dr Harbinson then asked Howell again about the incident in the ward bathroom, when he thought that by cleaning the place he was disturbing a dragon’s den. Dragons, he told her, were like demons. He believed that the prisoner who told him about the dragon’s den had implied there was witchcraft at work. A number of items had been set out in an orderly way in the bathroom, which he took as an indication of witchcraft. At that stage, his instinct told him it was witchcraft. He now believed that the other prisoner was mentally ill. Howell also confided that he was no longer preoccupied with sacrifice and rituals and the belief that he would be killed in a ritualistic way.

  When the doctor mentioned his ideas about his life appearing on television, he now explained that these had been triggered by his belief that God could see everything. He described how in the Old Testament King David had committed adultery with Bathsheba and then arranged for her husband Uriah to be killed on the battlefield. That had all been done in God’s sight. However, he no longer believed that his whole life had been played out on television.

  Howell repeated that his criminal behaviour was compulsive and that his sexual behaviour had been like an addiction. Death and murder had not bothered him eighteen years ago, he told the doctor. Lesley had three pregnancies terminated before they married; Hazel had one, although he was not sure if he had been responsible for her pregnancy. They were wrong, but he did not see that at the time. He now viewed abortion and suicide differently. He explained that his actions had been carried out in a situation of intense emotional strain: ‘I couldn’t see outside the pressure cooker situation which I had created. I couldn’t see any other way out.’

  As for his confession, some days he thought it had been the right thing to do. On other days, however, he regretted it. And at times he felt selfish because he had distressed so many people. He had thought that it would be important for Lesley’s memory and honour, and for the Buchanan family as well, that he should be truthful. Now, however, he believed he had not thought through his confession or the consequences properly.

  During this interview, Dr Harbinson recorded, the prisoner appeared relaxed and composed. His speech was spontaneous; he was not depressed, deluded or experiencing hallucinations; his concentration and memory were good. He was preoccupied with religious and spiritual matters, but only in a way that would be in keeping with his faith. Commenting further on this aspect of Howell’s mindset, the consultant noted: ‘It can be difficult to distinguish between deeply held religious beliefs and delusions. A delusion is defined as a fixed, false belief, out of keeping with the person’s culture and background. There is no doubt however that Mr Howell’s belief that killing his first wife and Trevor Buchanan was merciful was peculiar to him. Religious themes featured prominently in his delusions in 2009, following his imprisonment. A religious faith can give hope, meaning and pur
pose and can contribute to a sense of mental well-being. I think that in Mr Howell’s case, the church provided an environment where his needs for attention, admiration and control were met …’

  The report for the second session concluded: ‘His presentation is consistent with a personality disorder, principally narcissistic in type. This would predispose him to psychotic episodes. His personality disorder is evidenced by his grandiosity, his need for admiration and his lack of empathy. Disregard for the feelings of others and a sense of entitlement permeate his thinking and behaviour. This grandiosity and need for admiration were particularly evident during his second interview with me where he described himself as “a small god” who needed to be worshipped by women. The aetiology of his personality disorder is not obvious. There is no evidence that he experienced the abuse or neglect found in the case histories of many children who go on to develop personality disorders.’ (During Hazel Stewart’s trial, Howell challenged the ‘small god’ observation, claiming that Dr Harbinson had misunderstood what he said.)

  By the time of Howell’s final interview with Dr Harbinson in April 2010, his anti-psychotic and antidepressant medication had been stopped and he appeared to have fully recovered from the psychosis he had suffered from in the early months of his stay in prison. Although she now considered him fit to plead, Dr Harbinson said there was evidence of deterioration in his mental state which would require further monitoring.

  All three psychiatrists questioned Howell at length over a number of months about his personality, his psychosexual history and his relationships with Lesley, Hazel and Kyle. All three doctors came to more or less the same conclusion: that Colin Howell was bad, but not mad. He exhibited a narcissistic personality disorder, and there might have been evidence of mental disturbance at various points in his life. He was a fantasist who could manipulate, deceive and control; he took chances and was often delusional; one of the reports claimed he was ‘a charming, controlled psychopath’.