Let This Be Our Secret

by Deric Henderson

  Ramsey: ‘You told Dr Harbinson … that … you understood forensic medicine and you regarded the manner in which you killed Lesley and Trevor as clever, would that be right?’

  Howell: ‘I don’t remember saying that … I don’t remember using the word “clever”. Dr Harbinson made some errors which I notified my brief, my solicitor, about and she made several errors in the statement which I objected to and she wasn’t willing to change anything, so I don’t know if that is one of the – if I used that word or not.’

  Ramsey: ‘Dr Harbinson’s report was put before his Lordship at your tariff hearing, isn’t that right, relied upon and put before the court, isn’t that correct?’

  Howell: ‘Yes.’

  Ramsey: ‘Yes?’

  Howell: ‘Then I will have to accept I used that word, I don’t remember using it.’

  Ramsey: ‘So – in this confession that you made in 2009 – were you not a victim of circumstances, the way things were going for you financially, your marriage, everything else, and you found yourself in that situation?’

  Howell: ‘No, that’s not right.’

  Ramsey: ‘Was it a true confession, a real confession?’

  Howell: ‘What do you call a true confession?’

  Ramsey: ‘Well, what do you call a true confession?’

  Howell: ‘I call a true confession when you have made a confession about what you did.’

  Ramsey: ‘Were you properly contrite when you made that confession? … No residual feelings of “how clever I was, how sharp I was to fool the police all those years ago”?’

  Howell: ‘Absolutely not, I never even had a notion of that. I was so ashamed and regretted what I did … That has been inferred obviously by you by picking up a single word like “clever”. Perhaps I used that word, but it wasn’t clever in the mischievous sense of the word “clever”.’

  Ramsey: ‘All right.’

  Mr Ramsey found that even the most determined attempts to pin Howell down on almost anything proved difficult, sometimes simply impossible. The smallest, even the tiniest, inaccuracies of speech, and what he believed to be unfounded assumptions, were challenged. Ramsey’s exasperation with Howell understandably would manifest itself every so often: ‘So therefore, you are going to agree with me [on] things you said to Dr Harbinson that suit you, and if it doesn’t suit you, you will disagree with it, is that the position?’

  Having attempted to make some sense of Howell’s motives for testifying, Ramsey moved on to try to establish something of his essential character. His intention was no doubt to demonstrate to the jury the extent to which, at the time of the murders, the accused had been in thrall to an extremely domineering and even dangerous Howell.

  Mr Ramsey: ‘So, are you controlling?’

  Howell replied: ‘I don’t believe I am. I believe I have been in some situations.’ He was asked to expand. And off he went on another lengthy exposition: ‘There is legitimate control. Judge Hart is in control of this court … If a defendant goes into the box, he can become manipulative, deceptive and therefore he has to be controlled, which means he is sentenced and put into prison, found guilty, and that is legitimate control. If I am a father, then I have legitimate control of my children and I have the right to tell them what time to come in at night. If they are under sixteen, I have the right. If they want a tattoo up their back, I have the right to say you can’t do that, and so on. So there is control that is legitimate.

  ‘In church situations, there are pastors and elders. In the same way, if someone breaks the rules … then there has to be a certain amount of control. That is a good thing, otherwise society would break down and situations would break down. And no matter whether it is a church organization or a club, there has to be a certain amount of control, because there are rules. But there can also be deviousness and manipulation.

  ‘Then there is illegitimate control. When you take control of a person or a situation where you don’t have the right to do that, or if you do have the right, and you then abuse how you use that control, then that is dominance and abusive control. So I just wanted to clarify that so that when we do talk about control, I recognize and acknowledge and accept that there is legitimate control.’

  Howell’s attention to detail, his insistence on following every tangent and indulging in lengthy explanations, was often taxing and extremely trying for all those who listened. This was compounded by the fact that the courtroom was without any natural light. Although there was always a plentiful supply of tap water available, the atmosphere was dry and dehydrating, and the presence of so many people in such a confined space meant that the air was stale and stifling. Even the judge found it difficult. Mid-afternoon on day two of Howell’s testimony, when he was being cross-examined about his planning of the murders, Mr Justice Hart suggested a brief adjournment: ‘I don’t want to interrupt Mr Ramsey, but it’s getting extraordinarily warm in here. So I think we’ll break for ten minutes.’

  When the proceedings resumed, Ramsey questioned Howell on his attitude to women. Was he something of a ladies’ man? Did he – as psychiatrist Dr Helen Harbinson claimed – think of himself as, in his own words, ‘a small god who needed to be worshipped by women’?

  Howell’s response was characteristically long-winded and convoluted: ‘As with most beautiful females or handsome men – however you want to label people – there is often a great insecurity and low self-esteem. So whenever someone, an attractive female, shows [you] attention, it serves that neediness. So yes … my success … perhaps … my status as a dentist and therefore my wealth in proportion to the community … made me attractive to some females and I got a positive response. Am I a ladies’ man? Well, let other people hold that opinion. I never had that opinion about myself.’

  As for his comments to Dr Harbinson, Howell claimed – not for the first time – that he had been misunderstood: ‘I said I believe that in the fantasy world of sex … when men fantasize about a woman, it doesn’t matter if you are short, fat, ugly and bald. But you will believe that you are, and I used the words, “like a god”. You have a self-belief … part of the fantasy world. So that was the context of the conversation. But I never said I am like a small god.’

  The cross-examination moved on to Howell’s relationship with Hazel. What was she like? Howell quickly dismissed Mr Ramsey’s suggestion that his client was a shy, somewhat naive and softly spoken woman. Howell had clearly anticipated the question: his answer seemed well rehearsed: ‘I would describe Hazel as an advertisement for an orphanage in India. You see these pictures of a little child with a big teardrop and dark-brown eyes, and you just want to get your wallet out and give money to it, and help it. But I have been to India twice, and I have discovered that those adverts often have two businessmen behind them, collecting money off wealthy people and putting it into their back pockets.’

  Trying to shrug off the rather chilling effect of this deeply cynical description of Stewart, with its subtext hinting that materialism was her driving force, Ramsey swiftly moved on to quote some of Howell’s words during a police interview at the time of his arrest: ‘This is what you said at the time, Mr Howell: “Well, I know that she was finding it hard to take in information, IQ-wise. She was very simplistic, she wouldn’t be academic and that is what I was getting at when I said … if you explain everything, she’ll not understand … So yeah … she probably was easy to control if I wanted to control her, and vulnerable to somebody, someone like me. OK.” … Is that your view of her, that she was someone who was fairly simplistic and was easy to control if you wanted to control her, and vulnerable?’

  Howell hit back quickly: ‘You see, some of us say: “Oh, wee Johnny is easily led by his friends … And that is why he got the tattoo on his arm.” But in fact, wee Johnny is a very determined, manipulative child who disobeys his parents. So we have this wrong perception of people who are easily led. People who have the disguise and guile to appear innocent … A word [sic] that Hazel used about herself is “I’m ju
st soft” … and I believe that is part of the huge deception [sic] that I was under about Hazel.’

  In spite of all that Ramsey tried to put forward in terms of Hazel’s personality being passive, easily intimidated and submissive, Howell was insistent that she had made her own choices and had to take responsibility for them. Speaking about their relationship in the months after the murders, he recalled: ‘I would phone her because I couldn’t take the pressure of missing her so much. We were so dependent on each other because of our dark secret and it was hard to break that tie. Then sometimes a week would pass and I wouldn’t contact Hazel, and she would phone me in soft silk tones that she would be missing me.’

  According to Howell, Stewart had been the one to seduce him at the beginning of the affair. He described the power she had over him in dramatic terms. ‘I walked into the spider’s web. Now, flies go into a spider’s web because they might think there is some food for them there. So I willingly went after the bait and we [got] caught together in a trap and it proved to be so because of the end result.’

  Everything Howell said about his former lover reinforced his claim that her true personality was very far from the naive innocent she presented herself as. Their relationship was far more one of equals than the defence was trying to imply. ‘Control is a very complex thing,’ he declared at one point during the cross-examination. ‘So if I was controlling in one area, Hazel was controlling in another area. It was a dance between control and manipulation when two people are in a relationship like that.’ Howell picked up this particular metaphor again later in his testimony, in words which resonated far beyond the courtroom: ‘And so Hazel and I were waltzing together in time … All of the side-stepping was done together. I may have been the lead partner in the waltz, but Hazel was dancing in cooperation with that dance. I wasn’t dragging her around that floor, making her put her foot to the left or right. She was doing it in perfect harmony, on her own and willingly. She has lots of issues of control, manipulation and deception, but to try and highlight me as the controlling one and Hazel as the soft, manipulative one – that is not true.’

  Howell’s testimony in court was remarkable in many ways, not least his clever and very persuasive use of language. He took every opportunity to hammer home to the jury his conviction that Hazel had been a willing accomplice in the planning – and the execution – of the plot to murder their spouses. He frequently used the same key expressions ‘joint venture’ or ‘joint enterprise’, which encapsulated one of the main arguments of the prosecution’s case: that the murders had been a mutually agreed undertaking between him and Hazel: ‘If you look at the joint venture of the abortion. Hazel wanted it and I facilitated it. If you look at the murders – I wanted it and Hazel facilitated it. So we were both waltzing in time. Nobody was dragging anybody in the wrong direction … When it came to killing two people the decision to have an abortion with Hazel was extremely significant. That joint cooperation was so significant to how the two of us could do the same together.’

  He also talked of the abortion and then the murders in terms of a contract between himself and his former lover: ‘It [The abortion] was like a blood contract that Hazel and I had secretly signed between each other, which is [was] to murder an unborn baby … It meant then when it came to me coming to Hazel with my idea to have a joint venture to kill Trevor and Lesley, that we had already – six months earlier, whatever it was – signed a contract in blood that it is OK to kill a human … It is [was] a very powerful bond that we had, one that we were not in control of …’

  Media attention to the trial in Ireland was massive, and the story was picked up with interest in mainland Britain too – although in a more restrained way. The public’s fascination grew exponentially as Howell’s detailed and increasingly lurid revelations about his sex life with his former lover were brought under the spotlight.

  Each morning men and women queued in the waiting area of the courthouse for two hours and sometimes longer in the hope of getting a seat. There were just nineteen places available in the public galleries on either side of the dock. Three extra chairs were brought in at one stage but this was not nearly enough to accommodate those who waited outside, yearning to be admitted. The courtroom was big enough for the hearing but woefully inadequate for such a sensational and showpiece trial, which attracted an unprecedented level of public interest. On the rare days when places were available, only a handful of those waiting were admitted. But the others stayed anyway, in the hope of catching sight of Stewart arriving with her family each morning, and they would then while away the time until the afternoon, when they could see her leaving the building again.

  A woman who made the journey from her home in the countryside outside Derry was philosophical about not getting a seat: ‘It doesn’t really bother me. It’s the atmosphere. I just want to take in the atmosphere.’ The Northern Ireland Court Service took calls daily from hopefuls enquiring about the availability of seats. One woman asked if staff could find room for thirty to forty of her friends, all women; she explained that she was hoping to organize a special bus trip from Belfast for the day.

  Howell spared the court no detail as he elaborated on the nature of his sex life with Hazel. He revealed how sometimes, particularly in the run-up to the Coroner’s Court inquest in 1992, they would pretend that they never had sex, even when they did: ‘This myth began to develop and that became a pattern from then on. The other form of denial that both of us had is that sex is only full penetration and sex isn’t if you fiddle around to only about an inch of your penis into the vagina. Let’s be crude. So there is a whole thing about what is sex. In the last few days I have had it clarified that legally sex doesn’t matter if it is an inch, or eight inches, or what it is. It is sex. So, if you asked me, did I have sex with Hazel for four years, I would have said no. But now that I know what it means legally, I will now be saying that I had sex with Hazel on a regular basis during these four years. But … the climax was always followed up by extreme guilt …’

  Stewart, her husband, her two children and her wider family members must have squirmed as he went on to describe in excruciating detail how he would drug her before intercourse, at his clinic and once at her house, where he used to climb in through a back window. He attempted to explain the rationale behind their increasingly bizarre behaviour: ‘We got to the point where it was all foreplay and no sex because penetrative sex was a no-no by this stage for both of us, although the sexual relationship was still going, fully sexual without full penetration. However, it got to the stage where whenever Hazel got really turned on, she’d say to me … “Well, if you’re going to turn me on, you have to have sex, you know. Why are you getting me turned on if you won’t have full sex?” So she got angry and insisted that I would have full sex, but I wasn’t having full sex. So I brought home the liquid sedation, which was the experiment … So the experiment was: right, I have brought home the liquid sedation, sedated her to give her the same relaxed and uninhibited effect that she would have with the laughing gas, so that then I would be able to give her the full sex and she might not feel guilty. So, that was the experiment.’

  Howell was calm and measured throughout his four-day marathon appearance in the witness box. He did not have to be reminded to keep his voice up. Every now and again he took a sip of water. At times he looked and sounded like someone delivering a lecture: clinical, detached and, he claimed, factual. In all the horrors that he revealed, one of the most chilling features of his ‘performance’ was the way in which he repeatedly referred to the murders as ‘the procedures’. When he detailed how he had conceived his deadly plan, it was as if he was back at his desk at the clinic, drafting letters to his client patients, proposing various options, costs and timescales – only this time, it was him and Hazel, sitting in Trevor’s white Toyota Corolla, down by a nature reserve beside the River Bann, as he outlined his grotesque plot. And when he described to the court how he had pushed the hosepipe channelling the deadly carbon monoxide fu
mes under Lesley’s blanket while she slept, it was for all the world as if he was administering some therapeutic dental treatment to one of his trusting patients.

  Only once during the four days did Howell grow agitated and betray any real degree of emotion. This was when, without any advance warning to the judge or the jury, Mr Ramsey produced some family photographs of Lesley which had been taken in the weeks before she was murdered. In one photograph she was holding Lauren, who was just four years old and wearing glasses because she was having trouble with her eyesight. It was December 1990. Another picture was of her and Howell, dressed up for a night out in February 1991, when Lesley was desperately trying to lose weight and was having beauty treatments in a final bid to win back his affection and save the marriage. Then there were two more – taken in April of 1991 – in a garden bathed in spring sunshine with bunches of daffodils in full bloom. The young mother was wearing denim jeans and a floral blouse, crouching down, with little Daniel in his babygro on her knee and Matthew standing at her side. Friends had handed these photos over to the police – four images of a young woman radiating happiness and contentment. But behind the smiles, this was someone struggling with her emotions and a man who had all but abandoned any lingering hopes of reconciliation.

  Glancing at the pictures, Howell shifted in his seat, removed his spectacles and glared at his inquisitor. He declared that one of the reasons he pleaded guilty was to keep such details confidential and not add to his daughter Lauren’s plight. ‘For her to see this exposed now because there’s now a trial by the co-accused, is a prolonging and an extenuation [sic] of her pain … I believe you have brought this out in terms of discrediting my character. I know my character, but I did not want this to happen. I wanted that [it] to remain private and not to go to trial … not become public to the Press, to the book writers and the storytellers in the future. Unfortunately that [it] has been brought into the light and I don’t like it for the sake of my children, who now have to share in that humiliation.’