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March 9, 2026

Terrifying & True | Castlerock Double Murder (1991): Staged as a Suicide Pact

Terrifying & True | Castlerock Double Murder (1991): Staged as a Suicide Pact
Terrifying & True | Castlerock Double Murder (1991): Staged as a Suicide Pact
Weekly Spooky
Terrifying & True | Castlerock Double Murder (1991): Staged as a Suicide Pact

A locked garage behind a quiet holiday cottage. A car filling with exhaust. And two bodies posed to tell a simple story: a suicide pact between two “betrayed” spouses.

On May 19, 1991, in Castlerock, Northern Ireland, Lesley Howell (31) and Trevor Buchanan (32) are found dead inside a vehicle with a hose running from the exhaust into the car—an apparent double suicide that the community quickly accepts. Lesley is a mother of four. Trevor is a police constable and father. Both are mourned as victims of heartbreak and scandal.

But the truth is darker—and it doesn’t surface for nearly two decades.

Behind the public grief, investigators will later learn, a secret affair and a ruthless plan were allegedly shaping events from the shadows. Colin Howell, a respected dentist and lay preacher, and Hazel Buchanan (later Hazel Stewart) are accused of plotting to remove their spouses and stage the scene to look like a tragic decision. The story moves from a “straightforward” death scene to something far more chilling: sedation, exhaust fumes, meticulous staging, and a lie that holds until January 2009, when Colin Howell finally breaks and confesses—first to church elders, then to police.

The confession reopens everything. Hazel is arrested. In court, the case becomes a battle over what was done, what was admitted, and whether Hazel’s role was coerced or fully complicit. The old garage scene is re-examined with a new question: not why would they do this? but who benefits if everyone believes they did?

Inside this episode
- The discovery in Castlerock and why police initially believed it was a double suicide
- The secret relationship hiding in plain sight inside a tight religious community
- The alleged method: sedatives + exhaust fumes and the “suicide pact” staging
- How the case stayed buried—until a confession detonated it in 2009
- The interrogation dispute: coercion vs. participation
- The courtroom reckoning and the verdict that finally rewrote the official story

This is a true crime nightmare about image, faith, control, and deception—and how a staged scene can trap the truth for years. We’re telling that story tonight.

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🎥 Produced by: Daniel Wilder
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0:02 They find the car in a locked garage, the hose feeding exhaust into the window, and two bodies posed like a final embrace. Castle Rock calls it a suicide pact and moves on. But the story doesn't end in nineteen ninety one because nearly twenty years later, a respected dentist walks into a church meeting and confesses. What you are about to tet you is burved to be based on witness accounts, testimonies and public record. This is terrifying and treat.

0:58 Tonight. We have a case from Northern Ireland where a quiet seaside village woke to a scene that looked like heartbreak and was filed away as tragedy. In the early morning hours of May nineteenth, nineteen ninety one, behind a holiday cottage in castle Rock, a garage door is opened and a car is found sitting in the dim light inside or two bodies Leslie Howell, a young mother, and Trevor Buchanan, a police constable. A length of hose runs from the exhaust pipe toward a cracked window, feeding the cabin with fumes. Two investigators it appears to be a suicide pact. A grim private decision made by two people whose lives had been shaken by betrayal. For nearly two decades, that garage in Castle Rock keeps its secret until in two thousand and nine, Colin Howells steps forward and makes a confession that tears the case wide open. Suddenly, what looked like a tragic double death becomes something far more deliberate, a stage tableau built to mislead investigators and bury the truth in plain sight. We're telling that story tonight. A

2:38 damp dawn broke over the seaside village of Castle Rock in northern Ireland on May nineteenth, nineteen ninety one. The salty breeze carried an acrid smell that morning, the telltale odor of exhaust fumes seeping from a non descript garage behind a quiet holiday cottage. Inside that small outbuilding, a passerby made a horrific discovery. In a parked car, the bodies of two people were locked in a final embrace with death. Thirty one year old Leslie Howell lay sprawled in the back seat, her fingers still clutching photographs of her young children. In the front seat, slumped thirty two year old Trevor Buchanan, a police constable A length of rubber hose snaked from the car's exhaust pipe into a slightly open window, making the scene look at first glance painfully straightforward. It looked like a mutual death pact, a tragic double suicide. The position of the bodies and that hose feeding poisonous gas in the car told a story of despair. Leslie and Trevor were both married, but not to each other. Rumors had quietly circulated about an affair

4:13 between Leslie's husband and Trevor's wife, and now here were the apparent consequences. To the first officers on the scene, the tableau suggested two betrayed spouses who had lost all hope and made a fatal decision together. By all appearances, this was a sorrowful but straightforward case. Two innocent people driven by heartbreak had met in secret to end their pain. In the immediate aftermath, investigators treated the scene as a double suicide because the staging fit a car in a locked exhaust fumes and two bodies positioned to suggest a pact.

5:06 That early conclusion matters because it shaped what was and wasn't questioned at the time. Years later, when the case was revisited after new information surfaced. Detectives re examined the same details through a different lens. Not why would they do this? But who benefits if everyone believes that they did. The community mourned the loss. Leslie Howell was known as a devoted mother of four, and Trevor Buchanan, a steadfast policeman and father. Their funerals were packed with grieving family, friends and fellow church members offering condolences and prayers. Everyone believed they understood what had happened in that fume filled car by the coast. But as the village grieved what they thought was a shared tragedy, a far more sinister truth lay hidden beneath that neat narrative. What the community believed was a suicide pact would later be revealed as something carefully orchestrated, an elaborate lie that held for almost two decades. On the surface, Colin Howell and Hazel Buchanan later Hazel Stuart, looked like two people with everything to lose.

6:39 Colin was a local dentist and lay preacher. Hazel was married to a police constable and active in church life. In public, both families projected stability, faith, and respectability, the kind of image that made a community assume nothing truly dark could be happening behind their smiles, but closed doors helped to project a seemingly wholesome world. In reality, temptation was taking hold. Colin and Hazel's paths crossed frequently at services on Sunday, at prayer meetings, even during their children's weekday swimming lessons. A flirtation sparked and then flared into a full blown secret romance. They stole kisses in dark parking lots after Bible study, and exchanged longing glances across crowded church halls. Every illicit rendezvous was cloaked in lies told to their unsuspecting spouses. To the outside world. Colin remained the attentive husband to Leslie and Hazel the devoted wife to Trevor, but in stolen moments, they only had eyes for each other. It didn't take long for cracks

8:11 to appear in the facade. Leslie Howell began to sense that something was wrong in her marriage. Colin's late nights at the clinic or sudden urgency to assist parishioners seemed increasingly suspicious. One day, Leslie discovered a trace of the affair, a misplaced note, a whisper in the congregation, or perhaps just Colin's guilt manifesting in cold distance. Whatever the trigger, the revelation hit her hard. Leslie confronted her husband, and although Colin brushed off or minimized the infidelity, she was left devastated. The once VIVATIONI his young mother fell into despair.

9:03 Friends later recalled how Leslie, normally outgoing, grew quiet and withdrawn. In those months, she began self medicating her heartbreak with wine and prescription pills. Photographs from that period show her smile had faded. The hurt was plain in her eyes, even if she tried to keep up appearances. Trevor too may have sensed that his wife, Hazel, was growing distant, though he never openly voiced suspicions. As a police officer, Trevor knew how to notice details, but Hazel was careful.

9:45 If he asked about her occasional absences or the late night phone calls she dismissed as wrong numbers, Hazel soothed him with practiced reassurances. Inside, however, her nerves afraid the dual life she led, loving wife and mother by day adulterous lover by night weighed heavily. Each Sunday, Hazel taught Bible stories about honesty and fidelity to the children at church, then spent weekday afternoons sneaking away to Colin's arms. Guilt and fear of exposure loomed over them both. By early nineteen ninety one, the situation was precarious. Leslie's depression had deepened, and talk of the Howl Buchanan affair quietly swirled among a few church gossips. Colin felt cornered his wife's misery threatened to spill their secret into the open. Hazel, likewise, feared losing everything if the truth came out, the respect of her community, even the custody of her children. Divorce was anathema in their devout circle and would mean public disgrace.

11:10 Colin began to contemplate a darker way out. In his mind, an unthinkable idea took shape. If Leslie and Trevor were gone permanently, all of his problems would be solved, the affair could continue unfettered, and their religious reputations could remain intact. All he needed was for his lover to agree to an audacious and deadly plan. According to later accounts, Colin Howell's proposition to Hazel was as cold blooded as it was audacious. They would kill Leslie and Trevor and make it look like a joint suicide. At first, Hazel balked the thought of murdering her husband, of murdering anyone sent her reeling. But Colin was methodical and persuasive. He painted a picture of a life where they could finally be together, free from lies and guilt. Divorce, he argued, would ruin them in their tight knit community, but if their spouses died tragically, they could eventually comfort each other openly without scandal.

12:43 When Hazel hesitated, Colin pressed harder. He hinted at dire consequences if she betrayed him or refused to go along. Isolated by their secret, and under Colin's tightening grip, Hazel finally quiesced. In that moment, their illicit love story warped into a deadly conspiracy. From here on, try to keep two lanes in mind. What can be proven, what was said, what was found, what was admitted, and what's being interpreted. Why someone did it, what someone felt, what someone must have intended. Prosecutors can argue, motive confessions can describe intent, and here we stay honest about the difference. They spent weeks refining the plan in whispered discussions and clandestine notes.

13:43 Colin decided they would strike on a night when both households were quiet and unsuspecting. He obtained a supply of sedatives, intending to dose Leslie and Trevor to ensure they'd be subdued or asleep when the time came. So committed was he to this plan that Colin even conducted a disturbing experiment under the guise of dental work. He sedated Hazel in his clinic chair to test the potency of the drugs. Hazel awoke, groggy and violated. Colin had allegedly assaulted her while she was unconscious, but she said nothing. Whatever the intent, the message to Hazel was clear he had total control and the plan had to proceed. For the murders, Colin chose a method meant to be quiet and hard to detect in the moment, one that relied on exhaust fumes and a sealed space rather than a weapon that would leave a loud, obvious signature. The goal, according to later accounts, was to keep the victims incapacitated and avoid any struggle, then arrange the scene so it read as a tragic decision rather than a crime. Colin selected the location for

15:14 that final tableau with terr. He chose the garage at an empty property owned by Leslie's late father, a secluded spot where a car could be left running without drawing attention. After murdering his wife at the howl Home, Colin would drive Leslie's body, and later Trevor's, to this garage in Castle Rock. There, he and Hazel would position the two victims in a single vehicle. Trevor would be in the driver's seat and Leslie in the back. Colin even planned to tuck those family photographs into Leslie's lifeless hands a point bant touch to reinforce the illusion of a grief stricken mother taking her own life. They would insert the hose from the exhaust into the car window and let the engine run, ensuring the scene looked convincingly like a double suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Every detail was anticipated.

16:25 Hazel and Colin rehearsed their alibis. They would each pretend to discover their spouse missing in the early morning hours feigning confusion and concern. If anyone asked, they would express shock that Leslie and Trevor might have met up. They agreed on how to act grief stricken but not suspicious. Hazel would dutifully play the distraught widow, Colin the heartbroken widower, and so with chilling calmness, the lovers said their murderous plot into motion, waiting for the right night to execute it.

17:07 The night of the plan arrived, moonless and still. Hazel later described an eerie sense of detachment as she went through her evening routine, tucking her children into bed as if it were any ordinary night. Trevor dozed off on the living room sofa, unaware that it would be his last sleep. Miles away in the whole house, Leslie had turned in for the night after checking on her own young children. She had no idea her husband was slipping lethal ingredients into the cup of hot cocoa, which he insisted on making her to help her relax. By one a m both target victims were unconscious or in a heavy star stupor, and Colin Howell was ready to act.

18:06 Colin stood over his sleeping wife in the darkened bedroom, his face lit only by a sliver of street light through the window. Leslie lay on her side, breathing deeply from the sedatives in her system. In one hand, Colin carried the end of a length of hose fitted with the rubber nipple from a baby's bottle. Outside. His car was already running in the driveway, a long coil of hose snaking from the exhaust. Through a window into the bedroom, Colin gently pressed the improvised gas mask over Leslie's mouth and nose. For a few moments, nothing changed. She continued to breathe slowly, a oblivious Then her body gave a jolt as the first toxic fumes hid her lungs. She coughed and stirred, but Colin held the mask firmly in place.

19:16 Leslie's eyes fluttered open in confusion. Half conscious and sensing mortal danger, she tried to pull away, feebly, kicking at the bedcovers. A faint whimper escaped her. In her final moments, she gasped out the name of her eldest child, a plea or a prayer, but there was no saving her. Colin's hand did not relent. After a minute or two of struggle, Leslie Howel fell, still overcome by the exhaust fumes flooding her bloodstream, remained there a moment, watching the life drain from his wife's body. The quiet ticking of the clock resumed its dominance in the room. He finally removed the hose and shut off the car engine. Outside.

20:20 A sickly chemical odor hung in the air as he worked quickly. Now knowing he had limited time before dawn. He wrapped Leslie's lifeless body in a blanket and hoisted her over his shoulder. Colin carried Leslie out to his car. The night was silent except for his labored breaths and the chirp of distant crickets. He placed her body in the trunk and carefully shut it. With Leslie secured, Colin slipped into the driver's seat and drove into the darkness toward Hazel's house. He had to move swiftly and silently.

21:09 Street lights cast intermittent pools of pale gold on the empty road as he covered the few miles to the Buchanan home. Hazel was waiting, her heart pounding in her chest. She had left a back door unlocked and a window slightly ajar for Colin's entry. Her two children were fast asleep upstairs, innocent to the horror about to unfold under their roof. Colin killed his headlights and rolled to a quiet stop in Hazel's driveway. He retrieved the same hose apparatus from his trunk, now reeking of exhaust fumes, and crept toward the house. Hazel met him just inside the back door, her face ghost pale and drawn. Without a word, she led him into the living room, where Trevor lay slumped on the couch, a half empty glass of beer on the side table next to him. Trevor Buchanan was oblivious, snoring lightly still in his day clothes. Colin had left his car idling outside. Now he guided the hose in through the open window behind the couch. In one swift motion,

22:44 he slipped the rubber mask over Trevor's nose and mouth, and signaled Hazel to shut the door. For a moment. She turned away, unable to watch, but the effect was not as quick as with Leslie. The first gush of fumes jolted Trevor awake in confusion and terror. His eyes snapped wide at the sight of a figure looming over him with a hose Trevor's survival instincts kicked in and he thrashed, violently, knocking the mask aside. A desperate struggle exploded in the darkness. Trevor was strong, a trained RUC officer, and for an instant he had the upper hand, grappling Colin's wrist and forcing the mask away. Hazel stifled a scream as the two men wrestled in her living room, knocking over furniture. Colin, fueled by adrenaline and panic, managed to drive a knee hard into Trevor's stomach and wrench free.

23:55 He lunged again, this time managing to clamp the mask back over Trevor's face with all his weight behind it. Hazel, shaking, moved in to help pin down Trevor's flailing arms. It took endless seconds of grim effort, but at last Trevor's fight began to ebb. His thrashing limbs slowed, then went limp. The only sounds now were Hazel's ragged breaths and the low chug of the car outside, pumping in poison. In the aftermath of the fight, the living room was in shambles, an overturned chair, a shattered glass and Trevor Buchanan's body sprawled at an unnatural angle on the couch. Hazel stood in the corner, pressed against the wall with wide vacant eyes.

24:55 She had just assisted in killing her husband, and the shot was sinking in. Colin, ever cold minded, sprang into action once more. He removed the hose and closed up the window, erasing the most obvious evidence of their method. Then he gestured for Hazel to grab Trevor's feet. Together, they heaved his corpse off the sofa and through the back door into the cool night outside. The dawn was still an hour away. They lifted Trevor into the car, propping his lifeless form from behind the wheel. Leslie's blanketed corpse lay in the back seat just as planned. Hazel caught a glimpse of Leslie's pale hand slipping out from under the covering and quickly looked away, swallowing down a rising feeling of nausea. Colin worked fast and efficiently. He arranged Trevor as if he were the driver, and gently opened Leslie's limp hand to curl her fingers around the cherished photographs of her children. With Hazel's help, he inserted the hose one final time through the window and restarted the engine. They stood back as the car's interior once again filled with lethal fumes, enveloping the two bodies in

26:30 an atmosphere of death. Bathed in the dim glow of a single bare bulb, Colin and Hazel surveyed the scene they had created. Leslie Howel and Trevor Buchanan sat motionless inside the vehicle, pallid and inert, looking for all the world like a pair of broken souls who had chosen to die together. The smell of exhaust and death was thick. Hazel was shaking uncontrollably, tears streaming down her face. Colin placed a hand on her shoulder. Stern and steady. It was time to leave. He shut off the engine for the last time and carefully removed the hose, leaving it coiled conspicuously from the tailpipe into the car. As planned, the stage was finally set just before four a m.

27:35 With the eastern sky beginning to brighten, Colin Howell and Hazel buchanans slipped away from the garage. They pulled the door closed on the fume saturated tomb and parted ways into what was left of the night, Colin driving back to his house where his children slept motherless, and Hazel returned to her own home to await mourning with her fatherless children. By the time the sun rose over Castle Rock on May nineteenth, nineteen ninety one, the murderous pair had done everything in their power to ensure that the awaited discovery looked like nothing more than a tragic suicide pact between two devastated spouses. By the next morning, Colin and Hazel's deadly plan appeared to have achieved exactly what they intended. The scene in the garage spoke for itself, and investigators found nothing obviously amiss. When police delivered the grim news, Colin and Hazel played their roles shocked spouses, reluctant confessors to an affair, and grieving survivors of what seemed like a scandal driven tragedy. With that context in place, authorities quickly concluded that Leslie Howell and Trevor Buchanan had

29:08 taken their own lives in anguish. There was no homicide investigation, and the case was closed as a double suicide. The community, though stunned by the revelation of an affair, accepted the sorrowful narrative. At the funeral services held for Trevor and Leslie on the same day, Hazel wept as a bereaved wife, and Colin stood trembling as the grieving husband. Friends and church members consoled them both, never imagining the story itself was false. In public, Hazel and Colin expressed remorse over the affair and sorrow over their spouses suicides, reinforcing what everyone around them had swallowed whole. In the months that followed, life moved on, as it tends to do. Hazel Buchanan did her best to fade into the background. She continued to live in the same community, raising her two children who had lost their father. She returned to church and carried herself as a woman chastened by tragedy, devoting herself to family and faith, while speaking only in perfunctory terms about Trevor's death. Colin Howell also outwardly resumed a normal

30:39 life after a period of mourning. He went back to practicing dentistry and caring for the four children Leslie had left behind. He collected a substantial life insurance payout from Leslie's death, remarried within a few years, and gradually saw his reputation recover. It appeared that both conspirators had gotten away with their crime, and for almost two decades no one seriously questioned the garage suicide scene. Colin Howell and Hazel Buchanan were free, but they were living under the shadow of a secret only the two of them shared.

31:33 For many years, Colin Howell managed to bury his guilt under a veneer of normalcy, but deep down, his conscience never quite went silent. The secret that he and Hazel shared festered like a hidden rot. Colin's once unwavering confidence began to crack. In private, he battled nightmares and bouts of depression. He might have carried that burden to his grave had fate not intervened with a series of crushing blows. In two thousand and seven, unspeakable tragedy struck Colin's life again.

32:16 His eldest son, Matthew, died in a freak accident while abroad. The loss of his child devastated Colin. He searched for meaning in the senseless death and began to feel the weight of divine judgment. Not long after, he became entangled in a fraudulent get rich Quick investment scheme. By two thousand eight, Colin had been swindled out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, leaving him on the brink of financial ruin. He was crushed and desperate, convinced that these calamities were no coincidence. To Colin's mind, it seemed as if God himself was punishing him for the blood on his hands.

33:08 Nearly eighteen years had passed since the murders when Colin reached his breaking point. The dam of guilt finally burst. On a cold day in January of two thousand and nine, Colin Howell walked into a meeting of church elders in Coleraine and confessed everything. Voice trembling yet relieved, he recounted how he and Hazel had plotted and carried out the killings all those years ago. He said that God had told him it was time to come clean. The church elders sat in stunned silence as Colin, tears in his eyes, described in detail the staged car suicide, the hose and exhaust dreadful step. After a moment, one of the elders simply said, you must go to the police. Later that same day, Colin entered the police station in Coleraine. In a calm, matter of fact manner, he told detectives the unthinkable truth. The supposed double suicide of nineteen ninety one was in fact a double murder. Investigators, who had long since closed the case listened in astonishment as this respected dentist turned penitent killer laid out the real story. He

34:43 held back nothing. Colin Howell's voluntary confession was exhaustive and chilling. He implicated himself fully, and he did not protect his former lover. He made it clear that Hazel Buchanan now Hazel Stuart, had been his willing accomplice. The police wasted little time. Almost two decades after Leslie and Trevor's deaths, officers arrived at Hazel's door to arrest her for murder. Hazel, who had since remarried and was living a quiet life, was incredulous. At first. She had believed the past was buried forever, but now, in two thousand nine, her darkest secret was out in the open. Colin's confession meant she would finally have to answer for her role in the crime.

35:41 Hazel Stuart was brought into the interrogation room, trembling, but determined to save herself. She immediately denied being a murderer. Confronted with Colin's detailed confession implicating her, Hazel's initial response was to shake her head and insist, quote, he made me do it. I never wanted anyone to die. Thus began a series of tense police interviews in which Hazel spun a very different narrative of the nineteen ninety one events, one where she was not a cold blooded killer, but a woman under extreme duress. Hazel's version of events centered on coercion and fear that she was being controlled, threatened, and trapped. The prosecution's position was that her actions crossed the line from fear to participation. We'll flag those as competing narratives and focus on what the record can corroborate.

36:50 Then let you feel the weight of the claims. Over hours of questioning, Hazel gradually opened up about her version of the truth. In a recorded interview, her voice wavered as she described Colin's domineering influence over her life. Quote he was very controlling, Hazel told detectives, I was scared if I said something against him, he'd kill me. Her words came in a desperate rush. She insisted that everything she did the night of the murders was driven by fear and the belief that she had no choice. Hazel painted herself as another one of Colin's victims. She recounted how he had once secretly drugged her during a supposed dental procedure, an episode she offered as proof of how far he would go to control her. She told investigators that he threatened her and that she only helped dispose of evidence, including the length of hose, because she feared for her own life as well as for her children.

38:06 Throughout multiple interview sessions, Hazel clung to that story of coercion. When detectives pressed her with the obvious question why not run or call for help, she repeated that she had been too frightened and too trapped to dare. She maintained that Colin Howell was the mastermind and monster, and that she had never been a willing participant. By the end of the interrogation phase, Hazel's defense was crystal clear. She would claim she acted under duress out of fear for her own safety. Detectives listened, but the question now belonged to the courts. Was Hazel's stewart? A terrified pawn or an equal partner in a heinous crime. The wheels of justice began to turn swiftly after the arrests. Colin Howell, having confessed, pleaded guilty to the murders. In late twenty ten.

39:15 He accepted his fate and was sentenced to life in prison, a punishment that carried a minimum term of twenty one years before any possibility of release. His days of living a lie were over, but for Hazel, who maintained her innocence. A public trial awaited. In February of twenty eleven, nearly twenty years after the deaths of Trevor Buchanan and Leslie Howell, Hazel Stewart stood in the dock at Coleraine Crown Court. She faced charges of double murder, and the prosecution painted her as an equal partner in what they could called a gruesome extermination of two innocent people. Reporters and crowds packed the courtroom, eager to see the woman who had hidden in plain sight for so long. During the trial, Colin Howell himself took the stand as the star witness against his former lover. In painstaking detail, he recounted their affair and the murderous pact that followed. He spared no sordid detail, even divulging how Hazel had become pregnant with his child during the affair and had gotten a secret abortion.

40:39 A dark blood packed between them. Jurors watched Hazel intently as Colin described her role in the killings. Hazel sat stonefaced through much of his damning testimony, but at times dabbed her eyes with a tissue. When the gruesome particulars filled the air, it was a surreal reunion of the conspirators, one unflinchingly telling the truth of their crimes, the other desperately maintaining her facade. Hazel's defense team pressed her narrative of coercion. They argued that she had been under Colin's thrall and too frightened to resist his deadly scheme. Hazel did not testify in her own defense, perhaps fearing cross examination, but her taped police interviews were played for the court.

41:36 The jurors heard her wavering voice describing how terrified she was of Colin. They listened to her claims of being helpless and upon forced to assist in covering up a crime she had never wanted. It was Hazel's one chance to convince the jury that she did not act of her own free will. After weeks of testimony, the case went to the jury. Deliberations did not take long. On March second, twenty eleven, the verdict was announced. Hazel Stewart was found guilty on two counts of murder. She closed her eyes as the foreman spoke the words, and a faint cry came from the gallery where her family sat.

42:26 The judge, in sentencing her to life in prison with a minimum term of eighteen years, addressed Hazel sternly. He acknowledged Colin Howell's manipulative influence, but ultimately condemned Hazel for her choices. The judge noted that there had been several opportunities over the years when Hazel could have prevented the violence or come forward with the truth, yet she never did. Fear was no excuse for participation in s such a heinous act, he intoned. Hazel was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs, her face drained of color as the weight of two decades of deceit finally crashed down upon her.

43:17 The revelations of the trial sent shockwaves through Northern Ireland and beyond. No one felt the impact more than the families of Leslie and Trevor, who had lived for years believing a lie. They had mourned under the assumption that their loved ones died by their own hands. Now they learned it was cold blooded murder all along, a truth that was both horrifying and oddly vindicating, proving that neither Leslie nor Trevor had chosen to abandon their families after all. The tale of the suicide pact that wasn't of a devout dentist in a church going mother who conspired to murder became one of the most infamous crime stories in the country's history. It was almost too fantastical to believe, a real life saga of betrayal, faith, lust and murder that played out behind closed doors for years before exploding into the light. Today, Colin Howell sits in prison, a convicted double murderer who found religion, only to have it compel him to confess. Hazel Stewart, now identified by a prison inmate number instead of as a Sunday school teacher, resides in a separate prison facility, serving out her own

44:48 long sentence. Both will be well into old age before they have any hope of walking free. They pay the price each day for the lives they took and the lies they told. In retrospect, the deaths of Leslie Howell and Trevor Buchanan stand as a chilling reminder that evil can hide in plain sight. For eighteen years, the facade of a tragic suicide pact masked a calculated double murder. The Confessions, trial and Convictions finally stripped away that mask and ensured that justice, though delayed, was served. And as the final echoes of this story fade, one truth remains. Secrets.

45:42 This dark do not stay buried forever. Terrifying and True is narrated by Enrique Kuto, Its executive produced by Robfields and bobble Topia dot com, and produced by Dan Wilder, with original theme music by Ray Mattis. You have a story you think we should cover on Terrifying and True, send us an email at Weekly Spooky at gmail dot com, and if you want to support us for as little as one dollar a month, go to Weeklyspooky dot com slash join. Your support for as little as one dollar a month keeps the show going. And speaking of I want to say an extra special thank you to our Patreon podcast boosters folks who pay a little bit more to hear their name at the end of the show, and they are Johnny Nicks, Kate and Lulu, Jessica Fuller, Mike Scuey, Jenny Green, Amber Hansford, Karen Wee, Met Jack Kert and Craig Cohen. Thank you all so much, and thank you for listening. We'll see you all right here next time on Terrifying and True