Dentist won’t testify against his ex-wife

DENTIST Colin Howell will not testify against his ex-wife who is under investigation for withholding information about his double murder, it has been revealed.

Kyle Jorgensen, the mother of their five children, dumped Howell after he was charged with gassing his first wife Lesley and Trevor Buchanan, the husband of his then lover Hazel Stewart.

Howell, 52, persuaded Jorgensen to stay quiet when he confessed to the killings 10 years before he owned up to his church elders and police.

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Detectives twice questioned her before she returned to the United States to begin divorce proceedings, and even though the Public Prosecution Service has yet to decide if she should face criminal charges, Howell revealed to investigating officers he is not prepared to give evidence against her.

He told friends who visited him at Maghaberry Prison: “I have nothing further to say and no wish to see the mother of my children go to jail.

“If it wasn’t for her I might not have had the courage to go through with all of this. Rather than blame her, the police should be grateful for her intervention.”

It was Jorgensen, 45, a divorcee from New York, who forced Howell to hand himself over after he admitted being swindled out of their life savings and indecently assaulting sedated women patients at his dental practice in Ballymoney.

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He told her about the murders in August 1998, a year after they married when she arrived in Northern Ireland to study Irish history at the University of Ulster.

Howell convinced her to keep his secret, but when their relationship collapsed after he also confessed to cheating on her again with another woman, she forced him to tell all.

Hours before handing himself over to police in January 2009 she screamed at him in the kitchen of their home: “You’ve got to do it. You’ve got to do it, Colin. The truth will set you free.”

Stewart, 48, was convicted of murdering Ms Howell, 31 and her first husband Mr Buchanan, 32, in May 1991.

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The dentist poisoned his wife with carbon monoxide fumes, then killed his lover’s husband in the same way before leaving the bodies in a garage in Castlerock where he stage managed the deaths to look like a suicide pact.

Howell is serving 21 years while his ex-lover has just spent her first Christmas behind bars after being jailed for a minimum of 18 years.