Howell's dental practice manager awarded redundancy payment

Vanessa Barron is also to get 4,158 in holiday and notice pay after an industrial tribunal ruling in Belfast.

She worked for Colin Howell, 50, for 10 years at Causeway Dental Studio in Ballymoney and stayed on for two months dealing with the closure after his arrest last year.

The tribunal was held at the end of November but details of the ruling were only released last week.

Howell from Glebe Road, Castlerock, has been charged with the murders of his wife Lesley and RUC Constable Trevor Buchanan, the husband of his lover Hazel Stewart.

Their bodies were found in a car filled with carbon monoxide fumes in Castlerock in May 1991.

At first it was though they died as a result of a suicide pact but detectives reopened the investigation last January after questioning Howell.

Mother-of-two Stewart, 46 - who later remarried ex-Chief Supt David Stewart - is on bail also charged with the two murders.

Howell is due to appear by video link at North Antrim Magistrates Court in Coleraine on February 1.

He is also accused of drugging and indecently assaulting four women patients at his Ballymoney clinic on separate dates over a 10-year period stretching back to December 1998.