'Killer dentist' back in the dock?

DOUBLE killer Colin Howell is being lined up as a key prosecution witness in the trial of his former lover, Hazel Stewart.

The Coleraine Times understands that police interviewed dentist Howell, 51, in Magheraberry Prison from last Saturday to Monday afternoon and he

provided them with a detailed statement.

Today (Tuesday) police will hand over the statement to senior figures in the Public Prosecution Service who will discuss with the prosecution team of Ciaran Murphy QC and Neil Connor QC on how to proceed.

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It opens up the prospect of Howell being called into the dock to testify against Stewart, 47, who is charged with the murder of her former husband, RUC constable Trevor Buchanan, 32 and Howell's wife and mother-of-four Lesley, 31, whose bodies were discovered in a car filled with carbon monoxide fumes

in Castlerock in May 1991.

At the time it was thought that the pair had taken their own lives due to their devastation over an affair between Howell and constable Buchanan's wife Hazel.

Last Thursday Colin Howell dramatically changed his plea and admitted to their murders at Belfast Crown Court.

At the short hearing Howell, from Glebe Road, Castlerock, was told that he would be jailed for life with a minimum tariff to be decided at a later date.

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However should Howell, formerly one of the UK's foremost cosmetic dentists, take the stand in Coleraine he will be given his full sentence before doing so.

His former lover, motherof-two Stewart, 47, from Ballystrone Road, Coleraine, has remarried and will be supported at the trial by her second husband, an ex-police Chief Superintendent David Stewart, once a staff officer to the former RUC Chief Constable Sir Hugh Annesley.

She will stand in the dock at the same courtroom eighteenand-a-half years ago where she wept at an inquest into the deaths of Mrs Howell and her first husband Trevor.

Back then, North Antrim coroner, Robin Hastings ruled that the pair had died from carbon monoxide poisioning in an apparent double suicide.

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Stewart has changed senior lawyers with Paul Ramsay QC now defending her. The judge in the case will be Mr Justice Hart.

The jury was chosen today (Wednesday) amid enormous media interest across the Province, the Republic and the UK.