# 14: The Black Widow Killers (Colin & Hazel)

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 1 Jun 2023, 16 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/105f723ac/podcast/play/103880293/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-5-9%2F401851567-44100-2-07832d2f78127ac9.mp3

Today's episode is on Colin Howell & Hazel Stewart Trigger Warning: murder, suicide Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:05] Hello everyone, and welcome to Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[0:09] Neil, a true crime podcast where we crack open some of the most
[0:12] notorious cases in history. Given the topics that we'll be
[0:16] investigating, it goes without saying that this show comes with
[0:20] a content warning. The details can get a bit heavy
[0:23] and you might find some of the themes we discuss triggering.
[0:26] Listener discretion is strongly advised and check the
[0:29] description for some resources and further information.
[0:38] Today we're going to be talking about Colin Howell and Hazel
[0:41] Stewart. So before I do, I just want to
[0:43] give my usual disclaimer that I mean absolutely no disrespect to
[0:46] anyone that I talk about in this video.
[0:48] This is all just information that I have found on the
[0:51] Internet and I'm compiling into one video.
[0:53] S Hazel Stewart lived in a small town in Northern Ireland named
[0:56] Coleraine with her husband Trevor Buchanan.
[0:59] Hazel just recently got a job at the local Sunday school as a
[1:02] teacher. Trevor was a policeman and the
[1:05] two of them had a comfortable marriage.
[1:07] They had two kids together, they were great parents, they were
[1:10] proud of their little family, but things in the marriage
[1:13] weren't as perfect as they used to be.
[1:15] Trevor seemed very comfortable with the life that they had.
[1:18] He didn't want anything bigger or better.
[1:20] He wasn't overly ambitious in his career or in anything
[1:24] really, and Hazel was. Hazel was the complete opposite.
[1:28] And because of Hazel's new job at the church Sunday school,
[1:31] Hazel and Trevor used to attend a lot of church functions and
[1:34] that was where they met Colin Howell.
[1:36] Colin Howell was a dentist in Coleridge.
[1:38] He was married to a woman named Leslie Howell and the two of
[1:41] them had seven children together.
[1:43] The Howell family would devout Christians, they were always at
[1:46] the forefront of like church events and things like that, and
[1:49] they were very respected in the town.
[1:51] But before long, Colin Howell and Hazel Stewart began an
[1:54] affair together behind Trevor and Leslie's backs and they
[1:57] began sneaking around in the middle of the night and while
[2:00] they were at work and things. At first, Hazel felt quite
[2:03] guilty, and she would freak out every time they met up, but
[2:06] Colin reassured her that it must have been God's plan for them.
[2:09] He would always say things like it's a gift from God.
[2:12] It wouldn't have happened if God didn't want it, or God wants us
[2:15] to be together. But once Hazel got over that
[2:17] kind of initial guilt, they used to see each other more and more,
[2:21] and they were getting more and more careless with it.
[2:23] They didn't care who saw. Hazel began going to visit Colin
[2:26] at his dentist's office, where everyone knew where he worked.
[2:29] People could see her walking in and out, and they used to have
[2:31] sex in his office, take laughing gas in his office.
[2:34] And then in 1990, Hazel Stewart actually fell pregnant to Colin.
[2:38] How? And it was quickly decided by
[2:40] the both of them that Hazel could not have this baby.
[2:43] However, due to Ireland's law against abortion, she would have
[2:46] had to fly over to England to be able to get one and she wanted
[2:50] Colin to go with her. I don't know what excuse they
[2:52] gave to their partners as to why they both went away for a few
[2:55] days, surely that would have looked suspicious.
[2:58] But the two of them travelled over to England together and got
[3:00] an abortion in the same clinic that Colin's wife Leslie had
[3:03] been to three times. But it wasn't long before
[3:06] someone at the church caught on to Colin in Hazel's relationship
[3:10] and told the pastor who approached both of them
[3:12] separately. He basically told them both that
[3:14] they would be banned from the church if they didn't end this
[3:17] relationship because it was a sin, it was adultery.
[3:19] And not only would they both be banned from the church, but
[3:22] Hazel would also lose her job at the Sunday school.
[3:25] So the two of them told the pastor that they would break off
[3:27] the relationship, but they continued to see each other.
[3:30] And so the pastor just went straight to Colin's wife Leslie,
[3:33] who was pregnant at the time and just told her what was going on.
[3:37] And when Hazel found out that Leslie knew, she sat down her
[3:40] husband Trevor and told him too. At this point, Colin and Hazel
[3:43] did stop seeing each other, and the two separate couples went to
[3:46] relationship counseling, although that only lasted a
[3:50] couple of months before Colin and Hazel were back seeing each
[3:52] of that. But Trevor and Leslie weren't
[3:54] stupid. They knew that this was still
[3:56] going on, but they loved their partners, and they didn't really
[3:58] know what to do. And it was at this point, in
[4:01] early 1991, that Colin began saying things to Hazel about
[4:05] possibly getting rid of Leslie and Trevor.
[4:07] Both Trevor and Leslie had expressed to their cheating
[4:10] partners that they didn't want to get a divorce, and Colin
[4:13] didn't want to get a divorce either.
[4:14] He thought that I'd be really hard on the kids to come to
[4:16] terms with a relationship down in front of them, and so Colin
[4:20] suggested to Hazel that they should end their suffering for
[4:23] them humanely. But Hazel didn't take him
[4:26] entirely seriously. At first she thought there was
[4:28] no way that he was actually going to go through with, that
[4:31] was until the next time she saw him and she realized that he was
[4:34] deadly serious. Colin brought Hazel some
[4:37] sleeping tablets for her part in the murders and told her to
[4:40] crush them up and put them in Trevor's food or in his drink or
[4:43] something. And then Colin would come round
[4:45] and attack Trevor and hopefully he would stay asleep or if he
[4:48] did wake up during the attack he'd be too drowsy to fight
[4:51] back. And so Hazel agreed to her part
[4:54] in the murder and then she asked Colin what they would do if they
[4:56] got caught and Colin replied we're not going to get caught.
[5:00] So the two of them planned to commit these murders on the
[5:02] night of May 18th, 1991, the same day as one of Colin's
[5:06] children's birthdays. The plan was that Colin would
[5:09] kill his own wife Leslie in their home while Leslie was
[5:12] drugging her own husband Trevor at their house, and then once
[5:15] Trevor had fallen asleep, Colin would go over to their house and
[5:19] kill him second. So that night, Colin got one of
[5:21] his children's baby bottles, cut it in half, and then connected
[5:25] it to a spare garden hose. He then connected that to the
[5:28] exhaust of his car so that he could channel the gas that was
[5:31] coming out of it. And since he and Leslie were
[5:33] having troubles anyway because of the affair, Leslie was
[5:36] staying on the couch downstairs, making it ideal for him to kill
[5:39] her quite far away from the children.
[5:41] So Colin went to the garage, turned on his car, grabbed the
[5:45] other end of this tube and took it all the way to Leslie.
[5:47] In the living room. Leslie was asleep on the sofa
[5:50] with the covers already over her head, and so Colin just kind of
[5:53] tucked in the other side of the tube so that under the covers it
[5:56] would all fill with gas. Eventually Leslie woke up a
[5:59] little bit and she was choking, but she was too drowsy to try
[6:02] and get the covers off of her head.
[6:04] Colin ran over and held the covers down over her head
[6:06] anyway, and with her last breath she called out for her six year
[6:10] old son Matthew. Once Hazel had died from
[6:12] asphyxiation from the gas, Colin then put her body in the boot of
[6:16] his car and drove to Hazel's house.
[6:18] But before he did, he grabbed a bunch of family photos from the
[6:21] living room, all kind of framed photos that had the two of them
[6:24] in together, and took them with him.
[6:26] He then arrived at Hazel and Trevor's house, where Hazel let
[6:29] him into the garage and let him park his car in there.
[6:31] Hazel had intentionally parked her car elsewhere that night.
[6:34] At this point, Trevor was already asleep and so Colin just
[6:37] reattached the tube to the exhaust and took it up to the
[6:40] bedroom. But this time, Trevor wasn't
[6:42] asleep with the covers over the top of his head, and so Colin
[6:45] just had to kind of lay the tube next to him where he was
[6:48] sleeping. And because of this, because he
[6:50] could hear and feel the gas coming out by his face, he woke
[6:54] up and Colin was waiting outside of the bedroom and he heard
[6:57] Trevor inside wake up and start choking.
[7:00] And so Colin ran inside. Trevor was trying to fight Colin
[7:03] off, but because of the sleeping tablets and because of the
[7:06] amount of gas he'd already inhaled, he was quite weak
[7:09] anyway. Eventually, Colin managed to
[7:11] grab the tube and hold it inside of Trevor's mouth until he
[7:14] suffocated too. Colin then put Trevor's body in
[7:17] the boot of his car alongside his wife Leslie's, and drove the
[7:20] two bodies to a quiet area a couple of miles away named
[7:23] Castle Rock. He parked the car in a quiet
[7:25] place and then dragged Trevor's body from the boot and into the
[7:29] driver's seat and even put one of his hands on the steering
[7:31] wheel to make it look real. He left Leslie's body lying in
[7:34] the boot, but he arranged those family photos that he grabbed
[7:38] from the house around her to make it look as though she was
[7:40] looking at those in her last moment.
[7:42] Colin had also grabbed A cassette tape and headphones
[7:45] from home that had Leslie's favorite song on it that she
[7:48] used to listen to all the time and before he left, he turned on
[7:51] this cassette and put the headphones on Leslie's head to
[7:54] make it look as though she was listening to her favorite song
[7:56] one last time. He then started the ignition of
[7:59] the car and used an old vacuum part to channel the gas from the
[8:02] exhaust into the boot of the car, making this look like a
[8:06] suicide pact. The plot that Colin and Hazel
[8:08] were hoping that police would pick up on was 2.
[8:11] Heartbroken lovers find out that their partners have been
[8:14] cheating on them with each other and so they decide to kill
[8:17] themselves together. The next morning around 7:00 AM,
[8:20] Colin Howell reported his wife Leslie missing to police and
[8:23] said that he thought she could be with Trevor Buchanan.
[8:26] After just a couple of hours, the car with both bodies in was
[8:29] found and Colin and Hazel's plan worked.
[8:32] Both deaths were ruled as suicides and Colin and Hazel
[8:35] actually came up with their own stories of what happened that
[8:38] night to make it seem more believable.
[8:40] Hazel said that she was asleep and woke up in the middle of the
[8:43] night after hearing 2 voices downstairs.
[8:45] One of them was Trevor's and the other one seemed to be Leslie's,
[8:49] but Hazel said she just went back to sleep because she and
[8:52] Leslie still were on talking to him, so there was no point in
[8:54] going down and saying hi to her or whatever.
[8:56] And obviously Colin had the fact that Leslie had been staying on
[8:59] the sofa downstairs for the past nights, so he could say that was
[9:03] why he didn't notice a leave in the middle of the night.
[9:05] Colin Howell even left a fake suicide note that his wife
[9:09] Leslie supposedly left behind, just kind of thanking him for
[9:12] all the happier times in their marriage and saying that she was
[9:15] done. After their partner's deaths,
[9:17] Colin and Hazel were actually banned from the church that they
[9:19] attended because it was deemed that there were the reason for
[9:23] their suicides. And a lot of people in the town
[9:25] had their suspicions, including police, that maybe it wasn't
[9:29] suicide, maybe their partners had killed, but there was
[9:32] absolutely no physical evidence to say this.
[9:34] It was just, it just seemed too perfect that both of their
[9:38] partners decided to kill themselves so then they could be
[9:40] together. Meanwhile, Colin and Hazel were
[9:43] sneaking around still, because obviously they couldn't be seen
[9:45] together now at all in public, even just as friends.
[9:49] So they were going around to each other's houses in the
[9:51] middle of the night and things. And Hazel once again was full of
[9:55] guilt. But this time it was even worse
[9:57] than the first time. It even got to the point where
[9:59] Hazel couldn't have sex with Colin as she was drugged.
[10:02] Hazel would give Colin permission to inject her with
[10:05] drugs that he would use in his dental practice just so that she
[10:08] was a bit calmer and so that they were able to actually
[10:11] continue this affair. But eventually, the guilt was
[10:14] just too much for Hazel and the two of them just kind of faded
[10:17] from each other. They saw each other less and
[10:19] less. They never actually like
[10:21] officially broke up. I mean, they were never
[10:23] officially anything, but they never kind of spoke about it.
[10:26] They just kind of continued to see each other less.
[10:28] Eventually, during this period of time where they were kind of
[10:31] distancing themselves from each other, Hazel began seeing a new
[10:34] man and Colin was furious. That was until he met a woman
[10:38] himself. And eventually, both new couples
[10:41] ended up getting married and having children together.
[10:44] Both of them, even though they'd killed their spouses to be
[10:47] together, they were even together in the end.
[10:49] And then in 1998, seven years after the murders, Colin Howell
[10:53] decided to come clean to his new wife and admit to the murders.
[10:57] She was obviously horrified, but they'd just had a child
[11:00] together. She'd been married to him for
[11:02] years at this point and she loved him and so she promised
[11:05] not to go to authorities. Almost a decade later, in 2007,
[11:09] Colin Howell fell victim to a get rich quick scam when his
[11:13] wife Leslie committed suicide. He received £400,000 from the
[11:17] life insurance policy and in a space of six months he spent
[11:21] 350,000 of that. In this get rich quick scam, he
[11:25] sold two of his dental practices.
[11:27] He scammed multiple of his patients, all so that he could
[11:30] put more money in into this get rich quick scam.
[11:33] And this scam promised to make him millions.
[11:35] Yet all Colin received were some silver coins that were worth
[11:39] £30. That same year, Collins, now 22
[11:42] year old son Matthew, That same son whose name Leslie called out
[11:46] in her dying breath, actually died of an accident.
[11:49] He was over in Russia, staying on the top floor of an apartment
[11:52] block, and he came out of his apartment and looked down the
[11:55] stairwell to shout to his friend when he lost his foot in and
[11:58] fell 40 feet down the stairwell to his death.
[12:01] And Colin was devastated. He felt as though Matthew's
[12:04] death was his fault and it was a punishment from God for all of
[12:07] these sins. He also felt that the fact he'd
[12:10] lost all of his money was also a punishment from God, and he felt
[12:13] that these punishments were just going to keep happening and keep
[12:15] getting worse unless he confessed to his sins.
[12:19] So that's exactly what he did. Colin Howell decided to admit to
[12:22] everything, including some things that he'd never told
[12:25] anyone about South Colin and his second wife.
[12:28] Kyle went and sat down with some police where he was finally
[12:30] going to admit to these murders. But before he did, he turned to
[12:34] Kyle and said that he had a confession to make to her.
[12:37] First he said that he'd been unfaithful to her, but this time
[12:40] it wasn't an affair. He was actually sexually
[12:43] assaulting his dentist patients while they were sedated.
[12:46] And like I said he'd also scammed multiple patients out of
[12:49] over £200,000 worth of treatments that he wasn't going
[12:53] to give them just so that he could put that money into his
[12:56] get rich quick scan. He then turned to the police
[12:59] officers and admitted to killing Leslie and Trevor and told them
[13:02] everything right from the planning all the way through to
[13:05] making it look like a suicide. So police went and arrested
[13:08] Hazel Stewart, who completely denied her part in the murders
[13:11] and said that she actually feared Colin Howell and that's
[13:14] why she let him kill Trevor, because she was scared that if
[13:17] she didn't, he would try and kill her and her children.
[13:19] But Colin Howell testified against her in court, saying
[13:22] that she was complicit with the murders all the way through,
[13:25] right from the planning all the way to burning evidence.
[13:28] Afterwards, Hazel Stewart pled not guilty to the murders, but
[13:31] was ultimately found guilty and sentenced to life in prison with
[13:34] a minimum of 18 years. The judge said that Hazel had
[13:38] plenty of opportunities to stop Colin from doing this.
[13:40] She could have gone to the police as soon as he brought it
[13:43] up. She could have locked the door.
[13:44] She could have not let him into the garage.
[13:46] She could have always gone and turned the car off.
[13:48] She could have shouted to a neighbor to help, but she didn't
[13:50] do any of these things because she wanted him to kill her
[13:53] husband, because she wanted to be with him.
[13:55] She was equally as complicit in these murders as he was.
[13:58] Colin Howell, on the other hand, just pled guilty to the murders.
[14:01] He knew he wasn't getting away with it, and so he got life in
[14:04] prison with a minimum of 21 years.
[14:06] He also pled guilty to the sexual assaults against his
[14:09] patients. He was stripped of his NHS
[14:11] pension money, and he was sentenced to a further 5 1/2
[14:14] years. But yeah, that completes this
[14:16] video. I feel like this was kind of
[14:17] short, but there isn't all that much on the Internet about this
[14:20] one. There is a four part ITV drama
[14:23] named The Secret about this case.
[14:25] I haven't watched it, but I saw it when I was researching for
[14:28] this. I saw it advertised and stuff.
[14:29] So if you do want to go and watch that, if you're interested
[14:31] by this case, then I'm sure that's quite good.
[14:33] Do keep in mind while you're watching it that it is a drama
[14:36] though, because I saw that one of Colin and Leslie's children
[14:39] came out and said that a lot of things were inaccurate and over
[14:42] dramatized. Obviously, if they're going to
[14:44] make it into a drama, they need to make it more interesting, but
[14:46] they've also added in a couple of things that aren't quite true
[14:49] to the story. So keep that in mind.
[14:51] But yeah, that completes this video.
[14:56] Thank you so much for listening to Usual Disclaimer.
[14:59] At this point, I just want to say that if you've been affected
[15:01] by any of the topics we discussed today, please check
[15:04] the description where we've left some helpful resources.
[15:07] If you want to hear more cases like this one, make sure to
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[15:16] And if you really enjoyed, I'd love it if you could leave a
[15:19] rating and a review too. Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[15:22] Neil is an Audio Boom Studios production.
[15:25] See you next time.

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