Dentist killed wife and lover’s husband

A SCHEMING dentist murdered his wife and his lover’s policeman husband by poisoning them with car exhaust fumes as they slept, a court heard yesterday.

Colin Howell then fooled investigating police by stage-managing a scene to make it look as if they had died in a suicide pact, Belfast Crown Court heard.

He kept the secret for almost 20 years before confessing to detectives. Howell, 51, first killed his wife Lesley and later Constable Trevor Buchanan at their homes in Coleraine, Co Derry, in May 1991, when he attached part of a baby’s feeding bottle to a garden hose to poison them with carbon monoxide fumes from a car.