Hazel Stewart Appeal Refused in Double Murder Case

Hazel Stewart, a 62-year-old former Sunday school teacher, has been refused leave to appeal against her 18-year minimum sentence for the 1991 murders of her husband Trevor Buchanan and her ex-lover's wife, Lesley Howell. The Court of Appeal in Belfast ruled the sentence was 'neither wrong nor manifestly excessive,' despite Stewart's claims of coercive control and mental illness at the time. Judges found the new psychiatric evidence unreliable and inconsistent with earlier expert opinions. Police initially believed the deaths were a suicide pact, but it was later revealed the victims had been drugged, murdered, and their deaths staged, after Colin Howell confessed nearly two decades later. The court emphasized that Howell's influence had already been considered in Stewart's sentencing. The decision also took into account the distress that reopening the case could cause the victims' families.