Stewart admits she was part of plan to kill husband
- Published
Hazel Stewart has admitted in police interview tapes that she was part of a plan to kill her husband but insisted she wanted no part in it.
Mrs Stewart, 47, denies murdering her husband, Trevor Buchanan, 32, and her former lover Colin Howell's wife, Leslie, 31, in May 1991.
The court heard Mrs Stewart tell police how she got rid of evidence.
They also heard how she encouraged her husband to take a sleeping tablet on the night of the murders.
She denied giving him the drug, but admitted that sedating him was also part of Howell's plan.
The jury of nine men and three women at Coleraine Crown Court also heard how Mrs Stewart destroyed a garden hosepipe which was used to gas the victims while they slept.
As well as cutting up and burning the hose on an open fire, she washed and replaced bed covers in the room where her husband was poisoned.
She also opened the window to get rid of carbon monoxide fumes and got clothes which Howell used to dress her husband before driving him off in a car with his dead wife.
On the police tapes, the court heard Mrs Stewart insist she had tried to stop Howell at the house on the night of the murders.
"I didn't want him to do it. I said I was scared. I didn't want it and when I saw the bag it was terrible. It was horrible and I knew what he was coming to do.
"And I didn't want him to do it. But Colin is a strong person," she said.
Mrs Stewart said Howell was on a mission and she did not get him stopped.
Police originally thought Mr Buchanan and Mrs Howell died in a suicide pact. The investigation was re-opened in January 2009 after Howell admitted that he gassed them and then fooled police into believing they had taken their own lives.
Howell is serving a 21-year jail sentence after he admitted his guilt last year.
The trial continues.