Double murderer Sunday school teacher blames her PTSD, court hears
Stewart is serving a minimum of 18 years behind bars for the killing of Constable Trevor Buchanan, 32, and Lesley Howell, 31, the wife of her ex-lover Colin Howell.
Both were found in a fume-filled garage in Castlerock, Co Londonderry, in May 1991.
Police originally believed they had died in a suicide pact after discovering that their partners were having an extramarital affair.
Instead, they had been drugged and murdered and their bodies arranged to make it look as though they had taken their own lives.
Nearly two decades passed before dentist Howell, 65, confessed to both killings and went on to implicate Stewart at her trial in 2011.
She is making a fresh bid to have her sentence reduced by arguing that she was suffering from PTSD at the time of the murders.
Representing Stewart, Brendan KC said: 'This application was created by the discovery of fresh evidence.'
He said a series of reports from a psychiatrist in 2024 had said Stewart was 'suffering from two forms of mental health, depression and PTSD, at the time of the murders'.
Mr Kelly said 'coupled with coercive behaviour' from Howell, these were factors that should have been taken into account during her sentencing.
The barrister said the new evidence was 'cogent and admissible'.
He said her mental illness had been caused after she had an abortion in 1990, adding that her condition 'simply wasn't identified or recognised' at the time of her trial.
Pointing out that the diagnosis had been made only last year, Mr Kelly said 'it was difficult to see how we could have moved more quickly'.
The barrister said the application to give leave for appeal should be granted, the new evidence submitted to the court and the psychiatrist called as a witness.
The Court of Appeal in Belfast also heard submissions that Stewart, 62, a former Sunday school teacher, was being coercively controlled by Howell at the time of the killings in 1991.
However, a barrister for the Public Prosecution Service said that more than 30 years after the murders, Stewart had 'finally found a doctor who will say something sympathetic'.
Representing the Public Prosecution Service, Philip Henry KC said Stewart's barrister was trying to create an 'exceptional scenario'.
He said the appeal judges were being invited to 'feel so uncomfortable' about the new medical evidence that a 'sense of injustice is provoked'.
Mr Henry said the psychiatrist was first instructed in 2023 and was initially given some, but not all, of the relevant medical material.
He added that after the new psychiatric report, the court was 'nowhere near' the point where it could allow an appeal over the sentence to proceed.
Mr Kelly denied that Stewart's legal team had been 'shopping for a psychiatrist'.
Lady Chief Justice Dame Siobhan Keegan said the court would rule on the application next month.
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Everything pointed towards collusion: covert collaboration between paramilitaries and the organs of the British state. Travers, Lee and Millar relaunched the Miami Showband with new members before the year was out, to familiar scenes of hysteria – but their hearts weren't in it. Travers felt they had become a circus, and that audiences had come to stare rather than dance; he left the band the following year. For Lee, now lead singer, it could never be the same without his lost band members. 'I looked around and there was no Fran, no Brian and no Tony, and I didn't enjoy that.' In 1982, tired of feeling that he and his family were in danger, Lee started a new life in South Africa, performing as a saxophonist and band leader on the Holiday Inn circuit. He remained there for two decades, only returning after his wife, Brenda, died. Travers, meanwhile, went on a tenacious, meticulous search for the truth, engaging with numerous investigations and initiatives. A 2019 Netflix documentary, Remastered: The Miami Showband Massacre, is centred around his dogged efforts. Through the years, the finger of suspicion has repeatedly pointed at two men: Capt Robert Nairac of the Grenadier guards (later executed by Republicans), and Robin 'The Jackal' Jackson, a former soldier from County Down and a key figure in the notorious Glenanne Gang, were believed to have planned the ambush. Both were named by British intelligence whistleblowers, and Ken Livingstone named Nairac as a conspirator in his maiden speech as an MP. In December 2017, 80 documents were released including a 1987 letter from the UVF to the then-taoiseach Charles Haughey on headed notepaper, which openly admitted collusion with MI5 in the attack. The evidence was now overwhelming. The historic activities of the Glenanne Gang, including the Miami Showband Massacre, fall under the purview of Operation Denton, due to report this year. The massacre hasn't faded from Irish memory. A sculpture commemorating the dead musicians, unveiled in 2007 by former taoiseach Bertie Ahern, stands on Parnell Square in Dublin. One person who apparently didn't remember, however, was Bono, who described the 2015 shootings at the Eagles of Death Metal show in Paris as 'the first direct attack on music'. He later apologised, and U2 incorporated a slide of the Miami Showband into their show. The survivors don't have the luxury of forgetting. The trauma has left an indelible mark. Travers was diagnosed, in later life, with enduring personality change. Lee has, he tells me, experienced profound survivor's guilt. In 2021, Lee was awarded £325,000 compensation, in a package he says was presented to survivors and families as a take-it-or-leave-it deal. He considers the sum to be 'peanuts, for 50 years of anger and pain'. More than financial recompense, he says what he hopes for, with up to five perpetrators still officially unaccounted for, is closure: 'Just tell the world the truth.' My Saxophone Saved My Life by Des Lee with Ken Murray is out now (Red Stripe Press)
