Double killer Hazel Stewart fails in bid to have sentence reduced
A panel of judges at the Court of Appeal in Belfast ruled that the sentence imposed on Stewart, 62, a former Sunday school teacher, was 'neither wrong nor manifestly excessive'.
Lady Chief Justice Dame Siobhan Keegan told the court that Stewart's latest attempted appeal would have caused 'stress and upset' to the families of those she killed.
Stewart's lawyer described the ruling as disappointing, but said it 'doesn't end the quest to highlight that she was a victim of coercive control'.
She is serving a minimum 18 years behind bars for the killing of Constable Trevor Buchanan, 32, and 31-year-old Lesley Howell, the wife of her former 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 extra-marital 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.
He implicated Stewart and she was ordered to serve at least 18 years, at her trial in 2011.
Stewart launched her appeal against the length of her sentence on the basis of fresh psychiatric evidence that suggested she was suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder at the time of the murders and had been coercively controlled by Howell.
Stewart, wearing a pale blue T-shirt and a cross necklace, watched the court of appeal ruling via a videolink from Hydebank Prison.
Dame Siobhan said the fresh psychiatric evidence had been presented 'well after the event' and 'places reliance on prison records to contradict the case made by all other experts'.
She said: 'Even if there were any traction in the points now made, which we do not find, the trial judge also made allowance for Howell's control in the sentence he passed.
'No injustice arises in refusing to reopen this long-concluded appeal on these facts.'
The Lady Chief Justice added: 'We record this was a double murder of spouses in the cruellest of circumstances.
'Our overall view is that the sentence was neither wrong nor manifestly excessive.
'We refuse leave to admit the new evidence or to extend time as we are not convinced the new evidence establishes a valid ground of appeal.
'We are similarly not convinced that a fulsome enough explanation why this evidence was not produced earlier has been provided.
'In reaching our conclusion we reiterate the need for finality in criminal proceedings, we must deduce from this appeal that the applicant does not fully appreciate that.
'What must be self-evident is the stress and upset this latest appeal attempt will have caused to the families of the deceased.'
Dame Siobhan said the original trial judge had been cited on the issue of Howell's control of Stewart and he altered her sentence accordingly.
She concluded: 'We find no merit in any of the points raised on appeal.'
Stewart's lawyer, Kevin Winters of KRW Law, said: 'Today's decision of the Court of Appeal to refuse leave is disappointing but in many ways not unexpected given the very high bar we had to reach to convince the court to look at this relatively new issue after so many years.'
He added: 'Today's ruling doesn't end the quest for Hazel Stewart to highlight that she was a victim of coercive control.
'She engaged with the criminal justice agencies in an open and transparent manner to present as a victim of criminality.
'She made her case to a specialist abuse unit of the PSNI to allege that she was drugged, sexually and mentally abused and raped by Colin Howell.
'For that she is to be commended in taking the decision to come forward. It wasn't taken lightly.'
Mr Winters said: 'It shouldn't be lost on any one that Hazel Stewart has the full backing and support of her family which includes Trevor Buchanan's two children.
'That support has been with her ever since her conviction for her role in the double killing of her husband and Colin Howell's wife over 20 years ago.
'That support has been here as well throughout the criminal investigation against Colin Howell and right up until today's appeal ruling.'
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His responsibilities included repertoire and finances, and ensuring everyone looked immaculate (70s footage shows them in dazzling-white suits with glittering lapels). He also instilled discipline. 'My job was to make sure everybody was squeaky clean,' he says. 'No going on the piss before a gig. We weren't saints or angels, make no mistake. What goes on afterwards, behind closed doors, nobody knows. But we had to put on a professional show.' The Miami Showband entered the summer of 1975 in an optimistic mood. The band had scored major hits with Charlie Rich's country standard There Won't Be Anymore and Bonnie St Claire's bubblegum-glam nugget Clap Your Hands and Stamp Your Feet. O'Toole was being groomed for solo stardom, and had been booked to play Las Vegas to launch his Lee-penned single Love Is, with the intention of positioning him as the next David Cassidy. But that show never took place. 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The fake army patrol were members of the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), although at least four of them were also serving with the UDR. Their intention was to plant a briefcase bomb under the driver's seat, timed to explode further down the road. The timer malfunctioned, instantly killing two members of the UVF's Mid-Ulster Brigade, Harris Boyle and Wesley Somerville. In the chaos, an order was given to shoot the fleeing musicians to eliminate witnesses. Lee lay still with his face in the grass, slowing his breathing and pretending to be dead – a trick he had learned from watching Vietnam movies – as he heard the murder of his friends taking place around him. First to die was McCoy, 32, shot in the back with a Luger pistol. Travers, 24, hit by a dumdum bullet, was seriously wounded. As Geraghty, 24, and O'Toole, 28, attempted to drag him to safety, they were caught by gunmen, pleading for their lives before being executed with Sterling submachine guns. O'Toole was shot 22 times, his long-haired head so badly mutilated that a doctor would later ask Lee if there was a girl in the band. Travers lay next to the body of McCoy and, like Lee, played dead. Once the attackers had apparently left the scene, Lee cautiously went to fetch help. 'The main road was the most horrific scene I've ever seen in my life,' he remembers. 'There were bits of bodies lying all over the place. It was horrendous.' The first passing vehicle, a truck, refused to give Lee a lift. Eventually, a young couple agreed to drive him to nearby Newry, where he alerted police. 'My hand was on the door handle just in case, ready to jump out, because I didn't trust anybody at that stage.' The killings stunned Ireland, and thousands lined the streets for the funerals of the murdered musicians. The Miami Showband had represented hope. Not only did their shows unite communities, but their membership was mixed: McCoy and Millar were Protestants, the rest were Catholics. Is it fanciful to suggest that they were targeted because someone, somewhere, resented this pan-sectarian fraternisation? Lee doesn't think that was the motive. 'We were the No 1 band, and this gang wanted maximum publicity. If that bomb had exploded when they intended, the Miami Showband would have been accused of carrying weapons for the IRA.' (Indeed, within 12 hours, the UVF accused the band of being bomb-traffickers, describing their killing as 'justifiable homicide'.) Lee agreed to testify at the trial in Belfast on condition he was helicoptered to and from the Irish border, with 24-hour protection. His life was threatened by relatives of the accused; he has, he says, been looking over his shoulder ever since. Lance corporal Thomas Crozier and Sgt James McDowell, both of the UDR, were sentenced to life in the Maze prison, as was John Somerville, brother of the deceased Wesley and a former soldier. (They were released under the Good Friday agreement.) 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)
