BBC Documentary Airs Colin Howell Murder Confession Tapes

A new BBC documentary has aired original police confession tapes from Colin Howell, a former dentist who admitted to murdering his wife and his lover's husband nearly two decades after the crimes, shedding fresh light on one of Northern Ireland's most notorious double killings.

The two-part series, Confessions of a Killer, premiered on BBC One Northern Ireland and became available on BBC iPlayer earlier this week. It features audio from Howell's 2009 police interviews, where the then-50-year-old detailed the 1991 murders of Lesley Howell, 31, and Trevor Buchanan, 32, a Royal Ulster Constabulary officer. The victims were found in a fume-filled garage in Castlerock, County Londonderry, in what authorities initially investigated as a suicide pact linked to an extramarital affair between Howell and Hazel Stewart, Buchanan's wife.

Howell and Stewart, who were having an affair, drugged the victims before killing them and staging the scene to mimic self-inflicted deaths by carbon monoxide poisoning. The cover-up held for 17 years until Howell confessed to church elders in January 2009, driven by what he described as a crisis of faith and personal turmoil, including strains in his...