THE NEW OWNER OF DOUBLE KILLER’S PROPERTY CHARGED WITH HARASSMENT
THE man who bought killer Colin Howell’s luxury home is to appear in court on harassment charges next month.
The disclosure comes days after the owner is said to have put a photograph and message on a Facebook page revealing he was calling the property, near Castlerock, Dunkillyn Farm.
This newspaper revealed in December that an academic had bought the Glebe Road house, which was on the market for £300,000 for a number of months and which apparently sold for below the asking price.
Asked about the alleged harassment, the PSNI said in a short statement: “Police in Coleraine have charged a 52-year-old man with harassment. He is due to appear at Coleraine Magistrates’ Court on April 10. As is normal procedure, all charges are reviewed by the Public Prosecution Service.”
Police refused to elaborate on the charge, or why it had been brought against the man, but it is believed to relate to an incident in the area on St Patrick’s Day.
At the time of the sale, the buyer of the house asked this newspaper to avoid revealing his identity.
There were several reports that the man, who has a number of children, told associates he wanted to “normalise the site” as soon as possible.
Howell moved to the property, which has four bedrooms, four reception rooms, its own lake and paddock, long after he murdered his first wife, Lesley, and Trevor Buchanan, the policeman husband of his mistress, Hazel Stewart, in their family homes in Coleraine.
A source said: “Nothing untoward happened in the Glebe Road house.”
Police arrested Howell at the property in 2009 after he confessed to church elders in the kitchen of the house that he had murdered Lesley and Trevor 18 years earlier.
He admitted making it look as if the pair had died in a suicide pact in a car behind a row of cottages in Castlerock called The Apostles.
Police had accepted that Lesley and Trevor had taken their own lives and probably would never have known the truth if Howell had not confessed to the brutal killings and implicated Stewart in them.
Both are now serving life sentences for the murders.
Howell’s second wife, Kyle Jorgensen, who had five children by him, left Glebe Road to return to live in the US.
She claimed her husband forced her to stay silent about the murders, which were the subject of a four-part ITV series called The Secret last year, with James Nesbitt portraying the killer dentist.
Last year, a former Coleraine Mayor, Sam Cole, sparked controversy after he suggested that the house could be transformed into a tourist attraction.
There were reports that even though no one had been murdered there, people were taking selfies outside the property, which had been described in estate agent brochures as a “magnificent and idyllic country residence”.
The lake at the home has two islands, and Howell is said to have erected a memorial there to his son, Matthew, who died in an accident in Russia in 2007.