Tside, killer inside
foul play. But the real story was so chilling that what happened was turned into an ITV drama series called The Secret, starring James Nesbitt, earlier this year.
Because Colin Howell had been having an affair with his friend’s wife. And when his own wife Lesley found out, she was so devastated she made a failed suicide bid which gave the cunning dentist the idea of killing her.
He used a hose attached to his car’s exhaust to gas Lesley as she slept at their home. Scheming Hazel drugged her husband so he could do the same to him. An inquest believed the dead couple were wracked by depression.
Howell and Buchanan eventually split and both remarried. But the double murder began to prey on the dentist’s mind. After the death of his son and losing £350,000 in an investment scam, Howell, 51, thought he was cursed and confessed his secret to church elders. He was jailed for a minimum of 21 years in 2010 and testified against Buchanan, 48, who was jailed for 18 years in 2011.
EVERYONE was baff led when 19-year-old Oxford University undergraduate Rachel McLean disappeared in April 1991.
She didn’t show up for one of her exams which was so out of character her tutor alerted the police.
They talked to her boyfriend John Tanner who was studying Classics at Nottingham. But there was nothing to make them suspicious, especially after reading the love letters the couple sent each other. John told them he spent the weekend with Rachel and left her at Oxford station with a male friend who offered to drive her back to her house.
A police artist’s sketch was made and circulated and Tanner even appeared in a press conference appealing for help and also took part in a televised reconstruction.
Then police found Rachel’s diary. And the contents tore away the Tanner’s devoted boyfriend image.
She described how he was becoming increasingly possessive and she wasn’t sure she wanted such a full-on relationship.
Police checked footage taken at the railway station and found no sign of Rachel or the stranger. And their deepening knowledge of 22-year-old Tanner’s dark, jealous side convinced them he would not have let his girlfriend leave the station with another man. They tore her digs apart and found her body under floorboards in a cupboard. She had been strangled.
At the trial at Birmingham Crown Court in 1991, Tanner claimed he’d flown into a rage when Rachel admitted infidelities. The jury found him guilty of murder.
He served 12 years in Gartree Prison, Leics, starting a relationship with a female criminology student who wrote to him. He was released in 2003, after serving almost 12 years, a and returned to live with her in his native New Zealand.
Masking Evil by Carol Anne D Davis is published by S Summersdale.