For almost her entire life, Lauren Bradford-Clarke has had one unyielding longing: for a mum. It began when she lost her mother, Lesley Howell, at the age of just four. The tiny blonde girl was told ‘car fumes’ were the cause of her mother’s 1991 death – but only years later came to realise this meant suicide.
Unsurprisingly, the idea her mother had deliberately taken her own life, leaving her and her three young siblings behind, was profoundly traumatic for Lauren, now 39.
As she emotionally puts it, in this, her first newspaper interview: ‘My childhood was defined by loss and bereavement… For a long time I had feelings of, “Why did she leave? Why was I not enough? Why were we not enough?”’
Into the breach, though, came another mother figure: Hazel Buchanan, the new partner of her father Colin, a dentist. While Hazel, a Sunday school teacher, never moved in with the family, Lauren – understandably – became hugely attached to her. ‘I very much saw her as a mother,’ she says today. ‘Through all the years, and probably still, I’ve always wanted a mummy.’
When Hazel and Colin split in 1996 after five years together, it was a further blow: ‘It was heartbreaking for me when their relationship ended. I grieved for her almost as much as I did for Mummy, which is very complicated to think about now.’
This is something of an understatement.
For Lauren now knows the shocking truth – that her mother did not take her own life at 31, but was murdered by Lauren’s father and ‘replacement’ mother Hazel, who had been having an affair.
The couple also murdered Hazel’s husband, 32-year-old policeman Trevor, to whom she had been married since the age of 18 and with whom she shared two children.
Lauren Bradford-Clarke says: ‘My childhood was defined by loss and bereavement… For a long time I had feelings of, “Why did she leave? Why was I not enough? Why were we not enough?”’
Colin Howell with his wife Lesley. Colin and his mistress Hazel Buchanan murdered her first
Lesley was killed first. Then the pair placed Trevor’s corpse beside her body in her car, making it look like a double suicide. They even planted evidence to make it look like they had been the ones having an affair, their suicide seemingly prompted by terrible guilt.
Little wonder Lauren, from Coleraine, Londonderry, says she has had to deal with multiple waves of ‘traumatic grief’. First, for the loss of her mother, then at the revelation her father had killed her – not to mention the betrayal of the woman she hoped would become her new ‘mummy’.
It’s only now, 35 years since her mother’s death, that Lauren feels able to speak publicly, appearing in an ITV documentary on Tuesday in which she pays tribute to the mother she lost so brutally.
It’s not the first time Lesley’s murder has made it to the small screen: in 2016, there was an ITV mini-series called The Secret, in which James Nesbitt played Colin.
And tonight BBC2 are screening the first of a two-part documentary on the killings, which Lauren declined to take part in. It aired in Northern Ireland last week, with audio of Colin’s police confession played for the first time. That was the first time Lauren had heard it – something that caused her to complain to the Corporation, as it left her ‘distraught’.
In that confession, Colin – who was also a charismatic Baptist preacher – revealed details of the meticulous plans he and Hazel made for the murders.
The pair had met in 1990 through their church and begun an affair. That summer, Hazel became pregnant and Colin convinced her to go to London to have an abortion, which was illegal in Northern Ireland at the time.
A member of their congregation then discovered their affair – which caused their spouses much anguish. The stress became too much for Lesley and she attempted but failed to take her own life, even penning a suicide note to Colin. Despite promising to end it again and again, Hazel and Colin returned to each other in secret.
Hazel met Colin in 1990 through their church and began an affair that would lead to violence
Hazel’s husband Trevor was spiked with tranquilisers before being murdered by the pair
In early 1991, Colin began to plot the murder of Lesley and Trevor, disguised as suicide. He wrote in a letter to his lover: ‘Let this be our secret.’
On the night of May 18, 1991, Lesley lay asleep on the sofa while their children – Lauren and her brothers Matthew, six, Daniel, two, and Johnny, nine months – were tucked up in bed. Chillingly, that day was Daniel’s second birthday.
As she lay there, Colin slipped a long hosepipe attached to his car exhaust into his wife’s mouth. When she awoke, struggling, he held her down until she was dead. He then dressed Lesley’s corpse, put her in his boot and drove to Hazel and Trevor’s home.
There, Trevor lay comatose after ingesting tranquillisers his wife had hidden in a tuna sandwich. When Colin repeated the process with the hosepipe, Trevor put up more of a fight – but the outcome was the same as Lesley’s. Colin then drove the bodies to Castlerock, a seaside village five miles from Coleraine. There, in the garage of Lesley’s recently deceased father, he set the scene: headphones playing religious songs were placed on his wife’s head, family photographs scattered by her body.
The final ingredient was that suicide note Lesley had written to Colin, who now utilised it with callous efficiency, placing it in their home for police to find.
Days later, Lesley and Trevor’s bodies were buried yards apart in Coleraine cemetery, with both Colin and Hazel performing the parts of grieving spouses perfectly.
The children’s trauma, though, was all too genuine – and, says Lauren, remains debilitating.
She still has ‘treasured’ memories of her mother, who gave up her nursing career to care for her children. ‘My mum was brilliant about making things magical,’ Lauren says. ‘When she was cutting my nails, she would say, “After you get your nails cut, I am going to paint them for you.”
In 2010, Colin was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 21 years
Hazel was found guilty in 2011 and sentenced to life with a minimum of 18 years and sent to Hydebank Wood in Belfast
‘If we were going grocery shopping, she would say, “Shall we go for a date?” And we would get dressed up and go for “a date” and I would get really, really excited.’
Her last memory is of her mother days before she was killed. ‘She had gone somewhere for a beauty treatment,’ she recalls, ‘and I remember saying constantly, “Where’s Mummy, where’s Mummy, where’s Mummy?”
‘I have this really vivid precious memory of having missed her when she was at the beauty salon.
‘Then I remember her walking up the driveway, in blue jeans, a white polo-neck jumper and a bomber jacket embroidered with pastel flowers, and I remember thinking, “She looks beautiful.” I was there to greet her when she came in, and she gave me a big hug.’
Just as vivid are the memories of the day she discovered she’d died.
‘My brother Daniel had been given a blue slide for his birthday the day before,’ she says, ‘and we were playing on it. It was quite a sunny day, and church elders were sitting outside talking to my father.
‘Again, I kept running up saying, “Where’s Mummy? Where’s Mummy?” Then my brother Matthew and I were told Mummy had died from car fumes, had gone to heaven and we wouldn’t see her again.’
Lauren remembers that after her mother’s death the family made regular trips to Hazel’s house, and ran into her regularly, ‘which seemed coincidental, but as an adult, I realised was probably very much planned’.
Slowly, Colin was bringing his murdering mistress into his children’s lives – and Lauren began to see Hazel like a mother.
‘Aged nine, I wanted to get my ears pierced. I asked my father, and he said, “Mum and I said you weren’t going to get them done until you were 16.” I was very disappointed, but Hazel convinced my father to let me do so. That shows she had a parenting role in my life.’
Hazel and Colin split up when Lauren was nine and within a year, he met Kyle Jorgensen, a divorcee with two children, at a Bible study class. They married and had five children, while Hazel eventually married police superintendent David Stewart.
Aged 12, Lauren was in a chemistry class learning about carbon monoxide poisoning when she realised her mother’s death could not have been an accident.
‘Until then I had this image of her sitting in the car with the windows open, and car fumes drifting in and her very peacefully falling asleep,’ she says. ‘It gave me a terrible fear of car fumes.
‘That day I said to my father, “I didn’t realise it was suicide.” He was like, “Yup,” and the conversation ended. Traumatised doesn’t even cut it. I was devastated. I had days and nights when I would sob to myself.’
The disconnect between father and daughter eventually led to them becoming estranged. And more tears were to come.
In January 2009, aged 22, Lauren was called to a family meeting. ‘I got a call from my aunt saying, “We need you to come immediately.” There, my uncle began telling me my father was being held at Coleraine police station after admitting murdering my Mum.
‘I crumbled. I fell to the ground. It was probably the most extreme shock I have encountered. I even vomited. I just couldn’t take it in.
‘But then I realised I must have subconsciously known all along. I had so many unanswered questions about my Mum. Suddenly, everything made more sense.’
Colin made no attempt to spare Hazel in his confession, which had been partly prompted by another family tragedy.
In 2007, Lauren’s older brother Matthew, then a 22-year-old student, was on a placement in Russia where he lost his grip on a stairwell bannister and fell four floors to his death.
Colin confessed to the double murder in an apparent attempt to cleanse himself of his sins. ‘He once said to me, he brought death into the family and therefore God had punished him by killing my brother,’ Lauren says ruefully.
In 2010, Colin was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 21 years. The following year he was given five-and-a-half years for sexually assaulting five female patients while they were sedated in his dentist’s chair.
Now 66, he is interred at Maghaberry Prison outside Lisburn. Hazel was found guilty in 2011 and sentenced to life with a minimum of 18 years and sent to Hydebank Wood in Belfast.
Last year, the now 62-year-old failed in her third appeal, claiming she had been under Howell’s coercive control, despite sedating her husband before he died.
Bouts of therapy have not helped Lauren put the past completely behind her. She has visited her father in jail – to try to piece together the jigsaw, she says, rather than nurture a relationship. But she has not seen him since the Covid pandemic.
Her grief remains complex, mourning not only the loss of her mother, but a father, too. She says: ‘It was only after my father went to prison he said to me, “Lauren you are just like your mum in passion, in personality, in mannerisms.”
‘I thought to myself, “Why has it taken this long to tell me that?” Those are the things I longed to hear when I was younger. I always wondered, “Am I like her? What was she like? Is there anything of her in me?”’
As for Hazel, Lauren admits: ‘It’s very complicated how I feel. I feel anger, disappointment, hurt and pain about Hazel because of her constant efforts to evade justice.
‘The loss she has inflicted on me is immeasurable. I would love for her… to express some sort of remorse.
‘Sadly, I don’t think she ever saw me as a daughter. During her police interviews she explained she said no when my father once proposed marriage to her because she couldn’t handle “those children” and I was said “children”.’
A divorcee, Lauren has a daughter, Sarah, ten, and lives with her partner Kevwe, 40, an IT consultant, and his two young sons.
Learning the truth about her mother’s death inspired her career, taking a degree in criminology and sociology. She is now associate professor of criminology at the University of Nottingham.
Every iota of her life has been marked by the loss of her mother.
‘I was lied to my entire life, so I am determined not to lie to my daughter,’ she says. ‘She knows my father killed my mum and she knows “car fumes” was the phrase I was told. She knows my father is in prison. She knows the headlines. I answer all of her questions when she has them.
‘I do feel relieved I now know what happened. So much was taken from me and my mum, the least my mum deserves is the truth.’
Killer In The House: The Murders Of Lesley Howell And Trevor Buchanan is on ITV1 and ITVX at 9pm on Tuesday.
The Support After Murder And Manslaughter charity offers help for the bereaved at samm.org.uk
