The Secret Netflix: Colin Howell and Hazel Stewart’s dark and deadly hearts exposed to the world

The dentist and Sunday school teacher are both still serving time in jail in in Northern Ireland for double murder

“A dentist and a Sunday school teacher begin a torrid extramarital affair that leads them to make a murderous pact. Based on a true story.”

For those unfamiliar with the events, The Secret starring James Nesbitt and Genevieve O’Reilly as the killers, offers exactly as Netflix promises, a grubby story of family betrayal based on facts – but it is much more than that.

It is about two professed Christians, Colin Howell and Hazel Stewart, whose lives were mired in arrogance and evil, greed and ambition, selfishness and hatred. It is about the death of love and betrayal of innocents. It is about a cheating couple who cared only for themselves as the effects of their addiction to each other steamrolled the lives of their families and their community around them. And finally it is about overwhelming guilt and justice served 20 years late.

murder him(Image: Belfast Live)

On May 18, 1991, dentist Colin Howell murdered his wife, nurse Lesley, as she slept on a settee. He called his lover, Sunday school teacher Hazel and told her “It is done”. He placed Lesley into the boot of his car and drove to Hazel’s home where she opened the garage door and allowed Howell in as her policeman husband, Trevor Buchanan, slept. Howell gassed and strangled Trevor and bundled him into the boot too.