Dentist Colin Howell waited until the kids went out to play before delivering not one, not two but three bombshell confessions to his wife.
Kyle Jorgensen sat stunned at the kitchen table and listened as Howell admitted he had been unfaithful to his first wife. Worse was to come.
He then revealed he murdered her. Then he killed the policeman husband of his mistress – and put the two bodies together to make it look like a suicide pact.
Howell had kept the killings secret for seven years. But it would be another 11 years before justice caught up with him.
Now the astonishing story of betrayal, violence and perversion – Howell sexually abused sedated patients – is told in a four-part TV drama starring James Nesbitt.
The role has added significance for the actor, whose sister knew Howell and his first wife and visited their home for coffee mornings.
And Kyle – a New Yorker – has broken her silence in an interview with the Sunday Mirror in the US.
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She said of Howell: “He abused patients, he is a compulsive liar, he was an adulterer in our marriage and murdered two people.
“Everyone thought he was this great Christian guy but they were so wrong. He was a monster.”
Kyle had moved to the UK partly to rid herself of the memory of a violent three-year marriage to her first husband. She had two kids.
She threw herself back into eduction, attended the University of Ulster and joined a local church in Castlerock, County Derry, where she was introduced to Howell, then a father of four, at Bible study in December 1996.
Howell, now 57, had murdered first wife Lesley, 31, and Trevor Buchanan, 32, in nearby Coleraine in 1991.
Trevor was the husband of Howell’s mistress and his partner in crime Hazel Stewart, who he met at a Baptist church.
The dentist and his lover – played on screen by Genevieve O’Reilly – wanted their partners dead so they could set up home together.
But they split after five years and Howell met Kyle.
They wed within five months and she soon fell pregnant with the first of their five children.
She recalled: “I really looked up to him as a teacher. His biblical knowledge was amazing.
“He knew it all, but the faith I believe he’s been living is really very hypocritical.
“He would preach on what kind of people we ought to be, about sexual immorality.
“This was going on for years. I had no idea. He could do it right to your face. He was very deceptive.
“I’m having trouble really seeing one person I’ve known for 12 years as a good father and loving husband, but really it’s like seeing a completely different person in the same skin.”
Howell and Kyle were raising their seven-month-old son Erik when, in 1998, he suddenly admitted his past.
For the next ten years the revered Sunday School teacher bullied Kyle into keeping his secret, blackmailing her into thinking she must not utter a word for the sake of their children – or he would take his own life.
Confused, frightened and alone, Kyle tried to tell members of her church. But Howell was so respected among them that one church elder told her: “I don’t want to hear it.
“It’s before the Cross . . . you shouldn’t tell on other people before that time in their life.”
It was only in 2009 and after a string of conflicts that Kyle forced Howell to confess.
He is now serving a minimum 21 years after admitting gassing Lesley and Trevor.
He told Kyle, now 50, how he used a garden hose connected to the exhaust of his Renault car to kill Lesley with carbon monoxide as she slept at their home.
Howell, who had planned the murder for weeks, fed the hose through the house and close to Lesley’s face.
When she stirred and called for help he put a duvet over her head to silence her. He put her body in the back of his car before heading to his lover’s marital home.
There he carried out a similar plot but, again, his victim woke.
In a struggle, Howell took a quilt over the policeman’s head then put the hose to his face.
Stewart stood outside, her hands clasped tightly around her ears.
She later said: “I didn’t want to hear it, I put my hands over my ears, I was so scared.”
The killer then placed the two bodies in the boot, drove to Castlerock and left them in a garage with the engine running to fool police into believing the pair had taken their own lives.
After unburdening himself to Kyle, Howell begged her to keep silent.
She told police that he urged her: “Just take a deep breath, take a deep breath. It’s waited seven years. You can wait one more day. We need to sort the children.”
But Howell went on to lead a double life behind Kyle’s back. In 2003 he confessed to an affair but swore the relationship was over.
In 2007, following the death of his eldest son in an accident, he went back to the lover.
Kyle also discovered that throughout their marriage Howell had been sexually abusing sedated women under his care at his surgery in Ballymoney, Country Antrim.
She also claimed that he became addicted to pornography.
Howell’s deceitful life finally unravelled after he lost £350,000 in a “get-rich quick” scam in the Philippines.
He had netted £212,446 from Lesley’s will, £27,000 from the estate of her father, a £120,000 life insurance payout and a £54,635 endowment policy.
But his greed led to his downfall and he was declared bankrupt owing £250,000 tax.
Kyle told police she forced Howell to hand himself over in the wake of the financial losses, admissions of infidelity and the abuse of his patients.
“My marriage began to unwind before my eyes,” she would later tell police.
Howell admitted everything to church elders and police in January 2009 after Kyle told him: “You will confess. You will never be a free person unless you confess and be really honest.”
The killer has another 16 years to serve before he can apply for parole.
His former lover Stewart, 53, who remarried after their split, got 18 years for her part in the murders.
Kyle returned to the US to rebuild her life and lives in Sanibel Island, Florida, where she is bringing up her five children by Howell – and protecting them from the horrors of his crimes.
The former waitress was investigated by Ulster police for four years over the decade-long secrets she kept. But she was not charged.
She said of her children: “They are my number one priority. Everything I do, I do for them. I keep a journal and diaries about my life and I’ve come a long way.
“The healing still goes on but now I sleep very well at night.”
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