The pair saw more of each other, under the guise of taking their children on excursions. Then a few weeks later Hazel invited him to her house while her husband was at work - supposedly so he could teach her how to play the guitar, a skill he had demonstrated in the church.
Arriving with sheet music under his arm, he was greeted at the door. "Hazel was dressed in a denim miniskirt and sleeveless, low cut top – I knew I was not there for guitar lessons," he later said.
They began an affair, meeting at local beauty spots or at the Buchanans' bungalow while Trevor was on duty.
At times, Howell would sneak through the forest at the back of the house and climb in through a rear window left open for him.
In an attempt to remain undetected, they developed a secret code to contact each other, telephoning the other house but hanging up before the ring sound to make a momentary "ding" at the other end.
When their cars were spotted at a local forest park by a member of the church the affair was exposed. The pastor began a counselling programme attempting to save the two marriages and banned from seeing each other.
But they were soon back together secretly, and just before Christmas Hazel realised she was pregnant and, fearing it would be Howell's child, agreed to have an abortion.
One morning, leaving a note on her bathroom mirror saying she needed "space" and had gone away for a few days, she slipped over the garden fence and through the woods to meet Howell in his car and catch the flight to London to visit an abortion clinic.
Returning a few days later, she carried on as normal but the strains on the two marriages had grown by the end of April 1991 when Howell first outlined his plan to murder their respective partners, the trial heard.
They were to be gassed with carbon monoxide in their sleep then left in a car as if they had died in a suicide pact.
Initially reluctant, fearing they would get caught, Hazel agreed to take a packet of blue sleeping tablets to give to her husband on the night of the murders.
She outlined her husband's work rota to him and they chose the night of Saturday May 18, when he would be off duty. Hazel also agreed to leave the garage door open for Howell and park her husband's car in the street so that he could have access when he arrived for what he called "the procedure". She was also to leave out some clothes to dress her husband's body afterwards.
"I was scared, I didn't want it, I wanted the whole thing stopped and I didn't stop it," she told police wjhen she was finally arrested 18 years later.
Howell contacted his accomplice on the Saturday evening to finalise the plans. A few hours later she coaxed her husband to take a sleeping pill to help him get rest.
In the early hours of the morning, Howell called to say he was coming round, making clear his own wife was already dead.
A few minutes later he reversed into the garage as arranged and she let him into the house, catching a glimpse of what looked like a bag with Lesley's body in it in the boot.
"It was horrible and I knew what he was coming to do, I didn't want him to do it but Colin is a strong person," she later claimed to police.
As Howell ran the hosepipe through the hallway to the bedroom, she checked with him that there was no danger that the gas would harm her children, who were asleep nearby. Reassured, she ran into another room to wait.
At one point she heard noises as her husband, who had woken up, struggled with Howell in the final seconds of his life.
"I didn't want to hear it, I put my hands over my ears," she later said.
As she passed Howell the pile of clothes, she glanced down at her dead husband, trying not to look."I didn't want to see it," she said.
But as Howell bundled her husband into the boot, he handed her the hosepipe for her to cut up and burn in the fireplace in the living room.
After he drove off, she opened the bedroom window and changed the bed sheets get rid of smell of carbon monoxide.
"I never thought [I was destroying evidence], I just needed to get the room tidied up," she later insisted.
Around 6am Howell called to say he was back at his house after disposing of the bodies.
"What am I going to say here?" she asked him, as they finalised the story they would tell friends and family about how their spouses had gone off together the previous night and not returned.
For almost two decades, until a crisis of conscience prompted Howell to confess, Hazel kept the "dark secret", even from her second husband, David Stewart, a police superintendent.
"I live with that and I'll only get peace when I'm dead," she told detectives after she was finally arrested,
"I lived 18 years in agony."
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