Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

This is the story of Colin Howell and Hazel Stewart. Colin Howell is the dentist who murdered his wife and his lover's husband.

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Now the guy, his name's Colin, and Colin is a very religious dude, he's also a dentist. But one day, at a church activity, he meets this woman, her name's Hazel. And Colin thinks Hazel is foin, so they hit it off and pretty soon Colin and Hazel low-key start smashing. Here's the problem with that though. Colin is actually already married, and he has a bunch of kids. And here's the other problem with that. Hazel is also married with kids. Regardless, they secretly keep their affair going,

and they just keep smashing away. And this goes on for a few months. But then they get busted. Someone from the church they go to is at a local park, and he catches them in the act. And he tells the pastor at their church, and pastor tells Colin's wife, and this blows their whole affair wide open.

And so, Colin and Hazel each have to go to their respective spouses and confess that they're having an affair. Now, Colin's wife, who we'll just call Colin's wife, she's absolutely devastated by this news, and she can't handle it. And eventually, she tries to unalive herself with sleeping pills. But lucky for her, she's not successful. She survives.

However, allegedly, Colin finds her superiors. And this suicide note gives him an idea of how to solve his problem. Because despite all the trauma he's caused his wife, he still really wants to keep smashing with Hazel. Now, he could go and just get a divorce, and Hazel could get a divorce, and then they could just be together like normal people. But they decide they can't do that. Because remember, he is a super religious Christian, and so is she. And because of that, they decide divorce is just not an option. It's frowned upon by the church. Instead, they go a different route.

And Colin and Hazel come up with a plan. They're gonna unalive each other's spouses so that they can be together and that they can live happily ever after. So they're too religious for divorce, but not too religious for murder. Got it. So anyway, one night, Colin's wife is asleep in the living room, on the couch.

And this is not surprising, since they're having so many problems in their marriage. But Colin, he sneaks into the garage, and he's got some kind of hose, and he attaches that hose to the exhaust pipe of their car while the car is running. Then he takes the other end of that hose, and he sneaks into the living room, and he holds it near his wife's face.

Now, obviously, he's trying to poison her with carbon monoxide by trying to get her to inhale the fumes from the running car. And she does breathe in these fumes, but she doesn't immediately die. Instead, she wakes up, and her eyes open, and she starts to struggle because she realizes she can't. can't really breathe. And Colin, he holds her down and he covers her face with a quilt and he sticks

the hose under there and she struggles and she takes her last few breaths until she's unalived. Then Colin carries her body and he puts it in the trunk of his car and he drives toward Hazel's house. Meanwhile, over at Hazel's house, she is completing her part of the plan. And her husband is there at the house with her, this guy, and she low-key slips him some sedatives and he passes out. He's asleep. Then, Colin arrives, and he does the same thing he did to his wife. He attaches the hose to the exhaust of his car again, and he creeps into the bedroom with that hose, and he puts it near the husband's face so that he'll breathe in the fumes.

And then husband wakes up and there's a struggle and a fight, but husband is just too sedated, and he loses the fight, and Colin holds him down and puts the hose up to his face, and he breathes in too much of the fumes, and husband ultimately died. Then Colin moves the body to the car where his wife's body is, and he drives the bodies over to another family member's house, and he parks the car in the garage, and he arranges the husband in the front seat, and he puts his wife in the backseat.

Then he hooks up a hose to the exhaust pipe, and he runs it up to the window. And he makes it look like they were trying to carbon monoxide poison themselves, like it was a double suicide. And he reports it to the police, and police eventually find the bodies, and they believed the story that it was a double suicide. And I don't really think police do a very good job of investigating this.

They're just like, yep, two people who didn't really know each other decided to unalive themselves together? Huh, that makes sense. Case closed. Anyway, then, to make it worse, the medical examiner examines the bodies, and they agree, and they rule it a double suicide. So Colin and Hazel straight up get away with this crime. And what's even better for them,

Colin makes some bank from his wife. He allegedly receives over 300,000 pounds from her will or about 400,000 US dollars. He also makes money from life insurance policy and some money from his late father-in-law's estate. Dude has got some cash now. So he and Hazel are able to take all this money and live happily ever after as the good Christian family they are. But five years later, unfortunately for them, their relationship fizzles out and they end up splitting up.

And eventually Colin moves on and he remarries and so does Hazel. And it seems like since they moved on, no one will ever speak of those murders again. Until, about 16 years later, Colin's life starts falling apart. First, his 22-year-old son suddenly dies in some accident in Russia. He like fell down a stairwell. Horrible tragedy. And this devastates Colin, as you can imagine. Then he falls for some get-rich-quick scam.

Some guy in the Philippines cons him out of his life savings about 350,000 pounds, or around $467,000 US dollars. So all that money he made from his wife's death, from the will and the life insurance, he loses it all, and he falls deep into debt. Womp-womp-womp. So now he's broke and one of his kids is dead and he doesn't know what to do, like he's never felt this low in his life. And keep in mind, he's still a very religious guy.

So he sees all this bad luck as some kind of sign that his God is punishing him. Punishing him for all the bad things he's done in his life, specifically punishing him for unaliving his wife and for unaliving Hazel's husband all those years ago. So he starts thinking that it'll help if he confesses. So he goes and he calls some of the elders of his church to gather at his house and he sits them down and he starts confessing. I guess he thinks this is going to completely absolve him of his crimes.

Like the church is just going to be like, oh, it's fine that you've committed murder. We're all good with that, just as long as you tell the truth. No. I mean, they're church elders, but they're also, you know, human beings, like anyone else. You go around most people talking about how you committed murder over a decade ago. Most people are going to be like, uh, I don't want to be involved in this conversation. Whatever you did, bro.

Just leave me out of it. Anyway, during this gathering, Colin confesses a lot of things to these church elders. He confesses to his new wife that he had multiple affairs during their marriage. He confesses that he has a major addiction to pornography. He confesses that he sometimes likes to essay his dental patients while they're passed out in his dental chair, sedated? Wow. And finally, he confesses to unaliving his wife and Hazel's husband over a decade and a half ago.

Bro is self-snitching like crazy. And the church elders, they hear this and they're like, holy shit! Prayers are not gonna fix this one, and they call the police. And so the police come over and Colin confesses and bam, they arrest him. And he ends up snitching on Hazel, so bam, they arrest her too. And she gets sentenced to 18 years in prison while Colin gets a total of 26 years in prison. And here's what he looks like in real life.