THE cost to the taxpayer of defending Hazel Stewart, convicted of murdering two people including her own husband in 2011, has now reached £440,000.
However, it does not represent the full amount, as the Department of Justice does not have figures for a failed attempt last year to reopen her appeal against her conviction.
Stewart (52) is serving a minimum 18-year jail sentence for murdering her husband Constable Trevor Buchanan (32) and Lesley Howell (31), the wife of her ex-lover Colin Howell in 1991.
The legal costs to defend Howell, also convicted of the double murder, were more than £81,000.
The figures were disclosed by The Newsletter, which quoted the man who obtained the figures as saying: "There’s money for nothing – the health service is on its knees. And we’ve this type of behaviour going on from Hazel Stewart. It just beggars belief."
Of the total amount, almost £327,000 was the cost of her Court of Appeal case.
A legal battle over police pension benefits inherited by Stewart from her murdered first husband is to be heard in May.
Attempts by the National Crime Agency (NCA) to secure an order for her to repay funds she gained following the death of Trevor Buchanan have been hit by a series of delays.
The bid to recover money from Stewart comes as she continues to try to clear her name.
She was unanimously convicted of both killings by a jury at Coleraine Crown Court in March 2011.
The victims were found in a fume-filled garage in Castlerock, Co Derry and police believed they had died in a suicide pact after discovering their partners were having an affair.
Nearly two decades passed before dentist Howell (55) suddenly confessed to both killings and implicated Stewart in the plot.
She is now applying to the Criminal Cases Review Commission in a further challenge to the guilty verdict.
