The ex-wife of Co Derry dentist Colin Howell who told police she kept his double murder secret for over a decade is not to be prosecuted.
Kyle Jorgensen (47), an American, was told by her husband how he gassed his first wife Lesley and his then lover's policeman husband before persuading her not to inform the authorities for the sake of their children's future.
She has been under police investigation since Howell’s arrest in January 2009.
He first admitted the 1991 murders to her at the couple's home outside Castlerock, Co Derry, in the summer of 1998. He was on the verge of handing himself over to the police, but they eventually agreed to stay quiet.
It was Ms Jorgensen who eventually forced him to confess everything to detectives after he was swindled out of all his money, including the family's life savings.
The Public Prosecution Service in Belfast confirmed today she would be facing no charges.
A spokesperson said: “The decision was taken not to prosecute in this case because there was insufficient evidence to provide a reasonable prospect of conviction.”
Ms Jorgensen returned to Florida with their five children and filed for divorce when Howell was jailed for 21 years for murdering Lesley and Constable Trevor Buchanan in May 1991 and stage-managing the deaths to make it look like a suicide pact.
Hazel Stewart (51), his lover at the time, was jailed for a minimum of 18 years for her part in the deaths and role in covering them up. She has already failed in a High Court bid to appeal against her conviction for the murder of Mrs Howell, but is planning a fresh legal move in an attempt to clear her name.
A new legal team, headed up by the Belfast solicitor Kevin Winters, has asked the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) to examine the case and form a view on whether there may have been a miscarriage of justice.
Ms Jorgensen was interviewed by detectives at her home as well as in Derry and Limavady in the days following the arrests of her husband and Stewart, who was detained at the home she shared with her second husband, David Stewart, a retired RUC chief superintendent.
It was then that Ms Jorgensen admitted Howell had told her in August or September of 1998 what he had done.
Garden hose
He revealed how he used a garden hose, connected to the exhaust of his Renault car, to gas Lesley with carbon monoxide fumes as she slept at their home in Coleraine. He then drove across the town to murder Mr Buchanan (32), by the same method while Hazel waited outside the couple's bedroom before burning the hose as part of an planned cover-up.
Howell then placed the two bodies in the boot, drove to Castlerock and left them in a garage with the engine still running to fool investigating police into believing the pair had taken their own lives.
Howell begged Ms Jorgensen not to say a word to anyone.
She claimed he told 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.”
Ms Jorgensen told police how she contacted her family in America and spoke with friends in the Barn Christian Fellowship, the church outside Ballymoney, Co Antrim which they belonged to. She had come to live in Portstewart and study Irish at the University of Ulster. She met Howell in December 1996 — not long after Stewart ended her relationship with the dentist — and married him in May the following year.
It was August or September 1998 when admitting to having an affair with another women, he first confessed to the murders.
Press Association