Seamus Howell had turned two on the day his mother Lesley was killed by his father and Hazel Stewart.
The then lovers also killed Stewart’s husband Trevor Buchanan.
In a new interview with the Irish Times, Seamus said he has not seen or spoken to his father since he was jailed for at least 21 years in 2010.
The bodies of Lesley Howell and Trevor Buchanan were found in a fume-filled garage in Castlerock, Co Londonderry, in 1991.
Colin Howell and Kyle Jorgensen. Photo: BBC/Below the Radar
For years it was believed the pair died in a suicide pact after discovering their partners’ affair.
However, in 2009, Howell walked into a police station in Coleraine and confessed to the murders.
Stewart was found guilty of both murders in 2011 after a trial, in which Colin Howell testified against her, and was jailed for at least 18 years.
The double killing is back in the spotlight after the release of separate documentaries on the BBC and ITV in recent days.
Seamus is now based in New York, where he works as a consultant in a public hospital.
He told the Irish Times how he received “some cringe letters” from his father after he was detained in 2009, but has not talked to him or visited him in prison.
“I feel like I need to,” he said, adding that it is his “intention to”.
“I don’t know what it means to forgive him, however, I aspire to forgive him. I don’t wish any harm on him,” he added.
“I would really love to hear that he had learned the freedom that comes with being honest and also a little bit of humility.”
Lesley Howell
In the interview, Seamus describes life with his father, who appeared a deeply religious man who regularly attended Coleraine Baptist church, where he met Stewart, a Sunday school teacher.
He recalled how his father “loved to goof around with us – he would play his guitar and do singalong little Bible songs”.
In 1997 Colin Howell married Kyle Jorgensen. He had met the single mother, who had come to Northern Ireland from the United States to study Irish, at a prayer meeting.
Seamus remembers how the house was dominated by his father and his evangelical Protestant beliefs, with “everything framed in a very religious but punitive way”.
Trevor Buchanan
After dinner, one of the children would regularly be “summoned”, he told the Irish Times.
“Often there would be shouting and screaming, there would be smacking – for some sort of terrible way we had rebelled against God’s authority.”
He recalled when, aged 16, he wanted to attend a prayer meeting in a nearby town to “hang out with some other kids from the church”, he was told he was trying to sow division and that he was going against God’s plans to “plant” a church in Castlerock.
“The smallest little things were these huge fallouts from the Lord,” he added.
He also discussed the death of his older brother Matthew, who died in a freak accident in St Petersburg in 2007.
Seamus said his brother had been “deeply hurt” by his mother’s death, adding: “One of the terrible injustices that can never be undone is that he went to his grave not knowing the truth, and that’s very … that’s tough.”
Colin Howell
News Catch Up – Friday 30 January
After his son’s death, Colin Howell also lost thousands in a failed gold investment in the Philippines.
Seamus said his father was “obsessed” with the Biblical King David and felt he was being punished as God punished David.
While he would like his father and Stewart to apologise, he adds: “It’s more than just for me. On a personal level, it’s not going to make a big material difference in my life, but I’m talking about things from the perspective of my mother, and there’s a whole other person there: Trevor Buchanan.”
