Week 1: Satchwell trial heard timeline of disappearance | Breaking News & Latest Ireland Updates

Week 1: Satchwell trial heard timeline of disappearance — Legal Affairs Correspondent Richard Satchwell went on trial this week, accused of the murder of his wife Tina who went missing in March 2017. Her body...

Legal Affairs Correspondent

Richard Satchwell went on trial this week, accused of the murder of his wife Tina who went missing in March 2017.

Her body was found more than six years later in a grave dug in the sitting room of the couple's home in Youghal in Co Cork.

Mr Satchwell has pleaded not guilty to murder.

Our Legal Affairs Correspondent Órla O'Donnell looks back at the first week of evidence.

Much of the evidence in the first week of the trial of Richard Satchwell, came straight from the accused man himself.

After he reported her missing in March 2017 and in the months leading up to the first anniversary of her disappearance, Mr Satchwell gave numerous and extensive interviews to the broadcast media.

He told interviewers he didn't like speaking to the print media as he felt the newspapers had twisted his words. But in the broadcast interviews, some of which were live, unedited and extremely long, he felt his own words could be heard directly.

Over a day and a half, the jury watched interviews with every major broadcast news outlet operating in Co Cork - RTÉ, TV3 (now Virgin Media), Newstalk, Red FM, Cork 96 FM and even Youghal’s local community radio station.

In the interviews, his story remained the same. His wife Tina had asked him to run some errands in Dungarvan on the morning of 20 March 2017. He had gone out to do what she asked, and when he came back she was gone, along with two suitcases and the couple’s savings of €26,000. The tin the savings had been stored in had been left behind. He later sold it at a car boot sale.

Mr Satchwell appealed for his wife or for anyone who had any information to get in touch. Her two dogs, Heidi and Ruby, and their parrot Valentine missed her, he told interviewers. In a report by RTÉ’s Barry Cummins for Prime Time, the jurors got to see the couple’s beloved pets for themselves.

Prosecuting counsel Gerardine Small had told the jury at the beginning of the trial that Ms Satchwell was a very "petite, glamorous woman" who loved fashion and her animals. In the many television reports seen by the jury, punctuated by dozens of photographs, the jury got to see this for themselves. Even Ms Satchwell's favourite dog, her chihuahua Ruby, was dressed up for the cameras at one point in a cerise-pink furry coat.

Mr Satchwell told Mr Cummins that if his wife came home, he would throw his arms around her and then fall to the floor with relief. And he became emotional as he described how he believed she was alive, how he had built his life around her and how he had bought birthday, anniversary and Christmas presents for her in the hope she would come back.

He was asked directly by Paul Byrne, then southern correspondent with TV3 News, if he had killed his wife. Mr Satchwell replied: "Never. I would never lay a finger on her."

Ms Small told the jurors in her opening speech that Mr Satchwell’s story did not change for more than six years.

He walked into Fermoy Garda Station on 24 March 2017 to tell them his wife had gone. He told gardaí and various interviewers that until then he had been convinced she had gone away to "get her head straight" and was with family members in Fermoy, but that he didn’t have phone numbers to contact them. When he visited the town, he said he realised she was not there, the ground fell from under him and he went immediately to the garda station, he said.

By early May 2017, when Garda Thomas Keane called to Mr Satchwell’s home and spoke to him, their concern for Ms Satchwell’s welfare was rising.

On 11 May, Mr Satchwell formally reported his wife missing. This allowed the investigation to be upgraded from a "casual inquiry" about "someone who had left home", the court heard.

There was a trawl of CCTV, a media campaign took place, house-to-house inquiries were carried out. But now retired sergeant John Sharkey told the trial all of this proved "fruitless".

In June 2017, gardaí decided to search the couple’s home at Grattan Street in Youghal. Mr Satchwell, who was a truck driver, was not there, so gardaí used a locksmith to gain entry to the house.

Retired sergeant Sharkey told Mr Satchwell’s defence counsel Brendan Grehan that it was a "thorough, formal search". Up to ten gardaí were involved, remaining at the house for around 12 hours.

Garda Cathal Whelan told the trial the three-storey, narrow building was "untidy and unkempt". There were dog faeces on the floor and unwashed dishes in the kitchen.

At the top of the house, one room contained handbags and shoes, while there was a sun bed in an adjoining room. Beside the bedroom, there was a room containing rails holding hundreds of outfits.

Garda Whelan told the court the stairs appeared to be made of "relatively new, untreated, unpainted wood" and a wall at the side of the stairs was unpainted plasterboard which also looked relatively new.

Retired garda Denis Barry also recalled fresh plasterboard in the hallway. And he agreed with Mr Grehan that it was fair to say there seemed to be a number of unfinished home improvement works, including a freshly bricked wall underneath the stairs.

A forensic scientist told the court he had examined the house with a chemical used to detect the presence of blood, but nothing was found.

Gardaí also seized a number of electronic devices from the house.

Mr Satchwell attended Midleton Garda Station the following day. He told Inspector Daniel Holland that his wife was very headstrong and determined. He said she had assaulted him the week before she went missing and had previously knocked him unconscious on two occasions. He said he would never physically react to these assaults but would drive away on his own and have a cry.

He told gardaí the reason he had waited four days to report his wife missing was because she had told him previously that if she ever left him and he came looking for her, she would ring the guards on him.

Mr Satchwell was asked about documents found in the house related to Western Union money transfers for substantial amounts of cash. He explained that he and his wife were trying to buy or adopt two marmoset monkeys but were having difficulty doing so. In an email sent on 20 March 2017 to an animal sanctuary they were dealing with, Mr Satchwell said his wife had told him she would leave him over the issue.

For more than six and a half years, Mr Satchwell maintained the same story with gardaí and with the media. But on 10 October 2023, the situation changed. Gardaí arrested Mr Satchwell and brought in a multi-disciplinary team along with excavators and diggers to search the couple’s home again.

The jury was told by Ms Small that this search was extensive and invasive. The team included forensic archaeologists and personnel with a specialist knowledge of historic crime scenes. A cadaver dog trained to detect human bodies was also used.

In custody, Mr Satchwell continued to insist to gardaí that he had last seen his wife on the morning of 20 March 2017, and that she was gone when he got home. He was released the next day on 11 October 2023. But later that day there was a breakthrough at the house when a body was found.

Ms Satchwell’s skeletal remains were found wrapped in black sheeting in a small grave which had been dug underneath the stairs in the sitting room and then cemented over. A cause of death could not be determined.

Mr Satchwell was rearrested and reinterviewed. Ms Small said it was at this point that the narrative changed.

Mr Satchwell now told the gardaí that on the morning of 20 March 2017, he was in the shed out the back of the house. When he came back in at around 9am in the morning, he saw his wife, in her dressing gown, scraping at plasterboard that he had put up, with a chisel. He said that when he asked her what she was doing, she flew at him with the chisel.

He fell backwards he said, she was on top of him, trying to stab him in the head with the chisel. He said all he could do to protect himself was take a belt which was at Ms Satchwell's neck and hold her weight off himself. But he said in a matter of seconds she fell limp, and was then dead in his arms.

Ms Small said he told gardaí that he transferred her to a freezer two days later and then transferred her to the grave he had dug under the stairs four days after that.

The jury was told they would hear and see these very extensive interviews as part of this lengthy trial, which resumes on Tuesday and is expected to last for another four or five weeks.