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‘Tina, come home. There’s nobody mad at you. My arms are open. The pets are missing you.’
Richard Satchwell’s eyes fill with tears as he appeals directly to wife of 27 years Tina to contact him. By that stage, in June 2017, nobody had seen or heard from Tina in months.
In the Crimecall appeal, Satchwell, 58, looks straight down the camera, begging: ‘I just can’t go on not knowing. Even if you just ring the guards, let people know that you are all right.’
But he knew exactly where she was and what had happened to her.
The programme was one of more than a dozen media appearances in which Satchwell recounted his story of Tina leaving the house one morning never to return.
In that time, the truck driver told her family she had walked out on him with 26,000 euro of their savings, having assaulted him throughout their marriage.
It would take six years for the grim truth to emerge.
Satchwell had murdered his wife at their home in Youghal, Co Cork.
Within a week, he had placed her body in an unplugged chest freezer, which was kept in the shed at the back of the property in Grattan Street.
He then dug a hole, measuring almost one-metre deep, under the stairs of their three-storey home.
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Tina’s body, still wearing her pyjamas and dressing gown, was then wrapped in a black plastic sheet and placed inside the hole with her head facing down.
Satchwell showed no emotion as he was found guilty of murder today.
Dublin’s Central Criminal Court heard he was similarly impassive on March 24, 2017, when he walked into Fermoy Garda Station to report that his wife had left him, and he had not seen her in four days.
It was more than seven weeks after Tina disappeared that Satchwell formally reported her missing to gardai, and her case was upgraded to a missing persons case.
Satchwell set out a story to Garda James Butler that he would stick by for almost seven years.
The claims led to a lengthy investigation, which began with a search of his home in June 2017.
The search, which lasted for around 11 hours, did not find anything of significance.
In the year after she vanished, Satchwell embarked on a media campaign in which he spoke extensively to TV and radio journalists about Tina and the day she left their home and their marriage.
According to Satchwell, it was love at first sight.
He was 21 years old when he first laid eyes on Tina, a 17-year-old from Fermoy, who had moved to Coalville, near Leicester in England.
She had moved to live with her grandmother and Satchwell’s brother was a neighbour.
Satchwell said they ‘clicked’, and they were together ever since.
A broadcast interview played to the jury shows Satchwell taking a journalist around his home, meeting their pet parrot, Valentine.
He also shows a dusty unopened bottle of Cava he bought for their anniversary.
During many of his interviews and ‘exchanges of information’ with gardai, Satchwell repeatedly told them he believed Tina left because of a breakdown in their relationship.
But he also said he believed she would return home.
He claimed she would have violent outbursts that she would direct at him, and spoke about his wife’s ‘dark side’. He claimed he gave up a lot in his life to be with her. She did not want children, but he did, he claimed.
Images of his house after Tina disappeared revealed a home that had dog faeces on the floor, unwashed dishes lying in the kitchen sink and a birdcage that had not been cleaned for a while.
There was also a cement mixer in the sitting room.
Satchwell later admitted that he slept on bed sheets that had not been washed in years.
An upstairs room was full of clothing and clothing racks, all belonging to Tina.
By June 2017, detectives suspected that Tina may have been injured or ‘incapacitated by a criminal event’.
Cracks also began to emerge in his well-rehearsed story.
A forensic accountant said that the couple would not have been able to save 26,000 euro that he claimed she took the morning she left.
CCTV and phone location data also revealed that he was not in Dungarvan on the morning of March 20.
It later emerged that he had offered Tina’s cousin the chest freezer he had used to store her body for a number of days.
Years passed with no updates or sightings of missing Tina.
Then in August 2021, Superintendent Annmarie Twomey was appointed senior investigating officer, and along with Detective Garda David Kelleher from Cobh Garda Station, she familiarised herself with the case.
She identified new lines of inquiry and came to the conclusion that Tina was no longer alive – and had met her death by unlawful means.
Investigators obtained a court search warrant and on October 10, 2023, gardai arrested Satchwell and began an extensive search of his home.
He repeated the same story about her disappearing from their home with 26,000 euro on March 20 2017, claiming she never returned.
He was released the following day, but just hours later the decomposed remains of his wife were found buried one metre underground, beneath the stairs.
Suddenly, that well-rehearsed story changed.
He said that on the morning of March 20 he had been up early in the morning and was working on a plumbing issue in the shed.
At around 9am, the two dogs came into the shed, which, he said, meant that Tina was up.
He went inside and found his wife in her dressing gown scraping at the plasterboard with a chisel. He asked her what she was doing, and she suddenly flew at him with the chisel.
He said he lost his footing and fell backwards, and she was on top of him trying to stab him in the head with the chisel.
All he could do to protect himself from his 5ft 4ins eight stone wife, according to Satchwell, was hold the dressing gown belt to her neck.
He then held Tina’s weight off him with the belt and within a matter of second, she ‘falls limp and collapses into my arms’.
His denial of the charge was ultimately rejected by the jury who found him guilty of murder.
Speaking outside court, Tina’s cousin Sarah Howard said the family ‘finally have justice’.
She said: ‘During this trial Tina was portrayed in a way that is not true to who she was.
‘Tina was our precious sister, cousin, auntie and daughter. Her presence in our life meant so much to us all.
‘We, as a family, can never put into words the impact that her loss has had on all of us.
‘Tina was a kind, loving, gentle soul who loved her animals like they loved her and that is the way we want her remembered.
‘Today, as a family, we finally have justice for Tina.’
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