THE JURY IN the trial of Richard Satchwell, who denies murdering his wife before hiding her remains beneath their Cork home, will return to the Central Criminal Court for a third day of deliberations tomorrow.

The panel of five men and seven women began considering their verdict at 3.05pm yesterday afternoon, and have so far spent a total of four hours and 42 minutes deliberating in their jury room in the Criminal Courts of Justice building.

At 4pm today, presiding judge Paul McDermott told the jurors that he would send them home for the evening and asked them to come back to the Central Criminal Court at 10.30am in the morning to resume their deliberations.

“Don’t talk about the case to anyone,” he added.

Before sending the jury out to begin their deliberations yesterday afternoon, McDermott asked them to consider all the evidence in the case.

He said if he had omitted any piece of evidence, they should “go on what’s important” to them.

The judge had told the panel that there are three verdicts they can return in relation to the murder charge against Richard Satchwell, namely; guilty of murder, not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter or not guilty.

He asked them to be unanimous in their verdict.

McDermott told the jurors that there were two routes to the verdict of not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter; on the basis that they were satisfied that there had been an unlawful killing but that Richard Satchwell did not have an intention to kill Tina or cause her serious injury, and also on the basis of partial self defence.

Tina Satchwell's remains were found buried underneath the stairs in her home in 2023.

The judge began charging the jury around midday on Monday in the trial of Satchwell (58), who has pleaded not guilty to murdering his 45-year-old wife Tina Satchwell – nee Dingivan – at their home address at Grattan Street, Youghal, Co Cork between 19 and 20 March 2017, both dates inclusive.

McDermott concluded his charge on Tuesday afternoon to the 12 jurors, having told them that they could consider the issue of self-defence.

The judge said the onus lay on the prosecution to prove that Richard Satchwell was not acting in self defence.

He said a scenario had been presented to the jury that the accused was attacked by Tina Satchwell and had sought to defend himself in the manner described in his interviews with gardaí.

He said if the jury decided the force used by Satchwell was reasonable in the circumstances as he honestly believed them to be, then they must acquit him of murder and manslaughter and return a verdict of not guilty.

He said if Satchwell honestly believed he used no more force than was reasonably necessary, but the degree of force used was not what a reasonable person would have used, then he was not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.

He said if self defence didn’t apply, then they could find the accused guilty of murder provided they were satisfied he intended to kill or cause serious injury.

The trial has heard that on 24 March 2017, Satchwell told gardaí that his wife Tina had left their home four days earlier but that he had no concerns over her welfare, feeling she had left due to a deterioration in their relationship.

The accused formally reported Tina Satchwell missing the following May but her body was not discovered for over six years, when gardaí found her decomposed remains in a grave that had been dug almost one metre deep underneath the stairs during an “invasive search” of the Satchwell home in October 2023.

When re-arrested on suspicion of Tina’s murder after her body was removed from their Cork home, Richard Satchwell told gardaí that his wife “flew” at him with a chisel, that he fell backwards against the floor and described her death after he said he held her off by the belt of her bathrobe at her neck.

The Assistant State Pathologist has told the trial that Tina’s cause of death cannot be determined due to the skeletal nature of her remains.

Last week in her closing speech, Gerardine Small SC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, told the jury that Richard Satchwell’s narrative of how his wife died after he held her off by the belt of her bathrobe was “absolutely farcical” and had “more holes in it than a block of Swiss cheese”.

Small submitted that the British truck driver had woven “a web of deceit” and continued his “fabricated narrative” over the years.

Counsel said that Richard Satchwell’s objective from the very outset was “always to put everyone off the scent” and that this was done because he had murdered Tina.

In his closing address, defence counsel Brendan Grehan SC told the jurors that there was no doubt Satchwell was guilty, but asked the jurors what exactly he was guilty of.

He argued that although the accused had lied “to the people of Ireland”, the lies do not make him a murderer or relieve the prosecution of the burden of proving the ingredients of murder.