RICHARD SATCHWELL WAS “obsessed” with and “possessive” of his wife Tina, her half-sister told his murder trial today, with the witness also giving evidence that Tina had confided that she “couldn’t get away from” her husband.

Lorraine Howard (50), who is the first and only witness to give evidence on behalf of the accused man, told the 12 jurors today that Mr Satchwell was: “obsessive, wanting to know where Tina was all the time, who she was speaking to all the time, where she was going all the time”.

Ms Howard said every friend Ms Satchwell would meet, the accused would find “some fault” with, while Tina’s “friendship circle was getting smaller and smaller”.

Tina’s half sister also told defence counsel, Brendan Grehan SC, that she thought the way Mr Satchwell acted was “controlling and just odd”.

The trial has heard that on 24 March, 2017, Mr Satchwell told gardai 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 Ms Satchwell missing the following May but her body was not discovered for over six years, when gardai in October 2023 conducted “an invasive search” of the Satchwell home and found her decomposed remains in a grave that had been dug underneath the stairs.

When re-arrested on suspicion of Tina’s murder after her body was removed from their Cork home, Mr Satchwell told gardai 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.

In her evidence today, Ms Howard told Mr Grehan that for a long time she thought Tina was her aunt but she found out at an early age that she was her biological half-sister. 

The witness said that she and Tina shared the same mother but had different fathers.

Ms Howard told counsel that Tina found out the truth “at her confirmation age”, when she went looking for her birth certificate.

Asked how Tina had reacted, Ms Howard said: “Shock I suppose and felt maybe she had been lied to for a long period of time.”

Ms Howard said her grandmother Florence Dingivan, who is now deceased, had raised Tina and she [the witness] saw them as mother and daughter.

Ms Howard said she and Tina, who was three years older, weren’t raised in the same house but lived across the road from each other. “We would have been over and back to each other every day….. We were best best friends”.

Asked whether their relationship changed when Tina became aware they were half-sisters, Ms Howard said it had. 

“I think she felt resented and hurt, and in her eyes she was given away – that’s not actually what happened – and I was kept,” replied the witness.

Ms Howard said this had caused big distress for Tina and sometimes she [the witness] “bore the brunt” of that. 

“We had years of being friends and would then fall out, nearly always about small things, her being given away and she would take her mother’s side, who was in fact her grandmother [Florence], and I would take my mother’s side,” she continued.

“We had a very unique family set up and it caused problems in our family..it always came back to this issue that Tina felt somehow abandoned,” she added.

The witness began to weep when Mr Grehan brought up their brother Tom taking his life in 2012. She said his death affected Tina as much as herself.

The witness cried as she told the jury: “Tina had two families, even now we have her remains back, half her ashes with my grandmother and half are with my brother Tom.”

Ms Howard said she first met Mr Satchwell in her grandmother’s house when she was 15 years old.

Asked how she would describe the relationship between Richard and Tina, Ms Howard said the accused used to call Tina his “trophy wife and girlfriend”. 

“I didn’t like that as a comment, I didn’t think it was right to refer to someone as a trophy.”

Mr Grehan asked the witness about a statement she made to Detective Garda David Kelleher in August 2020, before Tina’s remains were discovered and Mr Satchwell was charged with his wife’s murder.  

Ms Howard said she believed Tina to be alive at the time and was angry with her, as she believed she was putting the family through “untold stress” and having “taken off with money”. 

She said she gave the statement in hurt and anger, saying: “I should have aimed this anger at Richard Satchwell”.

The witness agreed that her views have been “revisited” since she discovered Tina was dead and buried, and Mr Satchwell was calling to her house “telling me all these lies”.

Ms Howard agreed she recalled telling the detective that Richard was obsessed with Tina and she knew he was “above his league”, when asked to describe their relationship.

She also agreed she had said that the accused liked it “just the two of them” and that Tina “wore the trousers”.

The witness agreed gardai had asked her about Mr Satchwell spending money on Tina and she had said he would spend “every penny” on his wife “to dress her up”. 

She also agreed she had used the phrase “high maintenance” in her statement to gardai to describe Tina.

Ms Howard said she had never seen any “violence” between the couple, despite her and her sister having “many arguments”. 

“She never once went to put a hand towards me,” the witness added.

She agreed she had described Tina’s “Jekyll and Hyde personality” to gardai – as sometimes they would be friends and then wouldn’t be.

Ms Howard said she told Det Gda Kelleher that Tina had a temper. 

She agreed with Mr Grehan that she had also told the officer about scratches on Mr Satchwell’s back but clarified today that she had no idea where they came from and had never said Tina had given them to the accused.

Mr Grehan put it to the witness that she was asked about a comment Mr Satchwell had made – that if Tina ever left him and he came after her, she [Tina] would call the gardai. 

“She knew she couldn’t get away from him. She would confide in me that he would follow her to the ends of the earth and had no way of getting away from him,” said the witness.

Ms Howard said she had also told gardai in her statement that Mr Satchwell was not controlling but “definitely possessive”. 

“I didn’t see him as controlling at the time but have since changed my opinion,” she said.

Ms Howard said she had told gardai that Mr Satchwell had shown her every scar on his body and blamed Tina for it. 

“If he had a paper cut he would blame Tina”.

She said before Tina went missing, Mr Satchwell had never once described his wife as violent or aggressive in any form and then suddenly she was “violent and causing all kinds of damage to his person”.

The witness agreed with counsel she hadn’t had a conversation with Tina for 15 years before she disappeared.

The trial continues tomorrow before Mr Justice Paul McDermott and a jury of five men and seven women, when closing speeches from counsel will begin.

Mr Satchwell (58), with an address at Grattan Street, Youghal, Co Cork has pleaded not guilty to murdering his 45-year-old wife Tina Satchwell – nee Dingivan – at that address between 19 March and 20 March, 2017, both dates inclusive.