LAST UPDATE | 14 May

GARDAÍ TOLD RICHARD Satchwell that his description of his wife Tina’s death, where he said he held her off by the belt of her bathrobe, “didn’t make sense” and was “most likely a physical impossibility”.

A Central Criminal Court jury in Dublin today heard that the murder accused said he wasn’t trying to “bullshit” detectives.

“I’m going to prison, there will be no jury because I’m going to plead guilty,” Satchwell told gardaí in interviews.

The accused added: “I’m not going to lie, I’m holding my arms up holding her off [...] you’re asking did I put the belt around her neck and strangle her basically. I’m not saying at any point that’s the way she died”.

He said his initial account of his wife’s disappearance until her body was uncovered six years later in a grave beneath her home was his “shame”.

“Should I have come straight out to your barracks and put my hands up? Yes I should, but I didn’t and I can’t take that back now. I said it started as a lie and the lie escalated,” he told detectives.

In his first interview with gardaí following his re-arrest on 12 October 2023, Satchwell said that his wife Tina “flew” at him with a chisel, that he had fallen backwards and described holding the belt of her bathrobe at her neck “until she got heavier”.

“Before I know it, it had all stopped, it just stopped. I put my arms around her, she fell down on top of me. I didn’t know what to do,” said Satchwell.

During a second interview on the same day, the accused was asked by detectives to physically describe Tina.

“I can describe her in one word for you; physically perfect,” he said.

Gardaí put it to the accused that he hadn’t described any attempts to revive Tina after the incident.

“I lay there numb, and I wasn’t thinking. My brain numb and body numb. Her body was stone-cold. I can’t turn around and say she died of this, I don’t know what happened.”

He said he had used a nail scissors to cut the belt as he wanted to put Tina’s arm around him, but the position of the belt prevented him.

“I know it sounds sick”.

He said he was an emotional wreck, wasn’t in a good frame of mind and his face was wet from crying. He said he had dedicated his life to his wife.

At this point, Detective Sergeant David Noonan told the accused that Tina’s body had been taken away from the grave he buried her in at Grattan Street and a post-mortem would be performed in an effort to establish the cause of death.

Asked what he believed the cause of death would show, Satchwell said: “I think the weight of her and me fighting her off was too much for the throat, I think it blocked her breathing or something I don’t know”.

Asked by gardaí whether the belt on his wife’s purple bathrobe was tied, Satchwell said he didn’t think so, but he couldn’t say for certain.

“It happened in such a flash, it wasn’t something my brain had time to comprehend and pretty much everything that happened afterwards is a bit of a blur,” he told detectives.

Officers put it to the accused that this was not something that happens in a flash, to which Satchwell said at that moment his arms had gone “dead and numb”.

He replied: “It seemed like forever but also not forever that it was happening. I was afraid, I was full of fear, and I was fending her off.”

Satchwell said he had lifted the middle of Tina’s body into the hole he dug and laid her down as he wasn’t going to drop her in.

“I did my best. Honest to god I can’t go into 100% detail because I wasn’t 100% there. Mentally I lifted her in, I covered her with plastic”.

He went on to say: “It was a blur, everything was happening like it was a film that you can’t rewind, I wasn’t thinking”.

‘I can’t recall every detail’

The accused said he knew it sounded ridiculous, but he wanted to make his wife comfortable.

“I dropped her in the hole, next minute it’s done.”

He said the belt from the bathrobe was in the grave with her as he had taken nothing off the body. He described burying Tina as “the final goodbye, like at a funeral, a genuine funeral, you cry”.

The accused said he was “the doer” and “it’s a lot harder when you’ve done it and when you are the reason that the person is lying there”.

“I wanted her with me, but I knew she was dead, but I would talk to her – that’s not rational – it’s like when you go to a graveyard you talk to your loved ones.”

Gardaí then put it to Satchwell that he was excluding the most significant thing about how Tina died and there was no logical reason why he would do that, other than if there was something to hide.

“I’ve put my hands up. I am the reason she is no longer with us [...] I can’t recall every detail,” he said.

Officers put it to the accused that, from what he had described of what happened to Tina, they could not see how she had died.

Noonan said: “It doesn’t make sense from what you have described. That’s what I’m saying, there is another explanation for what caused Tina’s death”.

Satchwell replied: “I can’t give you anything else because that’s the way it was for me.”

The detective said the incident could not have happened the way the accused had described it, adding: “It’s most likely a physical impossibility that could have caused Tina’s death.”

Satchwell said he was “trying” and wasn’t perfect, but he could only go “by the way it was for me when it happened”. Gardaí again told the accused the way he had described Tina dying “didn’t make sense” and “nobody could die just like that”.

Satchwell replied: “I’ve said what it was for me. If I try to delve into it and try to make it the way you understand it then it’s not the way it happened for me”.

The accused said he had defended himself against his wife and he was looking at the chisel and not Tina’s face: “I’m sick of living behind a mask and now I’m here saying the best way I can.”

Gardaí asked him whether he thought the belt and him holding it had caused her death.

“I honestly can’t say for certain but to me yes,” he replied. “It was the way she came down on top of me”.

“When she was lying on top of you and the belt was in your hand, was it around her neck?” asked gardaí.

“Not to my knowledge, my arms around her when she on my body,” he said.

YouTube searches

In a third interview on 13 October, gardaí put it to Satchwell that his wife was found “pretty well-preserved” to which the accused said that it was his intention to “make her comfortable”. 

He went on to describe himself as scared, sorrowful and ashamed.

Asked how his life had altered since his wife left him, the accused said his quality of life was non-existent and he was lonely.

“I’m not inhuman, I have a conscience, I still dream of Tina. I never lost the desire to be with her,” he said, adding later that “not everything I said was lies, a lot was”.

He said he had “nothing to gain and nothing to lose” at that point. He told gardaí that Tina, in the past, hit him so hard that she “broke a tooth clean off the root”.

He told gardaí “in your head I was the violent person in the relationship”. He said there was no premeditation and gardaí would find a lot of bite marks on his body which matched Tina’s dental records.

“Not just arms; back, cheeks. If we had visitors, I went up to the attic and stayed silent until they were gone.” 

He was asked about viewing a YouTube video for quicklime on 24 March 2017, four days after Tina’s death.

The defendant said he had heard somewhere about using quicklime to dry cement, but that he only searched for it once, adding that he had not purchased quicklime or put it in the grave.

Questioned on changing narrative

Gardaí put it to Satchell that for the previous six years he has had “one narrative and one story”, but when Tina’s body was found he said he was starting to tell the truth.

“Now you have changed the narrative and changed the lyrics, you are still not telling full truths,” said one officer.

Satchwell said he was not being selective and was not trying to cover up and embellish.

“I was just panicking, trying to keep everything the same. Should I have come straight out to your garda barracks and put my hands up? Yes I should, but I didn’t and I can’t take that back now. I said it started as a lie and the lie escalated; my shame”.

Gardaí put it to him that his actions on 20 March 2017 didn’t suggest a man who was panicking but rather premeditation. He denied this, saying he could not have premeditated Tina coming downstairs and the series of events that followed.

The trial continues tomorrow before Mr Justice Paul McDermott and a jury of five men and seven women.

The Central Criminal Court 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 Satchwell missing the following May, but her body was not discovered for over six years, when gardaí in October 2023, conducting “an invasive search” of the Satchwell’s home, found her decomposed remains in a grave that had been dug underneath the stairs.

The trial has heard gardaí went with a search warrant to the accused’s home on Grattan Street in Youghal on 10 October 2023, where they arrested him for the murder of Tina Satchwell on or about 19 March 2017 and brought him to Cobh Garda Station.

An invasive search of Grattan Street was conducted simultaneously, with gardaí bringing in building equipment to excavate the couple’s home.

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