Murderer Richard Satchwell won over inmates with cooking skills in prison
Wife-killer had job in prison kitchens after impressing staff with his cooking abilities
Satchwell is expected to return to Limerick Prison to serve his time behind bars
Killer Richard Satchwell shared an isolation prison wing with Barbie Kardashian and Jonathan Dowdall – before winning over other inmates with his cooking skills.
Satchwell is expected to return to Limerick Prison, where he has been in custody since his wife Tina's body was found buried under the stairs in the home.
He will be spending a long part of his life with other killers in the lock-up who are already serving the life sentence he is due to get next week.
When he first went into custody on October 2023 while awaiting trial, the English truck driver was placed the same isolation unit where Jonathan Dowdall and Barbie Kardashian are held.
Satchwell is expected to return to Limerick Prison to serve his time behind bars
But Satchwell, who has experience of prison, adapted quickly to life behind bars and was allowed to mix with the general population and got a job in the kitchens.
He turned out to be a well-regarded cook and even prepared meals for the staff canteen, according to Sunday World sources.
An unremarkable prisoner he is expected to get on fine in whatever prison he ends up while serving his time, it was added. He will also be entitled to apply to serve his sentence in his native UK and where he has family.
During his five-week trial, Satchwell was held in Cloverhill Prison in west Dublin but is now likely to return to Limerick to serve his sentence.
The nature of his crime initially meant there were concerns for his safety when first remanded into custody and he was put into the same wing as Dowdall and Kardashian.
Victim Tina Satchwell
Dowdall, is a former Sinn Féin councillor serving time for his part in the murder of David Byrne in the Regency Hotel attack. He also appeared as a prosecution witness in Gerry Hutch's trial for the same murder and was part of the Witness Protection Programme.
Transgender Kardashian is serving a five-year sentence for making threats to kill her mother and recently was acquitted of making threats to kill a fellow prisoner and a member of staff.
Satchwell won't be the only lifer to be jailed for killing a partner, joining Patrick Ballard who kicked his partner to death in a public toilet in Ennis in 2021.
Richard Satchwell is working in prison kitchens
News in 90 Seconds - 3rd June 2025
Stephen Cahoon's victim was also a woman – his pregnant ex-partner – who he strangled to death in her Derry home in 2008.
Also a lifer is Daniel Whelan, who battered a mother of four to death who he had met at an addiction treatment centre in 2018 in Waterford city.
Other killers serving life sentences in the prison include Kenneth Collopy, the son of gangland figure Brian Collopy, who shot dead a man in 2009.
Another is Alex Friedman, who broke into a house and stabbed his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend at a house in Clonmel in 2007.
Jonathan Dowdall
Barbie Kardashian
Patrick Ballard
Mark Crawford, who stabbed his pal to death during booze and cocaine binge in 2018, is also doing life in the prison.
After Satchwell is sentenced to the mandatory life sentence next week it will be open for him to appeal against his conviction.
During the trial his legal team sought an application to have the murder charge withdrawn on the grounds that there was no evidence of intent.
Defence counsel Brendan Grehan also applied for the jury to be discharged after the judge's charge to the jury which he described as another prosecution speech.
Neither application was accepted by the judge and the proceedings went on until the verdict was delivered on Friday just after noon.
Under the rules in Ireland a prisoner serving a life sentence is allowed to make an application for parole after serving 12 years.
However, the average time being served before being released on licence is now closer to 22 years, which in Satchwell's case would mean he will be 80 years of age.
One of those serving a life sentence in Limerick, Ross Stapelton, was sentenced to life in 2004 for the 2002 murder of man who died nine months after being beaten into a coma.
While eventual release may come, lifers face being returned to prison if they break release conditions.
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Sunday World
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Extra.ie
2 hours ago
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Pic: Brian Lawless/PA Wire 'I cannot comprehend how someone who was supposed to love and protect her could do something so cruel,' she said. 'There are no words that can truly capture the pain and heartbreak this has caused me and my family. What happened to her has shaken me to my core.' Sarah Howard went on to say: 'One of the things I don't think I will ever overcome is to find out that Richard Satchwell had put Tina in a chest freezer and then a few days later he texted me to offer me the freezer. Richard Satchwell. Pic: Brian Lawless/PA Wire 'To hear this just horrified me to think I could have taken it into my family home and used it. What sort of person can do that?' The trial had heard that Satchwell told gardaí how he kept Tina's body in a chest freezer before burying her beneath their home. He offered the same freezer to Sarah before advertising it on the buy-and-sell website DoneDeal as 'free to take away… just needs a clean' days after the murder. 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Cork, between March 19 and 20, 2017, both dates inclusive. The 6ft 2in truck driver had claimed that his 5ft 4in wife, who weighed eight stone, had launched an attack on him with a chisel and died during a struggle in which he either lacked the intent to kill her or was acting in self-defence. Her cause of death could not be determined due to the skeletonised nature of her remains when they were eventually uncovered. The jury, however, unanimously rejected his defence and agreed with the State's case that Satchwell was a 'cunning' murderer whose claims were 'nonsense' and had hidden his wife's body to ensure a cause of death would not be available. The jury had watched video clips of a tearful Satchwell making televised appeals for Tina to come home, months after he murdered her and buried her in a grave dug almost one metre deep beneath the stairs of their house. 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The BBC is not alone in fearing the law is not working as intended. [ If Gerry Adams wanted to put manners on the BBC, why not do it in Belfast? Opens in new window ] Even in a matter of public interest, however, a news organisation should still demonstrate a serious allegation is more than one person's claim. The BBC said in court it had corroboration from five other confidential sources, but it had not mentioned this in programme, to be fair to Adams. The court was unimpressed by this argument, and little wonder. The BBC's final defence was that there must be freedom to report on figures of historical importance and losing to Adams could create a chill factor over investigations into the Troubles. It asked the jury to make no award of damages, even if it found Spotlight's claim to be untrue. 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What political motivation could there be to press on with a plainly weak case that was almost certain to work out in Adams's favour? The obvious explanation is by far the most likely: the BBC pressed on because it is an intractable bureaucracy with no respect for public money. Adams might be familiar with the concept of an organisation that struggles to back down. There has been a recent, relevant demonstration of this culture within BBC Northern Ireland. In 2023, it reached a confidential settlement in an alleged bullying case with a Spotlight producer, Lena Ferguson. She received an award and costs with no admission of liability. The BBC then issued a statement congratulating itself. 'We didn't want to be in a lengthy dispute with Lena and are happy that we can all now move forward,' it said. Yet the case had dragged out for four years, involving allegations dating back 20 years from Ferguson and others. The problem became serious enough to be raised in the House of Commons. Many people in the media in Belfast feared Spotlight had become dysfunctional, with implications for the quality of its journalism. They were appalled by the BBC's legal obstinacy towards Ferguson but hardly surprised. The best insight into how the BBC handles a mistake comes not from the insinuations of Gerry Adams but from Terry Wogan, a truly great Irishman, who after every crisis would quip: 'Deputy heads must roll.' We may be years away from even that stage of this fiasco.
