How a dog called Fern solved the mystery of where Cork woman Tina Satchwell had been hidden

Irish Examiner

15 hours ago

When Fern made a positive detection for the presence of human remains in the home of Richard and Tina Satchwell, the dog helped unravel the mystery of where the missing woman had been hidden for more than six years.
After Richard Satchwell was sentenced to life in prison for the 2017 murder of his wife, the role of Fern in the case and the absence of a cadaver dog in An Garda Síochána's dog unit has raised hackles, led to soundbites and sparked debate on why the Irish force had to rely on the PSNI's only cadaver dog.
Use of Fern in October 2023 for the search of Ms Satchwell's Youghal home was not the only time the services of a cadaver dog were requested by gardaí during the probe into her disappearance.
The first time was in 2018, when Ronnie, a dog from Britain, was brought to Castlemartyr for a woodland search after information led gardaí to concentrate on the area.
Mick Swindells has worked on a number of other high-profile cases in Ireland, including a search of the Slieve Bloom mountains for Fiona Pender in 2014.
Ronnie's handler, Mick Swindells, a former British police officer, recalls staying in Garryvoe during the 2018 search, and says the approach came from gardaí because of his work with the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains, set up to find the bodies of people murdered and secretly buried by republicans during the Troubles.
He has worked on a number of other high-profile cases in Ireland, including a search of the Slieve Bloom mountains for Fiona Pender in 2014. She has been missing since 1996 and her case was recently upgraded to a murder investigation.
He became involved in human remains detection in 1992 when working with the dogs section in Lancashire police. He has handled five cadaver dogs in his career, but also trained dogs in Britain as well as in the Malaysian and Spanish fire services, and Spanish police.
He pointed out training dogs to find human remains in water is different to training them to find buried remains 'because they can smell scent coming through the water'.
For land searches, probes are used to prod the ground to release any odours which could indicate if human remains are buried in the area.
He stressed, however, that the manner of a person's death can have an impact on the scent, explaining: 'Somebody who has been poisoned will decompose differently to somebody who has shot or stabbed, if there is trauma.
"Indeed, the size of a person and the type of soil they have been put in also changes decomposition — also, if there were clothes, or they were wrapped in a shower curtain or carpet or that kind of thing.'
He said in most cases, people do not have time to bury remains very deep — although he acknowledged cases like the Tina Satchwell case were different. During the recent trial, the jury heard her body had been buried unusually deep for a 'clandestine burial', with 84cm depth to the bottom of the burial site.
'He [Satchwell] was in his own house so he controlled the environment, whereas when you are burying bodies in woods … even the IRA didn't bury bodies deep and they had control of the areas. In his own house, he could take his time, he wasn't going to be disturbed,' Mr Swindells said.
In his work, cadaver dogs are trained on pigs. He explains why: 'If you train a dog to find Semtex and you hide a block of Semtex, it won't change. But, obviously, a dead body evolves and is always changing. So we have to try to train the dog to find a body from, for example, one day after death to 25 years after death when it is just pure skeletal. So you have to train the dog on every aspect of the decomposition and the only way you can do that is by using pigs. It is similar decomposition.'
A pig dressed in a coat and placed in a grave. Mick Swindells says the coat has been put on the pig to simulate a real concealment, for the purpose of training a cadaver dog.
He says pigs used for the purpose of training dogs to find human remains are buried in the ground for many years.
'We had a site in the UK where we buried pigs in 1992 and every so often we went back there with dogs if we are looking at a really old case to refresh them. Pigs are the closest thing to human because they are omnivores — pigs eat meat and vegetables the same as we do. They have the same skin type — the same number of layers of skin as we do, the same digestive system as we do.'
He says the normal police course for training dogs to find human remains is eight weeks: 'The basic course is eight weeks but the dog is always learning after that.'
The Search and Rescue Dog Association Ireland (North) currently has four specially trained cadaver dogs in Northern Ireland. The association's Clair O'Connor says: 'We would use archaeological bone or human blood in training. We get blood from donors.'
The association, which was founded in 1978 by Cork-born Dr Neil Powell, began working in the area of human remains detection in the 1990s, after being tasked to a search for two cousins who drowned in a lake.
Wexford-based Rachell Morris owns K9 Detect and Find Ireland.
She and Clair O'Connor both say they have had requests to aid An Garda Síochána over the years with searches.
13/06/'25 Gardaí bring a cadaver dog into a house on Monastery Walk, Clondalkin, where they are continuing their search in the investigation into the death of American woman, Annie McCarrick, who disappeared in 1993. Picture: Colin Keegan/ Collins
However, on Monday, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said there were no plans at the moment to acquire a cadaver dog for the force . He described such a dog as a very specialised resource which is not out every day working, as is the case for drugs, firearms or money dogs.
He also said a cadaver dog has only been used by the force three times in the seven years he has been commissioner. It emerged at Tuesday afternoon's meeting of the Oireachtas justice committee that a cadaver dog was used in the search for Kerry farmer Mike Gaine in the early weeks of his disappearance.
Mick Swindells believes the addition of a cadaver dog to An Garda Síochána's existing dog unit would not be a big cost.
'If you train them to forensics and blood and semen also, you are not restricting it to murders because you have got assault cases, rape cases, that they can be used for as well.'
He rejected minister for justice Jim O'Callaghan's assertion that the working life of a cadaver dog was just three years. He said police dogs operate until they are no longer fit enough to work, with many having a work life of up to seven years, typically retiring at about nine years old.
This was echoed by Clair O'Connor, who said: 'All of our search dogs would work until they are aged eight to 10 years old.'
A Garda spokeswoman confirmed the force has never had its own cadaver dog.
She said there were 28 dogs attached to the Garda Dog Unit, inclusive of the Southern and North Western Dog Units.
There are currently four dogs in training.
The statement said: 'The Garda Dog Unit has dogs trained in three distinct disciplines, namely general purpose, drugs/cash/firearms detection, and explosive detection. Dogs are trained in one discipline.'
In relation to cadaver dogs, the statement said: 'The operational demand for victim recovery dogs is currently sufficiently provided for through third-party contractors or through mutual assistance with the Police Service of Northern Ireland with whom An Garda Síochána has excellent working relations.'
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