Richard Satchwell trial: Jury resumes deliberations
A jury has resumed considering its verdict in the trial of Richard Satchwell who denies the murder of his wife at their Co Cork home.
The skeletal remains of Tina Satchwell were found under the couple's home in October 2023, more than six years after her husband reported her missing.
Mr Satchwell (58), a lorry driver, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of his wife Tina (45) at their home at No 3 Grattan Street, Youghal, on March 19th and 20th, 2017.
The trial, now on its 22nd day, heard evidence from more than 50 witnesses.
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Mr Justice Paul McDermott, having completed his directions to the jury on the evidence and law, sent the seven women and five men out at 3.05pm on Tuesday to begin considering their verdict. The jury was sent home, at its request, at 4pm and returned to court on Wednesday.
When sent home at 4pm, they had deliberated for more than four-and-a-half hours. They resumed their deliberations just after 10.30am on Thursday.
Relatives of Ms Satchwell, including her mother Mary Collins, half-sister Lorraine Howard and cousin Sarah Howard were again in court.
The jury has three possible verdicts open to it – not guilty of murder; guilty of murder; and not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.
The judge has directed they may also consider, depending on their view of the evidence, a defence of partial self-defence or full self-defence.
The trial heard Mr Satchwell went to Fermoy Garda station on March 24th, 2017, where he told a garda his wife had disappeared from their home four days later, and that he believed she had left him and had taken €26,000 cash savings. He told a garda he was not concerned about her safety.
After gardaí interviewed him in early May 2017, he formally reported his wife as a missing person about a week later.
Gardaí, increasingly concerned something untoward had happened to Ms Satchwell, obtained a warrant to search the couple's home in June 2017 when devices were seized.
In October 2023, gardaí carried out a full invasive search of the property, using a cadaver dog. Skeletal remains identified as Ms Satchwell were found on October 11th, 2023, buried in a grave site about one metre deep in an area under the stairs in the sittingroom.
Mr Satchwell, who had been arrested but released before the remains were found, was rearrested and, during another interview with gardaí, told them his wife had flown at him with a chisel on the morning of March 20th, 2017, that he fell and that she came on top of him trying to stab him with the chisel. He said that while fending her off with the belt of her dressing gown robe, which was up around her neck, she went limp and died.
He told gardaí there was 'no premeditation' and he had not called emergency services due to 'panic and shame'. He said he placed her body on the couch before moving it to a freezer for about two days after which he buried it in a grave dug by him under the stairs and which he had cemented over.
A postmortem of the remains was, due to lapse of time, unable to establish a cause of death. The jury heard there was no evidence of fractures to the bones, including the hyoid bone in the neck.
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By then, Satchwell had, on a number of occasions, been openly asked if gardaí considered him a suspect in his wife's disappearance. I knew as I entered the house that November evening that gardaí had previously spent a full day searching the house with no sign of Tina being found. I can remember as I entered the property the smell of must and dust, as I sat in the front living room smelling the bird droppings which littered the cage in which the couple's parrot lived. Valentine was the parrot which had replaced the previous one, Pearl. Richard told me that the couple were heartbroken at Pearl's death. "We cried for weeks, we had an autopsy done and everything," he said as I stood with him looking at various items on a shelf which spoke of the life of a missing woman. Various bottles of nail varnish sat on the shelf, the ones used by Tina the day before she "got up and left" as Richard Satchwell described it. The bottles were covered in dust, the house was dirty, and the situation was unpleasant. The interviewee picked up a dusty full bottle of Cava which he said he'd bought in Tesco to mark the couple's 25th wedding anniversary the year before. "Tina never opened it," Satchwell recalled, as Pearl looked on. "I don't drink, I'm a teetotaller," he added. We looked above the shelf at a photo of Tina. "She got that done up in Tallaght," he said as we stood beside the parrot in the narrow living room. Richard Satchwell pointed at clothes on hangers resting on a door behind a couch. The clothes Tina bought at a car-boot sale the day before she disappeared. That night, we only filmed in the front room. But to reach it, we had to walk through the hallway and the middle room beside the stairs. As we carried our filming equipment into and out of the house, we would have walked less than three feet from the understairs clandestine burial area. I have often reflected on my interactions with Richard Satchwell, and I am still processing it all. I was doing my job, interviewing a man who was making public appeals for his missing wife. On every occasion I met him - and I even had Richard Satchwell in my own car as we drove around Youghal - I would learn new information. The more I met him the more he talked, and the more he lied. Prosecution The interviews I conducted with Richard Satchwell were used as part of the prosecution's case, showing his demeanour and his comments even as his wife's body lay just feet away from where he and I sat on a couch in his home. I was one of a small number of journalists who had been inside the house at Grattan Street as Tina's body lay hidden, still dressed in her pyjamas and nightgown, as she lay face down beneath the stairs. Kyran O'Brien was working as a photographer with the Irish Independent when he photographed Richard Satchwell at the top of the house, beside the walk-in wardrobe where Tina kept the many clothes she had purchased at car-boot sales and in charity shops. The clothes were often designer labels, Tina always had an eye for a bargain, and she always had an eye for fashion. "All the clothes were immaculately folded and put in plastic and displayed very well," remembered Kyran. "And then he showed me another room where there was a sunbed that he had built as well. And it was all quite tight. It was quite a tight stairs. It was an old, very thin house. The rooms were quite small, but there were basically walk-in wardrobes." Like me, Kyran remembers there was a smell in the house, a smell of damp and dust and neglect. "There was dog poo and there was parrot poo and it was dirty. It was unkempt, it was smelly. It wasn't clean. And he kept trying to offer us cups of tea. And I kept sort of saying to him, 'we have a long drive home, so I'd rather not'," Kyran said. "It's terrible," Kyran told me, "to know I was in the house and the poor woman was not ten feet from where I was sitting. It'll stick with me." James McNamara did the State, and Tina Satchwell, a service when he got down on his knees and began to dig that October evening in 2023. It's a moment he won't forget. "We knew what we were doing was very important work. It was great to be involved with a case like this. It gives a family peace, so it was actually massive." The fact that machinery such as ground penetrating radar failed to give an indication of a body beneath the stairs is due perhaps to the fact the grave was so deep. Tina's body had been buried nearly three feet down, under soil, concrete and a layer of lino. And for years people, including myself, walked those stairs above, never knowing. There are many lessons to be learned from this case for everyone, and there are many vivid memories that will stay with me of my interactions over a number of months with Richard Satchwell.
