Richard Satchwell claims wife ‘flew at him with chisel’ before her death, court hears
Richard Satchwell (centre) leaving the District Court in Cashel, Co Tipperary. Picture: Brian Lawless.
Richard Satchwell claimed that his deceased wife, Tina Satchwell, "flew at him with a chisel", trying to stab him in the head in the seconds before her death.
He held a belt to her neck to protect himself, and within seconds, she “went limp” and fell into his arms, dead, the Central Criminal Court has heard in his trial for the murder of his wife.
However, this account of what happened to his wife was a “change of narrative” which only came after skeletal human remains were found in his home in October 2023, prosecution counsel Gerardine Small SC said.
“Decomposed human remains were found at 3 Grattan St, wrapped in black sheeting in a grave approximately at 3 ft deep that was dug under the stairs in the sitting room. The grave was cemented over,” she said.
“Those decomposed remains were identified as Tina Satchwell.”
But the remains were so decomposed at that stage they were skeletal, so pathologist Dr Margot Bolster “unsurprisingly” could not give the cause of death, she said.
“Richard Satchwell tells the gardaí that on March 20, 2017, on that morning he got up early, went to the shed, and was back to the house at 9am or 9.05am.
“He sees Tina Satchwell when he comes back in.”
His wife was at the bottom of the stairs with a chisel in her hand, scraping plasterboard which he had put up, and wearing a dressing gown, he told gardaí.
He said that he asked her what she was doing, and she then “flies at him” with the chisel.
He then lost his footing and fell to the ground, he said.
“She is on top of him, tries to stab him in head with chisel,” Ms Small said, recounting his account.
All he could do to protect himself, he claimed, was to take a belt and hold it at her neck, effectively holding her weight off him.
But “in a matter of seconds” she went limp and fell into his arms, dead, he told Gardaí.
On the following Wednesday, he said, he transferred her to the freezer out in the shed.
And on Sunday, he brought her back from the freezer, dug a grave, wrapped her body in black plastic sheeting, put her in the grave, and cemented it over.
Gardaí asked why, then, at 9:00 a.m. the morning after Tina died, he emailed a monkey rescue urging them to send him two monkeys, saying that if they didn’t, ‘his wife would leave him.’
Gardaí discovered “significant inconsistencies” between what Richard Satchwell told them and what they ascertained through CCTV footage, witnesses, and experts.
Mr Satchwell had initially told gardaí that his wife was missing but that he was not concerned about her welfare. Their marriage had been deteriorating and she needed “some time away to clear her head” but she would be back “sooner or later,” he told gardaí in the days and weeks after her disappearance.
He had told Gardaí and the media that on the morning of March 20, 2017, Tina had asked him to go to Dungarvan to buy parrot food [they had owned a parrot called Pearl] and some other items in Aldi.
But when he got back, he said that his wife was gone, her house keys were in the hall, her phone was in the kitchen, and her beloved dogs were in the house. But two suitcases were missing, along with some €26,000 in cash that he said the couple had saved from the sale of their house in Fermoy, and which he said they had kept in a box in the attic.
But Gardaí commissioned a forensic accountant who concluded that the couple did not have the capacity to save €26,000, or anything near that amount.
CCTV at Youghal Post Office showed that on March 20 at 11.13am, Mr Satchwell entered and claimed his dole, Ms Small said in her opening statement for the prosecution.
“That runs totally contrary to what his narrative had been – that he was in Dungarvan getting the items he said he was told to get,” she said.
Location data from his phone showed that he returned home at around 11.20am and stayed in the house until about 12.50.
That does not fit with his narrative, as this was when Tina Satchwell would have been packing her suitcases, Ms Small said.
Gardaí also found him advertising a chest freezer on DoneDeal on March 31, 2017, after Ms Satchwell disappeared.
He also sent an email from the house on March 20, 2017, to an international organisation, saying that Tina and Richard Satchwell were trying to buy two monkeys from this organisation but they were having difficulties getting them, and saying that his wife really wanted them.
The couple had been regular attendees at car boot sales on Sunday mornings, but the Sunday after his wife’s death, he attended alone.
Attendees told Gardaí that he told them he was there alone because Tina had contracted a serious respiratory infection and had gone to the UK to her sister.
Mr Satchwell was also selling Tina’s items – clothing, footwear – a very short time after her disappearance, Ms Small said.
“All these inconsistencies were unearthed by the garda investigation,” Ms Small said.
The couple had married on Tina’s 20th birthday in the UK approximately 25 years ago, she said.
They then moved to Tina’s hometown of Fermoy in north Cork, where they bought a house. But they sold it and bought the house at 3 Grattan Street, Youghal and moved there in 2016.
“You’ll hear that Tina Satchwell was a very glamorous lady, she had a great love of fashion and clothes, and that she adored her dogs, especially Ruby, a Chihuahua. She considered them her children.
“She was 5 foot 5 or 5 foot 4 in height, a petite lady,” Ms Small said.
Mr Satchwell had proposed to Tina in Youghal and the couple always planned to move back there, he told gardaí in a statement.
They bought a house there for €52,000 and moved in May 2016.
But just months later she would be buried there in a shallow grave, concealed beneath a concrete floor under a stairwell.
The Satchwells first met in Coalville near Leicester in the UK where Mr Satchwell was from and where Tina moved as a teenager with her grandmother.
“We just clicked and have been together ever since,” Mr Satchwell said in a statement to gardaí after his wife’s disappearance in 2017.
He said that his mother had hated the Irish and he had to leave his home for Tina.
“I’d give my life for her. I want her back,” he said in a garda statement in 2017.
“I gave up my family for her, she is my whole world.” But he also told gardaí that his wife had violent outbursts and he believed she had an undiagnosed mental disorder but refused to take medication.
“I don’t think she’s a danger to herself, she’s too vain. Tina is in love with herself,” Mr Satchwell said in one signed garda statement.
In another garda statement he said that Tina never attempted suicide and he didn’t think she would every self-harm because she would lash out at others rather than harm herself.
He also said that Tina had suffered a lot of tragedy and found the death of her brother particularly difficult.
Her “mood swings” got worse after that, he said.
She sometimes hit him and had given him black eyes and drew blood on occasions, he claimed.
But he told gardaí that he had “never even hit her”.
“She isn’t a bad person and I don’t want to paint her like that,” he went on to say in a garda statement read to the court.
“Tina was warm but was abused by people because she was different, she was so into her fashion.” He told gardaí he’d consider suicide over losing Tina and said he wanted her back.
Mr Satchwell, 58, first reported his 45-year-old wife missing at Fermoy garda station on March 24, 2017.
Gerardine Small SC, opening for the prosecution, said that she would “set the scene” for the jury.
“You are all judges of the High Court. You and only you decide on the evidence before you,” she told the jury of seven women and five men.
Richard Satchwell enjoys the presumption of innocence throughout all stages of trial, she said. A jury would then have to decide beyond reasonable doubt on his guilt or innocence.
While reasonable doubt was a high standard, it was not an impossible standard to meet, she said.
It required that for any doubt a jury member might have one could “reason it out”.
And for a murder conviction, there must be intent to kill or cause serious harm, she said.
The trial, in front of Judge Paul McDermott in the Central Criminal Court sitting in Dublin, continues.
