Court hears Richard Satchwell offered wife's cousin the freezer where he allegedly had kept her body
Richard Satchwell (second right) arriving at the District Court in Cashel, Co Tipperary, after being charged in connection with the murder of his wife Tina Satchwell. Gardai investigating her disappearance have found skeletal remains at a property in Youghal, Co CorkPicture date: Saturday October 14, 2023.
Richard Satchwell offered his wife Tina’s cousin their chest freezer, shortly after it is alleged he kept her body there before burying her in a shallow grave in their home, a court has heard.
In a series of text messages read out in court on Wednesday, Mr Satchwell also told Tina’s cousin Sarah that he “cried all the time” while he felt he “let her down in some way”.
A further text message said that he had pulled into a nearby Tesco a few months after she disappeared and that “there’s the same suitcase that Tina took with her” in the car park there.
Also in court today, the senior investigating officer at the time when Mr Satchwell was arrested for Tina's murder said she couldn't answer why an “invasive” search wasn’t conducted in their home shortly after Tina was first reported missing in March 2017.
A court has also heard that Mr Satchwell wasn’t considered a “suspect” in the case until five years after Tina Satchwell was last seen.
Separately, the jury was also told that a laptop seized in the Satchwell home googled the words “quicklime” and clicked on a video showing lime dissolving material in a contained four days after Mr Satchwell said he last saw his wife.
Mr Satchwell,58, with an address at Grattan Street, Youghal, Co Cork has pleaded not guilty to murdering his 45-year-old wife Tina Satchwell - nee Dingivan - at that address between March 19 and March 20, 2017, both dates inclusive.
Giving evidence before Mr Justice Paul McDermott on Wednesday, Superintendent Ann Marie Twomey said she was appointed as the senior investigating officer in the case in August 2021, more than four years after Tina was reported missing.
Upon her appointment, Supt Twomey said she and her colleague Detective Garda David Kelleher subsequently spent time delving into all the lines of inquiry that had been followed in the investigation.
This included witness statements, house-to-house inquiries, CCTV analysis, enquiries with taxi companies, ports, airports, the Department of Social Protection and the Passport Office. It also examined Ms Satchwell’s DNA profile, reported sightings and media appeals made both by An Garda Síochána and Richard Satchwell.
By late January or early February 2022, Supt Twomey said she formed the opinion that there were “reasonable grounds to believe Tina Satchwell was not a living person and had met her death through unlawful means”.
She said a large number of lines of inquiry were “identified and exhausted” before she formed the opinion that there were reasonable grounds to believe the arrest of Richard Satchwell was necessary.
She obtained a warrant to search his home in October 2023, and told him that there would be an “invasive search” conducted of his home.
Under cross-examination from defence counsel Brendan Grehan SC, Supt Twomey said that she didn’t believe Mr Satchwell to be a suspect until she’d reviewed all the evidence available in the case after being appointed senior investigating officer.
She said she formed a view that Mr Satchwell was a suspect in the murder of Tina Satchwell in August 2022.
Mr Grehan asked questions at length about a previous search of the Satchwell home back in June 2017, when Supt Twomey had yet to be appointed to the case.
Mr Grehan said: “There was nothing to prevent the gardaí conducting an invasive search of the house, including excavation, in June 2017.”
Supt Twomey said that she couldn’t answer on what the beliefs or thought processes were of investigators at the time.
Earlier, her colleague detective sergeant David Noonan said that when he conducted a cognitive interview with Mr Satchwell in June 2021, Mr Satchwell was not considered a suspect in Tina’s disappearance at that stage.
Also giving evidence was Detective Garda David Kelleher who described analysing laptops seized in the Satchwell home during a search in June 2017.
One “item of interest” was a google search for “quicklime” just after 9pm on 24 March 2017.
The court has previously heard that Mr Satchwell told gardaí on March 24, 2017 that his wife 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.
Detective Garda Kelleher told the court that 19 seconds after the quicklime search, a Youtube video was clicked into called “quicklime and water reaction” showing a blue container with items dissolving inside. A caption that appeared during the video told users to always wear gloves and an apron when using such items.
Separately, Detective Garda Kelleher highlighted an email chain between an email address with the name “rickiesat” used on the laptop and “international monkey rescue”. The discussion in February and March 2017 discussed money “issues” and the fact that Mr Satchwell hadn’t taken their message “seriously”.
On 20th March 2017, the day Mr Satchwell had said he last saw Tina, an email sent by the “rickiesat” email asked what was meant by this and said “my wife is saying she’s going to leave me over this”.
Mr Satchwell formally reported Tina missing the following May but her body was not discovered for over six years, when gardaí found her decomposed remains in a grave that had been dug underneath the stairs of her home.
Last week, the jury heard media interviews and appeals Mr Satchwell made about his wife’s disappearance. The prosecution alleges that Mr Satchwell had already murdered Tina prior to making these public appeals.
On Tuesday, it heard details of a lengthy witness statement the accused provided to gardaí in June 2021 regarding the disappearance of his wife.
In that statement, Mr Satchwell alleged that Tina could occasionally be violent and had been planning to leave him to “get her own back” for him previously leaving her.
In her opening address last week, prosecuting counsel Gerardine Small SC told the jury that after the body was recovered, Mr Satchwell told gardaí that he lost his footing and fell to the ground when his wife tried to stab him with a chisel. He told detectives that he held her weight off with a belt but that in a matter of seconds, she was dead in his arms.
The trial continues before Mr Justice McDermott, and a jury of five men and seven women, this afternoon.
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