'Once I started the lie, I couldn’t stop': Murder trial hears garda interviews with Richard Satchwell
The court also heard in the garda interviews that Richard Satchwell (pictured) has contemplated suicide since Tina Satchwell's death but stayed alive for their pets. File picture
“Once I started the lie, I couldn’t stop,” murder accused Richard Satchwell said after admitting he had buried his wife, his “beautiful Irish Rose” in their home six years after he reported her missing.
He wrapped the lilac dressing gown belt that he had held to his wife Tina Satchwell’s throat in the seconds before her death back around her body before burying her, days later, under the stairs in their Youghal home, he said.
He chose this spot because Tina had previously noticed soft ground in this place.
“The amount of time I sat and talked to that piece of ground, you would not believe," he told gardaí in an interview after his arrest for her murder. “But I could never take it back.”
A video recording of that interview was played at his trial for the murder of Tina Satchwell, nee Dingivan, aged 45, at their home on 3 Grattan St, Youghal, Co Cork, in March 2017. Mr Satchwell, aged 58, has pleaded not guilty to his wife’s murder.
Mrs Satchwell had vanished in March 2017 and Mr Satchwell had reported her missing to gardaí.
But after human remains were found buried beneath the staircase in the sitting room of their home during a search in October 2023, he told gardaí that he had held a belt to her neck because she had allegedly attacked him with a chisel and she died.
The night of her death, he “lay with her all night” on the ground by the stairs, he said, his body going numb by the morning.
The couple's dogs, Ruby and Heidi, continued looking for Mrs Satchwell for many weeks, with Ruby sitting outside Mrs Satchwell’s dressing room, where she stored clothes, every night for six months, he said.
“The dogs kept reminding me,” Mr Satchwell told gardaí, and he could not forget what had happened to his wife. Mr Satchwell repeatedly said he “couldn’t give detail” as it all “happened so fast” when questioned by gardaí about his wife’s death.
He said he had found her scraping at plasterboard he had recently erected by the staircase of their home that morning. When he asked her what she was doing, he alleged that she "flew" at him with the chisel.
He fell to the ground and she jumped on top of him, he said. “She was going for my head with the chisel,” he said, making stabbing motions in the recorded garda interview.
“I can’t say how many times the chisel came down towards me.” He said that he was “concentrating” on holding her away from him with the belt of her own dressing gown which he held at her neck.
He said he could not say what killed her but he “would imagine that the way she was forcing her weight down on top of me and the belt being where it was [at her neck] that she wasn’t able to breathe.”
When she fell dead into his arms, he felt like he “was holding the 17-year-old girl he met 30 years before. I know you’re thinking ‘you crazy bastard’. It all happened in a blur, the blink of an eye,” he told gardaí.
He knew that his wife was dead because she was not breathing and her body was cold, he told gardaí. He “spent hours holding her and kissing her on the head,” after her death he said. He then lay her on the couch but later moved her to a freezer in the shed because “the dogs kept coming over to her.”
“She was heavy, so heavy,” he said. “Tina just slipped into it [the chest freezer] it was horrible.”
Days later, on the Sunday, he buried her beneath the stairs. He put tulips into the grave and her wedding ring in her dressing gown pocket before wrapping her in plastic because he "didn't want to dirty her," he said. He then buried her in the sitting room and covered the grave with concrete, he said.
He said that he has contemplated suicide since her death but stayed alive for their pets. “I don’t know how to feel tonight. But there is a sense of relief that it is out,” he told gardaí in the interview following his arrest.
The shame he has felt inside for the six years since his wife's death “doesn’t go away”, he said. Every day, women get up and can “put your face on” like Tina did with “bright eye make-up that can create an illusion,” but she could not, he said.
The trial in front of Justice Paul McDermott continues.
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