Tina Satchwell’s half-sister tells Cork murder trial Richard was 'controlling and odd'

Mr Satchwell was 'obsessive' and wanted to know where his wife was 'all the time', Lorraine Howard said

Richard Satchwell (right) would 'call Tina his trophy wife, trophy girlfriend,' the court heard. File picture: Eddie O'Hare

“Controlling and odd,” is how Tina Satchwell’s half-sister described murder-accused Richard Satchwell.

Lorraine Howard told the Central Criminal Court that Mr Satchwell referred to Mrs Satchwell as his “trophy wife” and wanted to know where she was “all the time”. Mrs Satchwell’s skeletal remains were found buried beneath the stairs in the sitting room of her Youghal home on October 11, 2023, more than six years after she went missing.

Mr Satchwell, aged 58, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of his wife Tina Satchwell, nee Dingivan, aged 45, on March 20, 2017, at their home on 3 Grattan St, Youghal.

Ms Howard first met Mr Satchwell when she was about 15-years-old. The relationship between the couple was “odd”, she said.

“He’d call Tina his trophy wife, trophy girlfriend,” Ms Howard said. “I didn’t like that. I didn’t think it was right to refer to someone as a trophy.” 

Mr Satchwell was “obsessive” and wanted to know where his wife was “all the time”, Ms Howard said.

Any friend she had he would find some fault with. She had lots of friends but her circle of friends got smaller and smaller. I thought he was controlling and odd. 

Tina was “very young” when she first met Mr Satchwell and when they married in the UK, Ms Howard said.

Tina and Lorraine Howard were “best friends” as children, playing together every day, going to school together and sleeping in each other’s houses, she said.

But when Tina was due to make her communion she found her birth certificate and discovered that Mary Collins, who she believed was her aunt and the mother of Ms Howard, was actually her mother too. The discovery made Tina “resentful,” Ms Howard said.

She felt “abandoned” by her mother and fell out with Ms Howard periodically over it. “I suppose she felt maybe that she had been lied to for a long period of her life," Ms Howard said.

“I think she felt hurt that in her eyes she was given away but I was kept, as the next oldest. It caused resentment and I sometimes bore the brunt of that.” 

Mrs Satchwell’s anger over not being raised by her biological mother “was an on-and-off thing for many years.” “We’d be friends, then fall out over being given away. It always came back to this issue. She felt somehow abandoned.” 

But Mrs Satchwell had a very good relationship with her grandmother, Florence Dingivan, who the court heard was widely respected and loved, and who Mrs Satchwell viewed as her mother.

Mrs Satchwell had two families and her ashes have been spread between two graves. She is buried with her grandmother and with her beloved brother Tom, who died some years ago.

The murder trial heard that Tina Satchwell (pictured) felt 'abandoned' by her mother. File picture

“We were all very close to Tom, he was a lovely person,” Ms Howard said through tears. “Tina adored Tom and he adored her. It [his death] affected her as much as me. He was her brother.” 

Mr Satchwell has said that his wife attacked him with a chisel on March 20, 2017, and he held the belt of her dressing gown to her neck in a bid to defend himself. But his wife then suddenly collapsed dead in his arms, he said.

He said he was heartbroken and lost. He said he lay holding her body all night before putting her body into a freezer and later burying her under the stairs in the sitting room and concreting over her shallow grave.

Her husband reported her missing on March 24, 2017. Her skeletal remains were found wrapped in plastic and buried beneath a concrete floor under the stairwell in their terraced home in Youghal on October, 11, 2023.

The trial in front of Justice Paul McDermott continues.