Tina Satchwell case: Suspect was in different place than where he said at time of disappearance, phone records show

Garda suspicions in the Tina Satchwell case became even more focused on a man in his 50s when an examination of his mobile phone records showed that he wasn’t where he had said he was at the time of Ms Satchwell’s disappearance.

The man, who is currently being questioned at Cobh Garda station about Ms Satchwell’s murder, told gardaí that he was not in Co Cork at the time of Ms Satchwell’s disappearance on the morning of March 20th, 2017 but an examination of his phone records showed that this was not the case.

“There was a contradiction between what the suspect told us in his witness statements and what his phone records told us in terms of where he was at the time that Ms Satchwell disappeared so that obviously raised suspicion about his version of events,” said a garda source.

An officer based at an incident room set up in Carrigtwohill Garda station in east Cork spent months trawling through the phone records and email activity of the suspect at the time of Ms Satchwell’s disappearance and soon noticed the discrepancies between the records and the witness statements.

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Gardaí have become proficient in checking phone records which have become an important part of investigations as happened in the inquiry into the murder of Rachel Callely in 2004 in the Naul in North Dublin when phone records assisted gardaí get a conviction against her husband, Joe O’Reilly.

Mr O’Reilly had told gardaí he had his mobile phone with him at all times on the day that his wife was murdered, and he had not gone home but gardaí were able to trace where his phone had been and found it had pinged off a mast near his family home at a time when he said he was elsewhere.

Gardaí investigating the murder of Ms Satchwell believed that she was murdered in the house where she was found and buried a short time afterwards. They do not believe that she was murdered elsewhere and brought there or was moved from the house for a period and then reburied there.

Ms Satchwell’s body was found wrapped in black plastic and buried beneath a thick layer of concrete almost a metre deep in a full-size grave dug in the stairwell of the stairs in the hallway of the house where the main suspect in the case lived.

Meanwhile detectives are continuing to question a man in his 50s arrested at a bus shelter in Youghal shortly after midday on Thursday on suspicion of murdering Ms Satchwell. The man is detained at Cobh Garda station and can be held until 8pm tonight before he has be to charged or released.