Richard Satchwell told a detective two years before his wife’s body was discovered buried beneath their Cork home how he “personally thought” she was “still out there somewhere”, the Central Criminal Court has heard.
The jury heard on Tuesday how gardaí employed enhanced, witness-led interviewing techniques when questioning Mr Satchwell about his wife’s disappearance.
The trial has heard how on March 24th, 2017, Mr Satchwell told gardaí that his wife Tina 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.
The accused formally reported Mrs Satchwell missing the following May, but her body was not discovered for more than six years when gardaí found her decomposed remains in October 2023 in a grave that had been dug underneath the stairs of her home.
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Mr Satchwell (58), with an address at Grattan Street, Youghal, Co Cork, has pleaded not guilty to murdering 45-year-old Mrs Satchwell at that address between March 19th and March 20th, 2017.
In court on Tuesday, Detective Sergeant David Noonan told Gerardine Small SC, prosecuting, he met Mr Satchwell by appointment on June 20th, 2021, at an interview suite in Blackpool, Cork, to take a statement from him.
He said he asked Mr Satchwell to tell him everything about Mrs Satchwell “in as much detail as possible”.
Mr Satchwell said he met her in 1989 and had broken the law trying to buy things he could not afford for her. He said they would talk about anything and would often sit up all night and chat.
He said when her brother took his own life in 2012 she went distant and things altered in their relationship.
Mr Satchwell said he believed she was planning to leave him after this. He said she had mentioned 200 or 300 times over the previous 15 years that she was going to leave.
He told the detective that when they moved to Youghal he thought she would be happy as she had always wanted to live there.
Mr Satchwell said his wife could be “nasty” and if she got violent with him then minutes later it would be like it never happened: “She’d be apologising and crying.”
He said he would put his arms around his wife in relief if she returned home. “It wouldn’t cost nothing to pick up the phone, to ring 999, say ‘I’m Tina and I’m safe’,” he said. He said the last four years had not been easy.
He described replacing timber on the stairs at Grattan Street along with work on windows, dry lining and plasterboard.
Mr Satchwell said he left for Dungarvan around 10am on the morning she disappeared to get bird seed before going to Aldi. When he got back to Grattan Street, the accused told the detective, her keys were on the floor and her mobile on a countertop in the kitchen.
He said the two dogs being in the sitting room were very unusual. Later he spotted that two suitcases were gone and the money box in the attic – which he said had contained €26,000 – was “out with no money in it”.
When the statement was read back to Mr Satchwell by the detective on January 23rd, 2022, Mr Satchwell said: “I personally think she is still out there somewhere.”
The trial continues before Mr Justice Paul McDermott and a jury of five men and seven women.
