A cousin of Cork woman Tina Satchwell has told the Central Criminal Court she had “never” witnessed Ms Satchwell being violent or aggressive.
Sarah Howard said she grew up with Ms Satchwell in Fermoy, she was a “kind-hearted” and “genuinely lovely” person and they were very close.
She said that 10 days after Ms Satchwell disappeared, on March 30th, 2017, her husband, Richard, had sent her a text asking did she want their big chest freezer.
Asked did she respond to that, Ms Howard, becoming tearful, said she had not because it was “unusual” and “very strange”.
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Mr Satchwell would “not be the kind to give stuff”, she told prosecuting counsel Gerardine Small. She said he previously charged her children for nail varnish and a CD from his car boot stall.
Ms Howard was the last witness for the prosecution in the continuing trial of Mr Satchwell (58), who has pleaded not guilty to the murder of his 45-year-old wife at their home at No 3 Grattan Street, Youghal, on March 19th and 20th, 2017.
After Ms Howard’s evidence concluded at lunchtime on Wednesday, the jury was sent away until Thursday.
The jury has heard Ms Satchwell’s decomposed skeletal remains were discovered during a forensic search of the property on October 11th, 2023, about six and a half years after Mr Satchwell reported his wife missing.
After the remains were discovered, Mr Satchwell told gardaí his wife had come at him with a chisel on the morning of March 20th, that he used the belt of her dressing gown to fend her off and that she “went limp” and died. The prosecution case is he put her body in a freezer before burying her in a grave site dug in the floor under the stairs.
The jury has been told that advanced decomposition meant Ms Satchwell’s cause of death could not be determined at a postmortem carried out in October 2023.
On Wednesday, Ms Howard told Ms Small that her mother and Ms Satchwell’s mother were sisters and she was very close to her when they were growing up in Fermoy.
She last saw Ms Satchwell just before Christmas 2016, she was “in great form and seemed really happy”.
When she heard Ms Satchwell was missing, she rang her phone straight away and when she got no reply, rang Mr Satchwell asking where Ms Satchwell was, saying it was very unusual that her dogs were still at home.
Mr Satchwell told her they had an argument and she had left him. He said she had “thrown a cup or something” at him, he did not say when. He also said money and suitcases were missing, he had found keys on the floor when he came back home after Ms Satchwell had sent him on an errand to Dungarvan.
He also told her they had been at a car boot sale at the weekend and his wife told him she “had wasted 28 years” with him. She had never heard that before or anything about cups thrown at him, she said.
Ms Small set out details of other calls and messages between Mr Satchwell and Ms Howard in the days and weeks after his wife disappeared.
Asked had she ever witnessed Ms Satchwell being violent or aggressive, Ms Howard said: “Never.”
Under cross-examination, she told defence counsel Brendan Grehan she never saw Ms Satchwell exhibit violent or aggressive behaviour. She did not know if other members of her family had witnessed any such behaviour.
After she moved to Ballyporeen about 15 years ago, she still met Ms Satchwell but not as much, she said. Ms Satchwell did not drive and would come to visit with her husband who was “always with her”.
She agreed she had said in a statement to gardaí he was so besotted with his wife he could not have caused her harm. “That was at the beginning but as time went on and she didn’t contact any of us ...” she said.
Ms Satchwell had told her she wanted renovations done to her house before inviting people to it. “She was very house-proud.”
She agreed Ms Satchwell had a very close bond with her grandmother who effectively raised her and who she thought was her mother. She could not say if Ms Satchwell had fallen out with her real mother after finding out the truth that she was not, in fact, her sister.
She agreed Mr Satchwell hand-delivered a birthday card for her to her home in August 2017 which was signed “Tina and Richard”.
