Richard Satchwell has been found guilty by a jury at the Central Criminal Court of the murder of his wife at their Co Cork home in 2017.
There was audible sobbing from several members of Tina Satchwell’s family as the verdict was given on Friday, with some members of the jury also in tears.
Satchwell sat impassively in the court.
Ms Satchwell’s skeletal remains were found in a deep grave in an area under the sittingroom stairs of the couple’s home in October 2023, more than six years after her husband reported her missing.
Who is Michael Kelley, the man questioned over the murder of Michael Gaine?
Ireland’s extraordinary education revolution laid bare by two new reports
The Macron shove is not a sign of a very French love story, but something more disturbing
Ruby Eastwood: Why would anyone choose to live in a city as ridiculous as Dublin?
[ Gardaí ignored ‘red flags’ in Tina Satchwell murder investigationOpens in new window ]
Satchwell (58), a lorry driver, had pleaded not guilty to murdering the 45-year-old at Grattan Street, Youghal, on March 19th and 20th, 2017.
Friday was the 23rd day of the trial, which heard evidence from more than 50 witnesses.
The jury went out at 3.05pm on Tuesday to its deliberations and continued through Wednesday and Thursday, when they had considered the matter for eight hours and 37 minutes.
They resumed deliberations just after 11.30am on Friday and returned with their verdict at around 12.25pm, after nine hours and 28 minutes deliberating.
Several of Ms Satchwell’s relatives, including her mother Mary Collins, half-sister Lorraine Howard and cousin Sarah Howard, were in the packed court for the verdict.
Mr Justice Paul McDermott thanked the jury for their service on a “difficult” case. He said the next stage of the process is sentencing, which is his role, and he adjourned the matter to June 4th.
The mandatory sentence for murder is life imprisonment.
The three possible verdicts open to the jury were: not guilty of murder; guilty of murder; and not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter. It was also open to them to consider, depending on their view of the evidence, a defence of partial self-defence or full self-defence.
The trial heard Satchwell went to Fermoy Garda station on March 24th 2017, where he told a garda his wife had left their home four days earlier. He said he believed she had left him and had taken their €26,000 in cash savings. He told a garda he was not concerned about her safety.
After gardaí interviewed him in early May 2017, he formally reported his wife as a missing person.
Increasingly concerned “something untoward” had happened to Ms Satchwell, gardaí obtained a warrant to search the couple’s home in June 2017 and seized devices, including a laptop.
An examination of the laptop in 2021 showed two YouTube videos concerning the interaction between water and quicklime, which can be used to disguise decomposition odours, were viewed on March 24th, 2017.
In October 2023, gardaí carried out a full invasive search of the property using a cadaver dog. Skeletal remains identified being those of Ms Satchwell were found on October 11th, 2023, in a grave site about one metre deep in an area under the stairs in the sittingroom.
After the remains were found, Satchwell was rearrested and told gardaí his wife had come at him with a chisel on the morning of March 20th, 2017. He said he fell and she came on top of him trying to stab him with the tool. He said that while he fended her off with the belt from her dressing gown robe, which was up around her neck, she went limp and died.
He told gardaí there was “no premeditation” and he had not called emergency services due to “panic and shame”. He said he put Ms Satchwell’s body on the couch and then stored it in their freezer for about two days before burying her on March 26th in a grave he dug under the stairs and then cemented over.
He was charged with her murder on the evening of October 12th, 2023, after his solicitor, with whom he had 25 earlier consultations, had left the station.
He replied: “Guilty or not guilty, guilty.”
The defence argued that was done without him having legal advice and without having the ingredients of murder and manslaughter being explained to him.
A postmortem on the decomposed remains was unable to establish a cause of death. The jury heard there was no evidence of fractures to the bones, including the hyoid bone in the neck.
In her closing address to the jury, prosecuting counsel Gerardine Small said Satchwell was an “arch manipulator” who told “a plethora of lies” about his wife’s disappearance with the objective of putting everyone “off the scent” because he “murdered her”.
The manner in which he buried his wife was “absolutely disrespectful” and, after her remains were found, he gave a “nonsense” account of how she died, counsel said.
She said Ms Satchwell’s death was “not an accident” nor a result of him acting in self-defence and that his account to gardaí was “totally focused on trying to protect himself”.
Ms Small said the prosecution did not know the cause of death because Satchwell had “ensured that” was the case, but there was sufficient evidence to return a murder verdict.
Closing the case for the defence, senior counsel Brendan Grehan said Satchwell was guilty of weaving “a web of lies” and engaging in “disreputable” conduct after his wife’s death, including his “awful” offer to her cousin of the freezer where he stored his wife’s body, but that “did not make him a murderer”.
He was “certainly guilty of causing his wife’s death” but there was no evidence he intended to kill or seriously injure her, counsel argued.
The evidence was that the accused loved and “worshipped” his wife, that she “wore the trousers” in the relationship and was sometimes violent towards her husband, counsel said. There was no evidence he was ever violent towards her, he added.
He said the prosecution had not called any expert evidence to show Satchwell’s account of how his wife died was not possible.
Towards the close of the trial, the jury was told by a tearful Lorraine Howard that, after Ms Satchwell’s remains were returned to the family, they placed half of her ashes on the grave of her brother Tom and the other half on the grave of her grandmother, Florence.
