‘Tina, come home’ – husband’s appeal to wife who was buried in their house

“Tina, come home. There’s nobody mad at you. My arms are open. The pets are missing you.”

Tears fill the eyes of Richard Satchwell as he appeals to his wife of 27 years to contact him, three months after she had allegedly disappeared from their home in Youghal, Co Cork.

In the Crimecall appeal, the 58-year-old looks directly into the camera and pleads: “I just can’t go on not knowing. Even if you just ring the guards, let people know that you are all right.”

The programme, which aired in June 2017, was one of more than a dozen media appearances in which Satchwell spoke extensively about the morning he claimed Tina left the house and never returned.

Within months of his wife going missing, Satchwell, a truck driver, had convinced her family that she had deserted him, taken 26,000 euro of their savings and had assaulted him throughout their marriage.

Her family were left angry, worried and confused as they tried to make sense of her disappearance and the person Satchwell had described as violent. It was not the Tina they knew.

Within a week of murdering his wife, Satchwell had placed her body in an unplugged chest freezer, which was kept in the shed at the back of the property in Grattan Street.

He then dug a hole, measuring almost one-metre deep, under the stairs of their three-storey home. Tina’s body, still wearing her pyjamas and dressing gown, was then wrapped in a black plastic sheet and placed inside the hole with her head facing down.

On Friday, March 24 2017, a “not overly emotional” Satchwell walked into Fermoy Garda Station to report that his wife had left him and he had not seen her in four days.

Garda Conor Casey suggested making a missing person report, but Satchwell said she was “OK”.

It was more than seven weeks after Tina disappeared that Satchwell formally reported her missing to gardai, and her case was upgraded to a missing persons case.

Satchwell set out a story to Garda James Butler that he would stick by for almost seven years.

The claims led to a lengthy investigation, which began with a search of his home in June 2017.

The search, which lasted for around 11 hours, did not find anything of significance.

Over the 12 months following Tina’s disappearance, Satchwell embarked on a media campaign in which he spoke extensively to TV and radio journalists about Tina and the day she left their home and their marriage.

According to Satchwell, it was love at first sight.

He was 21 years old when he first laid eyes on Tina, a 17-year-old from Fermoy, who had moved to Coalville, near Leicester in England.

She had moved to live with her grandmother and Satchwell’s brother was a neighbour.

Satchwell said they “clicked” and they were together ever since.

A broadcast interview played to the jury shows Satchwell taking a journalist around his home, meeting their pet parrot, Valentine. He also shows a dusty unopened bottle of Cava he bought for their anniversary.

During many of his interviews and “exchanges of information” with gardai, Satchwell repeatedly told them he believed Tina left because of a deterioration in their relationship. But he also said he believed she would return home.

He also claimed she would have violent outbursts that she would direct at him, and spoke about his wife’s “dark side”.

He claimed he gave up a lot in his life to be with her. She did not want children but he did, he claimed.

He told gardai that he and Tina were best friends, and spent hours and hours talking each night, about nothing specific.

Images of his house after Tina disappeared revealed a home that had dog faeces on the floor, unwashed dishes lying in the kitchen sink and a birdcage that had not been cleaned for a while. There was also a cement mixer in the sitting room.

Satchwell later admitted that he slept on bed sheets that had not been washed in years.

An upstairs room was full of clothing and clothing racks, all belonging to Tina.

By June 2017, detectives suspected that Tina may have been injured or “incapacitated by a criminal event”.

Inconsistencies also began to emerge in his story.

A forensic accountant said that the couple would not have been able to save 26,000 euro that he claimed she took the morning she left.

CCTV and phone location data also revealed that he was not in Dungarvan on the morning of March 20.

Emails on a laptop seized from his home showed that the couple had been trying to buy two marmoset monkeys from an international monkey rescue organisation.

An email had been sent on the morning of March 20 claiming to be from Satchwell himself.

It later emerged that he had offered Tina’s cousin the chest freezer he had used to store her body for a number of days.

Years passed with no updates or sightings of missing Tina.

Then in August 2021, Superintendent Annmarie Twomey was appointed senior investigating officer, and along with Detective Garda David Kelleher from Cobh Garda Station, she familiarised herself with the case.

She identified new lines of inquiry and came to the conclusion that Tina had met her death by unlawful means and was not a living person.

Investigators obtained a court search warrant and on October 10 2023 gardai arrested Satchwell and began an extensive search of his home.

He repeated the same story about her disappearing from their home with 26,000 euro on March 20 2017, claiming she never returned.

He was released the following day, but just hours later the decomposed remains of his wife were found buried one metre underground, beneath the stairs.

Suddenly, his story changed.

He said that on the morning of March 20 2017, he had been up early in the morning and was working on a plumbing issue in the shed.

At around 9am, the two dogs came into the shed, which, he said, meant that Tina was up.

He went inside and found his wife in her dressing gown scraping at the plasterboard with a chisel. He asked her what she was doing and she suddenly flew at him with the chisel.

He said he lost his footing and fell backwards, and she was on top of him trying to stab him in the head with the chisel.

All he could do to protect himself, according to Satchwell, was hold the dressing gown belt to her neck.

He then held Tina’s weight off him with the belt and within a matter of second, she “falls limp and collapses into my arms”.

His denial of the charge was ultimately rejected by the jury who found him guilty of murder.