Woodland trawl for missing Tina winds up after Garda ‘review’
GARDAÍ searching for missing woman Tina Satchwell yesterday ended their 12-day operation in a Cork forest.
A team of 60 personnel had been trawling Mitchel’s Wood outside Castlemartyr in east Cork without any breakthrough in the hunt for the 45-year-old.
Gardaí staged a major operational review yesterday and the decision was then made to begin winding down the forestry search.
Specialist dog search teams from the UK left the scene several days ago and additional Defence Forces units, which had been scheduled to be deployed, are now not required.
A Garda presence and machinery remained at Mitchel’s Wood last night but these will be removed over the next 24 hours.
While items of interest have been uncovered by the search team, nothing of major significance is understood to have been found during the search operation.
Gardaí confirmed the current search of the Castlemartyr forest was complete and thanked the general public for their assistance and support. Gardaí said in a statement: ‘A number of items recovered during the course of this search will now be examined to establish whether they are related to the disappearance of Tina.
‘Gardaí would also like to thank members of the public who have come forward with new information which will now be investigated. The site remains closed to the public until further notice.’
Tina Satchwell disappeared from her home in Youghal, Co. Cork, on March 20 last year.
The missing woman’s husband – Richard Satchwell – told the media during the week that he spent time behind bars and was in a violent relationship with his wife.
In an interview, Mr Satchwell claimed she used to beat him but he said that he never hit her back. The 51-year-old has also claimed that the first time detectives forensically examined the car he owned when his wife went missing was seven months after she vanished.
The claims, about which gardaí are not commenting, are the latest the unemployed lorry driver has made since his wife went missing last March. They are also part of a growing number of personal details Mr Satchwell has discussed in a flurry of interviews he has given since gardaí began to seal off the search site.
According to a credible tip-off gardaí received, a woman matching Tina’s description was spotted in the woodlands around the time she went missing from her home in Youghal.
Her husband has since insisted that the couple never visited the woodlands at the centre of the search site, which is about 20km from their home. The English-born, unemployed delivery driver moved to Ireland on June 19, 1989.
While Mr Satchwell has admitted in previous interviews to ‘breaking the law’, he only admitted this week to having spent time in jail.
Speaking to TV3’s southern correspondent Paul Byrne, he said he was jailed in 2003 for welfare fraud.
‘I have been to prison once in this country for working whilst claiming dole,’ he said.
He was also asked last week by Youghal-based CRY 104FM’s Gerry Murray if he had ever been on the receiving end of Tina’s ‘physical anger’.
He said he personally pitied anyone who would try and harm her because ‘nobody would walk away without some physical damage’. When asked, ‘Have you ever been at the receiving end of her anger, physically?’, he replied: ‘Tell me a man who hasn’t.’
‘So you have had your skirmishes but you have never hit her back?’ asked Mr Murray. Mr Satchwell replied: ‘Never, never would.’
He was also asked if he felt anger towards Cork-native Tina, and he replied: ‘I don’t feel angry but I am disappointed... in the fact that Tina disappeared.’
‘A number of items will be examined’