We’ll work things out, Tina
A year on from disappearance of wife, Richard Satchwell issues another plea to ‘come back’
THE husband of missing Tina Satchwell yesterday marked the first anniversary of his wife’s disappearance by pleading, ‘just come back’ and saying they can work things out.
While Richard Satchwell has said he is still disappointed the 46-year-old vanished from their Cork home on March 20 last year, his message to her is: ‘My arms are here.’
The self-confessed former welfare fraudster, who previously admitted that his marriage was a violent one in which Tina would hit him, added that he still believes she’ll return.
This is despite the fact that none of a number of national appeals he has made for her to get in touch have led to any information about her whereabouts. Two major searches by gardaí, who called off their latest one over a 40-acre Cork woodlands site last week, have also failed to yield any clues.
Mr Satchwell claims his wife could have left their house in the town on Youghal last year with €26,000 because she was depressed and wanted to get away for a while. The unemployed delivery driver, who admits he was a suspect in her disappearance, has promised to take a lie-detector test to ‘prove’ he didn’t kill his wife as soon as he stops taking antidepressants.
Asked how he is one year on, Mr Satchell told TV3’s Paul Byrne yesterday: ‘As far as functioning goes, I don’t. I just get up, take the dogs for a walk, feed them, look after the bird and other than that there’s not much happening with my life.
‘Every morning I wake up waiting for the door to go [or] the phone to go, that is a daily thing even now.’
Asked how he feels, Mr Satchwell replied: ‘Sadness and hope. That is all I have. I don’t have anything else. That is why I get up every morning. I say good morning to a photo and everything I’ve got in the sitting room. That may sound crazy but I do and that is what I am left with at the minute until I believe she comes back one day.’
Asked by Mr Byrne, with whom he has agreed to undertake a lie test, what his first anniversary message was, he said: ‘My message to Tina is: my arms are here.
‘Nothing has changed as far as I’m concerned. She could just come back and settle straight back into life the way it was and if there’s anything she wants to alter then we will work on altering that. Basically, I can’t say much more.’