SATCHWELL: WE HAD A VIOLENT MARRIAGE
Husband claims missing woman Tina beat him
THE husband of Tina Satchwell spent time behind bars and was in a violent relationship with the missing woman, he has revealed. In yet another interview he has given since gardaí began searching a woodland area in Co. Cork for his wife, Richard Satchwell claimed she used to beat him but he swore that he ‘never’ hit her back. And the 51-year-old has also made an astonishing claim about gardaí, who last Monday week sealed off a 40-acre woodlands site at Mitchel’s Wood, Bridgetown, Castlemartyr.
He claims 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 Mrs Satchwell went missing on March 20, 2017.
They are also part of a growing number of very personal details Mr Satchwell has discussed in a flurry of interviews since gardaí began to seal off the search site.
According to a ‘credible’ tip-off they received, a woman matching Tina’s description was spotted in the woodlands around the time she went missing from her home in Youghal, Co. Cork.
Mr Satchwell has since insisted that the couple never visited the woodlands at the centre of the search site, which is about 20km from their home.
Yesterday’s round of interviews yielded yet more information about the 51-year-old unemployed delivery driver who moved to Ireland on June 19, 1989. He, for example, revealed he was so
‘I have been to prison once’
estranged from his own mother that the first time he found out she was dead was six months after she had passed away.
And when he married Tina in November 1991, not one member of his own family turned up at the wedding. He said that his UKbased family ‘hate the Irish’ and that his mother made him choose between her and Tina before he chose the latter. And while Mr Satchwell has admitted in previous interviews to ‘breaking the law’, he only yesterday admitted 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.
‘I was sentenced by Judge Michael Pattwell on December 12, 2003 for a month and I was released on January 10, 2004.’
Another claim to emerge was that his wife used to beat him up.
He was asked by Youghal-based CRY104FM’s Gerry Murray if he had ever been on the receiving end of Tina’s ‘physical anger’.
Earlier he had 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. And 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.’
Yesterday, the issue of a lie detector test arose again and he agreed to take one at some stage in the future because, he insisted, he has nothing to hide. However, he told TV3: ‘At this point, I myself don’t feel up to it.’
When it was pointed out to him that people might think he has something to hide, he replied: ‘I will take a lie detector test when I feel that I am right. I have got nothing to hide. I am not sleeping too well and I don’t suppose I will sleep much at all until the search in Mitchel’s Wood is finished.
‘When I feel right, in the future – not today, not tomorrow, when I feel right – I will sit down and take a lie detector test.’
Last Saturday, he said he couldn’t take the lie detector test because he is on medication, which he said he will continue until he feels well ‘enough not to try and commit suicide’.
Yesterday, he was offered a booking for a lie test live on air during an interview on the Neil Prendeville Show on Cork’s Red FM but he turned it down.
When asked about the abusive nature of his and Tina’s relationship, he told Mr Prendeville: ‘Tina was a great woman. I have not got a bad word to say about her.
‘She could have a flash temper. She could be there like, and just hit you and she could be crying and apologising. That’s all it was. There was no intent. The most I have ever done is hold her in my arms until she calmed down.’
It was during that interview that he revealed he had been to jail and made his claim that gardaí had not searched his car until he told them he was going to sell it last September. This is, if true, a whole seven months after his wife went missing. Last night gardaí declined to comment on the claim.
They also declined to comment on reports yesterday that a number of items have been found at the search site. These are believed to include fragments of a woman’s clothing found around the time 30 extra Defence Forces personnel were drafted in to help dig up part of the 40-acre site. It is not know if items of jewellery were also found. Last June, it emerged that one of the items Tina could have with her was a silver bracelet with the inscription, ‘Cherish yesterday, dream of tomorrow and live today’ on it.
Mr Satchwell, who says he tried to find it after she went missing, said the couple bought it in a charity shop on January 17, 2017, when their pet parrot died.
He has also repeatedly claimed she was suffering from depression and even hinted that she may have been trying to say goodbye to him in the months leading up to her disappearance.
He has claimed, for example, that on the Sunday before she vanished on March 20, 2017, while they were at a car-boot sale, she repeatedly told people she would never do anything to harm him, and that she loved him.
In addition, he has said that after her brother took his own life, she became so depressed that she – he claims – told him that if she left him, and he came looking for her she would call gardaí.
‘I will take a lie detector test’