Richard Satchwell told gardaí he buried his wife Tina Satchwell‘s body under the stairs of their Cork home as he wanted to keep her with him and didn’t want to leave her alone.
“I wanted her to know the hand that killed her was also the hand that loved her,” the murder accused told interviewing detectives.
Following the discovery of her remains at the couple’s home in Youghal, over six years after she was reported missing, the British truck driver told gardaí that “the worst thing of all” was once the lies started, he couldn’t stop and he had a “sense of relief” that the truth was out.
The Leicester native told detectives that he used to talk to the area in which he had buried Tina and the hardest thing was “not getting anything back”.
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Richard Satchwell told gardaí there was “no taking it back” after he held the belt of her bathrobe to her neck “until she got heavier”.
His wife had flown at him with a chisel, he told detectives upon his rearrest in October 2023.
“Before I know it, it had all stopped ... I didn’t know what to do. I held her for a good 20 minutes or half an hour. The two dogs just there sitting looking. They came over, started licking her, I just laid there,” he said.
He told gardaí he kissed his wife on the head but “there was no taking it back ... shame, panic, I don’t know”.
He said his wife was not a bad woman, but “just angry at times”.
The Central Criminal Court jury also heard Mr Satchwell (58) told officers he buried his wife (45) under the stairs because part of it “wasn’t concreted for some reason” but was “muck and stone”.
He said he dug a hole and carried her into it. He described working in the tight space under the stairs and said his knuckles were bleeding.
He cried as he told gardaí: “I actually carried her into the hole, I didn’t drop her into the hole, I wasn’t disrespectful. I can remember folding the plastic around her, putting the flowers in”.
He said he had bought a couple of bunches of Tulips from Tesco and put her wedding ring in the pocket of her bathrobe.
“I can’t put it into words what happened. I should have just let her stab me, let it be the end of me,” he said.
Earlier on Tuesday, a consultant forensic anthropologist told the murder trial there were no injuries to any of Ms Satchwell’s bones at the time of death and no evidence she ever suffered a fracture.
Under cross-examination, Laureen Buckley told Brendan Grehan SC, defending, that the hyoid bone is “sometimes but not always” found damaged in strangulation cases.
Mr Satchwell, with an address at Grattan Street, Youghal, Co Cork, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Ms Satchwell (née Dingivan) at that address between March 19th and March 20th, 2017.
The Central Criminal Court has heard Mr Satchwell told gardaí on March 24th, 2017, that his wife left their home four days earlier but he had no concerns over her welfare, as he felt she had left due to a deterioration in their relationship.
The accused formally reported her missing that May. Her body was not discovered for more than six years, when gardaí conducted an “invasive search” of the Satchwells’ home in October 2023. They found her decomposed remains buried underneath the stairs.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Paul McDermott and a jury of five men and seven women.
