One of Virgin Media’s calling cards is a true crime documentary where a tragic story is cynically repackaged as a tabloid exposé. Thankfully, that trademark sensationalism is absent from the Trial of Richard Satchwell (Virgin Media One, Monday, 9pm), a straightforward retelling of the murder of Cork woman Tina Satchwell in 2017 by her husband and his conviction this May (he is serving a life sentence). Crucially, it has been made with the co-operation of members of Tina’s family, including the victim’s half-sister, Lorraine Howard, and her niece, Sarah Howard.
This is, needless to say, an upsetting story featuring violence and gaslighting. What’s especially striking, however, is the pace of the Garda investigation, which took years to go anywhere despite numerous red flags.
Richard Satchwell did not report his wife’s disappearance until five days after he claimed she went missing. The story he put forward about her needing to take time away was, moreover, wildly implausible. He asserted that their marriage was rock solid and made dark hints about his wife’s mental health, telling a morning television show that her “biggest fear” was to be made to take antidepressants.
Richard Satchwell, from Leicester in the English Midlands, also seemed to develop a fondness for the spotlight. He went out of his way, it appeared to Tina’s family, to get his face on television. “He was attention seeking all the time… it was hard to sit there and listen to all that,” says Lorraine Howard.
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Tina was killed in March 2017, aged 44, but the case was not upgraded to a murder investigation until 2023, at which point Richard Satchwell was arrested. How could it have taken so long? Why, moreover, was a laptop taken as evidence in 2017, not analysed for a number of years?
The inquiry kicked into gear when a new detective, Superintendent Ann Marie Twomey, was put in charge, and she brought on-board forensic archaeologist Dr Niamh McCullagh. At that point, the Satchwell home in Youghal was searched with a cadaver dog, which revealed a body concealed behind a slapdash new wall.
Virgin Media doesn’t belabour the point – but, frankly, things might have proceeded more quickly.
“The murder investigation, in my own mind, fell short because the initial search [in 2017] that was conducted wasn’t intrusive,” says retired detective inspector Pat Marry, who was not involved in the investigation. “They should have had a cadaver dog in there, and that was a huge miss.”
Richard Satchwell was found guilty – but the motives and circumstances of the killing remain unclear (the jury did not believe his claim to have acted in self-defence). The victim’s family feels that this is, on balance, a blessing. “I’m relieved I don’t know how she died. I don’t believe anything that he said,” says Lorraine Howard. “We’ll never know the truth.”
True crime television too often commodifies the suffering of victims and families alike – reducing terrible events to a grisly spectacle. To its credit, the Trial of Richard Satchwell avoided that temptation. It is a story of an innocent woman who became the victim of a controlling and violent husband. Whether its airing will bring her family any peace is hard to say. But at least it will not add to their trauma, for which Virgin Media is to be commended.
