Six-and-a-half years is an unconscionably long time for a body to lie in a makeshift grave, buried just under the stairs of her own home, awaiting discovery. One week ago, after more than four weeks of testimony and nine hours of deliberation, a Central Criminal Court jury found Richard Satchwell guilty of the murder of his wife, Tina Satchwell, or Tina Dingivan as her family know her. On Wednesday, he was sentenced to life in prison. The 58-year-old intends to appeal.
Her sister, Lorraine Howard, said Satchwell secretly hid his murdered wife under the stairs of their home where he could have “ultimate control” over her.
For now, just one question remains: why did it take so long for gardaí to find Tina Satchwell’s remains?
In March 2017, Tina Satchwell, then aged 45, joined the ranks of Ireland’s missing persons. Satchwell reported her disappearance to An Garda Síochána on March 24th. It was four days after he claimed to have last seen her, but he said he had no concerns for her welfare.
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In May that year, after gardaí visited him at home, he filed a formal missing person report. He claimed that she had upped and left him without so much as a letter. Also left behind: her mobile phone, her keys, her two beloved dogs.
Gardaí were reportedly “perplexed” by her disappearance. She did not have a passport. There was no evidence that she had departed Co Cork by car, ferry, bus, or plane. She had no prior history of leaving.
Still, they waited until June 7th to conduct a preliminary search of the Satchwell home. They discovered unfinished home improvement works under way. But when that search failed to turn up forensic evidence such as blood spatters or a body stuffed in a freezer, the investigation appears to have stalled.
[ Tina Satchwell case: Questions raised by politicians over original Garda investigation ]
Finally, after a change in the investigating team, gardaí conducted an invasive search that included a cadaver dog in October 2023. The dog solved the mystery of Tina’s purported vanishing: she had never made it out of her home alive.
I remember the earliest media accounts of Tina Satchwell’s disappearance. I was living in Dublin on a research sabbatical at University College Dublin and studying Irish criminal justice policies.
At the outset, this case tugged at me. I am a criminologist with research expertise in gender violence. At every stage of life, women and girls who are reported missing are at much greater risk of homicide than men and boys. A recent study of femicides in Ireland reveals that more than half were killed by a person they knew.
In most cases, their murderers were their husbands, boyfriends or ex-partners. These are often the same people who call gardaí to report them missing.
Satchwell’s trial heard from Dr Niamh McCullagh, a specialist in the search and recovery of human remains concealed in a criminal context. She said that “for all concealed homicide cases that have been studied in Ireland, victims are disposed of within one kilometre of their home address in the majority of cases”.
Law enforcement delays and missteps are regrettably common in cases of missing women. Missing person cases are, in general, time-consuming, expensive and emotionally draining.
In the year that Satchwell murdered Tina, An Garda Síochána investigated more than 9,500 missing persons reports. To their credit, they solved all but 36 within the year. Tina’s disappearance should have been one of them.
Research by Bernadette Manifold, a forensic scientist who studies femicide and long-term missing women in Ireland, found that many femicide cases were initially reported as missing persons to the police and that women who go missing have a greater risk of being a victim of homicide.
Gender bias often manifests in cases involving intimate and domestic partner violence and sexual assault. In some instances, gender bias gives rise to victim-blaming and denialism. And so reports of violence and abuse in the home may be downgraded. Emergency calls concerning domestic abuse are cancelled and not recorded.
In the context of missing persons, investigators may miss red flags and discount the odds of foul play. Gender bias renders men’s explanations – even far-fetched explanations – credible.
Tina Satchwell’s disappearance was littered with red flags.
Criminological research identifies several factors to help investigators determine the risk that a missing woman may be the victim of murder. Her case encompassed every single one of those factors.
First, did an argument or fight precede the disappearance? Was there a history of violence in the relationship? Check and check.
Second, was the last person to see the victim alive an intimate partner? Check.
Third, were there delays in reporting the person missing? Check.
Fourth, were there inconsistencies in accounts of the disappearance? Check.
Fifth, did the missing person leave behind essential items such as a mobile phone and wallet? Check.
Three red flags were present at the beginning. Satchwell was the last person to see Tina alive. He delayed contacting gardaí and her family. She left behind her phone and identification card. In the days and weeks that followed, additional flags emerged. Richard revealed that their marriage was on the rocks and that Tina left to “clear her head”.
Discrepancies crept into his statements to gardaí and the media. He suggested their relationship was punctuated by episodes of violence (in his telling, she was always the perpetrator). In his final rendering, he suggested that he killed Tina in self-defence after she charged at him with a chisel.
Red flags don’t make a person guilty of murder, but these do make it incumbent on investigators to treat a disappearance with utmost urgency. As An Garda Síochána’s policy manual on missing persons states, “it is easier to rein back from the early stages of a big investigation, than recover missed opportunities”. The missed opportunities in this case are glaringly obvious.
The search of the Satchwell home in Youghal, Co Cork, should have been conducted in late March 2017, immediately following Satchwell’s initial report of Tina’s disappearance. That search should have included a cadaver dog.
The home improvement works, as well as Richard’s far-flung accounts of monkeys for sale, deceased parrots, undiagnosed psychiatric disorders and missing €26,000 should have immediately raised the eyebrows of gardaí.
While a thorough and expedient investigation into her disappearance would not have saved Tina Satchwell, improved policing practices that incorporate what we know about gender-based violence, and are informed by criminological research, may spare other women and girls from a similar fate.
Dr Jill McCorkel is professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at Villanova University, Pennsylvania. She is founder and executive director of Philadelphia Justice Project for Women and Girls
