Youghal woman Tina Satchwell disappeared in March 2017 from the home she shared with her husband, Richard. For more than six years, her case remained one of the State’s most unsettling mysteries. Richard Satchwell told gardaí that Tina had left him, carrying two suitcases and €26,000 in cash.
Searches of the couple’s home uncovered nothing. Media appeals followed, and journalists and interviewers sat across from Richard as he pleaded for information. What they never realised was that Tina’s body lay buried just feet away from them, hidden under concrete beneath the stairs.
Journalist Barry Cummins’ new book, Buried Secrets, tells the story of Tina Satchwell’s murder and the long investigation that eventually uncovered the truth. It traces the case from the initial disappearance through to the investigation breakthrough that finally revealed what had happened.
Drawing on interviews, court evidence and years of reporting, Cummins examines the coercive control and deception at the heart of the case, as well as the institutional failures that allowed Tina’s disappearance to go unanswered for so long. Here, Barry looks at the case and how it inspired him to keep going, to highlight the cases of so many other missing people…
I WOULD DESCRIBE myself as ‘somewhat of an expert’ about many missing persons cases. However, the reality is that you cannot be a complete expert. There are more than 900 people long-term missing in Ireland. It is impossible to know everything about each of those cases.
By the time I entered Tina Satchwell’s home in 2017, I knew gardaí had already searched it as part of their efforts to find her.
A dozen officers had spent 12 hours in the property looking for any trace of the missing 45-year-old. After a full day of fruitless searching, they had pulled the front door shut behind them.
With that search failing to yield any result, I assumed that, wherever Tina was, she was not in the house. How wrong I was.
Buried at home
I still shudder to think of Tina dead and buried under the stairs, just a few feet from that front door, her body wrapped in plastic sheeting and covered by concrete.
Although I’m a journalist long used to summing up profound moments, I don’t know if I’ll ever find the right words to convey what it feels like to know I sat on the same couch where, eight months before my visit, Tina’s body was laid out by her husband Richard in the hours after he murdered her.
It still stuns me that Richard Satchwell brought me upstairs during that same meeting to show me around – a killer knowingly inviting me to walk upstairs, so that I was walking directly above where his wife’s body lay hidden.
I wrote Buried Secrets to outline the depth of Richard’s deceit.
My experience inside 3 Grattan Street in Youghal, and my many subsequent meetings with Richard Satchwell, as he pretended not to know where his ‘missing’ wife was, have left me determined to drive awareness on what we all can learn from this deeply troubling case.
I wrote the book to try to ensure the same things don’t happen in other unsolved missing person cases. I’ve been here before, campaigning, quietly urging authorities to ensure more is done to aim for ‘better’ in investigating missing persons cases. I have worked closely with families of missing people, and I helped set up the annual Missing Persons Day event to publicly remember all who are lost.
The lost
There are certain names which resonate with me constantly, people whose suffering is now ended, but whose families continue to endure their loss. Those names are so important in learning lessons so that the same thing doesn’t happen again.
For 12 years, Bill Fennessy was a missing person, last seen in Fermoy in 1990. Bill’s car was also unaccounted for. Then, in October 2012, Bill’s body was found in the River Blackwater by divers on a routine training exercise in Fermoy.
Bill’s body was found inside his car, which was embedded under water. Over the many years that the car lay on the river bed, it had become covered over by silt, so as to be almost invisible.
I often wonder if the same thing has happened to Conor and Sheila Dwyer who vanished from Fermoy in 1991. Their white Toyota Cressida is also still missing. Similarly, might the couple be somewhere in the River Blackwater, or another river in County Cork?
Bill Fennessy’s case is just one example of a person who goes missing, huge searches take place without success, and then the person is eventually and inexplicably found close to where they were last seen.
Another such case, also coincidentally in County Cork, is the disappearance of Barry Coughlan, who was missing for 17 years. All that time, Barry’s body was in his car, which was embedded in the seabed only yards from Hugh Coveney Pier in Crosshaven – just a few feet from where Barry was last seen leaving a pub in 2004.
When Barry’s car was recovered from the water, it was upside down, and Barry’s body was still in the driver’s seat. His body was found by volunteers with Cork City Missing Persons Search and Recovery, who, for many years, have travelled the country searching for missing persons.
Improvements in policing
The section of water where Barry’s car was found had been previously searched, with nothing found. The vehicle had long been covered over by sand and silt. It is thanks to sonar equipment and the persistence of volunteers that Barry Coughlan’s body was retrieved, and he is now laid to rest with dignity.
There are so many cases of people whose bodies were not found until many years after they had died. I still find it hard to fathom how the body of 31-year-old Michael Murphy lay undiscovered in dense undergrowth at a cliff near Killiney train station in Dublin for almost two and a half years.
Michael had last been seen in 2002 in the Killiney area. His body was only found by chance in 2005 by workmen clearing away bushes as part of the upgrade of the train station.
How can such things happen in a modern, progressive country?
How did Stephen Corrigan’s body lie in bushes in Rathmines for ten years? Stephen was 47 years old when he vanished in 2010. For the following decade, his body lay in dense undergrowth near an apartment complex on Lower Rathmines Road.
In the days that followed the chance discovery of Stephen’s body, many people asked me how such a thing could happen.
My only answer is that we let it happen. We, as a society, tolerate a situation where so many bodies can lie for years without being found. Our collective hearts go out to bereaved families, but there is never a national outcry.
So how could we do better?
One thing that definitely could be done is for gardaí to bring in expert civilians to review case files and help coordinate searches.
That’s what was done in Tina Satchwell’s case. Forensic archaeologist Dr Niamh McCullagh was brought into the cold-case investigation team, given a USB stick with the entire case file, and asked to give her opinion on where to search. Her advice and analysis encouraged gardaí to go back into Tina’s home at Grattan Street and conduct a new search there, with officers now prepared to tear down walls and dig up floors if necessary.
And so it came to pass that in October 2023, Tina’s body was found, face down, wrapped in sheeting, where she had lain buried for six and a half years. This case was solved by Niamh’s intrepid work and a team of committed gardaí.
The solving of Tina’s case poses obvious questions, but questions which must be asked. How many other bodies of missing people, believed murdered, are actually hidden inside properties, buried under floorboards or within the foundations of a property?
Such questions are not sensationalist; they are crucial. How many other houses, while having been searched by gardaí initially, have not actually been subject to an intrusive search? How many times have gardaí been just feet away from the body of a missing person and not known it? How many properties should be searched once again, but this time with excavating equipment?
My experience of interviewing Tina’s killer, shaking his hand, and spending hours with him will stay with me.
My experience of being so close to Tina’s body and being oblivious to her plight will drive me to keep shining a light on missing persons cases.
Barry Cummins is a multi-award-winning author, documentary-maker, and broadcast journalist based in Dublin. He has three decades of experience working in news and current affairs with RTÉ, Ireland’s national broadcaster, Today FM and local radio. Buried Secrets by Barry Cummins, published by Gill, is out now.