Gardaí investigating the disappearance of Cork woman, Tina Satchwell have confirmed that they are to follow up on over 30 pieces of information that they received over the last two weeks as a result of various media appearances and appeals by her husband, Richard.
Gardaí under Supt Colm Noonan of Midleton Garda Station wound up a search last Friday of 40 acres of woodland near Castlemartyr for evidence relating to the disappearance of Ms Satchwell (45).
“The incident room would have received over 30 calls from people with various bits of information since we began the search and Richard Satchwell did some media interviews – all those calls become jobs that need to be checked out,” said a Garda source.
Some days he just sits 'in a trance' in the house while other days he drives to Fermoy to visit his wife's family or does work on the house
“Some of them don’t sound particularly promising but it’s only when we check them out that we can fully evaluate their significance and they all have to be followed up and that will happen over the coming weeks because the focus for the last two weeks has been on the search.”
The search concluded just as Richard Satchwell (52) is preparing to mark the first anniversary of his wife's disappearance from the house they shared at Grattan Street in Youghal on March 20th 2017 and at the weekend, he revealed on Sunday Brunch on Today FM how he plans to mark the day.
“Honestly, knowing me, I’ll just sit down and cry for the day,” said Mr Satchwell, adding that no two days are ever the same since his wife disappeared and some days he just sits “in a trance” in the house while other days he drives to Fermoy to visit his wife’s family or does work on the house.
Mr Satchwell said that he has people who check up on him to make sure that he is alright as he revealed that he felt “ a small sense of relief” when gardaí told him that they had not found his wife’s body in Mitchel’s Wood in Castlemartyr following an extensive search.
Mr Satchwell also revealed to Sunday Brunch presenter, Susan Keogh that he had wanted to have children but his wife had not and that he had sacrificed his desire to have a family when he moved from the UK where he met his Tina to come to Fermoy where he married her in 1991.
“ I always wanted children, Tina never did - I made a sacrifice, I said ‘Well, some people are there, they’re married with children and (were) probably not as happy as what me and Tina was,” said Mr Satchwell, adding he never bore any grudge towards his wife over her desire not to have a family.
He explained that he and his wife, whom he met when she went to stay with relatives in Leicester in the late 1980s, had discussed the matter before they got married and he had accepted her decision so it was not a question of her revealing her wish not to have children after they got married.
Mr Satchwell also re-iterated his denial that he ever hurt or harmed his wife even though she had hit him a slap on occasion perhaps once every six months when she had “a flash temper” but the slaps were never intentional contrary to what some media were seeking to suggest.
Asked by Ms Keogh if he had killed his wife, Mr Satchwell was clear in his reply: “Never - I could never lay a finger on my wife - my wife went to the swimming pool every day for something like 15 years and was never once seen with as much as a tiny bruise on the body,” he said.
