Earlier this year, Richard Satchwell was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his wife Tina in their Youghal home in 2017. It was a case that shocked the nation, as Satchwell had maintained throughout the course of the Garda investigation that Tina had simply disappeared – until her body was discovered under the stairs in their home following an extensive search by Gardaí in October 2023.
Now, two Irish journalists, Ralph Riegel and Paul Byrne, have written a book to tell Tina’s story and peel back the layers of a case that gripped Ireland for over six years.
‘Beneath the Stairs: The Disappearance of Tina Satchwell and the Discovery that Shocked the Nation’ was published at the end of October, and Ralph recently spoke to The Munster Express about the writing of the book, mentioning how a key aim of it was to tell Tina’s full story and highlight the issue of coercive control in society.
Ralph is the southern correspondent for MediaHuis, which includes titles such as The Irish Independent, Evening Herald and Sunday Independent. He grew up in Fermoy, which was the homeplace of Tina, and although he didn’t know her personally, he knew many of her extended family members. Paul is currently a producer and presenter on Cork’s 96FM and previously worked as southern correspondent for TV3/Virgin Media News for 25 years. He developed a close relationship with Richard Satchwell ‘like no other journalist did’ from interviews throughout the years of the investigation into Tina’s disappearance, and through both Ralph’s knowledge of Tina’s family background and Paul’s unique insights into Richard Satchwell’s character, they came together to write the book.
“I think what we tried to do [with the book] was a number of things. It was to tell the full story, fill in a lot of the gaps in terms of giving background information about some of the key elements of the search for Tina and then the trial itself,” Ralph told this newspaper.
“One of the key things we wanted to do was just highlight the issue of coercive control, because no one realised precisely how controlled Tina was in her life, God love her. For my co-author Paul, one of the things he definitely wanted done with the book was to remind people that coercive control does occur in society. Maybe not to the extreme of this particular case, and not all cases of coercive control end in violence and tragedy, but there are cases where people are very heavily influenced by others, and not in their best interests. In this particular case, poor Tina, she went to England as a 17-year-old, hoping to build a new life. She was just very unlucky, as one of the very first people she met over there was Richard Satchwell.”
Ralph continued: “One of the things I wanted to accomplish with the book as well, was to highlight how a lot of people are confident, certainly Tina’s own family, that Richard Satchwell didn’t just take Tina’s life. He tried to take her good name and reputation as well. The stuff that he said in his own defence during the murder trial about her being violent and abusive towards him, that wasn’t the real Tina and was not the person that her family knew.”
“They were determined in their victim impact statements to set the record straight about who she was. And that was one of the things we wanted to do in the book as well, to paint a picture of the real Tina, the bright, bubbly, effervescent woman that always seemed to have a smile on her face.”
Ralph reported on Tina’s disappearance from the beginning in 2017, and said that like many people, he had his doubts about Richard Satchwell’s story. “In almost all of these cases, the last person to see the individual alive is the primary focus of attention as regards the veracity of their story. What always struck me was, why would he wait four days before reporting his wife missing?” he said.
“He’s a man who effectively never let his wife out of his sight, who controlled almost every aspect of her welfare and wellbeing. She leaves the home, allegedly takes €26,000 in cash, and he waits four days before telling the Gardaí. If it was my wife who vanished like that, I’d be going, hang on a second, what’s going on here? And you think you would go to the authorities. I think any normal person would do that.”
BREAKTHROUGH IN THE INVESTIGATION
An important part of Ralph and Paul’s book is when it details of how a reshuffling within the investigating Garda team behind Tina’s case appeared to play a key part in the eventual discovery of her body. This is firstly laid out in the book when Richard Satchwell officially became a suspect around the time that Superintendent Ann-Marie Twomey took over as Senior Investigating Officer, and she ordered a full case review.
Ralph said: “Crucially, what she [Supt.Twomey] did, was to bring in outside experts. She referred the entire case file to Dr. Niamh McCullagh, a forensic archaeologist. Dr. McCullagh did her PhD on domestic homicide cases where killers have tried to hide the bodies close to the family home.
“She reviewed the file, and the very first thing she said, aside from the four-day delay in reporting Tina missing, was the fact that home improvement works were ongoing at the very time that Tina disappeared. That’s considered a major red flag because home improvement works also give an opportunity for body disposal in halls, ceilings and floors.”
Ralph stated that this marked a turning point in the investigation, as Detective Garda David Kelliher also got involved, and together with Supt. Twomey, they reviewed everything from the original search of the Satchwell home in 2017, to CCTV footage and the history on Richard Satchwell’s laptop. One significant finding was an online search for Quicklime in the week that Tina supposedly disappeared, which Ralph said was “another massive red flag for Gardaí” as it is “most associated with the disposal of bodies.”
The book was written in consultation with members of Tina’s family, and locals from around the areas of Youghal and Fermoy, to help with painting the picture of who she and Richard were. Ralph said that it ends with an emphasis on the victim impact statements from Tina’s family as well as highlighting the importance of recognising coercive control to readers. It also mentions the Garda reviews into the early stages of the investigation that are currently ongoing, which are being done to uncover exactly why it took six years for Tina’s body to be recovered.
Ralph concluded: “We thought the best way of finishing it was with some elements from the family, such as the victim impact statements and what people said in the aftermath of the case, as well as the importance of recognising coercive control when we see it, and encouraging people who may feel that they are in a situation like that, that there is help available to them and that they should confide in people. In cases like this, Gardaí will support individuals if they feel they are a victim of coercive control…Not every case will end in tragedy, but some cases certainly do, and the whole point is to intervene quickly enough to stop cases reaching that point.”
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