A senior garda who took over the investigation into the disappearance of Cork woman Tina Satchwell has said she cannot answer why an invasive search of her house in Youghal in Co Cork was not carried out until more than six-and-a-half years after she went missing.
Superintendent Ann Marie Twomey became the senior investigating officer in the investigation in August 2021.
Ms Satchwell had been reported missing by her husband, Richard, in March 2017.
Her body was found in October 2023, buried under the stairs in the couple's sitting room.
Richard Satchwell has pleaded not guilty to murder.
Ms Satchwell had been missing for four years and five months when Superintendent Twomey took over the investigation into her whereabouts on 16 August 2021, following the retirement of the previous senior investigating officer.
She said she and her team familiarised themselves with all the material in the incident room, including reports, analysis of CCTV and reported sightings of Ms Satchwell, after her husband, Richard, told gardaí she had left home on 20 March 2017.
She said they identified additional lines of investigation and additional witnesses including a forensic accountant and a forensic archaeologist.
She said once she had reviewed the material, she had reasonable grounds to believe Ms Satchwell was not a living person and had met with death through unlawful means. She believed she formed that belief in late January/early February 2022.
By the end of August 2022, she said she had reasonable grounds to believe Mr Satchwell’s arrest was necessary for the proper investigation of the murder of Ms Satchwell.
Under cross-examination from defence counsel Brendan Grehan, she said Mr Satchwell was not arrested immediately.
She said 58 new lines of inquiries were followed up and a number of locations were searched for evidence.
Asked by Mr Grehan when she had formed the view that Ms Satchwell had never left her home at Grattan Street in Youghal, Superintendent Twomey said she went to the district court on 9 October 2023 to obtain a warrant to carry out an invasive and intrusive search of the house.
She said she went to the house the following evening with a building contractor and a forensic archaeologist and explained to Mr Satchwell there was going to be an intrusive search of his house.
Mr Satchwell was also arrested on the same evening.
Superintendent Twomey said she was aware of a previous search of the house in June 2017 from material contained in the incident room.
She said she had crime scene photographs, an outline of exhibits seized and a report from a forensic scientist.
But under cross-examination she said she did not remember seeing a report from whoever was in charge of the previous search detailing the extent of the operation.
She said the warrant obtained in June 2017 had been obtained on the grounds that gardaí suspected the offence of assault causing harm.
Asked by Mr Grehan if she thought the gardaí who conducted the search in 2017 had conducted a thorough search, Superintendent Twomey said she could not speak to that as she was not there and had no involvement whatsoever in the investigation.
She agreed that she had seen photographs taken during that 2017 search, showing structural changes in the house at the time - including plasterboard on a wall, new steps on the stairs and new brickwork on a wall underneath the stairs.
She said she knew the previous search had not been intrusive.
Mr Grehan asked her if there was anything that would have prevented gardaí conducting an invasive search of the building with excavators in June 2017.
Superintendent Twomey said she could not answer that question as she could not account for the beliefs or thoughts of the previous investigating team.
She agreed that a district court granted search warrants and it was then up to the senior investigating officer as to what gardaí did inside the property.
She agreed she had told the district court judge in 2023 that she was concerned with renovations to the property as well as structural changes to the house and areas of the property not previously explored.
The court has been told Ms Satchwell’s skeletal remains were found in a grave dug underneath the stairs in the couple’s sitting room on 11 October 2023.
Internet search for quicklime
The jury also heard that four days after Mr Satchwell said his wife had disappeared, a search was carried out on a laptop at their home for quicklime.
Detective Garda David Kelleher said the user of the computer, which was seized during the search of the house in June 2017, had also watched a YouTube video of water being mixed with quicklime, twice.
An email chain found on a second laptop found at the house was also shown to the jury.
The thread between an international monkey rescue organisation an email address rickiesat@live.ie discusses payment for monkeys.
Mr Satchwell tells the organisation in February 2017 that he is not in a position to pay as he had lost his job over "going all over Ireland to pay them money".
In an email on 19 March 2017, the organisation tells him he never took their last message about getting the rest of the amount in full, seriously.
Mr Satchwell responds on 20 March 2017, asking what they mean by this.
He tells them: "I've been putting a lot of time to this, and my wife is saying she is going to leave me over this".
The jury has been told the couple were trying to adopt or buy two marmoset monkeys.
The court also heard about text messages sent by Mr Satchwell to a man called "Mr James" in relation to purchasing the monkeys, whose names, the court was told, were Terry and Thelma.
On 10 March 2017, Mr Satchwell said he would love to be able to do more, but "people here will not loan me money because I owe them already". He said he did not see what he could do because it would be a month before he could send money.
On 20 March, he said he was in "a mess right now" because his wife had said she was leaving him over this.
Det Garda Kelleher said discussions over the monkeys had been going on over two years, and Mr Satchwell was sending significant amounts of money abroad.
He agreed with Mr Grehan that it did appear to be some kind of scam, as the monkeys never arrived.
There was a constant demand for more money, he said, but it never appeared to come to anything.
He said it was well into 2021 when the gardaí became aware of the searches for quicklime on one of the Satchwell's laptops, even though the laptop had been seized in June 2017.
He agreed that quicklime was used to suppress odours in mass graves and to aid the decomposition process.
Location data
Det Garda Kelleher also showed the jury a PowerPoint presentation of Mr Satchwell’s movements between Sunday, 19 March 2017, and 28 March using location data from his mobile phone.
The data, along with CCTV footage, showed that Mr Satchwell was not in Dungarvan on the day Ms Satchwell went missing at the time he said he had been there and that he had been at home for a large part of the morning instead.
Five days after his wife went missing, the court heard Mr Satchwell attended a course run by the Road Safety Authority for drivers in Ballincollig for the day.
The jury was also shown text exchanges between Mr Satchwell and family members. On 25 March, he told his father that Ms Satchwell had walked out and taken all their savings with her.
He said he was hoping she would get in touch so he could find out what was happening.
He was also in touch with Ms Satchwell’s cousin, Sarah Howard, between 26 March 2017 and 12 July 2017.
At one point, he told her that Ms Satchwell was his life and his best friend, and he was crying all the time. He said he felt he let her down in some way.
On 30 March 2017, he asked Ms Howard if she wanted the couple’s big chest freezer.
Det Garda Kelleher said he also investigated the couple’s finances.
He said they had one bank account in Mr Satchwell’s name, and he said from 2015 to 2017 it was constantly in the red.
After selling their home in Fermoy and moving to Youghal, he said they had a balance of €372.
Det Garda Kelleher told the court that a forensic accountant had found the Satchwell’s did not have the capacity to accumulate anything near the €26,000 in savings, which Mr Satchwell claimed his wife took with her.
Det Garda Kelleher said his first involvement with the investigation was in 2020. And he told the court the investigation seemed to have stalled during the Covid pandemic.
