THE HUSBAND OF missing Cork woman Tina Satchwell has told RTÉ’s Ray D’Arcy Show why he has been doing an increasing number of media appearances.
Satchwell, who has also featured on RTÉ’s Prime Time and TV3 News in recent weeks, says past media appearances by him have helped gardaí in the year-long search for his wife.
Tina Satchwell (46) was last seen at her home in Youghal on 20 March 2017.
This week, gardaí have been conducting an extensive search of Mitchel’s Wood in the Castlemartyr area in an attempt to find evidence about her disappearance.
Speaking on the Ray D’Arcy Show, Richard Satchwell said criticism of his media appearances is unfair and that the Mitchel’s Wood search came as a result of one such TV appearance.
“I’ve never approached a TV programme or newspaper or anything, I won’t talk to the press anyway,” he said.
“As for ‘why am I on the telly’ or this or that? If I’m doing it, ‘I’m wrong for doing it’. If I don’t do it then, ‘I don’t care’.”
Due to people saying ‘oh he likes the sound of his own voice’ and such, I stopped doing interviews. But there before Christmas I got a phonecall from Sean Leahy saying that Prime Time wanted to do a programme. Sean is the investigating detective. So I did Prime Time, and as a result, we’ve had the person who’s come forward and given enough information for them to go to Mitchel’s Wood.
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Speaking further about his media appearances, Richard Satchwell said an appearance this week on TV3′s Ireland AM led to a man getting in contact with him claiming that he’d spoken to Tina a couple of months ago.
“When I was up in TV3 doing Ireland AM, on Thursday, after doing an interview, I was approached by the producer who said there was a guy who’d come into TV3 after seeing I was on and said he wanted to speak to me. So before I made a decision I actually rang the gardaí in Cork to ask advice about what I should do. I was told that it was totally up to me but whatever you do to get his details.”
Satchwell continued:
He seemed genuine to me, I came out to speak to him. We sat down on a couch, there was two people from TV3 with us. He held my hand all the time he was talking to me and he says, ‘I am 100% certain that on a date in January, that I was talking to your wife. The reason I went up to her is because it was extremely cold and I felt she wasn’t dressed warm enough, basically. So I said to her you’d want to wrap yourself up or you’ll catch your death of cold. And she said, ‘I’m just walking a new puppy that I’ve bought’.’
“He described what she was wearing. Even though I don’t recognise it as stuff that she would have taken from our house, but it is the style of dress that she would be wearing,” Satchwell added.
Following meeting this man, Satchwell said he passed the man’s details to gardaí who have since followed up on the information.
“I gave them the details that I got from this gentleman and I was advised that they would be talking to him within the hour. Later that day I was told they had and that they were sending somebody up to give him a proper interview. And this time they are investigating his story,” Satchwell said.
He later said that he would welcome Tina back with open arms if she returned and that if anyone out there is holding out on information they should be “ashamed”.
“I just want her to get in touch. But at this point, anyone who helped her get away, or anybody who might know where she is and are not letting people know, I personally think they should be ashamed of themselves at this point,” he said.
Any member of the public with information on Tina’s whereabouts is asked to contact the incident room at Midleton Garda Station at 021 4621550 or the Garda confidential line on 1800 666111.
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