THE HUSBAND of missing Cork woman Tina Satchwell has said she talked of leaving and would go to the gardaí if he tried to follow her.
Richard Satchwell was speaking to Ireland AM on Wednesday as gardaí continued to search Mitchel’s Wood in Castlemartyr, Co. Cork after a tip from a ‘credible source’.
Mr Satchwell said his relationship with his wife was strong but that she had been dealing with personal issues before her disappearance.
He told hosts Mark Cagney and Ciara Doherty: “From time to time she had turned round and said that, ‘If I ever decide to get up and go and you come after me, I’ll go to the guards’.
“But then 20 minutes later she’d be there like, ‘I didn’t really say that.’”
Asked why she would say something like that, Mr Satchwell replied: “It’s the way she was – one minute she could be sitting down laughing and the next minute she could be crying.”
Tina Satchwell was last seen by her husband on the morning of March 20, 2017, before he left their house in Youghal, Co. Cork.
Asked why he waited four days to contact gardaí, he said he had agreed to give her space if she wanted time alone and was confident she was staying with friends in Fermoy.
He said: “I gave her the space that she said she would want.”
“I was 100 per cent positive in my own head that she was after going to Fermoy,” he added.
“I didn’t have any reason to believe that she would go anywhere else.”
When he realised four days later that she wasn’t with her family, he contacted gardaí.
Mr Satchwell added that he believes his wife is still alive and that she had help to leave Youghal.
“I just want her to get in touch with somebody, anybody, just so everybody knows she's alright,” he said.
“I know there’s somebody out there that had to have helped her get out of Youghal.
“I think that person themselves should be actually ashamed of themselves for leaving the stress that they left behind, not only with me but with her family.”
