Youghal woman Tina Satchwell disappeared in March 2017 from the home she shared with her husband, Richard. For more than six years, her case remained one of the State’s most unsettling mysteries. Richard Satchwell told gardaí that Tina had left him, carrying two suitcases and €26,000 in cash.

Searches of the couple’s home uncovered nothing. Media appeals followed, and journalists and interviewers sat across from Richard as he pleaded for information. What they never realised was that Tina’s body lay buried just feet away from them, hidden under concrete beneath the stairs.

Journalist Barry Cummins’ new book, Buried Secrets, tells the story of Tina Satchwell’s murder and the long investigation that eventually uncovered the truth. It traces the case from the initial disappearance through to the investigation breakthrough that finally revealed what had happened.

Drawing on interviews, court evidence and years of reporting, Cummins examines the coercive control and deception at the heart of the case, as well as the institutional failures that allowed Tina’s disappearance to go unanswered for so long. Here, Barry looks at the case and how it inspired him to keep going, to highlight the cases of so many other missing people…

I WOULD DESCRIBE myself as ‘somewhat of an expert’ about many missing persons cases. However, the reality is that you cannot be a complete expert. There are more than 900 people long-term missing in Ireland. It is impossible to know everything about each of those cases.

By the time I entered Tina Satchwell’s home in 2017, I knew gardaí had already searched it as part of their efforts to find her.

A dozen officers had spent 12 hours in the property looking for any trace of the missing 45-year-old. After a full day of fruitless searching, they had pulled the front door shut behind them.

With that search failing to yield any result, I assumed that, wherever Tina was, she was not in the house. How wrong I was.

I still shudder to think of Tina dead and buried under the stairs, just a few feet from that front door, her body wrapped in plastic sheeting and covered by concrete.

Although I’m a journalist long used to summing up profound moments, I don’t know if I’ll ever find the right words to convey what it feels........

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