The Irish Scissor Sisters (2 page)

The fact that two seemingly ordinary young Dublin women were responsible for the murder and subsequent dismemberment, meant that the case would capture the public’s imagination and live long in their memory.

Irish people in the twenty-first century are well used to violent crime. While the Irish economy grew, organised crime equally prospered and threatened to spiral out of control. In 2005 the country was awash with money. Never had we known such prosperity. It was this boom that led tens of thousands of people from across the world to make Ireland their new home. One of these people was Farah Swaleh Noor. People arriving from abroad, however, would find the extent of the seedy underworld bubbling just beneath the surface hard to believe.

Linda and Charlotte Mulhall, however, were not brought up expecting to be criminals. Although their lives were far from perfect, there was nothing to suggest that they would become two of the most infamous killers in Irish history.

They came from a relatively stable background and had the support of a loving extended family. Somewhere along the way, however, things went tragically wrong for these women from a respectable estate in Tallaght, South Dublin. What drove these women to kill a man – especially as he was involved in a long-term relationship with their mother?

Thirty-year-old Linda was a doting mother-of-four, yet she had problems. Bad relationships and domestic abuse were part and parcel of her everyday life. She was also involved in a relationship with a vicious man who beat and abused her children, which led to the authorities taking them into care. These troubles led Linda to turn to drugs and alcohol to get her through each day. At the time of the murder, however, she was trying to get her life back together. She had won custody of her children and had returned to live at the family home in Kilclare Gardens. She was attempting to get some stability back into her children’s young lives but then it all went wrong.

Linda’s twenty-two-year-old sister, Charlotte, led more of a nomadic existence. She often spent weeks living in Kilclare Gardens but would then disappear for months at a time without telling anybody. She worked as a prostitute on the streets of Dublin, dabbled in drugs and drank too much. Charlotte wasn’t the only member of her family selling her body. Her mother also worked as a prostitute and the two women often spent nights working alongside each other.

When Linda and Charlotte left Tallaght to go on a drinking session in town on the day of the murder, they were armed with ten ecstasy tablets. Linda had easily bought them on the street and neither woman ever had any difficulty in purchasing hash or heroin from a network of dealers across the city. Gardaí believe that the use of E tablets was a big factor in Farah Noor’s death. The drugs made the women hallucinate and could have been what drove them to kill. E tablets are freely available throughout Ireland for less than €10 a tablet.

In the middle of what is universally regarded as an epidemic of serious crime, the murder of Farah Swaleh Noor still managed to stand out, horrifying and fascinating the general public in equal measure and putting pressure on the government to act to reduce the spiralling murder rate. The trial of Linda and Charlotte Mulhall was one of the most widely reported court cases in living memory. The courtroom was packed each day, with dozens of journalists from all the main newspapers, TV and radio stations eager to satisfy the public’s hunger for every gruesome detail of the shocking murder. Barely a day went by when the trial of the Irish Scissor Sisters didn’t make the front pages. Even now, over six years after the horrible killing, the Mulhall women are still front-page news and will probably always command headlines no matter what they do.

Charlotte and Linda Mulhall are currently in Mountjoy women’s prison. Linda is serving a fifteen-year jail term for the manslaughter of Noor, while Charlotte is serving a life sentence for his murder. As Charlotte told detectives when she finally confessed to killing Farah Noor: ‘I’ll be locked up for a long time, I suppose.’

2011

long it took Farah Noor to die but he had long since left this world by the time Charlotte Mulhall had plunged the knife into his body for the twenty-second time. The dead man had injuries to most of his vital organs. His heart was repeatedly pierced; his liver was badly damaged, while his stomach and bladder also had a substantial number of knife wounds. He had also been stabbed twice in the back. There was no evidence of Farah having put up a struggle and his hands showed no defensive wounds. Linda Mulhall, Charlotte’s sister, probably brought the hammer down on Farah’s head at least ten times and the attack is thought to have lasted anywhere from three to five minutes. Their mother, Kathleen, Farah’s girlfriend, was in the sitting room while her two daughters committed the savage murder on 20 March 2005.

That morning had started out like many others for Linda and Charlotte Mulhall. The two sisters got up and were bored.

The younger of the two, Charlotte, was restless and was eager to do something. She asked her older sister what they could do but much to her annoyance, Linda reminded Charlotte that she had her son with her for the day and couldn’t get up to much.

Not one to be easily put off, Charlotte, or Charlie as her family called her, went to the back room and came back with a bottle of vodka.

It was just after eleven in the morning and Linda thought it was too early to be drinking.

Giving her sister a filthy look and reminding her that there was never anything to do, and that today would be no different, Charlotte poured out two large vodka and cokes.

It didn’t take much to persuade Linda to have one, and soon the two sisters were on the couch, enjoying what was to be the first of many drinks that day, while Linda’s eleven-year-old son was amusing himself around the house.

It was a scene that had been played out in No. 31 Kilclare Gardens in Tallaght many times before. It was one that would never be repeated again.

Not long after the sisters began drinking, twenty-one-year-old Charlotte’s mobile rang. It was Kathleen, the girls’ mother.

Kathleen was in the city centre, drinking with her boyfriend, an African called Farah Swaleh Noor, and she wanted her daughters to come into town and join them.

Charlotte was delighted with the invitation and immediately said yes, but Linda was less keen. Charlotte begged Linda to change her mind but her older sister remained firm. Her son was in the house and she was reluctant to leave him on his own. She didn’t particularly want to see her mother or Farah anyway. She resisted but Charlotte knew that she could always change her thirty-year-old sister’s mind, so she kept at her until Linda finally agreed.

When Linda suggested bringing her son into town with them, Charlie went mad. How could you get a decent day’s drinking done with a kid in tow?

Eventually, Charlotte won out and Linda agreed to leave her son with her brother Andrew and to join the group in the city centre. Charlie was delighted. She told her mam that they’d get the bus in and see them around O’Connell Street.

Charlotte had another reason for wanting to go out that day. The year before, she had spent her twenty-first birthday in Kilclare Gardens, having a few drinks and had ended up depressed. She vowed that there was no way that she was going to let that happen again and she was determined to keep the promise she’d made to herself. This year her birthday would be different. It would be one to enjoy, one that she’d remember. After all she was going to be twenty-two the next day, 21 March 2005.

It was to be a birthday that would haunt her for the rest of her life.

Once Linda had given in and decided to go out for the day, she poured another two vodkas and began to loosen up a little. Things hadn’t been easy for the mother-of-four recently. Her ex-boyfriend, Wayne Kinsella, a vicious thug, had been jailed for seven years, nine months previously, for physically abusing three of her children. At the time the social services had taken all four children away from her and placed them into care. Linda had taken it badly but she had struggled through. She had been delighted to get the children back, but in the time without them she had been using heroin and drinking heavily. She had moved back into her father, John Mulhall’s, house with her children to try and get her life back on track.

The sisters went upstairs to Andrew’s room in the three-bedroom semi-detached council house they’d lived in all their lives and started to get ready. Charlotte spent her time living between the house in Tallaght and a flat in Summerhill. The twenty-one-year-old began by putting on her heavy eyeliner. Both the girls wore a lot of make-up and Charlotte was rarely seen without her trademark Cleopatra eyes. She spent ten minutes in front of the mirror making sure that she looked perfect. Charlotte felt inferior to her older sister, who, with her long blonde hair and slim figure, was easily the better looking of the two. Charlotte thought that her frizzy curls and round figure were nothing beside Linda but it never stopped her getting attention. She always had a boyfriend on the go and every weekend she would work as a prostitute on the canal at Baggot Street for extra cash. She was popular amongst the men down there who were more than happy to part with their cash in return for sex with Charlotte. Linda was applying her heavy foundation but was concerned about her new lip piercing. It was swollen and the bar was hurting her but thankfully the vodka was starting to numb the pain.

Enjoying themselves now, and having a really girly morning, the sisters tried on a number of outfits before deciding what to wear. Then they headed back downstairs for one last drink before they went into town.

Linda kissed her son goodbye and said she wouldn’t be long and was just going to meet his granny in town. The child barely looked up. He was used to being without his mam and well able to look after himself. He’d already been through more than most eleven-year-olds. As the girls left the house Linda called back to say that his Uncle Andrew was in the house and would get him anything he needed. With that the door slammed shut and the sisters were gone.

They walked to the end of the cul-de-sac and down the main road to the bus stop and waited about ten minutes for the 77 bus to bring them into town. The sisters had a smoke while they waited for the bus and looked up at the sky. It was a sunny day but dark clouds were moving in and it looked like there could be rain on the way. They sat upstairs on the 77 and lit up two cigarettes and chatted during the forty-five-minute journey into town.

The bus eventually got into town at about 1.15 p.m. and the girls got off on the quays. Charlotte used Linda’s mobile to ring Kathleen and find out where they could meet-up.

Kathleen was hanging around O’Connell Street with her Somalian boyfriend, Farah. The girls walked up Dublin’s main street, looking out for their mother. They finally saw her with Farah at McDonalds, at the lower end of the street. The pair of them were drinking cans of beer and looked like they’d already had a few. The girls greeted Kathleen and Farah with hugs and kisses and the group walked back up O’Connell Street towards the Spire.

As soon as Kathleen saw her eldest daughter she noticed her lip. Concerned, she asked Linda if she was okay. Farah had a look too and it was decided that they should do something about it. By now the lip was very swollen.