The Irish Scissor Sisters (44 page)

Husna rejected the allegations that Noor was a violent rapist and said he never once hit her during their marriage. Husna Said married Noor when she was seventeen and the couple lived in Mombasa and had three children together. Noor walked out on his family in 1993, saying he was going to Europe to set up a base and that he would later fly his wife and children over to join him. Said was pregnant at the time. But it appears Noor had no intention of ever seeing his family again. He appears to have lived in London until December 1996, when he managed to board a flight from Rome to Dublin and claim refugee status, making up an elaborate story that he was fleeing from war-torn Somalia. During his years in Ireland, Noor kept in contact with his wife and children and regularly sent his elderly mother money. But Said did not find out her husband had been murdered until six months after he died, when gardaí discovered Noor’s identity and tracked his family down.

Said’s teenage daughter Somoe was weak and suffered with health problems. She was often confined to a wheelchair and when the seventeen-year-old heard her father was dead, her health deteriorated. ‘She got a shock over her father’s death and got a fever. She was seventeen years old, the firstborn. When she heard the news, she got a fever and lost her memory. She then fell into a coma for two days and died. She was in high school. She lost consciousness and never woke up. I miss her so much because she was a beautiful person. Sometimes I feel like killing myself,’ Husna said.

The couple had two other children: fifteen-year-old Mohamed and thirteen-year-old Zuleh. Husna said her whole family was affected by the trauma of Noor’s murder and that they will never get over it. ‘[Someo] was the most important one and I loved her very much,’ she said. ‘I have no one to help me and am really going through a hard time. Sometimes I want to commit suicide because I have nothing left in this world.’ Farah’s mother used to give Husna some of the money her son would send from Ireland but since his death the entire family is living in poverty. She has applied to Ireland’s Criminal Injuries Compensation Board for compensation but has heard nothing from them. ‘They sent me some forms to fill in and I sent them back last March but I have heard nothing since then. I am supporting my two kids for the last two years without any money,’ she said. ‘I am a single woman and have no money. Life is very tough with the kids and it is hard bringing them up. I cannot pay their school fees. Farah left us and I have been supporting them by myself ever since. I work long hours as a cook and have to rush home to prepare them dinner. Life is very hard.’

Farah and Husna were from strict Muslim families and Husna had to stay indoors, mourning her husband for at least three months after his death. This meant that she was unable to go out to work to support her children. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Board has the power to give financial compensation to Noor’s family but Husna says she is not all about money. ‘No matter how much I get, I will never be happy for the rest of my life. I loved Farah a lot. He was my first love and I married him when I was seventeen. It was a marriage of love and not arranged.’

Husna said that Noor’s relatives in Kenya were extremely angry Kathleen Mulhall had not yet faced a jury to answer to any alleged role she might have played in the murder of the Kenyan.

‘Of course I’d like to see her in jail, and Farah’s mum is the same,’ she said. ‘She complains, asking why is she not arrested or in jail. I want to sue Kathleen. She can’t run away just like that. Wherever she is, she will never be comfortable for the rest of her life. Allah will never forgive.’

Husna had asked Noor for a divorce shortly before his murder because ‘he didn’t care about his family and didn’t send money, so we argued. He used to call me about 2005 and I have many letters he used to send me. I told him I wanted a divorce because he was not responsible for the kids. Everything fell on me. He didn’t care about the kids. He liked drinking. I didn’t trust him; he was an alcoholic.’

Farah Swaleh Noor was portrayed in court as a violent womaniser who used to rape his girlfriends. He got two women pregnant while in Ireland and they both made allegations of violence and rape against him. However, Husna said she did not recognise this description as fitting her husband. ‘Farah never beat me or treated me badly. Kathleen was his girlfriend. I don’t think Farah raped anybody. He did not ever rape me. She’s lying if she says he beat her.’

Noor never attempted to hide the fact he had two children in Ireland and wrote about them in letters to his wife. According to Husna: ‘Farah sent me a picture of his son a long time ago. If it was possible I would like to adopt the child and bring him up as a Muslim like Farah would have wanted.’

Farah’s family were obviously furious with Kathleen Mulhall and wanted her to answer for what she did.

Their wish would come sooner than expected because just three months after Husna Said spoke publicly for the first time, this author finally tracked down Kathleen. She had not been seen or heard from since September 2005, but in December 2007, after months of behind-the-scenes investigation and considerable expense, I determined that Kathleen Mulhall was going by the name Cathy Ward. She was living in a free council house in Shepherd’s Bush, in London, and was surviving on State handouts.
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photographer Mark Condren and I travelled over to London and placed the one-bedroom cottage under surveillance. We had been parked in a blacked-out van, outside her home, for a matter of minutes when the light in Mulhall’s porch came on and we saw her passionately kiss a middle-aged black man. The man then jumped on a bicycle and cycled away into the evening darkness.

Kathleen’s appearance had changed dramatically since she left Ireland and she had dyed her hair blonde in an effort to disguise her identity. Because it was in the depths of winter and the light was bad we were unable to get a clear photograph of Mulhall, so we returned at first light the following morning. We sat outside the house for three full days but Mulhall did not once leave the house. We suspected that she had left during the first night and had gone to visit relatives in Birmingham. We called to a neighbour’s house and asked after Kathleen. The neighbour told us that she didn’t venture out of the house much during the day but that she came alive at night and often had male visitors who spent considerable amounts of time in her cottage. She told her neighbours that she had left Ireland years before and had come to London from Birmingham. They said she was very pleasant and friendly and would offer to go to the shops for elderly folk who couldn’t leave the house in bad weather.

We showed a photograph of Kathleen around the dozens of pubs around the main drag in Shepherd’s Bush, which is home to many Irish immigrants, and several bar workers recognised the woman as Cathy Ward. They said that she regularly drank heavily with a large group of African men and we were told that the man we had seen her kissing was a convicted rapist. Mulhall was still fond of dangerous sex offenders, it seemed. The bar workers said that Cathy was a friendly and jovial woman who drank too much and would often disappear for weeks on end only to come back in and start to chat to punters as if she had never left.

The following week we returned to London and after seven hours in the van we saw Mulhall come out of her cottage and talk to an elderly neighbour. We snapped a photograph of her after spinning the van around and driving into the complex, towards the house. Mulhall was shocked that her hiding place had been compromised and ran indoors and slammed the door. We knocked but she refused to answer and turned out the lights.

The previous April the Director of Public Prosecutions had decided that Kathleen should face charges in relation to the murder of Farah Noor. So when the story appeared in the
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gardaí were eager to make the trip to London and extradite her to Dublin to face a jury of her peers. Detectives applied for an extradition warrant and waited the six weeks for it to come through, all the while hoping that she didn’t do one of her legendary disappearing acts now that she knew her cover had been blown.

On 12 February 2008 Detective Sergeant Liam Hickey and Detective Garda Mike Smyth flew to London and met up with their counterparts in the London Metroplitan Police. They then travelled to Kathleen Mulhall/Cathy Ward’s house and knocked on the door. The fifty-three-year-old opened the door and warmly greeted the two Irish detectives. She knew the game was up and had been expecting a visit since the
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had found her over two months previously. She made the officers a cup of tea and listened to them say that the DPP had decided that she had a case to answer about the murder of her former lover. She calmly said that she would voluntarily return to Dublin. Had she refused she would have been arrested by Met officers on foot of the European Arrest Warrant, but that process could have taken weeks or even months, so her unexpected cooperation was warmly welcomed by gardaí.

The following day Kathleen arrived back in Dublin. As soon as she got off the plane and touched Irish soil she was formally arrested and was transported straight to Mountjoy Garda Station. At 7.55 p.m. DS Liam Hickey formally charged her with aiding and abetting in the concealment of a crime. Kathleen made no reply. The next day she appeared at Dublin District Court amid a media circus. Wearing heavy make-up and sporting a peaked cap, white runners, black jeans, black polo-neck jumper and a leather jacket with gold zips, Mulhall stood quietly with her hands behind her back as proceedings got under way. DS Liam Hickey told Judge Patricia Ryan about meeting Kathleen in London and explained that she had agreed to return to Ireland. He also gave evidence about charging her the night before. No bail application was made and she was remanded into custody to the Dóchas Centre, where her two daughters were serving their sentences.

Sources say that the atmosphere inside the Dóchas Centre was extremely tense when Kathleen Mulhall arrived, accompanied by two prison officers. She was immediately taken into the office of the prison governor and told that she would be looked after by staff and treated like every other woman but that any bad blood between her and her daughters that could result in disputes or violence would not be tolerated. Kathleen said that she had no problem with Linda and Charlotte and hoped that they felt the same way. She said that she would serve her time quietly and would not cause any hassle or bother. With that she was taken to her room, where within minutes she was visited by Charlotte.

Charlotte had always been very understanding about her mother’s somewhat unusual private life and if she bore a grudge about Kathleen skipping the country and leaving her and Linda to face the rap for Farah, she didn’t show it. She ran up and hugged her mother and soon it was like they had never been separated.

Linda was a harder nut to crack, and while she did acknowledge her mother, she was very quiet and cold towards her for the first few weeks. She was less forgiving than Charlotte and was angry that while she was serving time for killing Farah at her mother’s behest, Kathleen had been swanning around in London, drinking heavily and having sex with a string of men. Kathleen worked hard to repair the fractious relationship and was forever apologising for what happened and generally trying to make it up to her daughters for being a lousy parent. Over time Linda relented and they gradually became close again and even moved into the same room together.

Although Kathleen had never been in trouble with the law or seen the inside of a cell – not that you could really describe the rooms at the Dóchas Centre as cells – she assimilated easily into prison life. She was popular with the other women and was regarded as a mother figure to come to for advice, which was ironic considering her shoddy history as an actual mother.

Charlotte had weekly visits with her son and Kathleen really relished spending time with her grandson and doted on the young lad. It was almost as if prison life had freed her and given her a second chance. Every week she would wheel the youngster around on a little tricycle and the prison officers noticed how happy she looked. It was almost like the Mulhalls were a proper family for the first time in years, and Kathleen was certainly enjoying making up with her daughters.

In March 2008 Kathleen Mulhall again appeared before Dublin District Court to face new charges in relation to her partner’s gruesome murder three years previously. She was charged with attempting to obstruct the arrest and prosecution of her two daughters by helping to clean up her apartment after Noor’s murder. More charges were brought against her for giving gardaí false information about Noor’s whereabouts and she was also charged with two counts of withholding information that could have helped in the arrest and prosecution of her two daughters for the murder of Farah Noor. She was remanded in custody.

Later that same month Charlotte Mulhall’s day of reckoning came when she was brought to the Court of Criminal Appeal (CCA) to find out whether she would be allowed a full appeal against her conviction for Farah Noor’s murder. Her legal team had claimed that comments made by trial judge Mr Justice Paul Carney while the jury was deliberating put them under pressure to reach a verdict in the case. The judge made the comments when the jury came out on the second day of their deliberations to ask the judge for guidance because it had become deadlocked. The foreman asked if the court would accept a majority vote and the judge told them there were five children who had a ‘vital interest’ in their decision, and then asked them to ‘make a final push to reach agreement’. Mulhall’s senior counsel, Brendan Grehan, said the only explanation one could make of this remark was that the jury had been put under pressure to reach a verdict. He then claimed that pressure must have led someone who, up until then had been in the minority, to go over to the majority. The jury eventually gave a verdict of 10–2, finding Charlotte guilty.