The Irish Scissor Sisters

by Mick McCaffrey

  Linda unzipped her bag and took out the arms that lay wrapped in the large black refuse sack. She opened the black bag and went over to the water’s edge. She gently emptied the two limbs into the water, which was probably about eight foot in depth. The sound of the arms hitting the canal made a pronounced splash but nobody saw the three women, even though dozens of people would have walked over the bridge while they were getting rid of the body.

  Charlotte took her black bag out and held the bottom of it and swung the torso into the canal. It landed about three feet into the water and immediately sank. She took her mother by the arm and said: ‘Come on, Ma, that’s the worst part over now. Let’s go home and get the rest and that’ll be it.’

  They walked side-by-side back to Richmond Cottages. It is not known how many trips they had to make that morning to dispose of Farah’s body. Linda later told gardaí they went back and forth six times and Charlotte estimated that it was three or four. It is probable that Kathleen only accompanied them once. CCTV cameras outside the Gala supermarket only observed Linda and Charlotte. Their mother wasn’t recorded. Traffic cameras did not pick up Kathleen either. A traffic camera captured the sisters on Ballybough Bridge at 7.23 a.m., just yards from the canal, with the bags on their backs. They went down to the water and when they returned minutes later the bags were empty. However many times they went to the canal that morning, by the time they had finished, Farah Swaleh Noor was lying in the canal in eight pieces, and nobody had seen what they’d done.

  After they had finished dumping the body and had returned to Richmond Cottages, the women started to clean the flat again. They had left the cloths and towels steeping in hot water and bleach for a couple of hours and they went over the bathroom and bedroom again with the same amount of effort they had put in earlier. They had all seen programmes about cleaning crime scenes on television and knew that you had to be meticulous if you wanted to avoid detection. They spent the next three hours on their hands and knees, scrubbing the bathroom floor and walls, making sure that people would never think that anything untoward had occurred at the flat. They cleaned the flat with such professionalism that, after spending days combing over each part of Flat 1, a team of trained technical examiners was only able to find a handful of blood specks. Gardaí would later observe that the Mulhalls were so thorough that they could easily have started their own contract cleaning business.

  The last area left to clean was the kitchen. They steeped the Stanley knife and murder hammer in bleach in the sink and wiped it clear of fingerprints. Kathleen put the weapons into a backpack and left them in the hallway.

  When they were finally satisfied that they had done enough, they gathered all the towels and cloths and put them in a black bag in the yard alongside the carpet, for the bin men to take away.

  While they were cleaning, the three women discussed what to do with Farah’s head, which was sitting in a black bag in the kitchen. Linda suggested that they should bury it far away from Ballybough so that if Farah’s body was found, the gardaí wouldn’t be able to use the head to identify him. Hundreds of Africans came into the country each year and promptly left without a trace. It would not be easy for them to identify the dead Somalian. Later on this strategy would make it doubly difficult for garda investigators to determine the identity of the torso in the canal. It was with this in mind that the women decided to get the bus to a park they knew in Tallaght and bury the head in the ground. They also planned to dispose of the knife and hammer they had used to carry out the murder.

  The sports bags were damp from being ferried back and forth from the flat to the canal. Even though the black bags had stopped any fluid or blood damaging them they were still quite smelly. The women were afraid that if somebody sat down beside them in the enclosed space of a bus they might be alerted to the fact that something was wrong. Kathleen had no other bags in the flat but remembered that she had a camera bag that her husband had given to her as a present a few years earlier. She went into the bedroom and took the large black bag from the wardrobe. She removed the camera and Linda took the bag and put the battered head in it. They were now ready for a trip across town to Tallaght, where Farah’s head would be buried, hopefully never to be seen again.

  The three Mulhalls left the house shortly after midday and, as they were walking out the door, Kathleen picked up the bag with the knives and hammer. They took the same route they had walked earlier that morning.

  At 12.11 p.m. Linda and Charlotte were captured on CCTV camera entering the Gala supermarket on Summerhill Parade. Charlotte was dressed in a fitted denim jacket, with a pair of dark denim jeans and white runners. She was carrying a dark pink rucksack that looked to be quite bulky. She stayed in the shop for less than a minute before going outside, obviously looking for somebody.

  She appeared on camera again thirty seconds later with her mother, and the three women went to the deli counter and queued in line to be served.

  The camera footage shows the three Mulhalls in what appears to be an agitated state, as they shuffled their feet and looked nervous. Kathleen was wearing a cream jacket with fur on the collar, a grey polo neck jumper and denim jeans with dark shoes. She had a royal-blue bag over her shoulder and also carried a black handbag. She left the queue and picked up a bottle of water and bought it before exiting the supermarket at 12.15 p.m. Kathleen was a regular in the shop and had been filmed there five days earlier after she collected her social welfare money. She had gone to the household products aisle that day and had bought black refuse bags and bleach, as well as phone credit. It was that same bleach that had been used five days later to clean the Flat 1 crime scene, and Farah’s dismembered body parts had been placed in those same black refuse bags before being transported to the canal.

  Linda reached the top of the deli queue and ordered a breakfast roll from the shop assistant. She asked for tomato ketchup to go with her sausages, bacon, eggs and hash browns. She was obviously feeling hungry after a hard night of murder and the subsequent clean-up. She also bought six packets of crisps and a packet of Superking cigarettes.

  At 12.18 p.m. Linda buttoned her black leather jacket tightly against her purple polo neck and left the shop with her sister, before tucking into her brunch. She didn’t even like the polo neck and was only wearing it to please her mother. Her brother John had given it to Kathleen as a present two years before but Kathleen didn’t think much of it either and had passed it on to Linda as a gift when her daughter went to visit her in Cork the year before. Linda was carrying the dark camera bag, containing Farah’s head, on her shoulder. She put the bag on the ground outside the shop, as she enjoyed her breakfast roll.

  Kathleen and Charlotte smoked cigarettes while Linda finished off her roll, and the group then walked towards town to get a bus. As they walked up O’Connell Street, Linda couldn’t help thinking about the previous day. If she’d just stayed at home with her children like she’d wanted to, instead of giving in to Charlotte, then everything would be fine now. Why did she even go back to her mam’s flat? She knew Kathleen was fighting with Farah and she should have just got a bus back to Tallaght like any decent mother would have done. She realised, however, that there was no point driving herself mad with ifs and buts now and she’d just have to make the best of things.

  They crossed the Liffey and turned right down the quays and waited for a 77 bus to bring them to the Southside. One arrived after less than five minutes and they each paid their own €1.60 fare and went upstairs to sit down. It was 1 p.m. and the bus wasn’t that busy. Linda and Charlie sat together near the back, with their mother in front of them. The camera bag with the head in it rested under Linda’s feet for the journey. They rode along in silence because none of the three felt like talking, each was engrossed in their private thoughts. Little did the dozen or so fellow passengers upstairs realise that they were travelling with the head of a dead African man.

  As the bus pulled into the Square Shopping Centre in Tallaght, they got off and walked through the doo
rs, past McDonalds and the cinema complex. They took the escalator up to the second level, stopping briefly to check out the window of a clothes shop. After exiting the shopping centre the Mulhalls walked down the street until they could see Tymon Park North in the distance.

  Tymon Park is officially known as Sean Walsh Park and is on the left-hand side of the Tallaght by-pass, in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains. It is a large public park where local people go to sit and read or play football and is described by South Dublin County Tourism as ‘the St Stephen’s Green of Tallaght’.

  The three women crossed over the footbridge connecting the Old Bawn Road to the Square and into the main gate of the park. They started to walk around. The area was so big that it was hard to know where to start. They were looking for somewhere to bury the head and dispose of the murder weapons. Linda would suggest a spot close to trees, only for Charlotte to disagree and say that somebody would notice if the ground was dug up there. This went on for about four hours and they kept walking and walking around Tymon Park, but couldn’t agree on a suitable spot to bury Farah’s head. There was a bench at the back of the park, up a slight hill and they finally sat down for a much-needed rest. As they relaxed, they looked at the large lake in front of the bench. It would be a nice place to sit to pass a couple of hours but they weren’t in the mood for taking in the scenery.

  Charlotte began to get frustrated saying they’d been here for hours and still hadn’t done anything. She jumped up and went about two feet behind the bench and started digging furiously at the clay with her hands. Linda didn’t think they should bury it a few feet from where people came to sit but Charlotte had started digging and wasn’t about to stop now.

  Kathleen took the Stanley knife out of her bag and handed it to her daughter, who used it to help disturb the earth, but she was having difficulty. Charlie thought to herself that she should have come prepared and brought a shovel. She eventually stopped digging and stepped back to observe her work. The hole was not very deep but the ground was too hard underneath and it was the best she could do under the circumstances.

  Linda started having flashbacks to the murder and panicked, shouting at her sister to take the bag off her back. Charlotte grabbed the camera bag and took Farah’s battered head out of the black plastic bag by his hair.

  Kathleen and Linda couldn’t bear to look and covered their eyes while the birthday girl tossed the head in the shallow grave and started to kick the muck to cover it in. Linda couldn’t bring herself to help fill in the hole and sat on the bench sobbing.

  It was approaching 7 p.m., and when Charlotte had finished she sat next to Linda and got her breath back. There wasn’t much earth covering the top of Farah’s head but it wasn’t visible to anybody who wasn’t looking for it and the three women were satisfied that the job was done.

  There was still the question of the murder weapons to be disposed of. The Mulhalls got off the bench and started walking away when Kathleen turned around and headed back towards the large lake. She took the Stanley knife and hammer from her bag and threw them into the water individually, using the end of her jumper to cover her hand so she wouldn’t leave fingerprints. They landed about eight feet into the lake and splashed, before sinking to the bottom. They were satisfied that they would never be found because nobody was likely to have any cause to dredge the water. Even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to link them to anything because they had cleaned the weapons for fingerprints back at the flat.

  After the knife and hammer were disposed of, Charlotte said, ‘That’s grand now,’ and that they could go home.

  Linda was furious. She didn’t want to hear that everything was grand. They’d killed a man and had just buried his head in a field where kids went to play. There was nothing grand about that and she said this to her sister. Charlotte just shrugged her shoulders.

  They walked out of the park and crossed the road in the direction of the Square. They had agreed to stay in Ballybough again that night to clean up some more but Linda announced that she was going home. She was depressed and wasn’t able to face it. She walked home to Jobstown, taking the camera bag with her. She said she’d make sure that it was taken care of. Kathleen and Charlotte hugged Linda before she walked away. Charlotte shouted after her, reminding her not to say a word to anybody about what had happened over the previous twenty-four hours.

  Linda walked slowly home and when she arrived back at Kilclare Gardens she said hello to the children. They were excited to see their mam but she only wanted to go to bed.

  John Mulhall walked into the living room and stared at his daughter before turning around and leaving without saying a word.

  Linda went upstairs and had a long shower trying to wash Farah off her but no matter how much soap she used, she couldn’t get the dead man off her mind. She went straight to bed and put the camera bag on the floor beside her.

  She slept for three or four hours and awoke with a start. She remembered the bag and went downstairs and got some coal and logs and started the fire. She lay on the couch and cried, waiting for the flames to get hot enough. After about half an hour she took the camera bag and put it into the fire. She sobbed as the flames engulfed the bag and soon reduced it to ash. She took another bottle of vodka from the press and poured herself a large drink and didn’t even use a mixer. Her hands were shaking and she needed something to calm her nerves. She got through nearly half the bottle and lay down looking at the fire. ‘I’m sorry; I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

  The next thing she remembered was one of her children calling her. Linda looked around and realised she was at home and for a split second thought that she was dreaming about Farah. She looked in the fireplace and saw the ashes from the bag and knew that it was not a dream but very much a living nightmare. She took a plastic bag from the kitchen and got what was left of the camera bag and brought it to the back garden. She lifted the lid of the green wheelie bin, with the No. 31 painted on the side, and left the bag for the bin men. The thirty-year-old went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror.

  She saw Farah. His sad eyes stared at her and he shook his head.

  She screamed and splashed her face with water.

  She glanced at the mirror again but he was still there. Linda wouldn’t be able to get the Somalian out of her mind for a long time.

  After saying goodbye to Linda, Kathleen and Charlotte walked back to the Square to get a cup of coffee. Charlie was starting to worry about her older sister. She could see that Linda’s conscience was already starting to bother her. She’d always been a sensitive soul and would struggle to keep such a horrible secret. She told her mam that they’d have to keep the pressure on Linda over the next few days and weeks to make sure she didn’t crack and go to the guards.

  They got the 77 bus back into town and walked the rest of the way to Ballybough. Charlotte started drinking vodka, while Kathleen got some cloths and a cooking pot and started scrubbing the bathroom again. Charlotte thought that it looked fine but her mother was like a woman possessed and just kept cleaning and cleaning throughout the night.

  She told Charlotte about her life with Farah and said she would have been dead within the year if Linda and Charlie hadn’t killed him. That wasn’t much consolation to Charlotte – she knew she was the one who would take the bulk of the blame if the guards came calling. The twenty-two-year-old sat on the settee and stared blankly at the TV. She felt dead inside and had no energy left.

  Kathleen woke up early on 22 March as there was still a lot of cleaning to do. She used a cloth and bleach to scrub the bedside locker and wardrobe. Then she got under the bunk bed, which could be cleaned now that the blood was dry.

  Charlotte wasn’t in the mood for sticking around and got a bag of stuff and left without saying where she was going.

  Kathleen went back to her frenzied spring clean but the bottle of bleach was empty so she popped out to the Gala supermarket, wearing a white hoody underneath a blue denim jacket. At 10.16 a.m. she bought credit for her
mobile phone, a bottle of milk and a bottle of orange. She then made her way to the household products aisle and picked up a bottle of liquid cleaner and a large bottle of domestic bleach. She got back into the queue, and then left it again, putting the cleaner back on the shelf. She paid for her Domestos and left the shop.

  The following day, at 11.25 a.m., she left the post office at Summerhill Parade after collecting her Social Welfare and went back into the Gala store next door. She headed straight to the household products and picked up some more black plastic bags and a large bottle of air freshener. She was trying to get rid of the smell of death that would not leave her small flat. She left the shop three minutes later.

  All three women were trying to come to terms with what had taken place. Linda started to instantly feel guilty, while Charlotte was a far harder person and had no problem going back to the murder scene to stay there that night. Kathleen had played no active part in the murder and subsequent dismemberment but she had lost her long-term partner and cleaning seemed to be her way of dealing with this.

  , three days after the murder, Charlotte went to the ATM at the Bank of Ireland on O’Connell Street. It was 7.32 p.m. when she withdrew €60. Exactly one week later, Kathleen did the same thing. At 1.35 p.m. she took out €150, in three €50 notes, from the same machine. There is nothing unusual about this except that Charlotte and Kathleen were withdrawing the cash from the account of Farah Swaleh Noor – the man who had been murdered and dismembered three days earlier.

  Noor’s account was based at Allied Irish Bank in South Mall, Co. Cork. He was issued with an ATM card, which hadn’t been used since August 2004. A replacement card was sent to him in November 2004. Kathleen Mulhall would later claim that she had looked after Farah’s card because he wasn’t great at managing cash. In later investigations it emerged that she withdrew money from the account on four dates in March. She couldn’t tell gardaí where she took the money out, how much she withdrew or what she had used it for. The final time that Farah’s ATM card was used was on 30 March 2005. This was ten days after its owner was murdered and the same day that his body was fished out of the Royal Canal.