The Irish Scissor Sisters

by Mick McCaffrey

  As well as sorting out her cover story in the weeks and months following the murder, Kathleen was still obsessed with cleaning up the crime scene. She had removed quite a large area of carpet from her flat that needed to be replaced. On 26 March she paid a visit to Carpet Mills on Thomas Street. She gave a shop assistant the measurements of the bedroom and front room and was quoted €365 to re-carpet both rooms. Kathleen couldn’t afford anything like this. She walked around the showroom wondering what to do and was looking at a large piece of lino when the owner, Thomas Eustace, offered her help. She said she wanted to buy a piece of vinyl but was short on cash and couldn’t afford much. She then examined some Threadford carpet, which is usually fitted in schools and offices and wouldn’t be suitable for domestic use. Kathleen knew she had to come up with a story to explain why she had just removed certain sections of carpet and not the whole lot. She said that her flat was infested with cockroaches and handed over €50 for the blue carpet. It measured about 6 feet by 10 feet and was delivered by Carpet Mills’ deliveryman and fitter, Joseph Tackaberry, three or four days later. She told him she could fit it herself and took it from him at the door of Flat 1. It was too small to fit the whole bedroom so she cut an area off with her penknife. This would at least replace the pieces she had taken up because they were covered in blood.

  There had been a problem with bugs at 17 Richmond Cottages between February and mid-March 2005. John Tobin had hired the company Pest Guard Environmental Services to deal with the problem. Lee Kelly, a surveyor with Pest Guard, visited each flat and found evidence of a major infestation in one of the upstairs rooms. The experts thought that the cockroaches had been brought into the house from abroad. To explain the problem with the carpet, Kathleen cleverly dwelt on the cockroach story. She knew that if the gardaí ever had to ask her why she had removed carpet from a house, just days after a violent murder, she would then have a plausible explanation. Kathleen’s flat, however, only had a very minor cockroach problem and all four flats were sprayed on four separate occasions, effectively eliminating the infestation. Another Pest Guard employee, Kevin Conroy, had visited Flat 1 a couple of times. He later said that he thought there was no problem with bugs of any sort in the flat.

  Proceeding with her plan, Kathleen rang John Tobin on 30 March and said she had seen another flat and wanted to move out. He told her that she had to give him two weeks notice but if she paid the following week’s rent, they would call it quits. She wasn’t willing to do this and said that she had lifted the carpet in her bedroom and found cockroaches there. She told him they had laid dozens of eggs. The landlord knew that the pest control people had only been in the flat two weeks before and had given it the all clear. Tobin asked Kevin Conroy to go back and check the flat again. The pest expert found no evidence of any bugs and said that it would be very rare for cockroaches to be living in bedrooms. They favoured the warmth of kitchens, with easy access to leftover food.

  A day or two later, the landlord called around to collect the rent, which Kathleen always left inside the door. John Tobin let himself in and noticed that all Kathleen’s belongings were packed in black bags. It looked like she was ready to move out.

  He discovered that the blue bedroom carpet had a piece the size of a door cut out of it and he could now see the concrete underneath. Another piece was lying against the wall in the bedroom. Tobin tried to ring Kathleen over the next few days to see what had happened but couldn’t get through to her.

  Kathleen eventually made contact with him on 7 April to say that she had changed her mind about moving out and now wanted to stay. She claimed that one of her daughter’s kids had broken her phone so she couldn’t contact him. She said that she had got a new piece of carpet fitted in her bedroom for €90. Tobin told her that Flat 4 was free and she agreed to move in there. The landlord met her two days after she changed flats and helped her to take out four black bags for the binmen.

  Kathleen moved into Flat 4 on 10 April and shared with two Russian men, who did not speak English well. Around this time Kathleen became quite friendly with her neighbour, Donna Fitzsimons, who lived in Flat 2. Maintaining her story, she told Donna that Farah had gone to live with a Chinese girl who’d had a child with him. She said that her old flat was too big now that she’d split with Farah and Donna later remembered thinking that this was a strange reason to move. Kathleen also confided in Donna that Farah was brutal towards her and used to give her bad beatings. Donna had seen her neighbour remove the carpet from the flat and had been there when the new carpet was delivered. Kathleen also showed her a robe that she was using as a tablecloth on the small kitchen table. She put on the robe, which covered her head and face and only allowed her eyes to be on show. Kathleen said that when she was with Farah in his own country she had to be covered from head to toe because he was a Muslim. Donna didn’t really speak to Kathleen when Farah was around. She had only previously called to borrow some milk and Farah had always ignored her. She recalled that the couple obviously liked to drink.

  Donna felt that Kathleen ‘wouldn’t be allowed by him to say hello or anything like that. He was a Muslim and wouldn’t let her talk to us or open the door or anything like that. If I ever called to the door when he was in, she would only barely open the door and would hardly speak. She only spoke to me after he left.’

  A woman called Catriona Burke moved into Flat 1, with her three-year-old son. Kathleen told her that she’d had to leave because she could not afford the rent by herself. Catriona was struck by the ‘big blue ring’ on the floor at the bathroom door, which was caused by a combination of cleaning chemicals and Farah’s seeping blood and brain matter. When she moved the double bed in the small bedroom there was no carpet, just concrete. Patches of carpet had been placed at the side of the bed to give the impression that the whole area was covered and the carpet at the bedroom window looked like it had been hacked. Catriona never noticed any other blood stains in the flat but she later said there was ‘a very bad sewerage problem’. This could have been as a result of flushing skin and bone fragments down the toilet. She never saw a single cockroach and was surprised when gardaí told her that Kathleen claimed that Flat 1 was infested.

  Catriona subsequently found an Irish passport, in a foreign name, in the flat and gave it to John Tobin, and his wife, Karen, then handed it in to Dunboyne Garda Station.

  A few days after the murder, Charlotte visited her family home in Tallaght and started drinking very early in the day. Her twenty-one-year-old sister, Marie, came in from work at about 6.30 p.m. and found Charlie crying in the bedroom. She went in to see if everything was OK but Charlotte was very upset and weeping uncontrollably. She initially wouldn’t say what was up with her but eventually turned to the apprentice mechanic and said: ‘We’re after killing Farah Noor.’

  Marie later gave a statement saying: ‘I did not believe her at the time as Charlotte was in the habit of telling wild stories, particularly when she was drunk. She told me that herself and my mother, Kathleen, were after killing Farah Noor. She did not say when. I just let her talk. She said my mother, Kathleen, and herself were in a chipper and returned to a house they were sharing with Farah Noor. She did not identify the location of the house. They said they found Farah Noor trying to rape my sister Linda. Charlotte then said she hit him and he turned and caught her but she did not say where. At this stage my sister Linda hit him and he did not get back up. She did not describe the items used to hit Farah, nor did I enquire. She then told me that they then cut Farah Noor into two halves and buried him either side of the canal. She did not identify the canal, nor did I ask her.

  ‘I honestly did not believe her. Charlotte was very upset at this stage and I was shocked, to put it mildly, by the story she told me, even though I did not believe her. I left the house and went for a drive and returned some time later and Charlotte was sitting on the couch talking to my father. She had calmed down at this stage and appeared to be having a normal conversation. I went to bed and did not give her st
ory any further consideration, nor did I discuss the story with my sister Linda or my father, John Mulhall.’

  At the time Marie didn’t know that her mother lived in Ballybough, beside the canal, but she thought of the strange conversation a few days later, when a body was recovered from the water. The twenty-one-year-old didn’t know what to do but she eventually decided to let it rest and not to tell anyone.

  Charlotte’s admission to her sister seemed to be an uncharacteristic blip – other than that outburst she seemed to be coping quite well with the gruesome events of 20 March. Not only was she happy to take money from a dead man’s bank account, she also met a few people she knew from the streets and sold them Farah’s rings, watches and other jewellery, in order to make some extra cash. While Linda and Kathleen had spent the day the body was discovered crying, Charlotte was getting on with her life. On 31 March, just a day after the Somalian’s remains were found in the canal, she met a man and started a relationship with him. She hooked up with a Russian called Dilmurat Amirov. He lived in Flat 3 at the cottages and that’s how they met.

  Over the following weeks, Charlotte spent many days sitting at the side of the canal, drinking cans with her new boyfriend. They sat on the benches at Summerhill and regularly walked under the bridge where Farah’s body had been discovered. Charlotte showed no emotion as she strolled by.

  Amirov also got to know Kathleen over the next few months. Charlotte’s mother followed her daughter’s lead and had a fling with Dilmurat’s friend, a Russian named Alex, who also lived in Flat 3. She started going out with Alex only a few weeks after her boyfriend was murdered. It didn’t seem to have taken Kathleen too long to get over Farah.

  Three weeks after Kathleen had moved upstairs she invited her neighbour Donna up to her flat for a drink. When Donna arrived at Flat 4 Charlotte was there, along with the two women’s boyfriends, Dilmurat and Alex. Donna had one glass of vodka before her taxi arrived, as she was going out for the evening.

  Donna later stated that she was on decent enough terms with Charlotte and Linda and that Charlotte had called into her for a chat a couple of times. Donna also spoke to Linda once or twice while she was around Richmond Cottages. She said she got the impression that Linda was not very close to her mother and had taken her father’s side when the couple had separated. She was a shy person who kept herself to herself and didn’t mix with other people like her mother and sister. Linda suggested that they should go out drinking together. Donna agreed that it would be a good idea but never had any intention of spending a night out with any of the Mulhalls. It never struck Donna that Kathleen acted as if she had been involved in Farah’s murder. She seemed very normal to her friend and neighbour.

  Neither Charlotte nor Kathleen ever mentioned Farah or the horrible events that had taken place in the downstairs flat. Alex and Kathleen’s relationship soon fizzled out and Charlotte’s relationship with Dilmurat didn’t last long either. Dilmurat and his three friends were thrown out of Flat 3 and then moved into Kathleen’s flat. They lived there for a while but were caught and were thrown out of Richmond Cottages altogether.

  As the weeks passed, Linda was still having terrible trouble sleeping and Charlotte thought it would be wise for her to spend time around Richmond Cottages so she could keep an eye on her older sister. Around Easter time, Linda moved in for a few nights with her four children. The group would arrive back to the flat with cans and neighbours would hear them up drinking all night. The three women spoke about the murder a few times but didn’t dwell on it. They did discuss what to do if the police began asking questions. The Mulhalls decided they would say that they knew nothing about what had happened to Farah and stick to their story. Charlotte told her sister that they should ‘keep their mouths shut’ – no matter what happened.

  Towards the end of March 2005, Robert McGovern and Brian Molloy, two park rangers were working at Sean Walsh Park in Tallaght when they saw a strange object sticking out of the ground. The rangers are responsible for patrolling the park and picking up rubbish. They were on foot patrol, emptying a bin beside a park bench in front of the lake, when they noticed what looked like a dead animal buried behind the bench. The men stopped to have a smoke and examine the object. The ‘animal’ had short black hair and was sticking out a few inches from the ground. Brian Molloy walked behind the ‘animal’ and started kicking at the ground with his foot. Bits of grass and chipping came away and when he saw the black hair Molloy thought that it looked like a human head. It was round in shape and appeared to have a wound in the middle of it. He called Robert McGovern and for a couple of minutes the two men had a conversation about what it might be. Eventually they decided that it was a dog’s belly. They also considered whether to dig it up or to just ignore it. In the end they agreed to cover it with a bit of clay and forget about it. They were both convinced that the object was an animal and nothing more.

  McGovern thought nothing more about what had gone on and would only remember the strange ‘animal’ when the gardaí eventually cordoned off the area.

  Brian Molloy noticed that the object was there for about a week or ten days after he first saw it. He had decided not to dig the remains up because he assumed that they would just rot in the ground, but then one day they had just disappeared. A few people also contacted him to report that something was in the ground, including a man who he knew as Lar. Molloy knew Lar because he spent a lot of time in the park drinking.

  ‘Lar’ is Laurence Keegan, a retired army private from Tallaght who goes to Sean Walsh Park with a book every day and has a drink and a smoke. He sits at the same bench and enjoys a few quiet hours keeping his own company. A few days after the remains were recovered from the Royal Canal Laurence looked up from his book and saw something black on the ground beside the bench. He thought it was a dead bird. He got up and started kicking it with his boots but it didn’t move. Then he realised that it wasn’t lying on the ground and was in fact buried in a hole. He saw that there was hair sticking out the top of whatever was buried. Laurence then realised that it could be the top of a head, with short dark hair. He had steel toecaps on his boots and tried to dig up the ground around the thing to move it. He thought he’d dig it up so he could see exactly what it was. It was lodged solid though and wouldn’t budge at all. He had read about the headless corpse taken from the canal and it immediately struck him that the ‘head’ he was digging up could be the same head for which gardaí were desperately searching the city. He went and reported the find to park ranger Brian Molloy and asked him to get rid of it. Molloy told him it was only a dog buried there but Laurence insisted that the object was human. He said it was the head of the body that had been found in the canal near Ballybough. Keegan thought that the park ranger didn’t believe him and wasn’t taking him seriously because he drinks in the park.

  Laurence Keegan returned home and met his daughter Carol Kelly. He told her he’d seen what looked like a buried head in the park. He said it could be ‘the black fella’ found in the canal. He asked her if she would go back and help him to dig it up but she refused. He went back to Sean Walsh Park as usual the following day and it was there in the same position. Keegan became convinced that the head was human because of the crown sticking out of the ground. He could clearly see that it had black hair but couldn’t see enough of the face to make out the skin colour.

  It was the same for the next three days as well. The second last time he saw the head, he noticed that blue bottles had started eating into it.

  Two days later it was gone, and Keegan assumed that one of the park rangers had dug it up. All that remained of it was a large hole. He saw Brian Molloy and asked him if he had dug the object up but Molloy said he had taken nothing from there. Once the head was gone, Laurence didn’t think much more about it and thought that it was none of his business anyway.

  It later emerged that Linda had dug up the head. After the body had actually been discovered she had started to get worse. Farah would not leave her mind, even when she w
as awake. She was in a constant state of drunkenness and was teetering on the edge of insanity. Her dreams started to get darker and the demons were telling her to dig up the head.

  Some time in early April she was in the house drinking when she had got the urge to go to see the head. It was after 10 p.m. but she walked down to Tymon Park and sat on the bench, just feet from where they had left Farah, a few weeks earlier.

  She was suffering from hallucinations and Farah started to talk to her, thanking her for coming to see him. She thought he had shaved his hair off since he’d been in the ground. She dug up the clay with her hands and picked up the head and put it in a black bag. It was badly decomposed and there was a good chance that rats and other wildlife had feasted on it while it lay exposed.

  Linda picked up the bag and left Tymon Park. She walked to Killinarden Park in Tallaght, which was just a short distance away. She hid the bag in some thick bushes where she was sure it wouldn’t be discovered and went home to Jobstown. She spent the rest of the night drinking vodka and only went to bed for a couple of hours.

  She got up early and went back to Killinarden Park and took the bag from the bushes, after making sure that nobody was around. She took the black bag and put it in a carrier bag she had brought from the house. It was her son’s schoolbag and she had taken his pencils and sharpeners out of it that morning – school copy books had now been replaced by a human head. As the mother-of-four walked home, she was determined to get rid of Farah’s head permanently.