The Irish Scissor Sisters (16 page)

John and James Mulhall were taken from their cells to an interview room where they were introduced to Det Sgt Fox and Det Gda McHugh. The brothers told the detectives that their mother, Kathleen Mulhall, and their sisters, Linda and Charlotte, had murdered Kathleen’s boyfriend at her flat in Ballybough. They had then cut up the body, before dumping it in the Royal Canal. The pair said that their mother had come to them in jail a few weeks after the murder and confessed that she had spiked Farah’s drink with ecstasy and that her daughters were forced to kill him, after he made a pass at Linda. They claimed Kathleen could not keep the killing a secret from them. She had broken down and said she had to tell them what happened. The brothers said that it was Kathleen who had planned the murder and she had got her daughters drunk and given them drugs so that they’d be willing to kill her boyfriend. Kathleen told her sons that Linda rang their father, John, after the murder and that he went ‘ballistic’ when he found out what had happened. He still drove his work van to his ex-wife’s flat, however, and took carpet and towels away to dump so that the gardaí would not find them. The pair claimed their father also took bedspreads, clothes and other items away from the murder scene. The prisoners said that it took the three women hours to clean up the flat and that they were now pretending that Farah was still alive but that he’d left Kathleen for another woman. They stated that Kathleen had bought new carpet for the flat and redecorated it so that the bloodstains would not be obvious.

John and James told the detectives that they were ‘disgusted’ by what their family had done. The brothers said they wanted to get the truth about what happened to Farah off their chests. James said it was Charlotte who cut off the head, so Farah couldn’t be identified, and that Linda had chopped off his penis, as punishment for raping Kathleen.

Det Sgt Fox and Det Gda McHugh interviewed the two prisoners for about half an hour. After they had finished, the investigators immediately went back to Fitzgibbon Street, where a case conference was held to dissect the spectacular information. The following day, the two detectives went back to meet the Mulhall brothers at 2.45 p.m. and they had a forty-five-minute conversation. Det Gda McHugh transcribed what was said into his official notebook. The brothers repeated the allegations about their family’s involvement in the murder. At 8.29 p.m. the same day, Det Sgt Colm Fox received another call on his mobile phone from John Mulhall. He told the detective that he and his brother had discussed going on the Witness Protection Programme but had opted against it and instead wanted a transfer to another prison. The Mulhalls were worried about their safety. Det Sgt Fox told John that he had been looking into getting the pair moved to another prison so they would be secure.

The next day, 14 July, Det Sgt Fox got a text from the same mobile number, even though the use of mobile phones is forbidden behind bars. He rang John Mulhall back and had another conversation with him on 15 July. The brothers were asking for a move to medium-security Castlerea Prison in Co. Roscommon. If they could not go to Castlerea together, then they wanted to move to Shelton Abbey open prison in Co. Wicklow. Det Sgt Fox told them that he did not have the authority to promise them any transfer but said the possibility was being looked at. The brothers said they were going to talk to a solicitor.

John Mulhall rang the Detective Sergeant again the following day, confused about why they hadn’t been moved yet. He then said he’d changed his mind and now wanted to stay in Wheatfield because it would be obvious that they had touted to the gardaí about what their family had done if they were both suddenly transferred. The pair did not want any other prisoners knowing that they had spoken to the police. John said they had extra information on the killing but would not tell gardaí and would not make official statements. They did not want their family to know that they had talked to the gardaí. Nevertheless they continued to keep in contact with Det Sgt Colm Fox.

On the same day Dr Dorothy Ramsbottom of the Forensic Science Laboratory confirmed to a 99.9 per cent certainty that the canal remains were those of Farah Swaleh Noor. The DNA tests taken from his son six weeks previously were positive. Dr Ramsbottom also told gardaí that the blood swabs extracted from the flat at Richmond Cottages on 26 May matched Noor.

Gardaí were convinced that Flat 1 at 17 Richmond Cottages was the murder scene. They arranged for a more indepth forensic examination of the flat. This took place over the last two weeks of July and arrangements were made with the landlord, John Tobin, that the two tenants from Flat 1 would be housed elsewhere. Detective Sergeant Mick Macken and Detective Garda John Higgins were in charge of the search, which involved members of the Garda Technical Bureau and the Forensic Science Laboratory. During the search a chemical called luminol, designed to show up the presence of minute levels of blood, was used for one of the first times in Ireland. The luminol examination revealed splatters of arterial blood throughout the bedroom. The bloodstaining was consistent with a serious assault having taken place. There was evidence of blood present in the grooves of the pine planks of a wardrobe in the bedroom but not on the surface of the planks. This meant that the area had probably been well cleaned. Gardaí now knew, with scientific certainty, that the man found in the canal was Farah Swaleh Noor and that he had been murdered at Flat 1, 17 Richmond Cottages, the home of his partner, Kathleen Mulhall. All the pieces of the jigsaw were starting to fit nicely into place. In the days after the double breakthrough Detective Sergeant Colm Fox and prisoner John Mulhall had a number of further conversations. Then, on Tuesday 19 July, James Mulhall rang. He told the detective that he wanted a transfer to Shelton Abbey and that his brother knew about it and didn’t mind. He said he didn’t feel safe in Wheatfield and was worried he would be attacked. Det Sgt Fox told him that he’d have to check with the authorities and ring him back but the brothers suddenly stopped co-operating with the investigation.

In the end the brothers completely refused to co-operate with gardaí and would not give statements implicating any of their family in the murder. They were never transferred out of Wheatfield. Their informal statements against their parents and sisters, however, were more than enough. The brothers’ crisis of conscience had resulted in detectives making massive progress in the case.

Gardaí had now built up a reasonably strong case against the Mulhalls. The DNA linking Farah Swaleh Noor’s death to 17 Richmond Cottages was significant, as was the witness statement placing the three Mulhall women with Farah Noor on O’Connell Street on the night he died. Combined with the fact that Farah’s phone had ended up in the hands of John Mulhall Senior and the new information from John and James Mulhall, detailing the alleged roles their mother and two sisters had played in the crime, detectives now had enough evidence to arrest Linda, Charlotte, John and Kathleen Mulhall.

Detectives had a case conference on the afternoon of 2 August 2005 and it was decided that Linda, Charlotte, Kathleen and John Mulhall would all be arrested for questioning the following day. It was agreed that four teams of detectives would swoop simultaneously and that the Mulhalls would be questioned in two separate city-centre garda stations. Some members of the media had been tipped off in advance about the imminent arrests and the
Evening Herald
had planned to run the story about the breakthrough in the case on its front page on the morning of 3 August. A senior garda involved in the case requested that they pull the story in case one of the suspects was not at their address when the gardaí called looking for them. The
Evening Herald
subsequently led with the story in its later editions, and the arrests, which took place at around 10 a.m., were the main story on RTÉ’s
News at One
.

At 10.40 a.m. Detective Sergeant Walter O’Connell from Store Street drove to 31 Kilclare Gardens with Detective Gardaí Kevin Keys, Adrian Murray and Garda Muireann O’Leary. They arrested Linda Mulhall under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act, on suspicion of murder.

The mother-of-four was taken to Store Street Garda Station for questioning and was processed at 11.25 a.m. by Garda Paul Caffrey, supervised by Sergeant Karl Mackle. She was fingerprinted, photographed and also provided a sample of blood and saliva to a doctor. She declined to have a solicitor present but said she wanted her father informed. Linda didn’t know that at this stage John Mulhall, as well as Charlotte and Kathleen, were all being detained and that her father was also in Store Street.

Over the course of the next twelve hours, Linda Mulhall was interviewed on four separate occasions by two teams – Detective Gardaí Kevin Keys and Adrian Murray and Detective Gardaí Larry Duggan and Mark Jordan. Linda told her interviewers that she was not in Ballybough on the day that Farah Noor was murdered. She insisted that this was the truth, even though she was told that two witnesses had put her with Noor, her mother and sister on O’Connell Street on 20 March. She was shown CCTV footage from the Gala supermarket taken the day after the murder. Linda admitted that it was her captured on the film but said she couldn’t remember being in the shop or being out drinking on the day of the killing. The detectives put it to her that she had denied being in O’Connell Street with her mam and sister on the day of the murder to conceal her role in the crime.

She told them: ‘It’s not that I tried to distance myself; I honestly can’t remember being there. Unless I must have been drinking. I’m not supposed to drink when I take these tablets.’ At the time Linda was on medication for her blood pressure.

She was shown Farah’s Ireland-away jersey and told: ‘Now I just want to point out the numbers one to ten. Now these are all holes we believe were caused by a knife when Farah was stabbed. Do you see them? What do you have to say about that?’

She said she didn’t know anything about Farah’s jersey and didn’t even know he had been murdered until today. She couldn’t offer any information about his death.

She conceded that she had been in her mother’s flat in Ballybough on two occasions and was given pictures of the bunk bed, which had bloodstains on it. ‘God, I don’t know anything about that,’ she replied.

She started to lose her composure when gardaí produced photos of the scene at Ballybough Bridge where the body was found. They asked if she recognised anyone there.

‘No, no, no, no, no, no,’ she shouted.

The detectives then asked: ‘You do know that Farah was cut up into eight pieces?’

‘I knew there was a body found but I didn’t know the way it was cut up. Was it really Farah? I would like a solicitor because I just can’t believe any of this.’

Linda asked for a solicitor at 8.31 p.m. and she spoke to Kevin Tunny, who is based in Tallaght, by phone. He then came to the station and spoke to her in person.

When the interview resumed, gardaí played Linda the tape of her brothers making the 999 call from Wheatfield Prison telling the police about their family’s involvement.

After hearing it she said, ‘That doesn’t sound like my brothers.’

The tape was played again for her but she insisted: ‘That’s not my brothers; that’s not my brothers. That sounded like a junkie to me. My brothers don’t sound like that.’

The detectives told her that they were hardly making it up and that John and James Mulhall had rung them because they wanted to get what they knew off their chests. ‘Do you not believe that your brothers would tell about the murder?’ she was asked.

‘They don’t know anything to tell about murders. I don’t know anything. I don’t believe what you’re saying to me, I don’t believe any of that,’ she replied.

The mother-of-four also denied ever seeing the Sagem V55 mobile phone that belonged to Farah, which her father had said one of his daughters had given to him. She claimed, ‘I’ve never seen that phone before in my life,’ and also said she knew nothing about money that had been withdrawn from Farah’s account after he died.

Garda Paul Caffrey, who was based at Store Street Station, went into the interview on two occasions. He wanted to check that everything was all right with the prisoner. During one of these visits Linda asked the detectives if her father was in the same station. Apart from this, she did not ask about her family.

Before she was released from custody that night, after the twelve-hour interrogation, Linda was asked if she wanted to reconsider anything she had said during the day. Gardaí first summed up the evidence against her: ‘So your two brothers call the gardaí and tell us that you and your mother and Charlotte killed Farah at Flat 1, 17 Richmond Cottages. We go to that address and search the same. This is where your mother lived and we find splatters of blood everywhere and the indication we have is that there was a violent struggle or assault there. Farah’s body is found in the canal very close to the flat. You are the last people seen with Farah. He is found wearing the jersey he had on when last seen with you. You were in the Ballybough area after he was last seen and your father states that you or Charlotte gave him Farah’s phone and Charlotte takes money out of his account after he goes missing. We can prove all these allegations very well indeed. What do you say to that?’