The Irish Scissor Sisters (25 page)

It was late into the night when DI Christy Mangan finally got to bed and he was up early the following day, Saturday, for another visit to see Linda at her home. She had agreed to show him and Sgt Hickey where she, Charlie and Kathleen had buried Farah’s head after murdering and mutilating him in the Richmond Cottages. Before they left she asked the investigators if Kathleen or Charlotte had come forward to talk to the gardaí but the officers had heard nothing from them.

Sgt Hickey drove a patrol car in the direction of the Square Shopping Centre in Tallaght to a large park, across the road from the Plaza Hotel. Locals called it Tymon Park North but it’s officially known as Sean Walsh Park. The group walked into the park and the gardaí were immediately struck by the large lake in the centre.

Linda later told them: ‘We walked around Tymon Park North for ages. Charlotte knows the park and we were saying we will put it here; we will put it there. We walked around for ages. We were looking for different places. Where the bench was Charlie started digging holes with the knife that me ma had in the bag. The hole was not very deep. I had the head on my back and I said to Charlie get this off me. Charlie took it out of the bag and put it in the hole. Charlie filled the hole. I could not do it. Me ma threw the knives in the water close by. We went home and I burned the bag in a fire at home in the sitting room. Me da was in bed.’

Linda showed little emotion as she returned to the scene where they had disposed of the murder weapon. DI Mangan immediately phoned Garda Niamh Coates, who worked in the Mounjoy local detective unit, and told her to preserve the area as a crime scene.

On the way back to the squad car, Mangan and Hickey asked Linda how she felt. She said she was glad to have pointed out where the head was buried and was feeling much better for having told the truth. She cheered up and told them that when she got home she was going to cook her children their favourite dinner and would make a nice trifle for them.

Linda Mulhall was not arrested during the three days when she was co-operating with the garda investigation. She had built up a rapport with DI Mangan and Sgt Hickey and there was no point in formally detaining and charging her until it was absolutely necessary.

The officers again called to her house on the Sunday morning and were kept waiting while she got changed from her pyjamas to go to Tallaght Station to clarify some issues. This was a very difficult interview for her and she was in almost continuous floods of tears. Sgt Liam Hickey struggled to take down everything she said, such was her emotional state. The recorded interview lasted about ninety minutes and Linda signed a statement afterwards. They left Tallaght at 1.55 p.m. to go and point out some more crime scenes. They were driving in the direction of the city centre when Linda asked if she could stop and get a cup of coffee because she had a headache. They were close to Fitzgibbon Street Garda Station so they went in there and Linda made the three of them coffee and she smoked a cigarette. After twenty-five minutes in the station, the patrol car was back on the road again.

On the junction of Summerhill Parade and the North Circular Road they stopped at a red light. Linda said she recognised the Sunset House pub and told Sgt Hickey to turn left, left again and then take a right into Richmond Cottages. She pointed out a white house – Number 17 – and got out of the car to show the men the flat where the murder had happened. The front of the house was locked but one of the new residents answered the buzzer and let them in. By this stage Kathleen had left Richmond Cottages and was living in Carlow.

Linda pointed to Flat 1, on the immediate right as you enter the house, and said: ‘This is it.’ Then she broke down and started to sob, before becoming inconsolable and howling uncontrollably.

DI Mangan asked if she wanted to go home to Tallaght. She said she did, so the three got back into the car and headed towards the south of the city.

Linda recomposed herself as the car moved further away from Ballybough and started to talk about the murder: ‘Farah was holding on to me with one hand and the other hand then went on to me, it was just a grip I could not get out of. Charlotte said, “Get your hands off Linda.” I told him to get his hand off me as well. He was never like this before. Charlotte said, “Get your hands off!” It was like they were not there; it was like he could not see them. He frightened me, he did. Me ma said get his hands off me as well. It was a hold I could not get out of and then Charlie said again, “Get your fucking hands off!” and he whispered. I remember it different some days, I remember in all different ways. Because of the E we took that night I remember it in all different ways. When we were sitting in the chair, me and him before he stood up, he whispered something in my ear, that me and him were two creatures of the night and he whispered something else in my ear, I know it was something dirty he said to me. I could not really understand the language. Farah was saying, “You are so like your mammy.” Charlotte said, “She is nothing like me ma. Get your hands off Linda!” Charlotte was sort of putting it up to him, you know like, she has big shoulders and me ma put her hand onto his arm and he still would not let me go and Charlie was roaring, “Get your hands off Linda!” Charlie must have seen the blade on the sink. She picked it up. Charlie opened up the blade and she cut him on the throat. The bedroom door was sort of open and me ma was like, “Get him in, get him in,” and he sort of tripped. He did not fall on the floor he sort of fell onto the bunk beds. Before he fell on the floor me ma was still trying to push him into the room saying, “Get him away; get him away from me.” I seen the hammer and hit him on the head. Charlotte got a knife from the kitchen. That Sean Paul CD was still playing. She stabbed him. He fell onto the floor. Charlie stabbed him. I hit him loads of times with the hammer on the head. I don’t want to keep talking about this. It is driving me mental. I don’t want to be alive anymore. I don’t.’

As the car journey continued, Linda spoke to the two investigators about her life. She said she always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Linda Mulhall was born on 3 February 1975 and spent her young days at the family home in Tallaght. She met her first partner Mark Farrelly, who was three years older than her and came from Galtymore Drive, in Drimnagh, in the early 1990s. Farrelly worked as a builder’s labourer and had come to the attention of the gardaí on a number of occasions. He appeared in court over twenty times and had convictions for public order offences and road traffic incidents. The couple moved into a house at 25 Bawnlea Green, in Tallaght, and Linda had her first child on 6 February 1993, a little boy. She gave birth to another son on 7 August 1994 and less than a year later, on 15 July 1995, she had her first daughter. She gave birth to her final child, another girl, on 5 December 1998. Linda and Mark Farrelly were young when they first met and were only together a couple of years when they had their first child together. Their relationship went through a number of bad patches and they eventually decided that they would be better off apart. Farrelly left the family home when they separated, around 2000.

Linda became involved in a new relationship with a man called Wayne Kinsella soon afterwards. People who know Kinsella describe him as a violent sadist who takes pleasure in hurting other people. He has over twenty-five previous convictions for crimes including manslaughter, violent disorder, assault and burglary. He had a strange and worrying hold over Linda Mulhall. She was obsessed by him and blind to his evil tendencies. Kinsella moved into Bawnlea Green with Linda and her kids in early 2003. She suffered a miscarriage in the summer of 2003, with Kinsella’s baby. Around the same time there were allegations that Kinsella was physically abusing and mistreating three of Linda’s children. In September 2003 the Health Board intervened and secured an order to take the minors into care.

After Linda’s four children were taken into care, the couple moved to Cork. They soon came to the attention of local gardaí, as Kinsella was suspected of breaking into houses and carrying out robberies. It is thought that Linda helped him. The couple were also said to be in regular touch with Kathleen Mulhall and Farah Swaleh Noor while in Cork and they socialised together. Linda was not happy with her mother leaving her father, but she still made an effort to meet up with her during the short time she was in the city. Her attitude seemed to be that, for good or bad, Kathleen was still her mam.

At the end of 2003, while her four children were still in care, Wayne and Linda moved to Manchester. They were thinking of permanently relocating there but they didn’t settle and came back to Dublin in January 2004. Kinsella and Linda were fighting a lot during this period and in early 2004 Linda agreed to cooperate with gardaí and the Health Board in prosecuting Wayne Kinsella for the abuse of her children. Her children were then returned to her, but on 10 February 2004 she agreed to place the four youngsters into voluntary care.

Linda split up with Wayne Kinsella and really went off the rails at this point. The council threw her out of the house at 25 Bawnlea Green for anti-social behaviour and she moved around various hostels for the homeless over the following months. The mother-of-four was drinking heavily and started taking heroin. She made a number of suicide attempts by trying to cut her wrists.

On 16 May 2004 custody of her four children was returned to Linda. For a number of months they were housed at a homeless unit in the Coombe area of Dublin. They were then evicted for ongoing anti-social behaviour. When she lost the flat, she rang her dad and pleaded with him to allow them to move back to Kilclare Gardens. She was very close to her father and was extremely grateful when he agreed to intervene to look after her children, as otherwise they would have been taken back into care.

Linda, however, was still finding life difficult. On 2 June 2006 she was arrested and charged with assault, arising out of an incident involving an ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend. She also has one previous conviction for theft, going back to 1993, on her record and has ongoing charges under Section 13 of the Criminal Justice Act, with one charge under the Road Traffic Act.

In July 2004 Wayne Kinsella appeared at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court and went on trial, charged with the mistreatment of Linda’s three children, aged eight, nine and ten years old. Truly shocking evidence of abuse emerged during the case. The court heard that Kinsella, who was then aged thirty-three, beat the three youngsters with a belt and electrical flex, leaving them with multiple injuries. The career criminal used to force the young children into different rooms in the house and take turns to beat them, for no other reason than to satisfy his sick blood lust. He told Linda’s ten-year-old son: ‘Whenever I look at you, I want to hit you.’

On one occasion he beat the boy so violently, Linda’s son was left cut and bleeding, with more than twenty different injuries to all parts of his body. Vincent Heneghan, who was prosecuting the case for the State, said that Kinsella made the boy strip down to his underpants and lie face down on the bed as he beat him with a belt. He then cut the flex from a lampshade and used it to hit him all over the body. He then went to the next room where he beat the boy’s nine-year-old brother. Kinsella also lifted him up, threw him to the ground and hit the boy’s face off the wall. Next he went to the third room and beat Linda’s eight-year-old daughter, before going back to the room where the eldest boy was now hiding, in extreme pain, under the bed. Wayne Kinsella flipped the bed over to one side, dragged the boy out from underneath and resumed beating him. The thirty-three-year-old did not stop until he was out of breath and panting from the exertion. Throughout the beatings, Kinsella shouted loudly and repeatedly: ‘You made Ma lose the baby.’

After the beatings he threatened to kill them if they told Linda what he had done. Garda Damien Dempsey told the court that he received information that the children might be in danger. He found out later that when he had called to the house, Kinsella had put the two boys in a box and made them stay there until long after the guard had gone. At the time gardaí took the eight-year-old girl into protection and a few days later did the same with the other children. Linda loved her kids and was devastated when they were taken away.

Wayne Kinsella eventually pleaded guilty to three counts of cruelty, on dates between 31 August and 1 October 2003. Some detectives believe that Linda may have become desensitised after witnessing Kinsella’s extreme acts of violence and depravity against her children. They think this could have driven her to carry out the barbaric murder and dismemberment of Farah Noor.

During sentencing, Judge Michael White said the children had been in a very unfortunate situation, in that they were completely at Kinsella’s mercy, as Linda Mulhall had not been affording them appropriate care in such circumstances. He described Kinsella as ‘a man with a predilection to violence’. In July 2004 he sentenced him to four years for beating the eldest boy, and three years to run concurrently, for each of the two other children, sentencing him to a total of seven years behind bars. Judge White told Kinsella that, as the live-in partner of their mother, he had abused his position of trust with the children.

Kinsella told the Judge: ‘I am very sorry. I will make it up to them. I just snapped that day. I had just lost the baby. It was totally out of character for me.’

Judge White accepted his apology but said he did not believe the attacks had been spontaneous, as Kinsella had claimed.

These comments were proven to be well justified as just three months later, on 14 October, Kinsella was back in court, before the same judge. This time he was pleading guilty to intimidating a mother-of-five and unlawfully seizing her car. The incident had occurred on 31 May 2003, a few months before he attacked Linda Mulhall’s three children.

Linda Mulhall’s ex was handed a four-year sentence, after admitting to forcing Ms June Byrne and her two-year old son out of her car. Kinsella had told Ms Byrne that he had a buyer for her car, which she was trying to sell. They were driving to the purported buyer’s house when he told her to pull over. He ordered them out of the vehicle saying: ‘If you get the police, I’ll kill you and burn your house down with your children in it.’