The Irish Scissor Sisters (30 page)

‘I stayed there all the time,’ Charlotte confirmed.

‘What happened to Farah’s phone and his ATM card?’ the Detective Sergeant next asked. The police believed that Charlotte had taken Farah’s mobile and his bank card.

‘Me mammy gave me the card to go down and get money out of it,’ she said.

‘Did you get money out?’ asked DS McDonnell.

‘Yeah.’

‘How much?’ he asked.

‘I don’t remember,’ Charlie claimed.

‘A couple of hundred?’ the Detective speculated.

‘Sixty euro,’ was the response.

‘So this fella … is dead and you’re off down the bank machine taking money out of his account,’ said a disbelieving Mike Smyth.

Charlotte repeated to the two detectives that she and Linda were out when Farah was murdered. She again said they were drinking around town and smoking heroin into the early morning and returned to find him cut-up in plastic bags.

‘When you start telling lies you have to be a very, very good liar because one lie leads to another lie. But it’s the small lies that catch you out, and you’re catching yourself out with all these lies,’ McDonnell told her.

‘You do everything liars do – you cross your legs, put your arms in front of you and look down all the time. You see, every attribute of a person telling lies, you currently have it Charlotte, and you have had since you walked into the station,’ his partner added.

‘Charlotte we don’t want to upset you. We are not here to judge you or punish you, we are here to try and find out the truth and come to the bottom of it,’ DS McDonnell said understandingly. ‘You told us you went down to the canal with those bags. How were you feeling when you were down there that time?’

‘Sick,’ she responded.

‘You were sick,’ he said, nodding his head. ‘Have you been sick since in relation to thinking about it?’

‘Yeah,’ Charlie confirmed.

‘All the time?’ Det Gda Smyth wondered.

‘Yeah.’

‘Did you ever think you were capable of such a thing?’

‘No,’ she said, as she slowly shook her head.

‘Do you feel like you’re some kind of a monster? Well you’re not,’ DS Gerry McDonnell said compassionately.

‘Who’s the closest person to you? Charlotte who’s the closest person to you alive?’ the Detective Sergeant continued.

‘Linda,’ she responded.

‘You’ve a lot of time for Linda, haven’t you?’ he stated.

‘Yeah.’

‘I would go as far as to say you love your sister,’ McDonnell said.

‘Yeah,’ Charlotte nodded, saying she did love Linda.

‘But telling lies is neither going to help you or Linda. Do you understand that? Do you understand that?’ asked McDonnell. ‘But the truth is what you came here to tell us and you haven’t told us the truth. Charlotte, we will listen to the truth, we don’t want to be giving you a hard time or upsetting you. Are you all right?’ he asked.

Charlotte nodded that she was all right but she was starting to lose her composure. The twenty-two-year-old had spent the day being grilled by four skilled investigators and it was catching up on her. They were beginning to wear her down. ‘Do you want anything?’ Det Gda Smyth asked her, ‘A glass of water or something?’

She shook her head and Det Sgt Gerry McDonnell pleaded with her, ‘Will you tell us the truth, Charlotte?’

She nodded her head.

‘OK, you’re OK,’ he said reassuringly. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeah,’ she said.

‘OK Charlotte, what happened?’ DS McDonnell asked, gently trying to push her over the line to an admission.

‘Everything that Linda said,’ Charlotte finally whispered and started crying, the relief of finally getting the murder off her conscience now clearly on show.

‘We will have to go through it in stages. We don’t mean to be painful with you or anything like that. What do you want to say about what you told us earlier?’ McDonnell asked.

‘Sorry,’ Charlotte sobbed.

‘Were you doing it to try to protect Linda, were you?’ he asked.

Charlotte started crying again and nodded that she was. She then talked the two detectives through what happened, starting with Kathleen Mulhall spiking Farah Noor’s drink with ecstasy: ‘She said he would be on the same buzz as us. He was drinking for ages and everything was grand and the two of them started arguing as usual, and Farah started saying shit to Linda and he wouldn’t let her arm go.’

‘Yeah? Do you remember anything, when you say shit? Was there any phrase?’ queried DS McDonnell.

‘Yeah, something like “we’re two creatures”, something similar,’ Charlotte elaborated. ‘Everyone was just arguing. Me mam kept saying to me and Linda, “Just please kill him for me. Kill him for me.”’

‘She kept saying that, your ma? OK,’ McDonnell nodded.

‘Then she got the hammer and the knife she gave to me and Linda, but he wouldn’t let Linda go, and I cut him,’ she admitted.

‘You cut him. Where did you cut him?’

‘On the neck,’ she said, pointing to the side of her neck. She didn’t remember what kind of knife it was but after she stabbed Farah, she said Linda hit him with a hammer in the bedroom. ‘I don’t remember how he died in the bedroom. Then we didn’t know what to do with him.’

‘When he was dead, yeah?’ asked the DS McDonnell.

‘Yeah. Me Mammy said just cut him up,’ Charlotte claimed.

‘How did you cut him up?’

‘With the knife and hammer,’ she said.

The detective sergeant asked, ‘What’s your recollection of cutting him up?’

‘I just remember cutting. I cut him up with the knife,’ she told the guards.

‘Right. Did you use anything else?’

‘Yeah, the hammer.’

‘You cut his skin with the knife … and then what would you do with the hammer?’ DS McDonnell asked.

‘Linda used the hammer. I don’t know,’ she claimed.

‘Do you strip him naked though, while you’re cutting him up?’

The detectives were trying to get a clear picture of exactly what happened on the night of the murder.

Charlotte agreed that they did and said: ‘We just cut him up and brought him down to the river.’

‘The river – you mean the canal?’ Det Gda Mike Smyth asked.

‘Yeah. We cleaned up. We went back and just started cleaning up, just cleaning up for hours.’

‘Are you OK? Do you want time to compose yourself?’ asked McDonnell.

Charlotte was still upset at this stage. She had bottled the secret up for so long that it was a relief to finally get it off her chest, but it still distressed her.

‘No. We had everything in the flat cleaned up. Then we went up to the Watergate Park and buried the head. After we done that we went back and started cleaning the flat again,’ Charlotte told them.

Gerry McDonnell asked: ‘Who decided to cut his head off?’

‘I can’t remember,’ she claimed.

‘What about his penis?’

‘I can’t remember who cut it,’ she replied.

‘And what happened the head?’

‘Linda put it somewhere. At first the three of us went to the park and put it there but Linda moved it,’ Charlie explained.

At 5.53 p.m., one hour and thirty-two minutes after the second interview commenced, the detectives decided to take a break to allow Charlotte to compose herself. She had confessed to the murder but they still needed her to fill in the blanks about who decided to dismember Farah Noor’s body and who actually took part in the process of chopping him up into eight pieces.

At 7.57 p.m. Det Sgt Gerry McDonnell and Det Gda Mike Smyth interviewed Charlotte again. Gda Karl Murray was also present for a time. They showed the twenty-two-year-old exhibits that gardaí had recovered. Detective Superintendent John McKeown had granted a six-hour extension to her detention period at 5.10 p.m. During her rest period Charlotte was fed and had a lie down in her cell. She did not contact anybody or ask for a solicitor.

Garda Murray showed her the knife that had been recovered from the lake at Sean Walsh Park. Charlotte said she didn’t recognise it and that it didn’t look like the one she had used to murder Farah. She was also shown the hammer but again said she didn’t recognise it because she said that she hadn’t used it.

The detectives then showed her a series of photographs from the flat at 17 Richmond Cottages. She said that the bedroom looked different because the bunk beds were now in a different place and there was different wallpaper and carpets in the bedroom.

She was shown a photo of the bunk bed and Det Gda Mike Smyth asked, ‘Did he bleed on the bunk bed?’

‘I don’t know if he did,’ she answered.

‘Did he put up any struggle?’ queried DS McDonnell

‘I really can’t remember any,’ Charlie said.

The Detective Sergeant queried her about Farah’s consciousness after he was stabbed and hit with the hammer in the bedroom: ‘How did you know he was dead and he wasn’t just seriously injured?’

‘He wasn’t breathing,’ she explained.

‘Why? Did somebody check on him?’

‘Don’t know; might have been scared to,’ Charlotte told him.

The detectives then moved on to the bathroom where the dismemberment had taken place and showed Charlotte pictures of the shower. Detective Smyth said to her, ‘I’ve been in that. That’s a very small shower. You didn’t do all the cutting up in the shower?’

‘It wasn’t in the shower, it was on the floor,’ Charlotte answered.

‘On the floor. And how, when you were doing the cutting up, how was he, how did you position him?’ Smyth asked.

‘Just on the ground,’ she said vaguely.

DS Gerry McDonnell then moved on to the issue about the number of wounds that Farah Noor received, saying, ‘Now the pathologist, his report I think indicates that he [Farah Noor] was stabbed over twenty times. Would you accept that?’

‘I really … I really can’t remember.’

Charlotte seemed shocked at hearing about the extent of Farah’s injuries. Linda was also surprised when she was told of Farah’s shocking injuries. The women did not realise just how far they had gone when they attacked Noor.

‘I’m just saying that’s what the pathologist has said. Would you accept that you had stabbed him?’

‘No,’ Charlie answered.

‘How many times did you stab him?’ Detective Sergeant McDonnell queried again.

‘I don’t know, a couple. It was nothing like that.’

‘Is there any situation there where your mother would have stabbed him or anything like that?’ McDonnell continued.

‘No,’ she said, emphatically.

‘When he was dead, then what happened? Were you panicked? What did you do after that?’ the detective wondered.

‘I don’t know. Me ma said the only way it’s going to get rid of this is you’re gonna have to cut it up now,’ she claimed.

‘What’s your view on what happened that night, Charlotte? Are you annoyed with your mother over it?’ asked DS McDonnell.

‘I can’t be annoyed with her. We’re the stupid ones that done it,’ Charlotte said.

Detective Garda Mike Smyth wanted to understand what had driven two seemingly ordinary women to carry out such an extraordinary act. He asked Charlotte: ‘Would you say there was a point in the night that made you go from just arguing to killing him? What made you?’

‘The way she kept going on, just telling us, “He’s going to kill me; he’s going to kill me. Youse have to kill him.”’

‘Right, but what specific thing happened? Was it him grabbing Linda?’ Det Gda Smyth pushed.

‘Yeah, I think so,’ she said.

‘That turned youse?’ he wondered.

‘Yeah.’

‘Are you saying the decision to kill him really came from your mother?’ DS Gerry McDonnell asked.

‘Yeah,’ Charlie answered.

‘She made the decision in relation to that?’ asked the detective sergeant.

‘Yeah,’ was her response.

‘What are your thoughts on all of it now? I mean how do you feel? Do you feel sorry for him? How would you describe how you feel?’ asked Mike Smyth.

‘I feel sick,’ Charlotte responded.

‘When the decision came to cut him up, are you saying that decision again was made by your mother?’ DS McDonnell wondered.

‘Yeah.’

‘Did she make it there and then or did she have to consult with somebody?’ he continued.

‘I don’t know. She just kept telling us she’d think of something, she would think of something to do,’ Charlotte claimed.

‘And whose decision was it to drag him into the shower room or bathroom?’ McDonnell queried.

‘She told us to bring him in,’ she responded

‘Whose decision was it to cut off his head?’

‘I don’t know,’ Charlie again answered.

Now that Charlotte had confessed, the detectives needed to get a clear picture in their own heads about the exact events of the night of the murder and deliberately revisited earlier questions.

‘You don’t know? Or [whose decision it was] to cut his penis off?’ DS McDonnell queried.

Charlotte shook her head, to say she didn’t know.

‘Was that done for any reason?’

‘I don’t know,’ she insisted.

‘Or was his head cut for any reason?’

She shook her head again.

‘Was there any reason why he was chopped up?’

‘We didn’t know what else to do,’ Charlie claimed.

‘Yeah, but was it to make it look like something else?’ asked Gerry McDonnell. Det Gda Mike Smyth intervened and told Charlotte: ‘It was just when this happened – I am sure you read all the newspapers – most people thought it was something else altogether.’

‘You’ve heard of ritual killings, have ya?’ Det Sgt Gerry McDonnell queried.

‘No,’ Charlie stated.

The two detectives had got Charlotte to admit that she had murdered Farah Noor. She had been questioned for over five hours and they decided there was no point in pushing her in the circumstances.

They were almost finished with Charlotte, when Gerry McDonnell asked her, ‘How do you feel now, after you told us?’

‘Better,’ she muttered.

‘Sorry?’ Gerry McDonnell couldn’t hear the mumble.

‘A lot better,’ Charlie stated.

‘You feel better. Why do you? What way do you feel better after you told us? Do you feel like it’s a load off your chest, do you? Do you?’ he asked.

She nodded in agreement.

Mike Smyth asked her, ‘Did people ever ask you about it, after Linda was arrested?’