The Irish Scissor Sisters (9 page)

James O’Connor was enjoying an evening stroll down the Royal Canal. The twenty-three-year-old had spent the day with friends and was heading towards his home at Matt Talbot Court in Summerhill. It was around 6.30 p.m. on Wednesday 30 March 2005 and lots of people were out and about, walking dogs or walking home from work to get some fresh air and take advantage of the lengthening evenings.

He wasn’t in a particular hurry and stopped at Ballybough Bridge to watch a group of young lads fishing. As he lingered around, taking in the early evening sun, one of the teenagers shouted up to him that there was a dummy in the water under the bridge. He looked down and saw the group of about three or four fifteen-year-olds gazing intently into the water. He went down the bank and under the bridge for a closer look and was amazed to see an arm and a leg close together, about three feet below the surface of the water. The sun was illuminating the water and you could see right to the bottom of the canal, which was about seven or eight foot deep. He scanned to the right and also saw what appeared to be a torso covered with some sort of green T-shirt. Beside that was what he thought was the top of a human leg.

The limbs were within a foot of the bank and you could have literally reached out and grabbed them and could certainly have hooked them with a fishing rod. James had no doubt that these were human body parts. The arm had a clenched fist and there was a grey sock on the leg. The torso had no head attached to it and a green fungus was oozing out of the top of the leg. He immediately knew that something unspeakable had happened here and told the group of teenagers that it was a human body and they would have to call the fire brigade. Still in shock from the grim discovery, James ran up the walkway to the top of Ballybough Bridge and dialled 999 on his mobile phone and asked for the fire brigade.

Glen Mannelly was on duty at Tara Street Station when he received a call at 6.56 p.m. from a man telling him that he had found a body in the Royal Canal. He immediately sent two fire engines from the North Strand, an emergency tender from Phibsboro Station and an ambulance from Tara Street. He also informed the District Officer, who was based at the North Strand, that a potentially serious situation was developing. Mannelly then contacted the Garda Command and Control centre in Harcourt Street so they could dispatch officers to the scene.

Fifty-two-year-old Derek Carroll was the officer-incharge of the North Dublin district and received the call from Tara Street at 6.58 p.m. He drove the fire officer’s car the short distance to the scene and arrived just four minutes later. James O’Connor was there and flagged down District Officer Carroll’s car. He pointed out the spot under the bridge where the body was resting. District Officer Carroll thanked O’Connor and the three teenagers and asked them to move back while he examined the scene. He wanted to make sure that they were real and that the call-out was not a hoax, as is a common occurrence. He walked down to the canal bank and saw what looked like human body parts, clearly on view. The two fire engines and emergency tender had arrived at this stage and he asked fireman Andy Cullen to get a drag from the fire engine to pull one of the limbs out of the water. They needed to determine if it was in fact human. A drag is like a long garden fork, with prongs bent at right angles on a long wooden handle. Andy Cullen got the drag and put it into the canal water, about three feet from the surface – he pulled out a left arm.

District Officer Derek Carroll is a thirty-year veteran of the fire service and knew a human arm when he saw one. He could see bone and tissue on the upper part of the arm and the skin definition on the thumb of the hand was also very clear. He was left in no doubt that they were dealing with a very serious incident. Fire fighters are highly trained and understand the importance of a garda crime scene. District Officer Carroll didn’t want to move anything that could jeopardise what would now be a criminal investigation, and he asked fireman Andy Cullen to put the arm back in the water, as close as he could to where it had originally rested. Cullen did this and then Carroll immediately ordered that the scene be sealed off until gardaí arrived. Fireman Mick Cummins taped off the North Strand side of the bridge while Andy Cullen sealed the Ballybough end.

Frank Kiernan is Station Officer at the North Strand and when he realised that the remains were human he radioed the Central Control in Townsend Street and asked them to contact the gardaí. While they waited for them to arrive, the ten fire-fighters at the scene set up lighting equipment on the canal because the light was starting to fade. They also made sure that nobody went anywhere near the canal. Ballybough Bridge is very busy throughout the day and night and a public footpath runs adjacent to the canal. A row of terraced houses at Sackville Gardens and Summerhill Parade overlook the canal where the remains were discovered and within view is the canal end stand of the magnificent Croke Park stadium, the home of the GAA.

Garda Alan Greally was on the 2 p.m. – 10 p.m. shift at the Communications Centre in Harcourt Square. He received a call from the Dublin Fire Brigade around 7 p.m. informing him of the presence of a possible body under the canal bridge. He logged the call onto the Command and Control system – little realising that incident number 050890972 would become one of the highest-profile Garda investigations in decades.

A patrol car based at Fitzgibbon Street was immediately sent to the scene, along with vehicles from the station’s District Detective Unit and local Crime Task Force.

Garda Kieran Brady was the driver of the patrol car and was on duty with Garda Niamh McGrath. The pair were ordered to Ballybough Bridge and arrived at 7.05 p.m. They were greeted by members of the fire brigade and Garda Brady was shown the body parts. He immediately contacted Fitzgibbon Street on his mobile phone and told Sergeant Christy Morrison about the body. He then spoke to James O’Connor, who told him how he’d come to see the floating remains.

A large crowd of onlookers had gathered at this stage and Garda McGrath was controlling them. Garda Brady reversed his patrol car onto the canal bank to prevent them getting access to what would soon be declared a murder scene.

An unmarked car from Store Street, driven by Garda Ronan Judge with Gardaí Marc Pender and Justine Reilly then arrived. The three guards could see something suspicious floating in the water about fifty metres from where the body had been found but could not identify it as a part of a body. They sealed the road at Summerhill Parade and controlled the watching crowds.

The scene was now officially under the control of the gardaí, and within minutes detectives and uniformed members began arriving at Ballybough Bridge.

As Linda crossed the bridge on her way to convince her mother to help her to dig up Farah’s head, she couldn’t believe it when she saw all the police around the banks of the canal. She instantly knew that Farah had been found and ran to Richmond Cottages to tell Kathleen. The two women started crying as they sat in the front room. They were in a panic over what would happen now. They decided to walk down to the canal the next day to check if the guards were definitely there for Farah. They hoped that a murder or something else had happened but it was too much of a coincidence. They both knew deep down that the game was up. They knew that somebody had spotted Farah floating in the water as they walked along the canal.

On 31 March they left Richmond Cottages and walked towards Ballybough Bridge. There was a cordon up, about 120 feet from the water, so they couldn’t see much. They edged forward as far as the police tape would allow them to go. There were dozens of uniformed gardaí around and plainclothes detectives were speaking to the forensic team, who stood out in their white suits.

Gardaí had no idea, as they were removing the body of a man who had been chopped up into eight parts and dumped in the Royal Canal, that two of the people responsible for the grim murder were standing there watching them. Charlotte and Kathleen had also been back to Ballybough Bridge before Farah was found. They had walked up there a few days after the murder and gone under the bridge to see if they could see any body parts – the mother and daughter had been relieved when there were none on show.

Kathleen and Linda were soon positive that Noor was lying in the water, just a few feet from them, but they wanted to be absolutely certain. Linda turned to somebody in the crowd and asked them what the commotion was about. The man told her there was a body all cut up in the canal and the gardaí were pulling it out. She told him that was awful and looked at her mother. They had seen enough and rushed back to the flat to talk about what would happen next. The police had no idea that the remains were Farah Noor’s so they were confident enough that they wouldn’t be arrested any time soon.

They turned on the 5.30 p.m. news on TV3 and watched live reports from the scene. They did the same thing on RTÉ at 6 p.m. and switched back over to TV3 at 6.30 p.m. Linda stayed in her mother’s that night and all they did was watch the news, trying to get more information about what the guards knew about Farah. Charlotte wasn’t in the flat as she was staying with friends elsewhere in the city that night. Linda rang Charlie’s mobile after watching the news reports and broke the news to her sister. Charlotte was shocked and cursed Farah Noor but she didn’t return to Richmond Cottages. She decided to stay in drinking with her friends, instead. Linda and Kathleen stayed in the flat staring at each other. Neither was in the mood for drinking – they were lost in their own thoughts, wondering about the consequences of what the two sisters had done that night.

Linda went back to Tallaght the following morning and spent the next few days with the news on. She saw the murder case featured on RTÉ’s
Crimecall
and knew that if the guards were going on TV making public appeals for assistance, they were obviously treating the case very seriously. She realised that now, more than ever, she had to do something about Farah’s head.

In the days after the murder, and even after the discovery of the body, Kathleen played out a charade with people, pretending that her boyfriend was still alive.

Five days after the murder the landlord of 17 Richmond Cottages, John Tobin, had gone to collect his rent from Kathleen Mulhall. A plumber by trade, Tobin bought the large house in June 2004 and divided it into four flats. Kathleen, or Catherine, as she had introduced herself to the landlord, had viewed the flat with Farah Noor and moved in at the end of 2004, paying €190 a week in rent. She had given her former address as 158 Lower Glanmire Road in Cork and listed her previous landlord as a reference. Tobin had found that Kathleen and Noor kept to themselves and didn’t cause much trouble. There had only been one incident when, after a minor disagreement, they called the guards about a fellow tenant.

As Kathleen was giving John Tobin the rent on 25 March, she told her landlord that Farah had run away to be with another woman, who’d had a child for him. She said that the girl only lived around the corner and that she’d only found out about it because Farah was meant to be working nights as a security guard in a shop in town. He’d told her he was spending all his time working but she’d discovered that he was actually seeing another woman and had spent hardly any time in work. She told her landlord that she had put Farah’s stuff into black bags and left them under the stairs. John Tobin did see two or three black bags in the house but in reality they probably contained bloody carpet, rather than clothes.

John Tobin wasn’t the only person to whom she spun the cock-and-bull story about Noor leaving her for another woman. In one incident Kathleen bumped into Farah’s friend Ibrahim Mohamed in the city centre. She asked him if he had seen Noor and told him to tell her boyfriend that she was looking for him if Mohamed happened to see him.

Farah’s cousin, Lulu Swaleh, had phoned her on 10 March to ask if a parcel of clothes sent from Kenya had arrived in Ireland yet. Even though Farah was still living with her at this stage, Kathleen had told Lulu that Farah had left her for a former partner and hung-up the phone.

Farah’s family would later make numerous attempts to contact Kathleen. She eventually told them that Farah had left her for good and was living with another woman. Then one day in July Kathleen rang Lulu Swaleh. The mother of six was in a very distressed state about Farah. She was in tears, ranting and making no sense. She eventually hung up the phone and never spoke to Noor’s family again.