The Irish Scissor Sisters (22 page)

Noor’s story did not tally with either Paula’s or her friend’s and the detectives asked why would two people lie to them about such a specific date.

Farah changed his story and said he remembered going to Sandycove beach to drink with his girlfriend and her friend, stating: ‘I don’t think it was the day that Raonaid was killed but it might be; I don’t remember. Anyway I never had an argument with Paula that time. I was not drinking in Dun Laoghaire that night either. I don’t have the money anyway. I was not drunk in Dun Laoghaire that night and I didn’t ring her at her home that night from Dun Laoghaire to say I’m sorry. I have met a friend of Paula’s called Avril. She is a fat girl. I don’t like Avril. Avril made Paula leave me for a South African man. I know that Avril knew Raonaid Murray because she told Paula that they were friends and Paula told me.’

The two Dublin-based detectives asked Farah Noor why he had boasted about committing such a brutal act of murder if he was innocent.

He claimed that he did it because he was jealous that his girlfriend was moving on and had met somebody else: ‘Before me and Paula split up I met Paula in the Pennyblack pub in Tallaght. It was our son’s birthday. He was two years old. Paula’s family were there and so was Avril and two South Africans. I was upset because I didn’t want the South Africans there but they had all the money. I had an argument with Paula because I didn’t want them there. I told Paula to be careful because Avril was a bad girl and her friend was killed. I mean Raonaid Murray, and I don’t know how. Did Avril know something because she was her friend? I don’t know. Avril then left with the South Africans, and me and Paula went home. A couple of months later we split up. She has married one of the South Africans. She broke my heart and I never see my son now. All I know is that I didn’t kill Raonaid Murray. I was arrested last year in Dun Laoghaire with a knife. The garda has the knife now. I got the knife as a present from my girlfriend. Before I used to go climbing and fishing with Paula’s father.’

Farah had boasted to other people about his involvement in Raonaid’s murder and regularly warned Kathleen Mulhall that she would end up the same way. During one of her interviews Kathleen said: ‘He told me he killed someone, some girl in Dun Laoghaire. I 100 per cent believe it. He told me he stabbed her; she was a friend of an ex-girlfriend. He told me I would end up the same way. He said he was too good to be caught. He told me it was somewhere down a laneway and he killed her with a knife. When he told me he killed a girl in Dun Laoghaire he told me that if I told the police that he would get my family, my children and kill them and said I would be the first killed.’

She said that Farah was very drunk when he confessed about the murder but a week before his death he brought it up again during an argument, telling her: ‘I am going to fucking kill you just like I did with the whore in Dun Laoghaire.’

After Kathleen Mulhall told gardaí about Noor’s confession, investigators at Dun Laoghaire were immediately informed. They accepted that he was ‘a nasty piece of work’ but were satisfied that he was not the killer. Gardaí believe that he brought up Raonaid’s murder in the pub in Tallaght on the spur of the moment, while under the influence, in order to upset and hurt Paula’s friend. Although Farah Swaleh Noor was initially a bona fide suspect in the slaying, investigators eventually ruled him out of having any involvement. No witnesses saw a black man near the scene and there wasn’t a shred of evidence – except for Noor’s own tenuous admissions – that he was responsible.

Despite the thousands of garda hours put into tracking down Raonaid Murray’s killer, the crime has never been solved. There were twelve arrests in the case but no charges. There have been a number of what looked to be very promising leads but all of these have come to nothing. One woman came forward four years after the killing and said she had given a false alibi for her then boyfriend on the night of the murder. She said the man had threatened to stab her during an argument but he was eventually eliminated because there was nothing to link him to the crime.

Another suspect lived in Dun Laoghaire and had displayed violence towards women in the years before Raonaid’s death. He was once regarded as the chief suspect but was able to present a watertight alibi and this line of investigation hit a dead end. A second local man who was detained was obsessed with knives and swords and lived in a fantasy world. His hobby was making drawings of women suffering extreme acts of violence. Another suspect arrested and quizzed was a convicted rapist who had been released from prison just months before the murder. Again, his alibi checked out.

Most detectives who worked the case agree that the man who callously stabbed Raonaid Murray to death was the ‘Noel Gallagher look-alike’. Several witnesses had come forward and told gardaí that they saw Raonaid having a row with a man in the minutes before she was murdered. This individual was described as being in his late twenties, of average height and wearing a beige jumper. He had blonde hair and wore it in the style of Noel Gallagher from the band Oasis. This man was probably responsible for murdering Raonaid but to this day nobody knows who he is or why he did it. Some investigators believe he was a visitor to Ireland and caught the first ferry out of Dun Laoghaire, after carrying out the ghastly deed. The authorities have offered a €207,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the killer but unfortunately the money remains uncollected.

The head of the Dublin Metropolitan Eastern Division, Chief Superintendent Pat Culhane, described the murder as ‘a motiveless, very savage, vicious attack’, saying: ‘It is an investigation that we must solve and one we will solve.’

At the inquest into the death Detective Inspector Eamon O’Reilly apologised to Raonaid’s family for not bringing her killer to justice and promised that the hunt would go on. ‘Someone out there knows some little thing. It is a big jigsaw and we’re missing a few pieces,’ he said. ‘We would renew our appeal for anyone who knew Raonaid Murray and who has not come forward to please come forward now.’

The lives of Raonaid’s parents, Jim and Deirdre, have been torn apart since that terrible night in 1999. They cannot understand what would motivate anybody to murder their vivacious daughter or how it happened in an area where people expect their children to be safe. In a poignant appeal for their daughter’s killer to be brought to justice the family said: ‘While Raonaid lies in her grave, her murderer is free to walk the streets. We know nothing will bring Raonaid back to us but the thought of her vicious killer roaming free adds to our agony.’ The murder the case remains open and several detectives still work on the unsolved murder. They will continue to do so indefinitely.

Paula had tried to put Farah out of her mind but then late one night during 2003, a woman called Kathleen Mulhall rang her for advice on how she should deal with Farah. The two women had never met and Kathleen said she’d got her number from Farah’s phone. She described how Noor was beating her up and she wanted to know how to stop him. Noor was displaying the same violent tendencies with Kathleen that Paula had experienced for three years.

Paula later said: ‘She was looking for advice. I advised her to leave him. I said he would never change. She wanted to know had he ever beaten or attacked me. I told her the full story and urged her to leave. I told her about the abuse. Kathleen Mulhall was always very polite. On one occasion she told me she was pregnant and that she was calling because she knew I was also pregnant. But I later found out this was lies. She knew I was in a new relationship but I told her to leave him. I remember telling her that he would never change and that something awful would happen if she didn’t.’

Farah met Kathleen Mulhall in the summer of 2001 at a nightclub in Tallaght. Kathleen abandoned her family for Noor and made her husband move out of the house in Kilclare Gardens. Her family resented her for this and John Mulhall was bitter over the break-up. At one stage, Farah and Kathleen’s son John ended up getting into a fist fight over what Kathleen claimed was a row about drugs. She said the pair got into a row after taking too much heroin and that Noor became aggressive with John. The Kenyan was terrified and jumped out of a window and ran away. John had witnessed Noor punching his mam once and did not have a lot of time for him. Despite this they shook hands the next day.

In the end Kathleen and Farah decided to move to Cork to have a fresh start. Neither of them had jobs, and, apart from her family, Kathleen had no ties to Dublin. They headed off to start a new life together in Cork in September 2002.

Gardaí who investigated the gruesome murder of Farah Swaleh Noor are all in agreement that he was a sadistic rapist who took pleasure in harming himself and others. Forty-nine-year-old Kathleen undoubtedly suffered serious domestic abuse at the hands of Noor and was left hospitalised and badly injured on a number of occasions. It was common knowledge that Noor was hitting Kathleen and members of her own family had often witnessed cruel violence. Gardaí believe that it could have been the three years of sustained abuse that allegedly drove Kathleen to plead with her two children to murder the man she said she loved. Noor had no idea that the violence and brutality would eventually catch up with him – in a terrible and tragic fashion.

In the weeks following Farah’s disappearance and when Kathleen was arrested and questioned by gardaí, the mother-of-six gave some disturbing evidence of just how brutal the dead Kenyan had been. The following statements were not heard in evidence during the trial of Linda and Charlotte Mulhall but were released to their defence counsel during disclosure – the right of the defence team to receive from the prosecution any information that might aid their client’s case.

Kathleen said that Farah Noor often made her life hell and regularly locked her in her bedroom when they lived in Cork, following bad beatings. He left her with serious injuries on more than one occasion but wouldn’t let her out of the house to go to the hospital. She was left with ‘broken ribs, two fractured hands, head injuries, cuts but never stitches’. Kathleen did sometimes manage to get medical attention. She said she was hospitalised at least three times because of the beatings but would tell staff that she had been mugged and ‘never told them the truth about what happened and stayed with Farah because I loved him’.

She told gardaí: ‘I had two very different relationships with Farah. When he was sober he was a beautiful person, a beautiful man, but when he was using both drink and drugs he was like the devil. He attacked me nearly every day. He was totally crazy when he was drinking. He’d beat me with his hands, his fists or with a belt. He’d mostly use a belt. He’d say, “I wouldn’t beat you if I didn’t love you.” I believed him. He told me on a number of occasions that if I told anyone about the attacks he would kill me. I believed him when he said this. I am 100 per cent sure he was telling the truth when he said he’d kill me. That’s why I got away from him. He told me on a number of occasions that he’d kill me. Farah always played the race card. He’d say, “It’s because I’m black.” He’d be the one fighting with people then he’d turn on people and if he started fighting he’d say, “It’s because I’m black,” to try to get away with it.’

She also detailed how Farah would burn himself with cigarettes as a form of relief: ‘He’d light a cigarette and then put the cigarette up against his skin and let it burn his skin. It would come up in a blister. He’d burst the blister and either suck or eat the skin. The pain wouldn’t bother him. He’d only burn himself with cigarettes when he was drinking. He said it was his culture and that’s why he’d burn himself. He put the lit cigarette up to various parts of his body and just let the skin burn. The worst one was when we lived in Cork. He put the cigarette up to his forehead and just let it burn. I slapped his hand away because you could smell the skin burning. Only when he’d drink he’d burn himself. That was the only type of self-harm he’d do. On about five or six times I woke up with cigarette burns. I’d have been drinking and in a deep sleep and the following morning I’d see the burn marks. Farah said that I fell asleep with the cigarette but I know I didn’t. After one of the beatings in Cork he left me in the house for a week. He kept the key to the front door and there was bars on the windows so I couldn’t get out. I had a horrible relationship with Farah. I loved him and I still probably do, I know I do. I know Farah is a violent man with drink taken. Farah could drink three or four litre-bottles of vodka a day along with beer cans. If he had money he’d drink three or four bottles a day but not every day. With drink on him I’d say Farah is capable of anything, including killing someone. I don’t even have to hesitate to answer that question. Farah is afraid of nothing and no one. The relationship we had was strange in that if I wanted a cuddle or a hug off him he wouldn’t let me near him but if it was the other way round, if he wanted to touch me or have sex with me, he could.’

Kathleen claimed that Noor used to make her pretend she was pregnant ‘to make other girls jealous’. He told everyone he knew that she was expecting his baby and forced her to go along with it: ‘It was all lies though, it was what Farah made me tell people. I was never pregnant by Farah or any other man bar my husband. I had my tubes tied about thirteen years ago when my younger son was three years. He’s sixteen years now. I think I was in the Mater Hospital for that procedure. When Farah asked me to do things, I would because I was afraid of what he’d do to me.’