The Irish Scissor Sisters (32 page)

She said she didn’t notice anything else strange about the flat and certainly didn’t see any blood there. After tidying her stuff she went back to sleep and was woken by Linda and Charlotte who had come in the open door.

She told the detectives that she never spoke to the girls about Farah. She said she’d tried to ring him a few times since but his phone was off. She had just assumed that he had gone off to live with his ex-girlfriend in Kilkenny, who had a sick child.

Again, the gardaí knew that she was lying and that her story made no sense. You don’t just let a man with whom you’ve had a long-term relationship walk out the door and not check where he has gone. The detectives were used to people telling them lies but Kathleen was excelling herself.

Farah’s wallet was gone as well, but Kathleen explained that she had his ATM card. She said he had given it to her a long time ago, to look after, because he wasn’t great at managing money. She said she’d used his card loads of times before because he owed her money but she didn’t have any information on the bank card being used after his murder. When the detectives questioned her about the card, she said she didn’t have it now and didn’t know where it was. Kathleen said she didn’t know anything about using the card after Farah died. She claimed that she had not taken any money out, even though bank records showed that his account had been accessed after he died.

‘As far as the government here are concerned Farah doesn’t know where any of his family are but he did know because he sent them money,’ she said. She claimed that she gave Farah €1,500 to send to his mother in Africa. She paid €63 to wire it to Kenya and that a woman called Lulu signed for it on 6 December 2004. Kathleen said she was always lending him cash to send back home. She told them that Charlotte had given Farah €1,000 out of a compensation claim pay-off she’d received as a result of a road traffic accident, to send to Kenya. The €1,500 Kathleen had lent him was also part of a gift from Charlotte. When pressed, Kathleen estimated that in the three years they were together she’d lent him another €6,000, which came from her dole money.

The guards were surprised to hear this. Kathleen had been telling them a few minutes before that she was not even in a relationship with Farah. She insisted she was telling the truth, however. Kathleen also told the gardaí that she’d survive on less cash each week so Farah’s family could have food back in Africa.

Kathleen was interviewed for more than three hours and kept her composure, even though the gardaí asked her some very tough questions. They formed the impression that she was a very cold woman and was also very hard. She didn’t seem to be nervous, despite the fact that she was being questioned as part of a murder investigation.

Kathleen declared that after Noor had left her to go back to his ex, she had started re-decorating the whole flat. She told them she took up the carpet in the bedroom because it was infested with cockroaches. She said she bought the new carpet from Carpet Mills and put the infested carpet in black bags and the bin men took it away. She swore that there was no blood on the carpet and said: ‘I don’t know if Farah was killed in that flat, I wasn’t there.’

When she was questioned about her ex-husband, John Mulhall’s, involvement, Kathleen said that John never had any contact with Farah. She claimed she knew nothing about John threatening him. She told the gardaí that she had not been in touch with her husband for years. The gardaí knew this was a lie and had phone records to prove it. Kathleen, however, continued with her story, which was flying in the face of all the evidence.

She claimed the only time she had rung him was when her daughters started visiting her in Cork. The mother-of-six said that Linda had told her she was having a problem with her father. Kathleen said she rang him to talk about it but she would not elaborate on the details of the conversation.

The last time Kathleen said she’d seen John was the previous Christmas Eve when she was at the family home in Tallaght. She said she’d also spoken to him a couple of times since then, about how their two sons were getting on in prison. Since Farah had disappeared she admitted speaking to her husband a few times but denied that he came to the flat and removed the bloody bedclothes after they murdered Farah.

‘John was never in my flat. I never had a conversation with him. John removed nothing from my house,’ she declared.

The gardaí knew she was lying and were all too aware that John Mulhall had helped to clear items from the murder scene. Kathleen vehemently disputed this.

Kathleen pretended that she was shocked about Linda confessing to the murder. She said that her daughter was lying to them when she said that her mother had urged her to do it, or was in anyway involved: ‘I don’t know if Linda or Charlotte harmed Farah. I don’t believe Linda killed Farah.’

She described Linda to the detectives as: ‘A mentally disturbed sick girl. She’s very unstable. She uses drugs. She’s bulimic. It relates to her dad. If she wants to talk to you about it she can, but it’s not my business. She didn’t have a good life.’

The guards were surprised to hear Kathleen talk about her daughter with such frankness. Most mothers try to protect their children and paint them in a good light but she was different. The officers were beginning to realise that Kathleen Mulhall was not going to volunteer much helpful, or honest, information.

Kathleen also spoke about how Farah Noor was violent and had a fascination with knives: ‘He had knives in his bag, a big Nike bag, a shoulder bag, grey blue. I don’t know where the bag is now. He mostly had kitchen knives; he threatened people with them.’

She said that the most violent thing Farah ever did was tell her that he was responsible for the murder of Raonaid Murray. Kathleen told them: ‘He told me he stabbed her [Raonaid Murray]. 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 he killed her with a knife.’

She said that Farah was very drunk when he first confessed about the murder but a week before his death he had brought it up again during an argument.

After Kathleen Mulhall told gardaí about Noor’s confession, investigators still working the case at the Dun Laoghaire headquarters were immediately informed. They accepted that Farah was ‘a nasty piece of work’ but were satisfied that he was not the killer.

At this stage Kathleen admitted she lived ‘in big fear’ of Farah. She said he had threatened to kill her and her family on numerous occasions but that he had never raped her or boasted about raping anyone else either. She claimed that just a week before the murder she’d had a massive row with the Kenyan and he’d threatened to kill her.

As the interview finally ended Kathleen signed a statement saying: ‘I was getting my social money for Farah and myself. I said to Farah, “I can’t keep collecting as you are working and if the Social find out my money will be stopped.” So I went to the Social Welfare and I told them I was not with Farah anymore and I told them to stop his money. I asked them for a letter and they gave me a letter. Farah rang me up that night and he told me I was a fucking liar and that I had his money. I told him I had a letter to say I wasn’t getting his money. I gave him the letter. He looked at it, read it and said all I was was a fucking cunt and said I wouldn’t get away with this. He said, “I am going to fucking kill you just like I did with the whore in Dun Laoghaire, Raonaid Murray.” I asked Farah not to kill me, as I didn’t do anything on him. He started beating me. Then he threw me in the bedroom in my flat. Then he tried to smother me with pillows and I couldn’t breathe. Then he jumped on top of me. I don’t know where I got the strength from but I kicked him in the stomach and he came off me. Then when he got up I made a 999 call and I said I would ring the police. He ran out to the kitchen and got a knife.

‘He said, “I am going to chop you up into little pieces and eat you.”

‘I said, “You can’t. If Charlotte rings and I don’t answer, she will know there is a problem and come to the house.”

‘He said, “Cathy I am going to chop you up into little pieces, put you in the fridge and eat you piece by piece.” He said, “No one will ever find you ’cause I will tell them you fucked off.”

‘So then he sits down and started thinking and he calms down. He said if I ever told the police he would kill me and my family. I told him to leave my flat and there would be no problem. So he took some stuff and he went. I said, “Farah can I have the keys of the house, please?” He said no he was keeping the keys. I told him to keep the keys and to fuck off. He then said, “You will never get away from me,” and he started saying things about James and John being fucked in prison every day. I said, “You don’t know my sons. Don’t say that about them.” He went.’

Kathleen Mulhall broke down crying three or four times during the course of the day, saying she could not believe that Farah was dead. Detectives were certain that she had played a central role in the killing but had to release her for the second time. There was not enough concrete evidence to hold her, despite what Linda had said.

Before Kathleen left the garda station she said, ‘I would love to help you. If I could help you I would, but I am sorry, I can’t. One day the truth will come out what happened Farah. Then I want an apology. I would help you 100 per cent if I could.’

Kathleen Mulhall met Farah Swaleh Noor in Coco’s nightclub in Tallaght in the summer of 2001. Ironically, Kathleen’s daughter Marie had already met Farah before they got together. At the time Marie was going out with Robert Steward from Kiltalawn, in Tallaght, and was in his house when Farah came in with Robert’s brother, Trevor. Marie went to the local shop and bought the so-called Somalian cigarettes, not realising that he would later be the cause of her family breaking-up. To complicate things further, Linda was seeing Trevor Steward around the time that Farah and Kathleen first met.

The mother-of-six and the ‘refugee’ immediately began having an affair, even though Kathleen had been married for twenty-nine years. She fell for Farah in a big way and early the following year separated from her husband, John. She took a barring order out against him, alleging that he was beating her up. She forced her husband to leave the family home in Kilclare Gardens but her children sided with John and went to live with him. She was snubbed by many of her family and friends when her marriage ended. After a hard few months living with Noor in Tallaght, they decided to move to Cork in the summer of 2002. They had been having problems with some neighbours from around Jobstown and Kathleen wanted to start a new life away from the messy situation in Dublin.

The couple moved to Cork City and lived at seven different addresses over the next two years. Farah had a lot of friends in Cork, as he had previously lived there and knew the city well. Kathleen did not have a job and spent her days drinking and pottering around, living on the €148.80 she was paid from the State, plus her rent allowance. Farah showed a bit more initiative than Kathleen. Noor worked at various odd jobs around the city to earn extra cash. As well as signing on, he got a job on a building site across from City Hall, which is now the site of the Clarion Hotel. Noor could not drive and did not have a licence so he was a familiar figure around Glanmire and Cork City, cycling his black mountain bike. The couple spent most of their days drinking and going to house parties thrown by other Africans living around the city. People remember that Farah used to refer to Kathleen as ‘The Boss’.

Linda and her then-new boyfriend Wayne Kinsella moved to Cork for a short time and the two couples would meet in pubs a few nights each week and drink together. McCurtain Street was a favourite hangout for them but Farah was a regular in a fair few pubs throughout the city.

During the summer of 2003 Farah and Kathleen were living in Flat 2, 9 Wellington Terrace, Grattan Hill. Noor was friendly with the man who lived in Flat 1, Ahmed Ahmed, and Ahmed’s friend Hamed Salim Miran. Hamed went to live in Flat 2 when the couple left Wellington Terrace in September 2003.

Farah and Kathleen moved to a flat at 105 Lower Glanmire Road. The new flat was in Kathleen’s name only and Farah was not supposed to be staying there. The owner of the three-storey terraced house, Maureen Moran, met Farah once when he was helping to move Kathleen’s clothes in. Maureen got a call two weeks after Kathleen arrived to tell her that there had been a row at the flat and that the guards were called and an ambulance had come as well. She went to see the mother-of-six the following day and noticed splashes of blood in the living room and hallway. It looked like some sort of weapon had been used during the fight the previous night. Kathleen promised to clean the blood from the walls and said she would do a good job. The owner wasn’t happy that gardaí were being called to disturbances on her property, however, and asked Kathleen to find somewhere else to live.

The following week when Maureen called around to collect the rent, she noticed that this time Kathleen was covered in bruises. She said Noor had beaten her but another tenant told Maureen that it was Kathleen’s son. Although Kathleen was on rent allowance she was slow to pay her percentage towards the rent. In the end the landlady asked Kathleen to leave the flat after about five weeks.

After being evicted from the flat at 105 Lower Glanmire Road, Farah and Kathleen found another flat just down the road at number 158. They moved into Flat 5 around 20 October 2003, paying a €300 deposit to the owner, Barry Sheehan, and signing a letting agreement. Sixty-year-old Gerard Finn worked collecting rent for Barry Sheehan and often had dealings with the couple. Finn used to call to collect rent from Farah and Kathleen each Friday but he often had to return again during the week because the two were always slow to pay. Kathleen told Gerard that she was pregnant and often wore a loose dress to hide her ‘bump’. He subsequently heard that she had lost the baby, supposedly due around June or July 2004, but he never spoke with Kathleen about it. When he visited the flat Farah was often drunk and Kathleen was a few times as well. Local people used to say that the pair enjoyed drinking too much and were well known in pubs around Glanmire.