The Irish Scissor Sisters (35 page)

John Mulhall initially told gardaí that he had nothing to do with the murder of Farah Swaleh Noor, he later admitted that he was in 17 Richmond Cottages just a couple of hours after the murder was committed. Some detectives privately believe that it could have been John Mulhall who cut up Noor and not his two daughters.

John Mulhall was an honest man and a hard worker who was devoted to his family. He seemed to be the one element of normality in the topsy-turvy world of the Mulhall family. He was devoted to his six children but did not seem to do a good job raising them. His two eldest sons, John and James, had a long history of run-ins with the law and were both behind bars when Linda and Charlotte murdered Noor.

John married Kathleen Mulhall in 1972 and she gave birth to their first child, James, in December of that year. Linda followed in February 1975 and the second son, John Junior, was born in 1977. Charlotte was the fourth addition to the family, after a gap of six years and Kathleen had another girl, Marie, the following year. The final Mulhall child, Andrew, was born in 1988.

John was involved in a bit of trouble when he was a teenager and had a number of minor convictions but when he met Kathleen he settled down and cleaned up his act. He didn’t come to the attention of the gardaí again until January 2004, when he was stopped on suspicion of drink driving on James’s Street in Dublin but he wasn’t charged. He was also involved in a traffic incident on the Nass Road on 15 May 2005 and was being investigated for dangerous driving, but apart from these incidents he never had any dealings with the law.

The father-of-six had worked on and off for the previous twenty-five years as a fitter in a company called City Glass, in Donore Avenue, Dublin 8. He drove a white 97 D Berlingo van belonging to the company and brought it home from work most nights. He effectively treated it like his own car, even though it was registered to the company. He also drove a motorbike in his spare time. John’s brothers Andrew and Eric worked as fitters with him in City Glass.

John and Kathleen’s marriage was healthy and happy for many years but in the mid-1990s he had an affair. When she found out, things between them were never the same again. Kathleen subsequently made allegations of domestic abuse against her husband. Gardaí believe there was some element of truth to this but he was never prosecuted. In late 2001, after meeting Farah Swaleh Noor, Kathleen said the marriage was over but she didn’t walk out on him. Instead Kathleen demanded that she be allowed to remain living in Kilclare Gardens. John Mulhall wasn’t a confrontational man so he reluctantly agreed. This led to the bizarre situation where Kathleen moved Farah Noor into Kilclare Gardens while John, Marie and Andrew moved out. They went to stay with Linda at her house in Bawnlea Green for about a month. The father-of-six was then forced to leave Linda’s overcrowded house and go and live with his son John Junior, taking Marie and Andrew with him. They stayed there for about two months.

The marriage break-up tore the family apart. John did not have any contact with his wife after she left him. He was very angry and bitter that she had turned her back on nearly thirty years of marriage. He was also furious with Farah Noor. Marie rarely spoke to her mother again. Linda also took her dad’s side, as did John Junior and Andrew, who stayed living with his father. Charlotte was more neutral and made an effort to get to know Farah Noor, while James also remained relatively impartial.

Shortly afterwards John received a compensation payment of nearly €80,000 from an accident he’d had in 1997 while working in Carlow. With money in his pocket, he rented a house in Rathmintin Court, in Tallaght, and lived there with his two youngest children for about six months. It was during this period that Kathleen decided to move to Cork with her boyfriend. She agreed to allow John back into the house, and in July 2002 he moved back into 31 Kilclare Gardens with Marie and Andrew. Charlotte occasionally came to stay as well and would sometimes live there for months at a time. In the summer of 2004 Linda and her four children also went to live with John after Wayne Kinsella’s court case. At the time of the murder there were nine people living in the three-bedroom house. A large extension that had been built in the back garden provided some much-needed extra accommodation.

Following Farah’s murder, a number of people came forward to say that John Mulhall had made threats against the Kenyan. Mohammed Ali Abubakaar was the last person to see Farah Noor alive. When he gave a statement to gardaí on 16 May, reporting that his friend was missing, he also detailed a dispute between John Mulhall and Farah Noor. He said: ‘Farah’s girlfriend, Catherine, is older than him and she is separated from her husband in Tallaght. She has blonde hair. About two years ago, before Farah moved to Cork, he told me that Catherine’s ex-husband had threatened to kill him. He told me that the ex-husband said to him, “I will kill you and nobody will be able to identify you.” Catherine at this time was in dispute with her ex-husband because she wanted the family home to be sold and she wanted half the money. I advised Farah to leave the country or to move down the country. Farah was concerned at the time about the threats. At this time Farah and Catherine went to live in Cork.’

During the investigation, John was asked whether he had made threats, either directly or indirectly to Farah Noor, and answered no to both questions. Even so there is little doubt that there was little love lost between the pair.

The relationship didn’t improve after the couple separated and Kathleen didn’t help as she liked to wind her husband up. In one set of incidents, a few months after she moved to Cork, she started texting her daughter Marie’s phone, telling her that somebody was sick in the family and asking to talk to John. Her ex-husband would obviously be concerned and ring his wife but she would then play dumb and pretend not to know what he was talking about. This really upset Marie and she cut off all contact with her mother at this time. When she bumped into Kathleen a few times over the years in Tallaght, she ignored her.

John tried to get on with life as a single man, although it was difficult at times. The fact that he had the support of his family, however, kept him going. On the night of the murder, he was sitting in the front room of his house when his mobile phone rang at 11.41 p.m. He checked and realised that Linda was ringing him. He wondered what she wanted at this hour of the night. ‘Hiya, love,’ he answered, but the voice that replied at the other end of the line was not Linda’s. He instantly recognised the deep husky voice of his estranged wife.

‘What do you want?’ he asked Kathleen.

Kathleen wouldn’t tell John what was going on and he was furious that his wife was still playing games with him after all this time. She would only tell him that there was a problem and that she couldn’t talk about it over the phone. His ex-wife said she wanted him to go over to her flat at Richmond Cottages, but he wasn’t falling for that. He had no intention of going unless he knew exactly what the problem was. He hung up the phone after 134 seconds and sat down, cursing his wife.

John Mulhall was raging but his love for Linda and Charlotte was far stronger than his hatred of Kathleen. He sat down and thought for a few minutes and decided that if his girls were in trouble he needed to make sure they were OK. At 11.51 p.m. he reluctantly rang Kathleen’s mobile and demanded to know what was going on. She still wouldn’t give him any information and said he’d have to come to her flat to see for himself. She sounded normal but wouldn’t tell him if Linda and Charlotte were all right. Instead she insisted that he drive over to Ballybough. The conversation lasted two minutes and fifteen seconds.

The father-of-six didn’t have a choice. He wouldn’t be able to sleep, wondering if his girls were in trouble and if they needed his help. After thinking about it for a few more minutes, he rang Kathleen again and told her he was on his way. He barked down the phone at her, as he was in no mood to be nice to the woman who’d ruined his life. All he cared about was Linda and Charlotte. She could go to hell as far as he was concerned. He hung up within twenty seconds.

John got the keys for his van and drove from Tallaght to Ballybough. He had previously been to Richmond Cottages to collect Charlotte on New Year’s Eve 2004 and knew where it was. The journey took him no more than twenty minutes and he pulled up outside 17 Richmond Cottages at about 1 a.m. He knocked on the door and Kathleen answered after a couple of seconds. His ex-wife looked at him and said, ‘Farah is dead. The girls killed him,’ John Mulhall must have thought his world was ending. Kathleen wouldn’t go into details when he shouted, ‘What the fuck happened?’ All she said was Farah had attacked Linda and was now dead. The father-of-six must not have been able to believe his eyes when his daughters then came in and told him they had killed Farah and cut him up.

In the subsequent investigation it emerged that John didn’t notice any blood on the floor or on the women. Neither did he remember a vile smell, even thought it would have been the type of stink you would expect when a body has just been cut up. Their father shook his head and whispered to the women, ‘This is too serious for me to be involved in. I can’t help. You’re own your own.’

As soon as he got out onto the street John got physically sick on the pavement. He then jumped in his van and sped away from Ballybough, as fast as he could. On the way home he later claimed he contemplated contacting the police but decided not to. He was in a state of shock.

The fifty-three-year-old couldn’t sleep a wink that night and got up soon after 5 a.m. on 21 March. It was Charlotte’s twenty-second birthday and her father was thinking about that as he drank a cup of coffee in the kitchen.

John loved his family but he was not used to breaking the law. He now found himself in an impossible situation. Either he helped his two girls to sort out the monumental mess they were in, or they would be arrested and spend the next twenty years behind bars. He’d long since stopped caring about the woman who was still legally his wife, but he felt it was his duty to help his own flesh and blood.

Finally reaching a decision, John Mulhall got back into his van and drove to Ballybough again. He picked up three black bags containing clothes, duvets, towels and other items that had been used, or got sprayed with blood, during the murder. He put the bags in the back of his van and drove home to Tallaght.

As soon as he re-entered the flat in Richmond Cottages, in the eyes of the law, John Mulhall became an accessory to murder. As he did not contact the gardaí and tell them that a man had been killed in the flat, he became part of the conspiracy to cover-up Farah’s death. He was now in serious trouble. The father-of-six was facing the possibility of ten years or more in jail, if the police came knocking at his door. He was all too aware of this as he went through the early morning traffic, but he’d made his choice.

In the weeks after his daughters killed Farah, John spent his days working and attempting to put his life back together. He was also trying to convince Linda and Charlotte to come clean. Then one incident, a few weeks later, highlighted the mess they were all in. During May 2005 a work colleague of John Mulhall’s, Florian Williams, was having problems with his mobile phone. He was looking for a new one and mentioned it in passing to Mulhall. John told him that he’d see if he could get his hands on one for him. A few weeks later, he came back with a silver Sagem phone and sold it to Florian for €50. The phone was in fact Farah Swaleh Noor’s and Charlotte had given it to her father. John Mulhall had just sold his work pal a mobile phone that had belonged to the murder victim.

Williams innocently used Farah Noor’s SIM card a total of eight times from 3 June 2005. In late June, Florian was out working in the house of family friend Marc Millea in Clondalkin when Marc said in passing that his phone was out of action. Florian said he had an old phone he could give him and brought it over the following Sunday. Mark Millea put his own SIM card into the Sagem V-55 and used the phone up until August, when he was contacted by gardaí.

Both Williams and Millea used the phone and SIM card in good faith and didn’t for a minute know where it had come from. When detectives subsequently interviewed John Mulhall, enquiring as to how he had happened upon the mobile of a murder victim, he pleaded ignorance. He said he must have got it from Charlotte or Linda. He claimed he didn’t know that Farah had owned it, but detectives very much doubt this and believe that he was lying. It is likely that Charlotte gave him the phone but whether or not John knew Farah was the previous owner is open to speculation.