The Irish Scissor Sisters (41 page)

Lunch is served in the dining room at 12.30 p.m. and the women are free for leisure time until 2.15 p.m. They can go for a walk in the yard, head to the well-equipped gym or head for the library to listen to music, watch a video, access legal information or borrow a book. As many of the women in the Dóchas Centre are non-nationals, books and other materials are available in Russian, French, Albanian, Serbian, Croatian, Polish, Chinese and Arabic.

They go back to school or work until 4.30 p.m., which is when dinner, the main meal of the day at the Centre, is served. Prisoners can relax and go to the gym or watch TV from 5.30 to 7.15 p.m. and must go back to their room after supper is finished at 7.45 p.m. Quizzes take place most weekends and Mass is celebrated each Sunday but a chaplain is available every day to offer religious support.

Phone cards can be bought and used in the Centre but only four pre-designated numbers are allowed and one of these has to be the prisoner’s solicitor. Before the card is first issued a house officer contacts the numbers to see if they will take phone calls from the prisoners. Each prisoner can contact the Samaritans free of charge. The cards can only be used from 5 to 7 p.m.

Visits are allowed each Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 12 noon and 2 to 4 p.m., although each prisoner is only allowed one thirty-minute visit per week, from preapproved individuals. A maximum of three adults are allowed per visit but there is no restriction on the number of children who may visit. Visitors can bring money and other treats for prisoners, which are left at reception for inspection. Linda’s four children visit their mum in prison each week, while Charlotte is said not to have many visitors. Linda’s kids were taken into the care of her brother James and his partner after she was convicted. They have continued to go to the same schools they attended before their mother became an infamous national celebrity.

After they were found guilty of the murder and manslaughter of Farah Swaleh Noor, Charlotte and Linda were inundated with interview requests from members of the media. In one case a journalist attempted to gain access to Linda by applying to visit one of her housemates but eagle-eyed prison service staff spotted the scam and refused him access. Psychologists and academics also tried to interview the women, in an attempt to understand what drove them to carry out a crime of such unspeakable horror. There were even reports that the sisters were receiving fan mail from across the country, with several men regularly sending letters wanting to be their pen pals. One street trader was also said to be planning to produce T-shirts bearing the girls’ faces.

After their convictions Linda and Charlotte were kept together and assigned to the Hazel House complex of the Dóchas Centre. Their bedrooms are on the same corridor, only a few feet apart, and they spend a lot of time socialising together. Charlotte is said to be friendlier than her older sister and mixes freely with staff and her fellow prisoners. Linda was involved in an ugly incident as she waited to be sentenced when she made a death threat against a fellow inmate. Linda accused a prisoner who was a member of the travelling community of stealing her bedroom key and taking clothes from her wardrobe. A number of officers were alleged to have heard the elder Mulhall sister promise that she would kill the young traveller and say when she was challenged: ‘I’m going down for one – another one isn’t going to make any difference.’ It is believed that an internal inquiry was carried out about the threat and Linda was formally disciplined.

Charlotte was back in court in November 2007 in relation to a charge of soliciting on Lad Lane the previous September. She had been out on bail at the time, awaiting her trial for murder, but was still selling sex on the streets of Dublin. She pleaded guilty to the offence and was given seven days to pay the €200 fine.

The Mulhall sisters have been behind bars in Hazel House with some of the country’s most notorious female offenders. Among them is fellow Tallaght native, Martina O’Connor, who clocked up her seventy-third conviction in early 2006, despite the fact that she’s only eighteen years old. She was involved in a vicious street assault in which a woman’s hair was set alight. O’Connor’s two-year prison sentence was subsequently increased to three years by the Court of Criminal Appeal. Delivering judgement on O’Connor, of Birchview Heights, Tallaght, Judge Brian McCracken said she had ‘an appalling record’ that suggested she was ‘clearly a teenager out of control’. In the assault on the woman on O’Connell Street, when she was just sixteen, O’Connor had removed the woman’s cap before setting her hair alight. The fire was quickly extinguished but then clumps of the victim’s hair were pulled out and she was dragged to the ground. The court heard that ‘when she [O’Connor] drinks she goes into an animal like rage’.

Another Hazel House resident was mum-of-four, Lisa Moran, who brought her children on shoplifting sprees. A judge told her that her kids would be ‘better off without her’ while she served a two-year sentence. The thirty-seven-year-old frequently attacked and threatened shop workers during her trips. Originally from Cork, Moran has pleaded guilty to over one hundred offences in just four years. Gardaí have told court hearings that she has hidden behind her children, aged from seven to thirteen, to avoid jail. She had also used them to commit the shoplifting offences and they had witnessed her violent reaction when challenged by shop staff. She has been convicted of driving without insurance on over twenty occasions and is banned from the road for twenty-five years. She’s also been found guilty of assaulting gardaí, security staff and other members of the public, theft from more than twenty shops, using forged or stolen cheques, and theft of handbags, mobile phones and wallets.

Another long-term resident of Hazel House is drugs mule Breda Maguire, a thirty-three-year-old single mother-of-two, who was born in Ireland but had lived most of her life in London. She is serving a six-year term after being arrested in May 2001 transporting €500,000 worth of heroin into Dublin Port. She fled the country when she was given bail but was later extradited back to Ireland and sent to the Dóchas Centre.

One woman who was said to be very unhappy at the Scissor Sisters’ emergence as the big fish in the Dóchas Centre pond was the so-called ‘Black Widow’, Catherine Nevin. Nevin was convicted in April 2000 of the murder of her husband, Tom, a well-known publican. He was gunned down in Jack White’s Pub in March 1996 and his former wife is serving a life sentence. She was also convicted on three counts of soliciting three different men to murder Tom Nevin in 1989 and 1990 and was sentenced to three seven-year sentences on those charges. Nevin had claimed that she was in the pub counting the takings with her husband when armed and masked raiders burst in, tied her up and shot Tom dead at point blank range. Gardaí had doubts about her story and she was convicted after one of the most sensational trials in Irish legal history. The public was fascinated with Nevin and her glamorous appearance and fashionable outfits were the talk of Ireland during her forty-two-day trial. Catherine Nevin is known to revel in her title as the most notorious prisoner in the women’s prison. Reports have suggested that she didn’t take kindly to the arrival of Linda and Charlotte Mulhall, who arguably commanded more column inches than she did during her murder trial. Nevin ignores the Mulhalls and tells her friends that their crime was too despicable for her to get involved with them. They bump into each other on an almost daily basis but the Black Widow is said to act as if the sisters don’t exist, which many staff and prisoners have put down to jealousy on Nevin’s part.

On Monday, 4 December 2006 the Mulhall sisters woke up early and chatted with their fellow prisoners, as they enjoyed a breakfast of eggs, cereal, tea and toast. As they went back to their rooms to get dressed, many of the other women wouldn’t even have known that the pair were facing sentencing that day, such were their blasé exteriors.

It was a morning of mixed emotions for the sisters. Charlotte had already had over six weeks to come to terms with the fact that she would spend the rest of her life behind bars. As she dressed in black trousers, with a pinstripe jacket, and applied heavy make-up to her face, she must have been thinking about ending up in prison just six months after becoming a mother for the first time. Her child had been taken into care following her conviction and she would soon apply to look after her son behind bars. This would help to make sure that the long days would be just that little bit shorter, but nevertheless it was not easy to act normal, as she put her silver earrings on and tied the hair-band in her dyed black hair. Staff said she was not as friendly as usual, as she sat nervously awaiting the prison van which would transport her to the Four Courts building in the centre of Dublin, a mere five-minute drive away.

Linda chose to wear a pair of plain black trousers, with a white tightly-fitted shirt, under a black leather jacket. She wore even more make-up than her younger sister and, had circumstances been different, she could easily have been preparing for a night out to celebrate Christmas, which was just weeks away. The mother-of-four had far more reason to be hopeful than Charlotte. She had only been convicted of manslaughter by the jury, which meant that her sentence was at the discretion of Judge Carney. Convictions for manslaughter in the Irish judicial system rarely result in more than an eight-year prison term and the jury had seemed to have had genuine sympathy for a woman who had acted in self-defence to ward off the unwelcome advances of a drunken, violent man.

Four Prison officers met the Mulhalls and placed them in the back of a van at around 10 a.m. They arrived at the Four Courts less than ten minutes later and around eight press photographers were there to greet them as they walked into the court building. The weather was cold and windy and parts of the country were under water from recent sustained heavy rain. Linda pulled the collar of her jacket up to get some extra warmth, as she heard the clicking of the snappers’ cameras. As it turned out, the dark clouds in the sky were an omen of what was to come.

The national media had been eagerly awaiting this day and news desks around the country were anticipating big sales with the ‘Scissor Sisters’ splashed all over the front pages. Court Number 2 was packed to capacity by 10 a.m., nearly a full hour before Mr Justice Carney was due to sit. Dozens of newspaper, radio and television journalists struggled to fit into the tiny courtroom. Anyone who wasn’t in attendance by 10.15 a.m. had to make do with standing room only at the back of the room, which was not where the many colour writers, sent to court to file copy on the girls’ demeanour and reactions, wanted to be.

Some observers could hardly get their heads around the doors when Judge Carney was finally announced to the court by his registrar. A female prison officer stood guard at the door to the side of the court, from where prisoners and barristers enter from the cells below. Two large gardaí, from the Bridewell Station, stood outside the courtroom, observing everybody who went in and making occasional sweeps to ensure that no jackets or bags were left unattended. It wasn’t just the Mulhall sisters, however, who had drawn the press to Court 2 that day. Padraig Nally, a sixty-two-year-old farmer from Co. Mayo, was due to face a retrial for the murder of the traveller John ‘Frog’ Ward that same day.

On 14 October 2004 the traveller had trespassed on Nally’s property, with the alleged intention of stealing from him. The farmer had confronted Ward with a shotgun, opened fire and badly beaten him with a stick. He had then reloaded and shot Ward in the back as he limped away. The original trial, which had taken place in Castlebar, Co.Mayo, in July 2005, had divided the nation. Many people felt that Padraig Nally was more than entitled to defend his property against a well-known criminal, with a string of previous convictions, while others disagreed. At the end of the seven-day trial, Nally had been found not guilty of murder and instead was convicted of manslaughter. On 11 November 2005 he was sentenced to six years in prison. Nally’s lawyers, however, subsequently argued in the Court of Criminal Appeal that the trial judge, who just happened to be Paul Carney, hadn’t allowed the jury the option of finding the farmer not guilty. The previous conviction had been overturned on 12 October 2006.

Padraig Nally’s case was the first of the morning to be called and the nervous looking bachelor pleaded not guilty. He then had to prepare himself for yet another two weeks in court as the twelve men and women of the jury were sworn in. Judge Carney told the jurors that this case had ‘engendered a great deal of publicity, perhaps more than any other in the history of this court. It has also engendered extremely strong feelings.’ He told the panel that they must hear the case ‘strictly on evidence and without discrimination to members of the farming or travelling communities’.

With the Nally case moved to a full hearing in Court Number 3, Counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions in the Mulhall case informed the judge that the prosecution would be seeking to have the Mulhall sentencing adjourned. This was because they had been unable to arrange for Farah Swaleh Noor’s mother to fly to Dublin from Kenya to give a victim impact statement to the court. He also said that a psychiatric report on Linda Mulhall was unavailable.