The Irish Scissor Sisters

by Mick McCaffrey

  The guards knew that she was holding the full truth back. Detective Keys asked her how were they expected to believe her: ‘Here you are saying you came back to a flat that was covered in blood – walls, floors, pools of blood, bits of bone, skin, everything – everywhere. A man has been murdered, obviously. You help, you say, to carry his body or bits of his body down to a canal and you tip it into the canal and you don’t bother to find out why the man has died?’

  She maintained that she was telling them the truth and said that it was Linda who was lying to them: ‘She’s crazy, really, saying that she done things and she didn’t. What thanks is she getting for it anyway off me ma. Why should she take the blame for something that she didn’t do?’

  Detectives Murray and Keys said it didn’t make any sense that Linda would confess to a gruesome murder if she hadn’t done it.

  Charlotte told them: ‘I think she’s fucking mental to be honest with you because she’s saying she done things that she didn’t do, just to protect me mam.’

  She said that her relationship with Kathleen was now fraught. ‘Things are after changing now. Sure the woman hasn’t rang me, hasn’t done nothing ... I’ve tried to get through to the woman so many times. No one ever knows where she is; well, I don’t.’

  Just as the interview was about to be completed, Charlie became emotional for the first time. She got upset when she was asked about her mother supposedly cutting up Farah. The two men asked her why she was crying and she replied, ‘It’s not a very nice thing,’ before adding, when they asked what the dead man had meant to her, ‘I just knew him.’

  After the interview ended senior officers in the investigation met to review the progress of the last few hours. Detectives Keys and Murray were confident that it was only a matter of time before Charlotte cracked because her original story had now been turned on its head. Their colleagues agreed and it was decided to re-interview Charlotte after she’d had a rest and some food.

  Charlotte Mulhall sat in a lonely cell in Mountjoy Garda Station and must have wondered how she had got herself into this almighty mess. She was twenty-two years old, single and had just found out she was pregnant. She was possibly wondering what chance her child would have in life. She had gone to the station with the intention of saying nothing to implicate herself and had practised her story long and hard over the last few weeks, but she’d messed that up. She was now in serious trouble. She’d admitted to the detectives that she’d carried the body to the canal, tipped it in and then cleaned up the house. She wasn’t a legal expert but she knew that surely that was a crime of some sort. She would probably be charged and might even go to jail. What would happen to her baby then?

  Life for Charlotte Mulhall had never been simple. She was well used to getting arrested and spending time in police cells but a murder investigation was a new departure. She had first come to the attention of the gardaí on 28 July 2000, aged seventeen. She was arrested after stealing money from Bewley’s Café in the Square, Tallaght, but she wasn’t prosecuted. A few months later, she was detained by gardaí from Sundrive Road on after a public order incident on the Long Mile Road, but again was released without charge. Officers from the same station arrested her on 27 March 2003 after she was caught throwing cans at a house belonging to the new partner of one of Linda’s ex-boyfriends. She was charged with this offence and given the benefit of the Probation Act in court on 2 October 2005, just two weeks before she was arrested on suspicion of murdering Farah Noor. She was arrested for assault on Grafton Street on 20 June 2003 but that charge was later thrown out of court. Three months later she was held again after being found in an intoxicated state on O’Connell Street and was also given the benefit of the Probation Act. Charlotte was picked up again on 3 September 2004, following a public order incident at the Mespil Road in Dublin and was taken to Donnybrook Garda Station.

  In total Charlotte had been arrested eleven times and charged on fourteen occasions for a variety of offences, including intoxication in a public place, refusing to give her name and address, threatening behaviour, assault, damaging property, failing to appear in court, and loitering for the purposes of prostitution. Despite this record, she only had two actual convictions at the time of the Farah Swaleh Noor murder. Gardaí at Donnybrook are familiar with Charlotte and she is a well-known prostitute, operating around the Baggot Street area. She has never had a job and is believed to have turned to prostitution in her late teens, to earn some extra cash. She worked regularly in Lad Lane, on the Grand Canal near Baggot Street Bridge. Gardaí say she was a popular prostitute who was always kept busy. Kathleen Mulhall had claimed in her interview that it was Charlotte who introduced her to prostitution because she wanted to earn some money to send back home to Farah’s family in Kenya. They had got drunk one night and Charlotte supposedly brought her mother up to Lad Lane and showed her how things operated. Charlotte was a heavy girl and was good with her fists and many other prostitutes were afraid of her. They wouldn’t dare to work her patch for fear of Charlie losing her temper, which she did quite often.

  She got through boyfriend after boyfriend and seemed to have a particular fondness for African and Eastern European men. In 2003, she had moved to Cork for a while to live with an African, although this relationship broke up. She was not involved in a relationship with the father of her child. His identity is unknown but she was seeing a man from Kazakhstan for a short time before she got pregnant. When she was finally re-arrested, she told the detectives that the reason she didn’t keep her appointment with Sgt Hickey was because she was in the Coombe Maternity Hospital, having a scan.

  It later emerged that Charlotte had been involved in a bizarre incident in the Coombe the week before her arrest when she went in seeking a pregnancy test. She presented herself to emergency room staff at around 8 p.m. on Thursday, 6 October. She was quite drunk and asked a nurse for a test. She was told that the hospital didn’t carry out pregnancy tests and she should go and see her GP. Charlotte became very upset and started crying. The nurse asked her if she’d been drinking and she admitted she had, just as a bottle of Southern Comfort fell out of her bag. She then said she was very upset and needed to speak to the nurse in confidence. Charlotte said she was involved in a murder case because her mother had killed her boyfriend, a black man who used to beat her up. She said she’d been drinking with the pair in town on the day of the killing and had gone back to her mam’s flat to find it covered in blood. She claimed her mother had told detectives that Charlotte and her sister had killed her boyfriend but she told the nurse that she had nothing to do with it. She also told the nurse that her father was ‘wonderful’ and the ‘light of her life’. She then said that she made her money working on Baggot Street and Leeson Street and got €2,500 for a ‘few good shags’. She boasted that it was the best money she ever made and said prostitution paid far better than nursing. The twenty-two-year-old said she’d had an alcohol problem since she was fifteen-years-old and the nurse gave her the phone number of Alcoholics Anonymous in Tallaght. After giving her advice on how to check whether she was pregnant and tips on how to stay healthy while expecting, the nurse sent Charlotte on her way. The mother-to-be said she was going outside for a fag and the nurse told her it was a bad idea and could harm any child she was carrying. Charlotte told the nurse to ‘get a life’ and left the hospital.

  Although Charlotte had a cold demeanour and certainly appeared harder than her older sister, the murder affected her. She went to see a doctor and was prescribed with antidepressants because she couldn’t sleep at night. She used a cocktail of vodka and sleeping pills to try to get rest and was also a user of many drugs, including ecstasy, cannabis, cocaine and heroin. Charlotte did not have many friends growing up and was absolutely devoted to her family and got on best with Linda and her brother James. She found it hard when her parents separated and made an effort not to take sides and still saw her mother, even though many of her siblings ostracised Kathleen. She was awarded €42,000 compensation in late 20
04 as a result of a road accident a couple of years previously and shared it among her family. She bought her father a new motorbike, gave her mother over €5,000, gave Farah €1,500 and bought him a new mobile phone and also looked after her brothers and sisters. Such generosity towards her family was typical of Charlie, but she had squandered the cash in a matter of months. She bought drink and drugs and by her own admission, ‘just wasted it really’. She didn’t even have a bank account and lodged the money in Linda’s account and took it out as she needed it. People who knew Charlotte say they were not surprised when she was arrested for Farah’s murder. If somebody pushed her far enough, she had the habit of snapping; if her family were at risk, then doubly so. Such was her devotion to them that she would go to any length to protect them – even murder.

  Charlotte’s thoughts were disturbed at 4.21 p.m. when Detective Sergeant Gerry McDonnell and Detective Garda Mike Smyth came into the cell to bring her back into the interview room. Again, Charlotte Mulhall refused to see a solicitor.

  The younger sister’s few hours of head time did not prompt her to start telling the guards about what really happened in her mother’s flat that night. She stuck to her story, repeating that she and Linda had left the flat at about 10 p.m. and drank around town until 5 or 6 a.m. the following morning.

  Det Gda Mike Smyth told her that Linda had told them a different tale. He commented: ‘If she’s not telling the truth she is very, very specific, whereas can I just say your interview earlier on was very, very watery. Linda has told us exactly what happened in the flat that night. Now nobody, not even a great novelist would be able to think up the stuff she has told us, she has been so specific in the detail,’ Detective Smyth declared.

  Charlotte said that nobody rang John Mulhall after they dumped the body. She denied that she had discussed the fact that her mother had murdered somebody with him afterwards, and said that the subject hadn’t come up in conversation with Linda either.

  She continued to insist that she and Linda left the flat at Richmond Cottages because her mother and Farah Noor were fighting in the front room. ‘I don’t know what the row was about. I think it was about the Chinese guy, I think, or the Chinese child,’ she said.

  Det Sgt Gerry McDonnell asked her, ‘Are you trying to say that yourself and Linda up and went at that stage? Is that what you’re trying to say?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she replied.

  ‘That’s the portion of your story we don’t believe,’ the detective sergeant told her.

  ‘That’s what happened,’ declared Charlie.

  ‘It’s not what happened though, sure it’s not?’ said Det Gda Mike Smyth. ‘If you can tell me one place in town where I’ll see you on video that night, I will tell you what I will do. I’ll give you a million euro and I will let you out of the station here and now.’

  ‘We were all around town.’

  ‘Just you name one place, at one time, where I can find you on video that night?’ Smyth pushed her.

  ‘I don’t know the times,’ was her weak reply.

  ‘You’re home and free; you’re gone Charlotte; you are laughing,’ added the detective.

  ‘On the Boardwalk,’ Charlotte eventually said.

  ‘On the Boardwalk? So if I check the garda videos on the Boardwalk that night I’ll find you? That night between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. in the morning, I’ll find you? Do you want to have that bet with me? Do you think I’m going to go up now and ask someone to look at eight hours of video, so they can’t see you on the Boardwalk that night?’ Detective Smyth said dismissively.

  ‘Charlotte, you know what you have told us from there on is a pack of lies,’ said DS Gerry McDonnell.

  Charlotte, however, stuck to her guns. She was proving more difficult to crack than they’d anticipated. She had been in custody for over four hours at this stage and nobody had expected her to stick to a story that was obviously made up for so long. Charlotte did not want a solicitor and obviously believed that she could maintain the lie alone.

  ‘Are you aware that Farah had your mother on the game?’ asked McDonnell.

  ‘No, I can’t say I ever heard that,’ she replied.

  ‘No? Did he ever threaten her? Did he ever threaten your mother? Are you aware of that?’ DS McDonnell queried.

  ‘Yeah, I did. I worried about her a few times. I know he broke her ribs,’ she answered.

  ‘Did she tell you that he threatened to kill her?’ Det Sgt McDonnell continued.

  ‘Yeah, that night when me and Linda came back, like,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Before that, no?’ McDonnell said. ‘You’re saying that you’re aware of it, before that night, that Farah had threatened your mother or he had beaten up your mother. Is that right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Several times, broken her ribs even?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Charlie said.

  ‘And yet you tell us that a row erupted between them and in order to protect your mother you left with your sister Linda. Is that what you said?’ Gerry McDonnell asked incredulously.

  ‘You were there that night and you were involved in it, up to your neck in it. You were covered from head to toe in that fella’s blood from where you chopped him up with a hammer and a knife,’ Detective Mike Smyth interrupted, taking on the role of bad cop in the interview. ‘Do you remember all the blood, do you? Hard to clean up, was it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, it was,’ Charlotte answered.

  ‘I’d say it was. Did he struggle much when you were killing him?’ Smyth said.

  ‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ insisted Charlie.

  ‘Yes you did. Cut his throat, didn’t you?’ Detective Smyth was getting animated now.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ she responded.

  ‘Do you remember the expression on his face?’ asked DS McDonnell

  ‘Did he say anything while he was dying?’ Detective Smyth interjected.

  ‘I told you I wasn’t there,’ Charlotte insisted, rattled by the tough line of questioning.

  ‘Yes, you were,’ Smyth said accusingly.

  ‘I told you; I wasn’t,’ she declared.

  Det Gda Mike Smyth looked Charlotte in the eyes and said quietly: ‘You were there and you know you were. I’d say you’ve had nightmares about it every night since. I’d say the only reason you ever get a night’s sleep is because you drink so much and take so much drugs to go to sleep. You know and I know that’s the truth. I’d say you’ve demons coming, crawling out of the wall.’

  Det Sgt Gerry McDonnell intervened and asked Charlie if she’d like to see a solicitor but she declined.

  Det Gda Smyth then summed up the case against Charlotte: ‘There’s nowhere on the videos where you are that night, apart from 17 Richmond Cottages, all right? You’re not on the Boardwalk and you’re not on O’Connell Street, so that’s just a complete and utter crock. If you were going to come in with an alibi, you had plenty of time to think about it; you most certainly could have come in with a better one. But your only alibi is Linda, who puts herself in the flat. Your mother puts you in the flat when the murder happens, your brothers unfortunately do as well. Now you have to say your whole family are a bunch of liars. Now that leaves you with a very sticky wicket at the moment, Charlotte.’

  The interview then changed direction again as the detectives started to go over what happened after Farah was murdered and dumped in the canal.

  Detective Sergeant McDonnell asked Charlotte, ‘Did you stay in 17 Richmond Cottages? Did you stay there for a period of time?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she admitted.

  ‘In the month of March, you were staying there then?’

  ‘I stayed there all the time,’ Charlotte confirmed.

  ‘What happened to Farah’s phone and his ATM card?’ the Detective Sergeant next asked. The police believed that Charlotte had taken Farah’s mobile and his bank card.

  ‘Me mammy gave me the card to go down and get money out of it,’ she said.

  ‘Did you get money out?’ asked DS McD
onnell.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How much?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t remember,’ Charlie claimed.

  ‘A couple of hundred?’ the Detective speculated.

  ‘Sixty euro,’ was the response.

  ‘So this fella … is dead and you’re off down the bank machine taking money out of his account,’ said a disbelieving Mike Smyth.

  Charlotte repeated to the two detectives that she and Linda were out when Farah was murdered. She again said they were drinking around town and smoking heroin into the early morning and returned to find him cut-up in plastic bags.

  ‘When you start telling lies you have to be a very, very good liar because one lie leads to another lie. But it’s the small lies that catch you out, and you’re catching yourself out with all these lies,’ McDonnell told her.

  ‘You do everything liars do – you cross your legs, put your arms in front of you and look down all the time. You see, every attribute of a person telling lies, you currently have it Charlotte, and you have had since you walked into the station,’ his partner added.

  ‘Charlotte we don’t want to upset you. We are not here to judge you or punish you, we are here to try and find out the truth and come to the bottom of it,’ DS McDonnell said understandingly. ‘You told us you went down to the canal with those bags. How were you feeling when you were down there that time?’

  ‘Sick,’ she responded.

  ‘You were sick,’ he said, nodding his head. ‘Have you been sick since in relation to thinking about it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Charlie confirmed.

  ‘All the time?’ Det Gda Smyth wondered.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did you ever think you were capable of such a thing?’

  ‘No,’ she said, as she slowly shook her head.

  ‘Do you feel like you’re some kind of a monster? Well you’re not,’ DS Gerry McDonnell said compassionately.