Farah’s pay was lodged into his AIB account in Cork and his payslips were sent to the Mountainview B&B. He seemed to use it as a semi-permanent postal address, even though he no longer lived there. His wages for the week ending 20 March 2005 were paid into his account five days later. They amounted to €157.42 for the three days he had worked that week. The staff at Adecco remember Noor as being of medium height and build, with ‘watery eyes and a runny nose’. He always wore ‘casual gear, but trendy and he was always clean’. He wore a gold band on his wedding finger and always had a Manchester United ring on his middle finger. He wore two or three other rings on his right hand.
Adecco sent Noor’s P45 to Mountainview on 22 March but he never received it. Mary Andrews wrote ‘return, gone away’ on the letter but forgot to put it back in the post. Community Welfare Officer Derek O’Connor liased with Adecco about Noor’s work record and all the reports he received back were satisfactory. Mr O’Connor always thought that Noor looked scruffy, as if he was homeless. He said he had been in his office between four and eight times, from September 2004 until February 2005, and was never clean.
The last time Farah Swaleh Noor made contact with the Health Board was on 11 March 2005. His payments had risen to €148.80 a week from 24 February and he was also given Supplementary Social Welfare Allowance. This was pending a claim he was making for Unemployment Assistance, as he had filled out a provision for Unemployment Assistance form on 24 February. He used to collect his money every Thursday in Gardiner Street.
With their money sorted out, all Farah and Kathleeen had to do now was find somewhere to live and they’d be set up. Kathleen Mulhall answered an advert looking for tenants and moved into Flat 1, 17 Richmond Cottages in Ballybough on 1 December 2004. The landlord, John Tobin, later said that he often saw Charlotte around as well and thought she lived there for a while. Kathleen told him that her daughter was interested in one of the flats but later rang him to say that she changed her mind.
Farah and Kathleen quickly settled back into life in Dublin and Kathleen started to rebuild her relationship with her family. She frequently saw Linda and Charlotte and regularly went to visit her sons, John and James, in prison. Farah also reacquainted himself with other Africans living in Dublin. After a few weeks it was almost like they had never left the capital.
The couple invited Farah’s friend Ali Suleiman Abdulaziz over to Richmond Cottages on Christmas Eve 2004. Ali had been one of the first people to greet the couple when they came back from Cork. Charlotte was also there that evening and they had a good night, enjoying some food and a few drinks. Ali later told gardaí how Farah used to jokingly refer to Kathleen as his mother and how ‘he used to make a joke of it but I think he used to love that woman and she used to love him’. Farah made sure that Ali, Kathleen and Charlotte had enough food and drink before he went off to work as a security guard that evening. He produced a small bottle of Hennessy Brandy and some cigarettes and gave them to the women to have while he was gone. Ali said that this type of thing was typical of Farah and that he was generous.
Farah Noor’s mind, however, was troubled in the weeks before his death. He would confide in Ali that he was scared but he wouldn’t go into details about why. His friend said he ‘used to give him advice not too drink too much; he drank too much, to be honest. And I said to stay away from people who take drugs’.
The couple had not been getting on and Noor had asked several people to keep their eyes open for any free accommodation because he was thinking of leaving Kathleen and moving out of Richmond Cottages. Some residents at Richmond Cottages reported more shouting and fighting than usual. It was clear that the couple were not getting on well and were coming to the end of their violent and tempestuous relationship. Farah undoubtedly beat Kathleen and, if her story can be believed, which is doubtful, had threatened to kill her and cut her up into pieces not long before he died. Kathleen told the gardaí that she was afraid of Farah but there is evidence that he was equally scared of her. In the months before he was murdered Farah had phoned his mother, Somoe Bakari Shigoo, and told her that he would have to get a knife for his own protection because Kathleen had threatened to kill him. A lot of people also came forward to say that they had seen Farah with bruises on his face and that Kathleen was no shrinking violet. She was well able to fight back and give as good as she got.
Farah’s mother was very concerned and sent her son a gift a parcel of clothes. Farah rang her four days later to make sure that she had posted it. On 10 March Farah’s cousin, rang Kathleen to see if the package had arrived but she said that Farah had walked out on her.
The last call that Farah made to his mother was some time around the middle of March. Somoe said it was a very strange call and her son was upset, confused and rambling, which was not like him. She felt that it was as if he was saying a final goodbye to her and was apologising for all the mistakes that he had made in his life.
Farah was in a dark place and kept referring to the son he’d had with the Chinese woman ‘Lynn’.
St. Patrick’s Day 2005, like many others in the lives of Kathleen and Farah, was spent on the beer. They started drinking early in the Parnell Mooney pub, on Parnell Street, with Farah in his ever-present Ireland-away jersey. There was a ballad session taking place to mark the day and all the customers were in good spirits. Christian Silva was in the same pub with his friends, ‘Kenyan’ Ali and Sam. They all moved to the downstairs bar because it was so packed in the main upstairs lounge. Silva had gone to the bar and ordered a pint of Guinness when he heard a woman call his name. He didn’t recognise her but she came over and said, ‘You remember me.’ She said she had met him upstairs in the bar before. The woman was Kathleen Mulhall.
A black man came in after her and Christian thought he was from Nigeria. Farah Noor started being aggressive and shouted at him: ‘Why do you talk to my girlfriend?’
Christian didn’t want any trouble and replied: ‘You ask her.’
Farah pulled a pair of nail cutters from his trouser pocket and punched Silva under the left eye with them. He went to hit him again but Silva caught his hand and Noor got a cut to the head in the ensuing struggle.
Christian went back to his two friends and they brought him to the toilet because his eye was bleeding.
A bouncer saw what had happened and rushed over and threw Noor out. Kathleen, however, stayed in the pub.
After Christian had cleaned his eye up, the bouncer asked him if he wanted the guards called. Silva said no and went down to the small garda office on O’Connell Street instead and told Garda David O’Leary that he had been assaulted. Garda Patrick Buckley from Store Street Station was on mobile patrol in a van when he received a call to go to the garda office. Christian Silva agreed to go back to the Parnell Mooney with the gardaí and point out the man that had assaulted him.
Silva and Garda Buckley drove the short distance to Parnell Street and saw two men standing outside the pub having a cigarette. Silva said that the man wearing the long-sleeved Ireland jersey had attacked him and the black man identified himself as Farah Swaleh Noor. The other smoker was an Irish man, Michael Dunne from Ballymun, who had joined Farah for a cigarette. Dunne had witnessed the row and asked Farah if he was OK and they had got talking.
Garda Buckley explained to Noor that an allegation had been made that he had assaulted a man but Farah said nothing.
Michael Dunne then identified himself and gave the officer his mobile number. He told the garda that the row wasn’t Farah’s fault.
At this stage, Farah Noor said he didn’t know his own phone number but that his girlfriend was still in the pub and she had it. Garda Buckley decided not to go looking for Noor’s partner and took Christian Silva back to O’Connell Street as he did not have to go to hospital and was not badly injured. He dropped him off and went back to the garda office and gave the details to Garda O’Leary for further investigation.
Meanwhile Michael Dunne went back inside the Parnell Mooney and told Kathleen t
hat she had better go outside because her husband had nearly been arrested. She left and joined Noor who was still waiting. Kathleen wasn’t happy that her night had been ruined and started for home in a huff. Farah followed her and barely spoke for the rest of the night.
Between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. that same night, Farah’s friend Ibrahim Mohamed met the couple. They were both extremely drunk and Farah was bleeding heavily from a nasty gash to his head. Kathleen was trying to get her boyfriend home and they only stopped and spoke briefly. Ibrahim vaguely knew the couple from Cork because they had lived in a flat next door to his friend and had been to a few of the same parties. He subsequently told gardaí: ‘Farah would talk too much with drink. He would fight. Farah wouldn’t say much when he was sober but he would talk a lot when he was drunk. I didn’t really listen to him when he was drunk.’
Relations between Farah and Kathleen were very strained. The couple had spent the previous night drinking in the same pub at a reggae night and according to witnesses were also quite drunk that night. Farah continued drinking for the next two days and didn’t turn up for work as scheduled. He was on an almighty bender and immediately started drinking cans when he woke up on 20 March.
Kathleen told him she was meeting her two daughters in town and asked if he wanted to come. He said he would. It could be a good opportunity to make up for the last few days and the fight on Paddy’s night. He got dressed and headed towards O’Connell Street, hand-in-hand with Kathleen. Maybe they could work through their problems after all.
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.
The Irish Scissor Sisters Page 24
