Farah Swaleh Noor was portrayed in court as a violent womaniser who used to rape his girlfriends. He got two women pregnant while in Ireland and they both made allegations of violence and rape against him. However, Husna said she did not recognise this description as fitting her husband. ‘Farah never beat me or treated me badly. Kathleen was his girlfriend. I don’t think Farah raped anybody. He did not ever rape me. She’s lying if she says he beat her.’
Noor never attempted to hide the fact he had two children in Ireland and wrote about them in letters to his wife. According to Husna: ‘Farah sent me a picture of his son a long time ago. If it was possible I would like to adopt the child and bring him up as a Muslim like Farah would have wanted.’
Farah’s family were obviously furious with Kathleen Mulhall and wanted her to answer for what she did.
Their wish would come sooner than expected because just three months after Husna Said spoke publicly for the first time, this author finally tracked down Kathleen. She had not been seen or heard from since September 2005, but in December 2007, after months of behind-the-scenes investigation and considerable expense, I determined that Kathleen Mulhall was going by the name Cathy Ward. She was living in a free council house in Shepherd’s Bush, in London, and was surviving on State handouts. Sunday Tribune photographer Mark Condren and I travelled over to London and placed the one-bedroom cottage under surveillance. We had been parked in a blacked-out van, outside her home, for a matter of minutes when the light in Mulhall’s porch came on and we saw her passionately kiss a middle-aged black man. The man then jumped on a bicycle and cycled away into the evening darkness.
Kathleen’s appearance had changed dramatically since she left Ireland and she had dyed her hair blonde in an effort to disguise her identity. Because it was in the depths of winter and the light was bad we were unable to get a clear photograph of Mulhall, so we returned at first light the following morning. We sat outside the house for three full days but Mulhall did not once leave the house. We suspected that she had left during the first night and had gone to visit relatives in Birmingham. We called to a neighbour’s house and asked after Kathleen. The neighbour told us that she didn’t venture out of the house much during the day but that she came alive at night and often had male visitors who spent considerable amounts of time in her cottage. She told her neighbours that she had left Ireland years before and had come to London from Birmingham. They said she was very pleasant and friendly and would offer to go to the shops for elderly folk who couldn’t leave the house in bad weather.
We showed a photograph of Kathleen around the dozens of pubs around the main drag in Shepherd’s Bush, which is home to many Irish immigrants, and several bar workers recognised the woman as Cathy Ward. They said that she regularly drank heavily with a large group of African men and we were told that the man we had seen her kissing was a convicted rapist. Mulhall was still fond of dangerous sex offenders, it seemed. The bar workers said that Cathy was a friendly and jovial woman who drank too much and would often disappear for weeks on end only to come back in and start to chat to punters as if she had never left.
The following week we returned to London and after seven hours in the van we saw Mulhall come out of her cottage and talk to an elderly neighbour. We snapped a photograph of her after spinning the van around and driving into the complex, towards the house. Mulhall was shocked that her hiding place had been compromised and ran indoors and slammed the door. We knocked but she refused to answer and turned out the lights.
The previous April the Director of Public Prosecutions had decided that Kathleen should face charges in relation to the murder of Farah Noor. So when the story appeared in the Sunday Tribune gardaí were eager to make the trip to London and extradite her to Dublin to face a jury of her peers. Detectives applied for an extradition warrant and waited the six weeks for it to come through, all the while hoping that she didn’t do one of her legendary disappearing acts now that she knew her cover had been blown.
On 12 February 2008 Detective Sergeant Liam Hickey and Detective Garda Mike Smyth flew to London and met up with their counterparts in the London Metroplitan Police. They then travelled to Kathleen Mulhall/Cathy Ward’s house and knocked on the door. The fifty-three-year-old opened the door and warmly greeted the two Irish detectives. She knew the game was up and had been expecting a visit since the Sunday Tribune had found her over two months previously. She made the officers a cup of tea and listened to them say that the DPP had decided that she had a case to answer about the murder of her former lover. She calmly said that she would voluntarily return to Dublin. Had she refused she would have been arrested by Met officers on foot of the European Arrest Warrant, but that process could have taken weeks or even months, so her unexpected cooperation was warmly welcomed by gardaí.
The following day Kathleen arrived back in Dublin. As soon as she got off the plane and touched Irish soil she was formally arrested and was transported straight to Mountjoy Garda Station. At 7.55 p.m. DS Liam Hickey formally charged her with aiding and abetting in the concealment of a crime. Kathleen made no reply. The next day she appeared at Dublin District Court amid a media circus. Wearing heavy make-up and sporting a peaked cap, white runners, black jeans, black polo-neck jumper and a leather jacket with gold zips, Mulhall stood quietly with her hands behind her back as proceedings got under way. DS Liam Hickey told Judge Patricia Ryan about meeting Kathleen in London and explained that she had agreed to return to Ireland. He also gave evidence about charging her the night before. No bail application was made and she was remanded into custody to the Dóchas Centre, where her two daughters were serving their sentences.
Sources say that the atmosphere inside the Dóchas Centre was extremely tense when Kathleen Mulhall arrived, accompanied by two prison officers. She was immediately taken into the office of the prison governor and told that she would be looked after by staff and treated like every other woman but that any bad blood between her and her daughters that could result in disputes or violence would not be tolerated. Kathleen said that she had no problem with Linda and Charlotte and hoped that they felt the same way. She said that she would serve her time quietly and would not cause any hassle or bother. With that she was taken to her room, where within minutes she was visited by Charlotte.
Charlotte had always been very understanding about her mother’s somewhat unusual private life and if she bore a grudge about Kathleen skipping the country and leaving her and Linda to face the rap for Farah, she didn’t show it. She ran up and hugged her mother and soon it was like they had never been separated.
Linda was a harder nut to crack, and while she did acknowledge her mother, she was very quiet and cold towards her for the first few weeks. She was less forgiving than Charlotte and was angry that while she was serving time for killing Farah at her mother’s behest, Kathleen had been swanning around in London, drinking heavily and having sex with a string of men. Kathleen worked hard to repair the fractious relationship and was forever apologising for what happened and generally trying to make it up to her daughters for being a lousy parent. Over time Linda relented and they gradually became close again and even moved into the same room together.
Although Kathleen had never been in trouble with the law or seen the inside of a cell – not that you could really describe the rooms at the Dóchas Centre as cells – she assimilated easily into prison life. She was popular with the other women and was regarded as a mother figure to come to for advice, which was ironic considering her shoddy history as an actual mother.
Charlotte had weekly visits with her son and Kathleen really relished spending time with her grandson and doted on the young lad. It was almost as if prison life had freed her and given her a second chance. Every week she would wheel the youngster around on a little tricycle and the prison officers noticed how happy she looked. It was almost like the Mulhalls were a proper family for the first time in years, and Kathleen was certainly enjoying making up with her daughters.
In March 2008 Kathle
en Mulhall again appeared before Dublin District Court to face new charges in relation to her partner’s gruesome murder three years previously. She was charged with attempting to obstruct the arrest and prosecution of her two daughters by helping to clean up her apartment after Noor’s murder. More charges were brought against her for giving gardaí false information about Noor’s whereabouts and she was also charged with two counts of withholding information that could have helped in the arrest and prosecution of her two daughters for the murder of Farah Noor. She was remanded in custody.
Later that same month Charlotte Mulhall’s day of reckoning came when she was brought to the Court of Criminal Appeal (CCA) to find out whether she would be allowed a full appeal against her conviction for Farah Noor’s murder. Her legal team had claimed that comments made by trial judge Mr Justice Paul Carney while the jury was deliberating put them under pressure to reach a verdict in the case. The judge made the comments when the jury came out on the second day of their deliberations to ask the judge for guidance because it had become deadlocked. The foreman asked if the court would accept a majority vote and the judge told them there were five children who had a ‘vital interest’ in their decision, and then asked them to ‘make a final push to reach agreement’. Mulhall’s senior counsel, Brendan Grehan, said the only explanation one could make of this remark was that the jury had been put under pressure to reach a verdict. He then claimed that pressure must have led someone who, up until then had been in the minority, to go over to the majority. The jury eventually gave a verdict of 10–2, finding Charlotte guilty.
Counsel for the DPP argued the judge’s request that the jury make a final push to reach a conclusion was not an ultimatum or a threat. They said the jury, who had already been over-nighted in a hotel for two days, took another night before reaching a verdict. But leave to appeal was rejected by the CCA with the judges’ ruling that they did not find with the submission that the jury’s decision was perverse. On the basis of the evidence before them and the statements made by Mulhall, the jury was ‘perfectly entitled’ to come to the verdict of murder in relation to her, the ruling said. In relation to the remarks made by Mr Justice Carney, the appeal court said there had been no objection raised to them by the defence at the time of the trial, although the prosecution had done so. Common sense would have said the defence would have benefited from the remarks, the ruling continued. It was ‘perfectly clear’ that the jury had very carefully considered the verdict and it was hard to see that they came under any kind of pressure. The application for leave to appeal was therefore refused.
During the same month Linda had her own appeal D-Day and received a severe blow when she lost her appeal against the severity of her fifteen-year jail sentence for Farah Swaleh Noor’s manslaughter. The Court of Criminal Appeal found the trial judge, Mr Justice Paul Carney, had imposed the appropriate sentence in light of the facts of the case. The appeal court had adjourned the case in February 2008 to consider reports by probation officer Scarlett Taylor and a consultant forensic psychiatrist at the Central Mental Hospital, Dr Helen O’Neill. Dr O’Neill’s report had been prepared just before the sentencing hearing in December 2006, while Ms Taylor’s March 2007 report was based on the detailed notes of her predecessor, who had interviewed Mulhall several times. Linda Mulhall’s senior counsel, Brendan Grehan, said the psychiatric report showed that his client felt great remorse to such a degree that she had difficulty touching her own children. It showed she had suffered a brutalised existence from a very early age and that she had taken to drink and self-harm as a means of dealing with her difficult upbringing. He added that the probation report showed she was tearful and distressed and had great difficulty understanding what she had done. Because of this one event in her life, Linda ‘should not be written off’. While she could not explain what she did and why she did it, she had never tried to deflect blame for the brutal killing of Farah Noor. The three-judge court said that after considering the two reports it was satisfied that the original fifteen-year sentence was appropriate and should stand. The appeal court said it had considered the submissions by Mulhall’s legal counsel and it noted the psychiatrist recommended that she required a structured programme of counselling and rehabilitation to deal with the risk of re-offending. The three judges said there was no doubt that the sentence imposed was lengthy and the trial judge had decided, because of the gruesome nature of the offence, that the sentence should be at the ‘very, very serious end of the scale’. The maximum sentence for manslaughter was life imprisonment and Mr Justice Carney considered the appropriate sentence was in the ‘late teens or perhaps twenty or twenty-one years’. In settling on fifteen years (eighteen years with the last three suspended), he took into account that Linda Mulhall had co-operated with gardaí after the initial investigation; had assisted in recovering parts of the body; and her lack of previous convictions.
On whether a further part of Linda’s sentence should be suspended, the appeal court said it was clear from early on that Mulhall had to engage with counselling and rehabilitation services, but she had not done so by the time of sentencing. They added that long after her arrest and incarceration she had not joined any programme, despite the probation services saying that she was at risk of re-offending. In those circumstances, the trial judge had not erred in failing to suspend part of the sentence, the judgement said. Linda Mulhall was in court for the verdict and sat emotionless with her head down when the decision was read out. She was quickly brought out of court after the ruling.
James Mulhall, the Scissor Sisters’ eldest brother, impressed observers during the murder trial because he attended court every day to lend support to his siblings. However, in April 2008 he was jailed for stealing from prostitutes, crimes that he committed during lunch breaks in his sisters’ trial. The thirty-five-year-old took advantage of the breaks in Linda and Charlotte’s trial to go to the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) in Dublin’s Docklands and steal from prostitutes. He was ultimately identified after detectives recognised him in court from descriptions the prostitutes supplied, which had been circulated around Dublin garda stations. Mulhall pleaded guilty to stealing over €1,000 in cash and fourteen mobile phones from two prostitutes, in September and October 2006. The father-of-two claimed that he committed the crimes because he was desperate for money. He was looking after Linda’s four children while she completed her fifteen-year sentence.
On 26 September 2006 detectives from Store Street were called in to investigate an incident in the IFSC. A Brazilian woman who had advertised her services on a website had received fifteen phone calls from a man looking for her apartment. When she let him in, a second man appeared and the pair stole nine mobile phones and €800 in cash, before escaping.
On 5 October a South African prostitute was attacked at her apartment in Ringsend and robbed of €250, five mobile phones and an iPod. The woman picked up a knife from the kitchen to defend herself, but was threatened with a bottle and assaulted.
Gardaí initially had no suspects. They distributed images of the robbers, taken from CCTV footage. Again, a detective recognised Mulhall from the image because he had seen him in court each day for over a month. Gardaí from Store Street went to the Central Criminal Court and identified Mulhall and detained him. He admitted carrying out the robberies and his accomplice was identified as thirty-year-old Paul Draper, from Tallaght. Both victims were traumatised by their experience and left the country.
The same judge who presided over the Mulhall murder case sentenced James Mulhall. Judge Paul Carney said that he was aware of the family background and of the fact that their father had committed suicide. He said that James would have been under pressure at the time because of the media scrutiny his sisters’ case received and also noted his explanation that he needed cash because he was looking after Linda’s children. He added that he wouldn’t be human if he didn’t take these factors into account. Carney jailed both men for five years.
Just weeks later, James Mulhall
was back in court and was convicted for robbing two shops at knifepoint. He had been caught on a store’s CCTV system after he was briefly trapped inside the store. He admitted the robbery of €1,450 and €620 during separate robberies from shops at Fortunestown Lane and Belgard Square, in Tallaght on 14 and 18 February 2007. He told gardaí he was desperate for money and could not afford to feed his own two children and Linda’s four.
Garda Pauline Glennon told the court that Mulhall held a knife to a cashier in the second robbery. He threatened he would ‘fucking kill’ her if she moved, and he ran towards the door after grabbing the cash. When the employee pressed the panic alarm and trapped him inside the shop, Mulhall kicked the door and shouted that he would kill somebody if they didn’t let him out. He eventually managed to force the door open and escape.
Judge Katherine Delahunt said the crimes were committed ‘in rapid succession over a couple of days’ and that the use of the knife had left staff very traumatised. She accepted that James was in financial difficulties but said that it could not be accepted as an excuse. ‘Any person with very significant social problems does not just go out and rob stores,’ Judge Delahunt added. He was jailed for four years which would be on top of the five-year term he received just weeks before.
In August 2008 Charlotte Mulhall burst back into the national consciousness in spectacular fashion when a photograph was published of her holding a twelve-inch kitchen knife to the throat of a male inmate while behind bars. The photograph was taken with a camera phone and given to the Evening Herald newspaper. When the Herald splashed it on the front page, there was a predictable outcry. The murderous prostitute was snapped holding a long blade to the neck of Mountjoy inmate Denis Gibney, who was celebrating his birthday with a cake. The pair of pals had been joking around in the kitchen of the Dóchas Centre, where they had been working, in July 2008, and looked like they didn’t have a care in the world. They were laughing and joking and happily posed for the controversial picture. Prison sources were surprised that the photo materialised, because there was always a high level of supervision when male and female inmates were allowed to mix behind bars.
The Irish Scissor Sisters Page 31
