The Irish Scissor Sisters

by Mick McCaffrey

  The Irish Prison Service launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the picture. The incident was made more embarrassing by the fact that the Prison Service had only recently launched a high-profile clampdown on mobile phones, and having a notorious murderer making a mockery of the system left the Prison Service chief, Brian Purcell, with a red face. In a statement he said that initial investigations concluded that the photo had been taken twelve months before it was published. ‘Evidence we have to date indicates that the photograph was taken over a year ago in the prison kitchen, where the prisoner worked, and the knife itself was a kitchen knife. Security issues are of paramount importance to the Prison Service. We already have a rolling programme of security reviews within the prison system, and in this context we will shortly be conducting a full security audit of the Dóchas Centre. As part of the new package of security measures currently being rolled out across the prisons system, new airport-style security measures, which include walk-through detectors and X-ray scanners are scheduled to go live in the Dóchas Centre, commencing on 4 September. Everyone coming into the prison – prisoners, visitors and staff – will have to pass through the new measures, and all handbags, briefcases, clothing etc. will be subject to screening.’

  If Brian Purcell was embarrassed, then politicians were furious about the regime that allowed prisoners to mix and photographs to be taken with such seeming ease. Labour’s justice spokesman, Pat Rabbitte, said, ‘It’s bizarre that someone convicted of a particularly gruesome murder ought to be seen in possession of a potentially lethal weapon. People looking at this photograph in their newspapers will be shaking their heads in disbelief and wondering how such a shocking lack of security could be allowed to happen.’

  Rabbitte added that the incident made a joke of Justice Minister Dermot Ahern’s credibility in terms of his ‘extravagant claims’ about tackling the use of mobile phones in prisons. He said the minister needed to explain how such an incident could be allowed to happen. ‘There are obvious questions from the point of view of prison security. The minister is responsible for prisons but he seems to want to duck the issue and say it is a matter for the Prison Service. I sincerely hope that this bizarre incident doesn’t undermine the regime at Mountjoy for women … because it has a very good reputation as a progressive women’s environment,’ he added. Fine Gael was equally critical with its spokesman on justice, Charlie Flanagan, saying: ‘Prisoners are holding up two fingers to the criminal justice system and these pictures show that prison security is a shambles. It beggars belief that a convicted knife murderer would be allowed access to a potentially lethal kitchen knife.’

  Charlotte Mulhall was immediately transferred to Limerick Prison as punishment, while gardaí were called in to see if there was enough evidence to charge her with possession of a mobile phone, an offence that can result in an extra five years being added to a jail term. It was eventually determined that because there was no proof that the handset belonged to her, a criminal charge could not be filed against her. She was transferred back to the Dóchas Centre after a week or so and lost a number of privileges, but that was the extent of Charlotte’s punishment.

  Gibney was serving a five-year sentence for the possession of 9,000 E tablets worth €135,000. The drugs were in a shopping bag in his car when he was stopped by gardaí for a routine search. He pleaded guilty to possession and said he was moving the drugs for someone else. He was regarded as a responsible prisoner and was given a trustee job in the kitchen of the female jail. This was obviously a highly sought after position because of the number of females around, which naturally appealed to men spending long periods of time locked up. He was released from Mountjoy shortly after the photo was taken and when he was tracked down to his home in Crumlin, the forty-year-old told reporters, ‘I’ve taken a lot of crap over this photo; I really don’t need this shit. I won’t be giving any information about that photo. If I want to talk, I’ll call you and let you know.’

  Perhaps the most bizarre story to emerge about the Scissor Sisters appeared in the Star Sunday newspaper, also in August 2008. The reporter claimed that Linda Mulhall had become pregnant behind bars by one of the inmates from the Mountjoy men’s prison, who worked with her in the kitchen. She allegedly told family members that a scan had confirmed that she was expecting her fifth child. A Prison Service spokesman immediately came out and dismissed the report as inaccurate and nine months passed without the baby ever appearing.

  In February 2009 Charlotte Mulhall broke her years of silence to give a telephone interview to the Sunday World newspaper from her plush room at the Dóchas Centre. In the same week that her mother, Kathleen, pleaded guilty to the part she played in the brutal death of Farah Noor, Charlotte described how she would never tell gardaí where Noor’s head was and how she was still haunted by the murder and often cried about it.

  When asked by reporter Niamh O’Connor what Noor was like, she said, ‘He was an evil bastard … He broke my ma’s ribs with a hurley, her hand with a hammer … The things he done.’ Describing the day of the murder in March 2005 she said, ‘We were very high ... I think I was that out of my head, really, I didn’t really realise what I was after doing until the next day. I still can’t believe it, that it’s true. He was trying to strangle me ma … dragging out of Linda and pulling out of her and saying mad shit to her. He was a weirdo … The most I remember about it is that Linda and my ma panicked and were afraid. They were just screaming, basically, what are we going to do with this [the body]?’

  Charlotte then described cutting up Noor’s body and how she felt she had to be strong for Linda. ‘The two of them were just really losing it altogether. I dunno; it was just a spur of the moment, like, and me ma said we’re going to have to cut him, cut him up, like.’ She then started to cry and said, ‘I dunno; I think it was just panic trying to get rid of it and cut him up, basically. I don’t sleep. You always see it in front of you, just like flashbacks all the time. It is really hard to deal with. I try to tell myself that it’s not real, kind of, but it’s very hard, though, really.’

  Charlotte also said that she felt that she and Linda had been wrongly convicted of Farah’s killing and that she was unhappy that evidence about Noor’s abuse was not heard. ‘We were convicted before the trial even started. The jury didn’t hear his two ex-partners give evidence. They were sent out for that. The jury were sent out for that in case they, what was the word, prejudiced the jurors. I mean that girl told of how he was molesting his own child and everything. He broke her arm, raping her for years when she was only sixteen. The judge said that would prejudice the jury. He couldn’t listen to it, basically.’

  Charlotte said she had no hard feelings about her mother fleeing to London, where she spent her time bedding sex offenders. ‘Me ma was a great ma. So was me da; that’s one thing I will say to them. In later years that [her parents’ break-up] was between them, but it never affected any of us in any way.’

  She also described the trauma that her mother had gone through after Noor’s tragic death, but maintained that Kathleen did not still love the dead African. ‘She does not [still claim to love him]. She doesn’t even talk about it. It’s too hard for her. Even if I try and mention something to her about it, she’ll just break down in tears. She is taking it very bad now. I don’t think she can really cope with it. She’s been drinking and all. She’s lost an awful lot of weight. She used to be very happy-go-lucky.’

  Even though Kathleen Mulhall admitted to detectives that she sold her body as a prostitute and that Charlotte had coached her, Charlotte denied that this was the case. ‘That’s a lie. I was out working, me mother never did … I only actually started going out working on the streets after all that hassle [her parents’ break-up over Farah Noor]. That’s when I started on heroin and heavy drugs, and it was just to pay for my habit really.’

  Despite being jailed for life because she’d carried out the murder on her mother’s say-so, Charlotte had a remarkable lack of bitterness
towards Kathleen. When asked if she blamed her at all for her predicament, she said, ‘I don’t know if she actually knew what she was saying, because she was, we were all really out of our heads … To me, me ma, she’s an older woman and she didn’t even actually see anything that we done that night.’

  Charlotte even defended her deadbeat mother when talking about the way Kathleen kicked John Mulhall out of his home so that Noor could take his place. ‘Me da was having an affair with someone she knew, so there was always trouble in the family … But to me that was a long time ago,’ she said.

  Charlotte still wasn’t prepared to come clean and confess to what really happened to Farah’s head. A lot of detectives had major doubts about Linda’s version of events, in which she claimed to have smashed the skull with a hammer, in a field in Tallaght. ‘I don’t think it would actually make a difference at this stage, not after being sentenced,’ was Charlotte’s answer when she was asked why she wouldn’t come clean about the where the head was. ‘They won’t even let me appeal against it [the sentence], so I really don’t think it would make a difference. I think it’s just gone too far. It’d only just start another whole load of publicity again. I think it’s just best to leave it be really.’ When asked if a full and frank confession would show that she feels remorse for what happened on the night of the Noor murder she replied, ‘I don’t know. I just can’t really say. I swore I wouldn’t.’ She said she made this promise to her mother and Linda and that, ‘I’m the kind of person, if I give someone my word, I just can’t go back on it.’ she concluded, before hanging up the phone.

  In May 2009 Kathleen Mulhall appeared before the Central Criminal Court to answer for her role in Farah Noor’s death. Coincidentally it was Mr Justice Paul Carney who presided over the case. Carney had been the judge in Kathleen’s daughters’ trial and had famously said of it: ‘It was the most grotesque case of killing that has occurred in my professional lifetime.’

  Kathleen admitted to cleaning up the murder scene at her flat in Ballybough and was facing a possible ten-year sentence for the cover-up. The strain was clearly evident on her face as she broke down in court and wept as details of Farah Noor’s killing were read into the record. Her senior counsel, Hugh Hartnett SC, said Mulhall had been abused by her parents, her husband and later by Mr Noor, but she had never been in trouble with the law and had no previous criminal convictions. He pleaded to Mr Justice Carney that, ‘Not to take it [the abuse] into account would be an outrage against justice.’ He said that Mulhall had suffered bouts of depression and had turned to religion in the Dóchas Centre. ‘She was abused as a child by her father and, indeed, her mother. Despite that, she never got into trouble and got married at a very, very young age.’

  Evidence was heard that Mulhall had initially denied any knowledge of the murder but had eventually admitted that she had stayed silent to protect her children. She also offered to take the blame for the killing to protect her daughters, it was heard. Hugh Hartnett said his client had tried to do her ‘level best’ for her family.

  Mr Justice Carney adjourned the sentencing hearing for a number of days and requested a transcript of the short hearing.

  When the case went back before the court, Mulhall was more composed, and, dressed in a brown pinstriped jacket and pink shirt, stared ahead and showed little emotion or fear of what she was facing. Mr Justice Carney said he would take into account the fact that Mulhall had returned from the UK voluntarily. He also noted that she was trying to protect her children and had suffered abuse and violence at the hands of Noor, her late husband and other members of her family. The judge imposed a sentence of just five years and backdated it to February 2008, when she first came back to the country and was remanded in custody. This meant that she would be freed at the end of 2011. It was a very good result for Mulhall, who many detectives believe had got off very lightly indeed.

  There was some controversy over whether life in the Dóchas Centre was too easy, when the long-serving governor Kathleen McMahon controversially retired early, in May 2010. After she resigned she gave media interviews in which she severely criticised the Irish Prison Service, saying that the Dóchas Centre had become severely overcrowded and that the progressive, non-judgemental regime that she encouraged during her time as governor was being ‘cannibalised’. She also claimed that the overcrowding was leading to a major increase in lesbianism among the women.

  In response, the director general of the Irish Prison Service, Brian Purcell, highlighted the fact that the prison service was obliged to take every inmate that the courts decided to jail and could not put a ‘full up’ sign in the jail. He said that overcrowding was undesirable but inevitable and that the new jail planned for Thornton Hall would ease the overcrowding situation. He told the Sunday Tribune: ‘The Dóchas Centre is our flagship model. The new facility will continue with that regime and improve on it. We will have a lot more space. The bunk-bed situation is not ideal. The regime we have for women at the Dóchas Centre works very well. It wouldn’t necessarily work the same for male prisoners. Men and women are different. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.’

  The women in the Dóchas Centre certainly seem to enjoy life there, and there have been dozens of occasions where woman have pleaded to stay there after completing their sentences. The relaxed regime belies the fact that many of the inmates are serious criminals with long and chequered histories. Some 25 per cent of inmates are serving sentences for murder, manslaughter or conspiracy to murder, while 21 per cent have been sentenced for possession of drugs for sale or supply. A further 28 per cent are doing time for offences such as robbery, theft and criminal damage.

  Despite the serious nature of the crimes, there are relatively few security incidents at the prison. A spokesman for the Irish Prison Service said of the Dóchas Centre: ‘Most of our long-term prisoners we don’t have any problems with at all. They know they are in for the long haul. They just put their heads down and get on with their lives. They generally get involved in a lot of the training and education programmes too. They need to do things to fill their days. It’s the remand prisoners who are usually the most volatile. We get to know our long-term prisoners very well; we know their personalities. For the women who are here long-term, the worst thing you can do is nothing.’

  Linda finally exhausted all legal avenues in July 2010 when the Court of Criminal Appeal delivered its verdict on her appeal against her conviction and sentence. Linda’s legal team had gone back to court to argue that Mr Justice Paul Carney should not have sentenced her without reading the full psychological report on her, which had not been completed when she was first convicted. The three-judge appeal court said in its judgement:

  In light of the severity of the crime, its nature, and the evidence tendered by gardaí at the sentencing hearing as to the particular circumstances of the applicant, this court concludes that it would not be possible in this case to have full regard for the established principles of sentencing, without the reports sought to be procured on behalf of the applicant. In that sense, and in that sense only, the learned sentencing judge erred in law. The court refrains at this time from passing any comment on whether the sentence actually imposed is or is not unduly severe, or on the question as to whether any part of the custodial sentence should or should not have been suspended. It is both inappropriate and impossible to reach a conclusion on these matters without having the benefit of the above referred to reports.

  While this was somewhat critical of Judge Carney, the court determined that the eighteen-year sentence handed to Mulhall, with the final three suspended, was appropriate given the nature of her crime. As to whether she had been provoked by Noor’s behaviour on the night, it was ruled that this had been accepted by the jury in the original trial, hence her being convicted of manslaughter and not murder, like Charlotte. This ruling meant that once and for all Linda had to accept that she would serve at least ten years behind bars. Prison sources said she was not overly surprised at the outcome and took it
quite well.

  In October 2010 the brutal case of the Scissor Sisters and Farah Noor was brought to the small screen by TV3 reporter Dyane Connor, who presented the 24 hours to Kill series. Professor of criminology at Birmingham City University, David Wilson, gave Connor an interview in which he said he believes the drink- and drug-fuelled crime would have given the sisters terrible nightmares. ‘It’s a journey into a dark side of the human psyche. I’ve no doubt that both Linda and Charlotte still think about what happened on that night and probably still have nightmares about it. This is clearly a murder that takes place after the sisters have been using drink and especially drugs for a long and sustained period of time. Without doubt the alcohol and drug abuse distorts the way they think about events. It’s that context … that gives the power to this particular murder,’ Professor Wilson said.

  Wilson was especially struck by how Linda Mulhall had struggled to come to terms with the horrible crime she had committed. ‘The most successful murderers I’ve dealt with have been able to compartmentalise their feelings after the death. They can commit horrific crimes and do horrific things to their victims but then put that into a box, metaphorically, and park it. They leave it somewhere and return to their normal lives. Linda seems to have been unable to do that. What was in that box leaked out constantly.’