Mother ‘offered to take blame’

THE girlfriend of Kenyan murder victim Farah Swaleh Noor cleaned up the crime scene to protect her two daughters, who had killed him, the Central Criminal Court heard yesterday.

The court also heard that she offered to take the blame for her boyfriend’s death.

Kathleen Mulhall, 53, St Mary’s Park, Carlow, pleaded guilty in February to helping to clean up the crime scene in order to conceal evidence and prevent the apprehension of her daughters, knowing that Mr Noor had been murdered at Richmond Cottages, Ballybough, on March 21, 2005.

Mulhall will be sentenced on Friday morning by Mr Justice Paul Carney at the Central Criminal Court, sitting at Cloverhill.

In December 2006 her daughters, Charlotte, 25, and Linda, 32, were convicted, respectively, of Mr Noor’s murder and manslaughter.

Yesterday, Gda Sheelagh Sheehan told the court that their mother was in a relationship with Mr Noor, whose dismembered body was found in the Royal Canal, Dublin, in 2005.

His head and penis were cut off and he had suffered multiple stab wounds to the trunk. His body was identified using DNA evidence.

During the investigation into Mr Noor’s death, Kathleen Mulhall was interviewed six times by gardaí.

She said that she had last seen Mr Noor in March 2005. She told Mr Noor’s employers that he had gone to Kilkenny.

On August 3, 2005, she told gardaí she knew nothing about Mr Noor’s death and had only heard about his death the day before.

She was interviewed once again over a month later. On this occasion she told gardaí that she had been drinking with Mr Noor and her two daughters on the boardwalk in Dublin on the day of the killing.

All four ended up in Mulhall’s flat at Ballybough.

There was a disagreement between Mr Noor and Mulhall’s daughters, who went into a bedroom. Mulhall did not go in.

She told gardaí that she heard “roaring and shouting” and that Linda came out of the room, covered in blood and told her that Mr Noor was dead.

She went into the bedroom and saw that Mr Noor was not breathing.

“I was dragged out. They slammed the door shut.

“I did not get back in.”

She said that she did not see Mr Noor being killed.

Mulhall also told gardaí that she and her daughters cleaned up the room the next day. When asked why she did not report the killing, she told gardaí: “Why do you think, because of my children.”

Kathleen Mulhall was released from Garda custody in September 2005. Gardaí were not able to locate her again until January 2008. She had been living in England.

Gardaí travelled to London in February 2008 and met with her. She said she wanted to return to Ireland. When she returned she was interviewed and said she did not tell the gardaí what had happened in order to “protect her daughters”.

The court heard that she had been in a relationship with Mr Noor since 2002, that the relationship was “abusive” and Kathleen Mulhall had “suffered a lot”. Her counsel, Hugh Hartnett SC, said Mr Noor was “violent and abusive”.

Kathleen Mulhall will be sentenced this Friday. The maximum possible sentence is 10 years.