Gory details of gruesome crime recalled

THE awful and gory details of one of the most gruesome murders ever committed in this country were revisited this week when the mother of the so-called Scissor Sisters was finally brought to court for her part in the monstrous crime.

It began as a drinking session on Dublin city’s boardwalk in March 2005 and ended in a blood-drenched frenzy of violence later that day.

Kathleen Mulhall, a 53-year-old working class mother-of-six, was no stranger to drink and drugs-related violence, but what happened in her Richmond Cottages, Ballybough home was off the scale of any brutality she might have experienced in her lifetime.

Drinking with Kathleen that day in Dublin was her abusive African boyfriend Farah Swaleh Noor and her daughters Charlotte, then 25, and 32-year-old Linda. Kathleen Mulhall had left her husband John and had become involved in a relationship with Mr Noor in 2001. The pair lived in Cork for a time before they returned to Dublin in 2004.

Back at Richmond Cottages on that fatal night, more drink and drugs were consumed and a row broke out between Noor and Mulhall’s daughters.

Using a hammer and a carpet knife Linda and Charlotte killed 38-year-old Noor in a frenzy of bloodletting. Kathleen Mulhall claimed she had not witnessed the killing which took place behind the locked door of a bedroom.

Her daughters dismembered his body, cutting off his head, penis, arms and legs off with a bread knife and other implements.

The head was never recovered, the other body parts were after youths reported seeing a leg sticking out of the waterin the Royal Canal.

After cutting up the body, the “Scissor Sisters” made several trips to Dublin’s Royal Canal, carrying body parts in bags and throwing the grisly evidence into the water.

Mulhall told gardaí that she and her daughters cleaned up the room the next day.

When asked why she did not report the killing, Kathleen Mulhall told gardaí: “Why do you think, because of my children.”

Gardaí, at first, thought the killing had been a ritual one, and travelled to Africa as part of the inquiry.

Kathleen’s estranged husband, John, described as a hard-working individual, hanged himself in Dublin’s Phoenix Park in December 2005. Gardaí believed the shock of the case proved to be too much for him.

One year later, in December 2006, his daughters, Charlotte and Linda, were convicted respectively of Noor’s murder and manslaughter.

In February, 2008, Kathleen Mulhall, who had fled to England during her daughters’ trial, surrendered to gardaí.

Mulhall broke down sobbing in the Central Criminal Court this week as lawyers pleaded for leniency over her role in covering up the killing.

The Court heard how Mulhall had wanted to take the blame for the murder of Noor four years ago.

Her barrister claimed his client had been abused by her parents, husband and later Mr Noor but had never fallen into trouble and had no previous convictions.