Scissor Sisters killing dubbed one of most macabre by criminal expert

A LEADING international criminal profiler has dubbed the Scissor Sisters killing as one of the most macabre crimes ever carried out.

In a new TV3 series, 24 Hours to Kill, the day leading up to the murder of Kenyan Fareh Swaleh Noor by Charlotte and Linda Mulhall is put under the spotlight by leading police and forensic experts.

Linda and Charlotte Mulhall were jailed in 2006 for killing their mother’s lover, Farah Swaleh Noor, and cutting his body up. His head has never been found.

Professor of Criminology at Birmingham City University, David Wilson, said he believes the drink and drug-fuelled crime would have given the sisters 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 sister has 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 seems to me that gives the power to this particular murder.”

Dr Derek Carson, former State Pathologist for the North, said it was a frenzied killing with 22 stab wounds to the torso.

He said: “These involved the heart, the lungs, the stomach, the liver and one kidney. There was ample reason for the death in the stab wounds alone.”

And he said the butchering of the body by the sisters in their mother’s Dublin cottage would have been gruesome.

He said: “The soft tissues and the skin and muscle can be cut quite easily with sharp knife but the big problem is bones.

“How do you get through the bone? With ordinary kitchen implements it’s not easy.”

Retired detective Garda Daniel Kenna, who investigated the murder, said the case was one of the worst killings he had ever encountered.

“I have worked on a lot of murders and murder is murder but I think in this circumstance, the fact that the body was mutilated in the way it was after the killing and the fact that it was done by women made it particularly gruesome.”

The former detective describes how the brothers of the Mulhall sisters gave their sisters and their mother up to the police.

After James and John Mulhall told officers their sisters had killed the Kenyan victim Linda Mulhall confessed to officers.

Professor Wilson said Linda Mulhall had difficulty coming to terms with the horror of the crime she 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.”

Their mother, Kathleen, abandoned her daughters to go on the run before their trial in 2006.

Mother-of-one, Charlotte Mulhall, now 27, was found guilty of murder and given a life sentence while mother-of-four Linda Mulhall, now 35, was found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 15 years.

Two years later mother Kathleen pleaded guilty to cleaning up a crime scene and was jailed for five years. She joined Linda and Charlotte in the women’s prison in Mountjoy.

l24 Hours to Kill will be shown on TV3 on Thursday at 9pm.