The Irish Scissor Sisters (24 page)

This was the final time that Farah Swaleh Noor would appear on the gardaí’s radar until his dismembered body was fished out of the Royal Canal.

from garda custody on 3 August, she came under sustained pressure at home to go and confess to the guards. Her father knew that Linda had snapped and murdered Farah Noor with Charlotte, after the Kenyan had made sexual advances towards her. The two of them spoke at length about what had happened. John knew that his daughter was having trouble sleeping and was in a dark place because of the murder. Linda was haunted by what she had done.

She had initially been very cocky after being questioned and was going around the house saying, ‘They’ve nothing on us; we’re in the clear.’ She had thought that surviving twelve hours of police grilling meant that it was all over, but her confidence was to be short-lived. She hit the bottle hard and wasn’t looking after her kids properly. Linda’s Dad was left trying to work full-time and look after a house that often had nine people staying in it. Andrew and Marie were living with their father and with Linda and her children also in the house, it was very crowded.

It got to the stage where his eldest daughter couldn’t even look at her children. It was almost as if she wasn’t their mother at all, she was so cold towards them. When she’d had her pregnancy scare in early April she’d realised that the last thing she wanted, at this difficult time in her life, was to have another child. When the hospital had told her it was a false alarm at least that had been one worry off her mind.

As the days passed, Linda gradually began to realise that the murder investigation wasn’t going to go away. She knew that the guards would keep knocking at her door until they got to the truth. It was very tense in the house and Linda’s younger sister Marie hadn’t been talking to her since the arrests. When she heard that the police had searched the river at the back of the house belonging to John Mulhall’s employer, Marie lost the plot completely. She tackled her sister in the kitchen at Kilclare Gardens, shouting, ‘Loads of people who had nothing to do with the killing of Farah Noor are being dragged into Farah’s death.’ Marie warned Linda that if she didn’t go to the police and tell them what she knew then she’d go to Tallaght Garda Station herself. Marie threatened to tell the guards that Charlotte had confessed to her a couple of days after they carried out the murder.

The two women had a blazing row and Linda said that she was in the clear and that the guards had no evidence. Their father was in the kitchen at the time and Marie said that if Linda didn’t come clean she would leave the house for good. She went away and John told Linda that things were getting too complicated. He said it would be better for everyone if she spoke to the police. She agreed and John then phoned Marie and told her that he was going to ring the guards. He said he would get them to come to see Linda because she’d agreed to tell them everything.

John spoke to Sergeant Liam Hickey, who arranged a meeting with Detective Inspector Christy Mangan on the morning of 17 August. John met DI Mangan in Cork Street and told him to come over to the house in Tallaght later that evening to speak with Linda. He told the inspector that she knew where the head was buried. He said she was their only hope if they ever wanted to recover it.

DI Mangan and Sgt Hickey called to 31 Kilclare Gardens at 7.30 p.m. that evening. John welcomed them in and they sat in the front room of the house, waiting for Linda to come back from Kevin Street, where she was picking up her dole cheque. John rang her mobile a few times and she told him that she was nearly home and would see the police then. At 8.45 p.m. there was still no sign of her so the two guards left and told John Mulhall that they’d rearrange the meeting for a few days later. Linda was not in town collecting her dole. She was so messed up over what she had done to Farah that she had cut her arms in what could have been a very amateurish suicide attempt. Either way she was in Tallaght Hospital getting treatment.

Two days later, on 19 August, the same gardaí again went to the house. They shook John Mulhall’s hand as he invited them into the front room where they eagerly waited to meet Linda. The mother-of-four came into the room, sat on a chair and lit a cigarette.

DI Christy Mangan told Linda her father had asked them to come to speak with her about the death of Farah Swaleh Noor and asked if she had anything to tell them. She was very nervous and told him she knew nothing about Farah’s murder and couldn’t help them. She admitted to them that she had cut her arms on purpose and showed them her injuries but she said she was grand and had previously self-harmed. Her father served tea while she chatted with the detectives, who informed her that the investigation was not going to go away and that they were searching a stretch of river in Leixlip as part of the investigation.

Linda listened to what the men had to say but again said that she couldn’t help them. DI Mangan said that he would be talking to other family members who would tell him if she was lying. John Mulhall then left the room to take a call on his mobile from his daughter Marie. While he was gone, Linda still said nothing.

After about twenty minutes of silence the guards decided to leave her for the moment. As John Mulhall walked them to their car, he asked them if Linda had told them where the head was buried. They shook their heads but Mulhall said, ‘She knows where it is.’ He promised to get his daughter Marie to make a full statement the following Saturday telling them what she knew, because Linda had spoken to her about the murder over the previous five months.

Less than three hours after the two detectives left Kilclare Gardens DI Mangan was on patrol in Coolock when his mobile phone rang. It was Linda Mulhall and she was in tears and sobbing. She said, ‘Christopher, Christopher I need to talk to you. Will you come back at five o’clock to talk?’

DI Mangan asked her did she want to discuss the murder and when she told him she did, he arranged to see her at 4.45 p.m.

Linda Mulhall was waiting for DI Mangan and Sgt Hickey in her bedroom, which was in a specially built shed in the back garden of the Tallaght house. She was sitting at the top of her bed with John Mulhall and said she ‘wanted to tell the truth of what happened with Farah’. She asked if her dad would leave the room because she wanted to be by herself when she confessed.

Over the next hour and a quarter, a tearful Linda told the two officers exactly what had happened on that fateful night of 20 March. She started from when her mother had rung the sisters and arranged to meet her and Charlotte on O’Connell Street and finished with a detailed description of how she had murdered Noor. She took a number of breaks to go to the toilet in the main house and spoke to her daughters while she was gone.

When she came back at 6.15 p.m. she agreed to make a full written statement but didn’t want to go to Tallaght Station to record her confession. She was officially cautioned and read her rights and over the next ninety minutes Sergeant Liam Hickey wrote down Linda’s words as she emotionally described how the murder had ruined her life and made her a nervous wreck. She signed her statement at 8 p.m.

When Linda finished her official statement she agreed to show gardaí the spot where Farah Swaleh Noor’s head was buried. She hugged her father as she got into the patrol car with DI Mangan and Sgt Hickey. She directed them past the Jobstown Inn and left up a small road, past a golf course to Killinarden Hill. Linda told Sgt Hickey to stop the car as they drove past an innocuous field on the left-hand side of the road. The entrance into the field was covered with rubbish bags and was protected by thick barbed wire. DI Mangan held down the barbed wire with his foot while Linda crouched under it and entered the field, which was littered with rubbish and burnt-out cars. They walked about 300 feet to the right of the field, past a burnt-out car and towards a ditch. Linda walked into the entrance and got down the bank into the ditch. A black pipe lay covered in muck and grass and the thirty-year-old said she recognised it from when she was there the last time. The pipe was lying on the bed of a small stream.

She later stated: ‘I walked into a far field and kissed the bag and told Farah I was sorry. I stayed there for ages, a long time. I had a bottle of vodka with me. I drank all of it. I took the hammer out of the bag. I left the head in the bag and hit the head loads of times to try and break it up. I fell asleep and woke up cold. It was starting to get dark. There was a mucky patch there and I turned away and pulled the head out of the bag. I put muck over it and said a prayer and told him I was sorry and said it should not be you, it should be me ma. I burned the plastic bag up there and the school bag and I ran home to bed. I am sorry for what happened. It is not my fault it happened, I’m sorry. If I could turn back time, I would. I am sorry.’

She then described how she used all her energy to throw the hammer about sixty feet into the deserted field. DI Christy Mangan took Linda by the arm and helped her out of the ditch. They then turned left and walked a short distance to an adjoining piece of land because she said she wanted to make sure she was in the right place. Finally she said ‘this is it’ and they continued back to the squad car. The mystery over the death of Noor was now effectively solved. Despite the extensive searches that took place in the field and Linda’s full co-operation, Farah Noor’s head was never recovered.

Linda was relieved that she had finally gotten the murder off her chest and now had no problem going to the local garda station to record what she had said earlier on tape. DI Mangan spoke to Sgt Mick Leahy at 9.15 p.m. and he made an interview room available.

When they were settled in the station Linda was cautioned. She was told that she could leave at any time and then Sgt Liam Hickey slowly and carefully read out her earlier statement. She cried continuously as her words were read out and DI Mangan decided that she’d had enough emotional trauma for one day.

They drove Linda home at around 10 p.m. On the short drive back to Kilclare Gardens, she told the officers that the next day she would show them where the head had originally been buried in Sean Walsh Park. She also agreed to point out where the murder weapons had been dumped.

John Mulhall came out of Number 31 when the car pulled in and he shook DI Christy Mangan’s hand. Linda got out of the car and grabbed DI Mangan and embraced him, amid floods of tears. The emotions of hiding the terrible secret for nearly five months were overflowing. As the guards left, John brought his distraught daughter into the house.

Marie saw her and asked her if she told the guards the whole story.

‘I’ve told them everything,’ Linda answered. ‘Me and Ma and Charlotte took his head to Sean Walsh Park but I went back and dug it up and put it in a field in Killinarden Park.’

‘I don’t want to know any more,’ said Marie. ‘Now you’ve told them they can leave Da alone and can deal with you and the others.’

The two women never discussed the case again after that. Although the two gardaí had made massive progress that day their work was only beginning. As they drove back to Fitzgibbon Street, they had to mobilise uniformed gardaí to seal off the field in Killinarden Hill. A full forensic examination and detailed search would take place at first light the next day for fragments of Noor’s head and skull. Linda had also told the detectives that she’d stored the head in some bushes in a place called Killinarden Park the night before she buried it in Killinarden Hill. Killinarden Park is a large green area, close to the church, in the heavily populated Killinarden Estate in Tallaght. Arrangements would have to be made for this location to be searched as well.