The Irish Scissor Sisters (28 page)

‘So the arrangement was that you and Linda would say that youse killed him?’ Det Gda Murray asked and Charlotte nodded her head. ‘Whose idea was that?’

‘Ours,’ Charlotte claimed.

She then went on to say that Kathleen had brought her and Linda down to the canal two or three days after the murder and pointed out the spot where Farah’s remains lay, under Clarke’s Bridge. Linda’s children were also supposedly there.

‘Why did youse go down to the canal that day, two or three days later? Why did youse go down to the canal?’ Detective Murray asked.

‘She wanted to see if she could see anything, Charlotte replied.

‘What did you see?’ Detective Keys enquired.

‘We didn’t see anything.’

‘Nothing?’

‘She just pointed out to us whereabouts it was, but you couldn’t see anything,’ Charlotte coldly stated.

The detectives asked Charlotte to go into detail about these claims that her mother was responsible for the murder of Farah Noor. Det Gda Murray asked her, ‘And what did she say she’d done to him?’

‘She told us that she hit him with a hammer and cut his throat,’ she claimed.

‘What else?’ asked Keys, pushing her for more details.

‘She said when he was dead she cut him up; she panicked,’ the twenty-two-year-old answered.

‘Did she describe how she cut him up?’ wondered Detective Keys.

‘With a knife, she said,’ answered Charlie.

‘Did she say she used anything else?’ continued Keys.

‘Just a knife and a hammer.’

‘Describe the scene,’ Keys requested.

‘There was blood everywhere’

‘In what way everywhere?’ he pushed.

‘Pools of blood,’ she said.

‘Whereabouts in the flat?’

‘In the bedroom, in the middle of the floor and everywhere in the bathroom, the bathroom walls, all the walls were just red,’ Charlotte matter-of-factly said. She didn’t seem to feel emotional, despite the horrific scene she had witnessed.

‘Was there any of him left when youse got there?’ asked Detective Murray.

‘No,’ claimed Charlie.

‘Hmm,’ he scoffed. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Was your mother covered in blood?’ asked Det Gda Keys.

‘Yeah, she had blood on her clothes and on her hands,’ the pregnant woman answered.

‘What about her face, her hair?’ Keys queried.

‘Yeah there was blood in her hair.’

‘Very noticeable, was it?’ asked the detective garda.

‘Describe it for us.’

‘Just everywhere – her clothes were soaked; all her hair was soaking,’ Charlotte said.

‘And what about her face?’ continued Keys.

‘Only a little bit on her face,’ she claimed.

Detective Gardaí Adrian Murray and Kevin Keys are both highly experienced detectives who have investigated numerous murders in their careers. They were all too aware that when somebody stabs a person to death and cuts up a body the murder scene would be like an abattoir, with blood absolutely everywhere, especially on the killer. They did not believe a word of Charlotte Mulhall’s story.

Detective Keys then asked her: ‘Are you suggesting to us that your mother killed Farah and cut him up to such an extent that there was blood on the walls, on the floors of the toilet and the bedroom and she herself was covered in blood, and that while she was covered in blood as you described, she brought the body parts down to the canal. Is that what you’re suggesting to us?’

‘Yeah,’ Charlotte answered quietly.

‘Think about it,’ he pleaded with her.

‘I know what I’m saying to you,’ she stated, sticking to her story.

‘It’s lies, Charlotte, isn’t it?’ Detective Murray said.

‘It’s not lies.’

‘The evidence we have doesn’t support that story, simple as that. Charlotte, don’t come in and make a liar of yourself,’ Det Gda Keys told her.

‘It’s not lies,’ she insisted.

‘It’s not the full truth. It’s not the full truth, is it?” he queried, staring directly at Charlotte.

Det Gda Adrian Murray then spoke, saying: ‘There is no way you’d have come into the flat with your ma covered in blood and then have to ask her, where’s Farah.’

‘You’re not going to think something like that, are you?’ the prisoner replied.

‘Well you’re after telling us she was covered in blood, her hair, her clothes, her hands; her hair was soaked. So why would you have to ask a stupid question, where’s Farah?’ Murray wondered incredulously.

‘Yeah, but you’re not going to think she’s after killing her boyfriend,’ Charlie said.

‘Because it didn’t happen,’ Murray answered.

‘It did happen,’ she insisted.

‘It did happen that he was killed but it’s not happening the way you’re saying it,’ said Murray.

‘It is happening,’ she insisted.

‘It’s impossible. There’s no way youse would have come in and asked her, “Hey Mam, where’s Farah?”’ Murray insisted.

His colleague intervened, adding, ‘That story is not correct. It may be based on a true story but it’s not a true story. What you’ve told us there is not correct.’

‘It is correct,’ Charlie promised.

‘It can’t be: that yourself and Linda arrived back, after being out in town, she’s covered in blood, dripping in blood is what you’re basically describing, and you have to ask her a simple question, “Where’s Farah?” Where do you think he is? Don’t be so ridiculous now,’ Murray said.

The two detectives were now starting to put more pressure on Charlotte to see if she’d crack.

‘We thought Farah was after being hitting her, as he usually does,’ Charlotte responded.

‘Tell us the truth about what happened,’ Detective Keys ordered her.

‘That is the truth,’ she said.

‘That’s not the truth,’ he replied.

‘That is the truth,’ Charlotte insisted.

‘That’s not the truth,’ Keys stated.

‘It is the truth,’ the twenty-two-year-old said.

‘So you thought Farah was after hitting her like he always did? Did Farah hit her once too often, is that what happened?’ Murray asked.

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there,’ Charlotte replied.

‘Ha!’ Murray guffawed. ‘You were there.’

‘I wasn’t there when it happened and Linda wasn’t there either.’

‘So you’re telling me you got down on your hands and your knees and you mopped and cleaned up blood and guts and bone and kidneys and any bit of his inside, you picked them up and never asked your mother, “Why did you do this?” ’ a disbelieving Detective Murray asked.

‘Of course I asked her why,’ said Charlotte.

‘But you said you don’t know why?’ Murray queried.

‘She said if she didn’t do it he would have killed her,’ Charlotte said.

‘Why were you down cleaning up another man’s blood and guts?’ the detective wondered.

‘’Cause she’s my mother,’ she replied quietly.

‘There wasn’t just guts down there and blood, sure there wasn’t? What else was there?’ asked Det Gda Murray.

‘Pieces of skin everywhere,’ Charlie said.

‘What about his head?’ Det Gda Kevin Keys asked.

‘She won’t tell me where it is,’ Charlotte claimed.

‘You have to remember that we’re able to prove certain things and that’s what you have to remember and you’re telling us a story but it doesn’t add up,’ said Detective Garda Keys. ‘This is a huge investigation and we have a serious amount of evidence but the story you are telling us doesn’t fit, it just doesn’t fit, and all I’m saying to you is don’t tell lies. Tell us the truth, that’s all we want, the complete truth. It’s not worth it to go through what you’re going through ’cause you’re telling us things we know for a fact are lies,’ he pleaded.

The interview had been going on for nearly two hours and both detectives knew they were on the brink of a breakthrough. The evidence against Charlotte, however, was slim. All that gardaí had was Linda’s word that her sister was involved. If the officers didn’t manage to get her to admit it, there was little chance of charging her with Farah’s murder. All the gardaí involved in the case knew they were playing for high stakes.

‘She won’t tell us where the head is. No, it’s not the truth. We did bring the body down to the canal with her,’ Charlotte said.

After sticking to her story for months, Charlotte had just admitted that she and Linda had disposed of Farah Noor’s body. She had just implicated herself in the murder.

‘Go on,’ Keys told her.

‘When we came back to the house she had it all in bags. She had all the pieces in bags. And the three of us had a bag and we just walked down and put it in the canal. Yeah, but I really don’t know where she put the head,’ Charlotte said, still emotionless.

‘That’s not the truth either,’ Detective Murray said.

‘It is the truth. They were sports bags,’ she insisted.

‘Oh, sports bags. So what was in the bag you carried?’

‘I don’t know; I just carried the bags. Legs and arms I think,’ Charlie said, with a stony expression.

‘What time of day was this?’ asked Keys.

‘Half-seven.’

‘And how long were you in the house before you left with the bags?’ he enquired.

‘I don’t know; about an hour,’ Charlie said.

‘What were you doing for the hour?’ Detective Keys wondered.

‘Getting her to tell us what she’d done and trying to calm her down,’ she stated.

‘What did she say she was after doing?’ Murray asked.

‘She said they were fighting and she hit him with a hammer and she cut his throat.’

‘Charlotte, will you tell us the whole truth now and don’t be skirting around it? You’re coming and going, just tell the whole truth,’ Detective Adrian Murray requested.

‘It is the whole truth I’m telling you.’

‘Your mother didn’t cut up that body on her own,’ asserted Keys.

‘She did.’

Murray tried a different approach, gently saying, ‘Does it hurt you to go through it over again? Is that the problem? It can’t be easy talking about it.’

‘It’s not easy talking about it,’ she agreed.

‘But we are gonna have to get to the bottom of it, Charlotte. Do you understand that you’re gonna have to explain it some time?’

Charlotte again insisted that she was telling the truth, but the two detectives pointed out that she had been saying that ten minutes before and she had now changed her story. She then told them that she was lying about Farah’s head. ‘She had it in the house,’ Charlotte admitted.

‘Whereabouts?’ asked Keys.

‘In the back garden,’

‘Did you see it?’ the detective asked.

‘No. I can’t tell you anything else,’ she maintained.

The pregnant woman then went back into her shell and swore that she and Linda had arrived back at the flat to find Farah’s body packed in bags beside the bedroom door.

The two detectives decided to change topics and quizzed her about what she and Linda had done in town when they’d left Kathleen and Farah alone at Richmond Cottages.

She said that she and Linda were walking around the streets and met ‘loads of people’ and got a bag of heroin from a Chinese man for €20 and started smoking it. She told them that they went up Marlborough Street, where she usually hangs around, and then to O’Connell Street.

Detective Kevin Keys reminded her that they would know that she wasn’t telling the truth. ‘All over town, you know, we have hundreds of CCTV tapes, thousands and thousands of hours of tapes, all relating to that period of time and you’re on some of them. You’re aware of that, you know that?’

Charlotte still maintained she was giving them the full story. She repeated that when they got back to her mother’s flat: ‘She had all the pieces in bags. And the three of us had a bag and we just walked down and put it in the canal.’

Detective Murray then asked her about the bags and if there were: ‘bits of legs sticking out or bits of arm sticking out. It’s not nice, sure its not? Fingers, they’re all real living parts. There had to be feet sticking out or fingers. Bits of body just don’t fit neatly into a bag and you can zip it up.’

The two skilled detectives worked together to try to get Charlotte to tell the truth. Detective Keys said that he understood that she had gone through a difficult ordeal because: ‘We saw the parts as they were coming out of the canal. We were there; we can only imagine what it was like. I know what it was like myself and I can only imagine and understand what it was like when you were there.’

Charlotte ignored his sympathetic approach and said that after dumping the body the three women spent five or six hours cleaning the flat and ‘there was a disgusting smell’. She told them the head was in the back garden and was stored there for a few days after the murder, before the bin men took it away along with the sports bags used to transport the limbs to the water.

The guards knew that she was holding the full truth back. Detective Keys asked her how were they expected to believe her: ‘Here you are saying you came back to a flat that was covered in blood – walls, floors, pools of blood, bits of bone, skin, everything – everywhere. A man has been murdered, obviously. You help, you say, to carry his body or bits of his body down to a canal and you tip it into the canal and you don’t bother to find out why the man has died?’

She maintained that she was telling them the truth and said that it was Linda who was lying to them: ‘She’s crazy, really, saying that she done things and she didn’t. What thanks is she getting for it anyway off me ma. Why should she take the blame for something that she didn’t do?’

Detectives Murray and Keys said it didn’t make any sense that Linda would confess to a gruesome murder if she hadn’t done it.

Charlotte told them: ‘I think she’s fucking mental to be honest with you because she’s saying she done things that she didn’t do, just to protect me mam.’

She said that her relationship with Kathleen was now fraught. ‘Things are after changing now. Sure the woman hasn’t rang me, hasn’t done nothing ... I’ve tried to get through to the woman so many times. No one ever knows where she is; well, I don’t.’

Just as the interview was about to be completed, Charlie became emotional for the first time. She got upset when she was asked about her mother supposedly cutting up Farah. The two men asked her why she was crying and she replied, ‘It’s not a very nice thing,’ before adding, when they asked what the dead man had meant to her, ‘I just knew him.’