Scissor SistersIn March 2006, a severed leg was found floating near Croke Park in Cork, Ireland. Further body parts were found and the subsequent murder investigation linked the victim to the Mulhall family. A subsequent manhunt and confession led to the imprisonment of the victim’s partner, and her two daughters, who were nicknamed the “Scissor Sisters” by the press, for the brutal manner in which they carried out the killing.
When a member of the public was walking near Croke Park and Ballybough Bridge in Dublin on March 30, 2005, they saw something strange floating in the water of the Royal Canal. As they moved closer, they realised it was a severed human leg with a sock attached to the foot. When officers of the Garda Síochána arrived on the scene, they began a search of the water.
Garda sub-aqua divers carried out a search of the canal, where they located most of the rest of the body, which had been dismembered into seven parts. The remains had been placed inside black plastic bags and a sports bag before being dumped into the water. The only parts not retrieved were the head and penis of the male victim.
It was presumed that the killer had removed the head to prevent identification, forcing detectives to launch an appeal to the public as they set about trying to identify the victim. One notable piece of evidence was an Irish away soccer jersey found with the remains that provided a vital clue that helped narrow down potential matches in the Dublin area.
The body parts were believed to have been submerged in the water for 10 days, leaving the skin an exceptionally pale colour. As a result, forensic teams initially assumed the victim was Caucasian, however this was soon disputed when advanced forensic testing corrected the initial racial assumption, revealing that the torso belonged to a Black African man.
After cross-referencing the DNA profile with missing persons and local criminal records, police were able to confirm the identity of the victim as 40-year-old Farah Swaleh Noor, an Irish citizen whose past was clouded in misinformation. Police were now determined to identify who had killed Noor, and ultimately, the reason for his gruesome murder.
When he arrived in Ireland in 1996, Farah Swaleh Noor claimed his name was “Sheilila Salim” and he was Somali whose family had been killed in Mogadishu during the civil war in that country. Subsequent investigations into this claim led police to discover he had in fact been born in Kenya, and his family were still alive.
Noor had originally been ordered to be deported by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, however an appeal in March 1999 saw him granted Irish citizenship because he had become the father of an Irish-born child. The circumstances of the birth of Noor’s son was found to be the result of criminality.
In 1997, Noor had raped a mentally disabled 16-year-old Chinese girl, and she later gave birth to a son. He had four previous convictions for offences including intoxication, threatening and abusive behaviour and assault. At the later murder trial, two women claimed to have had children by Noor, and that both births were the product of rape.
His criminal record also listed eight charges of disorder and assault, one of which involved a sexual assault in which a knife was found at the scene by gardaí. On three of these occasions he was convicted, but never served any time in jail. Noor was known to police as a particularly violent individual, especially towards women.
With an aggressive media campaign, police identified Noor, with significant help from Crimestoppers through a public appeal. One of the most important pieces of evidence in identifying the victim was the Irish away soccer jersey found with the remain. Authorities printed thousands of appeal leaflets featuring a photograph of the jersey and a physical description of the man.
These leaflets were translated into several African languages and distributed specifically to the local African community in Dublin. Soon police gained their first big break in the case when a tip-off came in from a man who claimed to be a friend of the dead man, who saw the newspaper appeals and called the confidential Crimestoppers tip line.
That key witness, a Somali man who was a friend of Farah Swaleh Noor, provided the crucial breakthrough that allowed Gardaí to formally identify the body. The man connected his missing friend with a family who lived locally, the Mulhall’s. For his assistance in the case, the caller was paid a “substantial” reward by Crimestoppers.
On August 3, 2005, police made arrests in the case. 50-year-old Kathleen Mulhall, her ex-husband John Mulhall, 53, and their two daughters, 30-year-old Linda Mulhall and 21-year-old Charlotte Mulhall were taken into custody in relation to the death of Farah Swaleh Noor. Each of the Mulhall’s denied any knowledge of the killing.
All four suspects were questioned but admitted no involvement. Charlotte Mulhall, the eldest daughter, claimed she and Linda had been out drinking all night when Noor was believed to have been killed. She stated they merely returned home to find their mother covered in blood.
The family members were consequently released without charge, leaving the investigation at a complete standstill. A number of weeks later John Mulhall contacted detective Christy Mangan, the lead investigator on the Noor murder case and suggested the he come directly to the family home in Tallaght.
When Mangan arrived, he was told that Linda Mulhall wished to talk with him. Rather than conduct the interview as a standard high-pressure interrogation, Mangan sat down with Linda in her kitchen and together they share a casual cup of tea. Sensing that Linda was an emotionally fragile woman who had lived a highly volatile life, Mangan treated her with empathy and understanding.
Linda told Mangan that the murder of Farah Swaleh Noor was weighing heavily on her conscience, and during the conversation, she broke down and admitted that she “could not get the smell of Farah’s intestines out of her nose,” before going on to provide a detailed confession to a crime that had caused her immense psychological distress.
Over the course of their conversation, Linda formally agreed to cooperate to detective Mangan, before confessing that she was responsible for hitting Farah Swaleh Noor with a hammer while her sister Charlotte slashed his throat. She eventually agreed to show investigators exactly where she and her sister had hidden Noor’s severed head.
The Garda Síochána carried out a search of the flat at the Mulhall’s flat at Richmond Cottages in the Ballybough/Summerhill area of Dublin, which provided definitive forensic proof that a crime had taken place at the property. Initially, the flat appeared to be completely clean. However, the Garda technical unit utilized advanced forensic methods to uncover hidden evidence.
Investigators used Luminol and other chemical enhancements to find hidden blood traces, and successfully located microscopic bloodstains embedded in the flat that were positively matched to the DNA of Farah Swaleh Noor. From the forensic evidence found at the flat, the sequence of events that led to the crime were slowly revealed.
Forensics confirmed that an initial attack occurred in the bedroom, while stains aligned with Linda Mulhall’s confession that Noor was struck with a hammer near a bunk bed before being dragged into the bathroom where his body was dismembered. The search revealed heavy, deep residues of cleaning chemicals and bleach, proving that the scene had been actively and meticulously scrubbed in an effort to destroy evidence.
Shortly after Linda’s confession, her mother Kathleen Mulhall fled the country in September 2005 and gardaí were unable to locate her whereabouts. Meanwhile, Charlotte and Linda Mulhall were both charged with murder and gave not guilty pleas during their appearance at the Central Criminal Court.
Several months after Linda’s confession, the girls’ father, John Mulhall, died by suicide in December 2005. Although he initially been arrested and questioned about the murder of Farah Swaleh Noor, investigators believed he not at the Mulhall’s flat at Richmond Cottages on the night of the murder, and had no involvement in the crime.
The trial of Linda and Charlotte Mulhall took place over the course of 13 days in October 2006 at Dublin’s Central Criminal Court. During the almost two week trial, disturbing and horrific details about the murder of Farah Swaleh Noor were heard as evidence before presiding Judge Paul Carney, which led to the proceedings becoming one of the most sensationalized and macabre trials in modern Irish history.
The prosecution presented a highly detailed timeline of the March 2005 killing of Farah Swaleh Noor, who at the time of his death was the partner of the sisters’ mother, Kathleen Mulhall. The court heard that on the day of the killing, Linda, Charlotte, their mother and Farah Swaleh Noor had been drinking heavily in Dublin city centre.
The four then returned to Kathleen Mulhall’s flat at Richmond Cottages where the three women took ecstasy and vodka. The court was told that Kathleen Mulhall crushed a tablet into Farah Swaleh Noor’s drink so they were “all on the same buzz”. While Linda and Noor were sitting on a two-seater couch with Charlotte sitting on the arm, the evening took a dark turn.
The court was told how Noor made aggressive sexual advances toward Linda, something which triggered a violent confrontation. With Noor speaking into her ear, and putting his arms around her waist, refused to let her go, Linda grew increasingly uncomfortable. Witnessing this, Kathleen started screaming at Noor and an heated argument took place.
During the course of the shouting, Kathleen Mulhall was alleged to have instructed her daughters to “just kill him for me”. It was then that Charlotte is alleged to have picked up a Stanley knife and struck Noor across the throat, inflicting a wound that sent him to the ground, before Linda picked up a hammer and hit him on the head a number of times.
While this frenzied attack was taking place, their mother reportedly looked on but did not participate in the assault, which resulted in Noor being stabbed more than twenty times. The worst testimony was yet to come, when the jury and attendees of the court were told the gruesome circumstances of aftermath of Noor’s killing.
This most shocking evidence detailed a multi-hour dismemberment inside the bathroom of the Ballybough flat. After Linda and Charlotte dragged Noor’s corpse into the bathroom they began to dismember the remains. The head, limbs and penis of the victim were severed by Charlotte using a kitchen knife, while a hammer was wielded to break the bones.
The sisters put towels over his legs to stem the flow of blood, and the whole dismemberment took a number of hours, after which the parts were placed inside black plastic bags and a sports bag, in which they were later found by police in the Royal Canal. The women made several trips to dispose of the remains.
In an attempt to prevent identification of the body, the Mulhall sisters decided not to throw the head into the water. Instead, it was brought by bus to Tallaght where they walked through The Square Shopping Centre to Sean Walsh Memorial Park, where Charlotte dug a hole with a knife to bury the head.
A number of days later, Linda Mulhall allegedly returned to the park and dug up the head, before placing it inside her son’s schoolbag. She then brought it to a field in the Killinarden Estate, Tallaght, where she broke it up with a hammer before burying it again. Their mother Kathleen attempted to dispose of evidence by throwing the knives and the hammer into a nearby pond.
The severed genitals of Farah Swaleh Noor were never recovered by police. The ghastly of the murder caused a media sensation, with the press creating a pop culture pun. At the exact time of the 2006 trial, the American pop-rock group Scissor Sisters was incredibly famous and dominating the music charts in Ireland and the UK.
Irish tabloids weaponised the band’s name as an attention-grabbing, dark wordplay to describe the killer siblings, who became known in the press as the “Scissor Sisters”. The nickname became an instant, permanent fixture in Irish true-crime history, and ensured the trial became highly sensationalized.
During the proceedings, Linda Mulhall’s defense focused heavily on Noor’s history of extreme violence against women and his immediate abusive behaviour on the night of the killing. A young Chinese national testified that she met Noor at an amusement arcade on O’Connell Street, where he forced her to have sex, resulting in her giving birth to a son.
Another character witness against the victim was a woman who had previously lived with Noor and testified to his terrifying and violent nature, stating that he had repeatedly raped her. She noted that the girls’ mother, Kathleen Mulhall, had previously contacted her to talk about Noor’s abuse, which was a constant factor in his relationships.
Linda Mulhall’s defence team successfully argued a defense of provocation, which legally reduced her culpability from murder to manslaughter. Conversely, Charlotte’s defense attempted to distance her from the specific mechanics of the murder, maintaining her initial innocence despite the forensic evidence and Linda’s admissions.
The most damning evidence was given by the prosecution witnesses, such as the Garda sub-aqua divers and pathologists who carried out the autopsy. Members of the Garda dive team testified about retrieving Noor’s severed body parts from seven different sections of the Royal Canal, while the autopsy revealed the full horror of the dismemberment.
However, the most incriminating testimony came from a friend of Charlotte Mulhall, who spoke of a private admission the defendant had made. According to the unidentified witness, Charlotte admitted to the killing before the sisters were arrested. This shocking revelation severely damaged Charlotte’s defense of total denial.
After hearing some of the most horrific forensic evidence and witness testimonies, the jury retired to reach a decision on the fate of the “Scissor Sisters”. They spent 18 hours over three nights in intense deliberations before delivering their final split verdicts on October 28, 2006.
Charlotte Mulhall was found guilty of murder by a majority decision, with presiding Judge Paul Carney handing her the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment for a crime he called “the most grotesque killing”. The jury accepted Linda Mulhall’s defence of provocation and she was found not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter, ultimately being sentenced to a 15 year prison term.
Linda Mulhall appealed the severity of her sentence, citing grounds that it was passed without psychiatric and probation reports. This appeal was rejected, with the Court of Criminal Appeal finding the sentence to be appropriate. Charlotte Mulhall requested leave to appeal her conviction.
Her appeal stated that Justice Carney had put pressure on the jury to reach a verdict even though the foreman had indicated they were deadlocked. This appeal also failed on the grounds that the defence did not raise objections to the Judge’s comments during the trial and the fact that the jury was not affected by any alleged undue pressure to reach a verdict.
In February 2008, Kathleen Mulhall voluntarily returned to Ireland after having lived in England since fleeing from justice. She was charged, among other offences, with two counts of giving false information to gardaí about Noor’s whereabouts, and withholding information which she “knew or believed” would be of assistance in prosecuting her daughters for Noor’s murder.
She was also charged with impeding an arrest in the murder investigation. To these charges she pleaded guilty to helping clean up the crime scene in an effort to conceal evidence. During her interviews, Kathleen admitted that she and her daughters spent the entire day after the St. Patrick’s weekend killing scrubbing the bedroom and bathroom.
She told detectives the sisters stripped the room of contaminated items, destroying or disposing of fabrics, clothes, and tools used during the dismemberment. Because she facilitated and helped execute this extensive clean-up to hide the murder from authorities Kathleen was eventually convicted.
In May 2009, Kathleen Mulhall was sentenced to five years in prison for her role in the cover-up.. After serving her sentence, Kathleen was released from prison in October 2011. Kathleen Mulhall has kept in contact with Linda during her time in prison, while her relationship with Charlotte has gone through periods of estrangement.
After her conviction, the four children of Linda Mulhall were placed in the care of her brother, James Mulhall, who would later plead guilty to the robbery of two prostitutes, a crime for which he claimed was intended to financially support his own six children and those of his sister.
During her time in prison, Linda Mulhall turned to alcohol and slashed her arms, causing her to spend over a week in a psychiatric hospital. In April 2009, Cormac Looney of the Evening Herald referred to an admission by Linda to fellow inmates as “the final secret of the Scissor Sisters”.
Linda Mulhall reportedly told other inmates that she had smashed Noor’s head and scattered the fragments into rubbish bins in the Phoenix Park. On January 2, 2018, she was officially released from the Dóchas Centre women’s prison in Dublin after serving just over 11 years and 3 months, which with standard Irish prison remission was reduced by 25%.
Since he release, Linda has kept a low profile, and reportedly settled back into a private life, becoming a grandmother, and continues to enjoy the support of her family. In contrast, her younger sister Charlotte Mulhall, remains in prison, serving the mandatory life sentence imposed upon her.
In 2008 she caused national controversy when photographs leaked to the press of her holding a knife to the throat of a male prisoner in Mountjoy Prison. As a result, security across the Irish prison system was increased, and Charlotte was moved to Limerick Prison, the only other Irish prison to contain a women’s unit.
Charlotte has spent the majority of her sentence in Dublin’s Dóchas Centre women’s prison. While there, she became heavily involved in rehabilitation courses and was recognized as a well-behaved inmate. On Christmas Eve 2018, she was transferred to Limerick Prison following another incident reported in the press.
It was alleged that a guard saw her sitting on a female officer while performing a beauty treatment. Charlotte contested this version of events and launched a High Court challenge over the sudden relocation. Despite the transfer, she maintained a “trusted prisoner” status within Limerick Prison, where she continues to serve her mandatory life term.
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