Charlotte and Linda Mulhall, along with their mother Kathleen, had spent the evening of March 20, 2005, drinking around Dublin City Centre and taking ecstasy tablets along the River Liffey Boardwalk. The women decided to retire to Kathleen’s flat for the night where Kathleen’s lover Farah Swaleh Noor had been waiting for them to return home. Kathleen went to the kitchen and crushed up another ecstasy tablet she had in her pocket, then surreptitiously slipped it into Noor’s drink.
Linda had been sitting next to Noor on a sofa when he began touching her. According to reports, Noor then grabbed Linda around the waist and refused to let her go. Kathleen began yelling, ordering her daughters to “just kill him for me.” Charlotte slashed Noor’s throat and Linda picked up a hammer, giving him several blows to the head. He was stabbed approximately 27 times before the girls dragged Noor to the bathroom and hacked away at his body with kitchen knives.
It is unclear what Kathleen had been doing as her daughters placed her former lover’s body parts into bags before throwing most of them into the Royal Canal. In order to make it difficult for Noor to be identified, Charlotte dug a hole with a knife near a shopping center in Tymon North Park and buried the head. Linda returned to the location several days later to dig up the head and hit it several more times with a hammer and disposed of it in a field near Killinarden Estate. Kathleen also assisted in the cleanup effort by throwing several knives and a hammer that had been used in her lover’s murder into a pond.
Police had been alerted 10 days later that a leg had been seen floating in the Royal Canal near Croke Park. Divers were able to recover the bags that contained the rest of the victims’ body. Curiously enough, Noor’s head and penis have never been found.
The Mulhalls were not officially detained as suspects in the case until August of 2005. All of the family members had denied any knowledge of Noor’s murder. It wasn’t until Linda came forward and confessed that police were able to make an arrest in the case. Kathleen fled to England shortly after the confession.
Blood stains found inside the flat that Kathleen had been living in were determined to have been Noor’s. In addition to Linda, Charlotte was also charged with Noor’s murder. The media later dubbed them “The Scissor Sisters.”
In hopes of leniency in their case, a number of character witnesses were brought to the stand in order to describe Noor’s history of violence against women. The sisters both claimed that their mother, Kathleen, was subjected to regular beatings by Noor throughout their relationship. Noor had also fathered several children with women he had raped.
Linda received a 15-year sentence for manslaughter, while Charlotte was sentenced to a mandatory life sentence. Kathleen would be tried in 2008 after voluntarily returning from England. She received a five-year sentence for withholding and providing false information to law enforcement.