Kathleen Mulhall, the mother of the notorious “Scissor Sisters” Linda and Charlotte, today pleaded guilty to helping to clean up the scene where her daughters had hacked her Kenyan boyfriend to death.
Farah Swaleh Noor’s torso and limbs were recovered from the Royal Canal, his head and penis were never recovered. It was a trial that seriously captured the public’s attention when it ran over several weeks in the Autumn of 2006.
The papers were full of detailed descriptions of how the two sisters had cut up the body in the bathroom of their mother’s house in Ballybough…an operation that took around five hours. They had killed Noor after a day drinking with him and their mother over the Patrick’s Day weekend in 2005.
In court today Kathleen Mulhall stood quietly as the charge was read out to her. She was dressed in black trousers with a white shirt and black jacket, her hair pushed up under a black cap, her eyebrows drawn on rather than grown…her signature look.
The gathered press – and there were many to witness this addendum to such a gruesome case – leaned forward to peer round the packed bodies in Court 1 in the hope of seeing a remorseful tear. After all, the man her daughters had killed was the man she had left her husband for in 2001. Today though she looked straight forward and lean how you may the tears were not much in evidence. Although as the single charge was read out to her she could be seen swallowing nervously.
It was all over in a little more than a minute. The charge of obstructing an investigation by helping to clean up her home after the murder was read out and she quietly admitted her guilt. She will not be remanded in custody to await her sentence on May 5th.
There have been a rush of guilty pleas lately. For some reason things tend to work like that in the courts. You might have a succession of acquittals or a flurry of not guilty by reason of insanity’s (actually there appears to be such a flurry ongoing at the moment). I’ve never worked out whether it’s because the Director of Public Prosecution’s office tend to deal with similar cases in a bunch or whether it’s some weird cosmic thing. I’d place money that it’s something completely prosaic though.
Guilty pleas are the worst though because from a reporting point of view it means that the case never gets a run. While a summary of the evidence will be given at the sentencing you don’t here the details and the different view points that a full trial will give. I’m sure there are plenty out there that could come up with multiple reasons why the guilty plea is preferable but what can I say…I’m a writer.
So it looks like the rest of this week will be taken up with editing of the novel and various meetings that must be attended. Such is the life of a freelance!
Ya, it must be some cosmic thing. Take care!