Scissor Sisters (convicted killers)

Linda Mulhall was released in 2018, having served over 12 years of a 15-year sentence. Linda was tracked down in July 2018 by The Sunday World’s Eugene Masterson to her new home in Co Kildare. She told him she wanted to get on with her life and didn’t want to comment further.

Linda Mulhall turned to alcohol and slashed her arms, causing her to spend over a week in a psychiatric hospital. In April 2009, she claimed to fellow inmates that she had in fact smashed Noor's head and distributed the fragments in rubbish bins in the Phoenix Park. This first disclosure of where Noor's head had ended up was referred to as "the final secret of the Scissor Sisters" by Cormac Looney in the Evening Herald.

The 2009 RTÉ television series Killers featured the Mulhall sisters.

Noor's head and penis were never recovered, although Linda later admitted they had put the head in rubbish bins around Phoenix Park. It was also thought that they carried the head by bus to Tallaght and buried it in a field, with Linda returning later to dig it up, carry it to another field using her son's schoolbag, smash it further with a hammer and bury it again. Linda attracted further media attention when she slit her wrists and was sectioned (involuntarily hospitalised). Charlotte also attracted media attention when a photograph of her holding a knife to a male prisoner's throat was published; that action resulted in an increased security presence in all Irish prisons and Charlotte was moved from Mountjoy to Limerick Prison. Kathleen Mulhall voluntarily returned to Ireland in February 2008 and faced several charges. She pleaded guilty to helping clean up the crime scene to conceal evidence and was sentenced to five years in prison in May 2009.

Kathleen Mulhall voluntarily returned to Ireland in February 2008 and, among other offences, was charged 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. She pleaded guilty to helping to clean up the crime scene to conceal evidence. Kathleen Mulhall was sentenced to five years in prison in May 2009.

Charlotte caused a further national controversy in 2008 when photographs of her jokingly holding a knife to the throat of a male prisoner in Mountjoy Prison were leaked to the press. As a result, security in Irish prisons was increased. and Charlotte was moved to Limerick Prison, the only other Irish prison to contain a women's unit.

The subsequent manhunt and the trial in October 2006 attracted intense media attention as the details of the crime slowly emerged. The sisters and their mother were arrested but released until Linda confessed to involvement in the crime. Kathleen Mulhall left the country to live in England. When Charlotte and Linda were charged with murder in December 2005, their father, John Mulhall, hanged himself in Phoenix Park.

Linda and Charlotte were both charged with murder and pleaded not guilty in the Central Criminal Court. Their trial took place in October 2006 with Linda Mulhall being found guilty of manslaughter while her sister Charlotte was found guilty of the murder of Noor. Linda's jury accepted her defence of provocation.

Linda and Charlotte Mulhall (also called the Scissor Sisters by the media) are sisters from Dublin, Ireland, who killed and dismembered their mother's boyfriend, Farah Swaleh Noor, in March 2005. Noor was killed with a Stanley knife wielded by Charlotte and struck with a hammer by Linda following a confrontation with the sisters and their mother, Kathleen Mulhall. His head and penis were sliced off and the rest of his corpse dismembered and dumped in the Royal Canal in Dublin where a piece of leg still wearing a sock was spotted floating near Croke Park ten days later.

Charlotte Mulhall was 21 years old when the killing took place. Like her sister, she had a history of drug and alcohol abuse. She had a number of minor previous convictions for criminal damage and public order offences and was charged with criminal damage and given the Probation Act in October 2005. She was also involved in prostitution.

The killing took place at a flat Kathleen Mulhall was renting in a house on Richmond Cottages, Summerhill, on 20 March 2005. This was on the public holiday of Saint Patrick's weekend.

The sisters and their parents were arrested in August but denied any knowledge of the killing. A number of weeks later Linda contacted investigating officers admitting her involvement. Gardaí took a voluntary statement from her at her home in Tallaght in August 2005. Until this, Gardaí had been making limited progress in the case. When Gardaí searched the Mulhall flat in Summerhill, they found bloodstains that were later confirmed to match Noor's DNA. After Linda's confession, Kathleen Mulhall fled the country in September 2005 and gardaí were unable to locate her again until January 2008. She was living in England.

The girls' father, John Mulhall, hanged himself in Phoenix Park when his daughters were charged with the killing in December 2005. He was not believed to have been involved in the killing.

The Mulhalls were from Kilclare Gardens, a working class area in Tallaght, south Dublin. Their parents John and Kathleen Mulhall raised a family of three boys and three girls. Kathleen was originally Kathleen Ward before she got married and was from the Travelling community. John Mulhall allegedly abused Kathleen. Their marriage broke down and Kathleen entered into a relationship with Farah Swaleh Noor in 2002. Noor moved into their family home with Kathleen, and John Mulhall took some of his children and moved out. He rented various accommodations in Dublin over a period of a year, then moved back into the home after Kathleen left and moved to Cork with Noor. Kathleen and Noor returned to Dublin in 2004. Noor allegedly subjected Kathleen Mulhall to regular beatings.

Farah Swaleh Noor was 40 years old at the time of his death. He arrived in Ireland in December 1996, claiming to be a Somali called "Sheilila Salim" whose family had been killed in Mogadishu during the Somali Civil War. Subsequent investigations revealed that he was in fact a Kenyan and that his family was still alive. The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform ordered that he be deported but he appealed and was granted Irish citizenship in March 1999 because he had become the father of an Irish-born child. He had four previous convictions for offences including intoxication, threatening and abusive behaviour and assault. In 1997, he raped a mentally disabled 16-year-old Chinese girl. She later gave birth to a son. Two other women had children by him and both described having been raped by him. Noor had faced eight charges of disorder and assault, one involving a sexual assault in which a knife was found at the scene by gardaí. He was convicted on three occasions but never served time in jail. Noor lived in a number of areas in Dublin, including Dún Laoghaire and Firhouse, as well as the inner city before moving in with Kathleen Mulhall. Gardaí described him as being particularly violent towards women.

Linda Mulhall was 30 years old at the time of the killing. She was unemployed, had left school early and had four children. The relationship with the father of her children broke up and she got into another relationship with an individual called Wayne Kinsella who subsequently abused them, in one case beating the children with an electrical flex. The abuse was later investigated, and the children were taken into care by the social services, while Wayne Kinsella served a seven-year prison sentence for his cruelty to the children. Kinsella himself had an extremely violent history, having been thrown out of school for violent behaviour, according to his elder sister, Donna. In a 2013 RTÉ Radio interview, Donna Kinsella said that her brother Wayne was always an extremely violent person, even during his childhood, and stated that he used to beat members of his own family, including his parents, and had broken her jaw on one occasion. In May 1996, Kinsella received an eight-year prison sentence for the murder of a retired auctioneer, Thomas Foreman, who was killed while visiting his wife's grave in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin on 23 September 1995. In May 2012, Kinsella was jailed for life after being found guilty of the murder of 29-year-old Dubliner Adil Essalhi, who was stabbed to death in a field near Tyrrelstown on 6 January 2011. Kinsella claimed he murdered Adil Essalhi, because he believed that Mr. Essalhi had been involved in the killing of his younger brother, Lee Kinsella, who was shot dead in Finglas in May 2006. Wayne's sister Donna said Mr. Essalhi had nothing to do with Lee's death. Linda Mulhall, meanwhile, had a history of alcohol abuse and suffered from an addiction to heroin. She had one previous conviction in 1993 for larceny.