The mother of two sisters jailed for killing the man whose headless torso was found in the Royal Canal, Dublin, was sentenced to five years in prison today after previously pleading guilty to impeding the investigation.
Kathleen Mulhall (53), who was in a relationship with murder victim Farah Swaleh Noor, told gardaí she had helped clean up the crime scene to protect her two daughters, who had killed him, the Central Criminal Court was told.
The court also heard that she offered to take the blame for her boyfriend’s death.
Mulhall, St Mary’s Park, Carlow, pleaded guilty in February to helping to clean up the crime scene to conceal evidence and prevent the apprehension of her daughters, knowing that Mr Noor had been murdered at Richmond Cottages, Ballybough, on March 21st, 2005.
Mulhall was sentenced this morning by Mr Justice Paul Carney at the Central Criminal Court, sitting at Cloverhill. The maximum possible sentence was 10 years.
In December 2006 her daughters, Charlotte (25), and Linda (32), were convicted, respectively, of Mr Noor’s murder and manslaughter.
Delivering his sentence, Mr Justice Carney said that he had advantage of having been the trial judge who presided over the trial of Mulhall’s daughters.
At the time, the judge described Mr Noor’s death as the “most grotesque case of killing that ever occurred in my professional lifetime.”
During the investigation into Mr Noor’s death, Mulhall was interviewed six times by gardaí. On August 3rd 2005, she said that she knew nothing about Mr Noor’s death and that she had only heard about his death the previous day.
Over a month later, she told gardai that she had been drinking with Mr Noor and her two daughters on the Boardwalk in Dublin on the day of the killing. All four ended up in Mulhall’s flat at Ballybough and an argument broke out between Mr Noor and Mulhall’s daughters, who went into a bedroom. Mulhall did not go in.
She told gardaí she heard “roaring and shouting” and that Linda came out of the room, covered in blood and told her that Mr Noor was dead. She said that she did not see Mr Noor being killed. Mulhall told gardaí
that she and her daughters cleaned up the room the next day.
When asked why she did not report the killing, she told gardai: “Why do you think, because of my children.” She said that, at one stage, she told her daughters she would go to the gardai and tell them she killed Mr Noor.
Mulhall was released from Garda custody in September 2005, and gardaí were not able to locate her again until January 2008. She was living in England. In the meantime, Charlotte and Linda were convicted, respectively, of Mr Noor’s murder and manslaughter.
Their mother, who has no previous convictions, returned voluntarily to Ireland.
The court also heard that she had been in a relationship with Mr Noor since 2002, that the relationship was “abusive” and Mulhall had “suffered a lot”.
But Mr Justice Carney said that Mulhall was “fully aware” of the “grotesque nature” of the killing when she “presented assistance in relation to the cover-up.” He said that an “aggravating feature was laying a false trail.” Mulhall told Mr Noor’s employers that he had gone to Kilkenny.
Mr Justice Carney said that there were a number of factors in favour of the accused, however, including her guilty plea. “My impression is that this would have been a very difficult case for the prosecution to prove,” he said.
Other mitigating factors were her lack of previous convictions, her voluntary return from England, her desire to protect her daughters, her attempts over the years to protect her family in difficult circumstances and the violence and abuse she suffered in her relationships with men.
Mulhall is the mother of six children, three daughters and three sons.