The Torso in the Canal (2 page)

Linda later explained in a statement produced in evidence that she suspected Kathleen gave Noor the tablet so that he would share the good feelings her daughters were experiencing:

‘I think Ma wanted Farah to have the E as me and Charlie were in great humour,’ she said.

Charlotte’s statement to gardaí shows that she was of the same view. However, she said that she took more ecstasy after arriving in the flat.

‘That’s when me ma put one in Farah’s drink so that he would be on the same buzz as us. Then me ma starts arguing, I don’t know what they started arguing about,’ she said later.

Despite the relative potency of the drug, the only effect it had on Noor was to increase his sexual appetite. The drug didn’t cause him to feel closer to his girlfriend, or even become a little restless. All he felt was an attraction for Linda. Little by little, as the minutes passed, he began taking more notice of her.

All three women knew Noor was a predatory male in almost every sense of the word. He had physically and sexually abused women all his life; he looked on them as objects rather than people with individual personalities. He sometimes flirted with them, sometimes raped them, and sometimes beat them. He once boasted about killing one.

Whether it was the ecstasy he unwittingly consumed or his own desires, his interest in Linda became more apparent as the hours passed. Charlotte sensed it, perhaps more than anyone present in the room. The constant attention and looks he directed at Linda were tolerable for a time but worsened as he got more drunk, and the ecstasy pill took effect.

It was at this point that he set in train a series of events that would end his life.

There were few places to sit in flat No. 1: this caused Linda to sit on Charlotte’s lap as she sat beside Noor on a sofa.

‘Me and Charlie were having a laugh. I was sitting on Charlie’s lap on the red settee. Farah was sitting beside me and Ma was on the arm,’ Linda would later recollect.

Noor, who was flirtatious, saw the opportunity to get closer to Linda. Whilst sitting on the couch, he pulled Linda close to him, and then placed his arms around her waist. She was drunk, but sober enough to know what was happening; more importantly that he was her mother’s boyfriend. She tried to pull away without causing a scene but Noor wouldn’t let go; his grip was too tight. She later recalled:

‘It did not feel right. He pulled me closer to him, sort of touching on Charlie’s lap and his knee. His arm went from my back onto my shoulder and he pulled me close to him. He said something in my ear.

‘I did not understand him but I knew it was dirty. It was something he should not have said to me. It caused me to shiver.’

Linda did not shout at Noor, though Charlotte saw what was happening. Rather than stay silent, she told him to get his hands off her sister. Noor was now so drunk and stoned that he wasn’t even listening, nor did he care what she said. He took no notice of the warning and continued as if she had said nothing. He was fumbling about.

Noor then pulled Linda closer, moved in closer to her and whispered into her ear once more. This time, he called her a creature of the night, and then said she was like her mother.

This was a catalyst for trouble. Linda then spoke.

‘I said “Farah get your hands off me.” He whispered something in my ear like, “You and me are creatures of the night.” I did not know what he meant. It was something he used to say to me ma.’

According to Linda’s account of what happened that night, she then asked her mother what he meant. Noor was still holding her waist, though occasionally his hand would touch her leg. That he wouldn’t let go further exacerbated the situation.

Noor had never touched Linda before, although she knew he had violent tendencies towards women; he had left her mother hospitalised in the past.

‘He still had a grip of me and me ma said, “What do you mean? What do you mean by saying to Linda that we are two creatures of the night?”’

If Linda had reacted to Noor’s unwanted advances in a muted manner, there was no disguising the anger that Charlotte felt towards him. She became hysterical. She began screaming and shouting.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’

Whether Noor was just drunk or simply too high on ecstasy to understand the seriousness of the situation, he failed to release his hold of Linda, who had now struggled to her feet. He held his grip to annoy the women, as much as anything else.

‘I was trying to say “Get your hands off of me,” but his hands were still around my waist. I really don’t think he could see me ma and Charlotte. I was now standing beside the sink and Farah was standing in front of me.

‘I was trying to push Farah’s hands from my waist. I said to me ma as I tried to push his hands away, “He would sleep with your daughter as quick as he would look at you.”’

It was at this point that Charlotte also stood up and told Noor to stop. She had purpose in her voice and her body language was threatening. But he didn’t stop. Instead he taunted her, continuing to say: ‘You’re so like your mammy.’

In a statement she made to detectives, Linda maintains to this day that Charlotte attacked Noor while trying to protect her. There is no doubt that Noor refused to release his grip because he was being asked to; he wasn’t going to allow himself to be bossed around by women.

‘Charlotte was saying, “Get your hands off her. She is nothing like me ma. Get your hands off Linda.” Charlie was stronger and was putting it up to Farah saying, “Get your hands away from her.”’

Still the warning had no effect.

‘Farah would still not get his hands off me.’

The tension in the room was palpable. Noor pushed Kathleen away with one hand, and drew his finger across his throat in a threatening manner. He insinuated he would kill someone.

‘Me ma pushed Farah, pushed him back towards the bedroom,’ Linda later stated.

It could be surmised that Noor was fooling around and meant no harm. But he had a history of sexual violence towards women, and had beaten Kathleen, on one occasion breaking her ribs. This gave way to underlying tensions which had by this time spiralled out of control.

But Linda and Charlotte were suspicious of Noor for other reasons. They had been deeply affected when their mother had left the family for him. It was something they could not fathom; and now Charlotte was confronted by that same man threatening her sister.

*****

In the flat, on the kitchen draining board was an orange coloured Stanley blade that had been used to cut carpet. Charlotte could see the blade was sharp.

While Noor was looking at Kathleen, and still refusing to let Linda go, Charlotte reached for the blade and once again warned Noor to let her sister go. He took no notice of her. She then picked up the blade and stabbed him in the throat, inflicting what must have been a wound across his throat.

The wound may not have killed him but it did catch him by surprise. It was the beginning of a frenzied attack.

Noor stood up. Shock now engulfed his body as the blade penetrated an artery, causing him to lose consciousness. In her statement, Linda said he didn’t fall down at once, but ‘sort of staggered.’

Charlotte, in her interviews, which were later read out in court, claimed her mother handed the sisters the implements to kill Noor.

‘Me ma just kept saying to me and Linda “Please kill him or he is going to kill me.” She just kept going on about it. Me ma gave me a knife and she gave Linda a hammer. I don’t know where she got them. I cut him on the neck on the side. I was facing him,’ she said.

He stumbled backwards, his body probably reeling from the pain and sudden loss of blood to his brain. He could barely speak but managed to say the word ‘Katie’, which was his pet name for his girlfriend, Kathleen. He then fell back into a bedroom and hit his head on a bunk bed before collapsing to the ground.

It was at this stage that Linda began attacking him with a hammer.

According to her version of the events, she struck several blows to his head.

‘I picked up a hammer from the sink and hit him on the head, loads of times; a good few times. He fell on to the ground and I hit him again. Charlie stabbed him,’ she confessed.

The two women continued to attack Noor without any hesitation, or consideration given to the fact that he was now lying on the ground, and presented no threat to anyone. The amphetamines in their bloodstreams may well have induced manic psychosis, where each action worsened their mental condition and possibly resulted in more violence, and extreme abnormal behaviour. Whatever the cause; it was an orgy of grotesque violence they both engaged in.

Charlotte would later confess: ‘I cut his neck. Linda hit him with the hammer, this was in the bedroom. I can’t remember everything. I stabbed him in the neck. I don’t remember how he died in the bedroom but he was dead.’

Charlotte had stabbed him in the upper torso and in the back, sinking another knife—a bread knife—in so deep in one attack that it punctured both of his lungs, ripped through his kidneys and perforated his liver. She didn’t stop there.

Stab wounds can be made with minimal force. The important factor is the sharpness of the tip of the blade—once it has penetrated clothing and skin, remarkably little force is required to follow through and create a deep wound. In addition, the faster the stabbing action, the easier it is to penetrate skin.

Charlotte repeatedly stabbed her victim with as much strength as she could muster, inflicting fatal wounds right across his body, particularly his torso.

The first wound to his chest would have been enough to kill him, but high on ecstasy, Charlotte continued to plunge the knife into his lungs as he lay on the floor fighting to breathe. In truth, Noor never stood a chance. He was drunk and probably lost consciousness when he was struck by Linda, who also inflicted a series of blows which probably crushed his skull.

The blows would have resulted in a decreased amount of blood flow to the brain, depriving it of oxygen.

Noor’s nervous system would also have decreased the amount of blood flow to the brain, as a protective mechanism, forcing him to pass out. This would have ensured he didn’t fight back.

When they had finished, Noor lay on the floor covered in stab wounds, bloody and badly bruised. Linda had struck him with such ferocity that hammer marks were left in the floor.

No one knows for sure what emotions ran through their minds at that moment in time, or what it was that led them to engage in a final act of barbarism. It may have been drug induced hypomania. The chances are it was.

The most accurate account of what happened is contained in Linda’s statement in which she gave the following version of events.

‘Charlie said, “Is he alive; is he alive? I thought he was coming at me.” Farah was lying on the ground and Charlie said to me ma that he was dead. Me ma said, “Get him out, get him out.” We were all screaming at this stage.’

Terrified and gripped by panic, the two sisters dragged the body into the flat’s bathroom where they stood over it. Charlotte’s statement, read out during the course of the trial, implied that it was her mother who decided it would be best to dismember Noor, although she didn’t use those words.

However, Linda’s statement contradicts this and quotes Charlotte as saying: ‘We will chop him up.’

It was never determined who came up with the idea but whatever happened, the two began to denigrate their victim’s body through dismemberment.

Chapter Two

‘To profane a dead body by cutting it to pieces has always seemed, at least to our Western eyes, an act of bestial brutality. It is one thing to do murder. It is quite another to destroy the murder victim’s identity, and this is the effect of dismemberment.’

-
Dr William R. Maples, forensic anthropologist, in
Dead Men Do Tell Tales

There are numerous
ways of hiding a body and erasing proof of a murder. Those most frequently used are burial of the victim’s body at a secret location such as a remote wood, mountain, or a construction site. Sometimes killers burn the bodies of their victims using accelerants, until all traces of the crime have been erased and identification of the victim is almost impossible.

Other killers have been known to drop a weighted-down body in the open sea or in a lake in the hope that it will never be found. Dismemberment is, by far, the rarest method of body disposal. Few killers have the stomach or nerve to take an axe, or a saw, to a body and begin cutting it into small pieces.

Women are rarely accused of denigrating a victim’s body in such fashion. Of the handful of cases of those who do, dismemberment is almost always carried out immediately after the crime, usually in a blind panic.

Perhaps they went into shock when they realised the gravity of what they had done; in many ways this would have given them a very limited ability to understand their actions, while helping them to suspend reality while they went about their gruesome task. Neither of the two appear to have planned what took place; instead the events just unfolded. When they realised that no one could help them, they got on with the task of dismembering Noor’s body.

*****

The actual dismemberment took place in the bathroom of the flat. This was small and pokey. Therefore, when the sisters dragged Noor’s body into the bathroom, they found there was no room to move; certainly not enough to dismember a corpse.

At this point, Charlotte sat on the toilet seat while Linda positioned herself in the shower. This gave them some room to manoeuvre.

According to the statements given by both Charlotte and Linda, Kathleen did not participate in the dismemberment. Instead, she sat in the kitchen smoking continuously.

The tools they used to dissect the body were the same implements they had used to kill Noor—a Stanley knife and a hammer, and the bread knife that had perforated his vital organs.

Charlotte was the one who began the vile process of dismemberment when she attempted to saw through one of Noor’s arms with the bread knife.

Her statement read: ‘We got Farah into the bathroom. Myself and Charlie dragged him in by the legs, and me and Charlie cut him up. It was Charlie’s idea. Charlie started sawing on his arms, with the knife; the knife had a rugged edge on it.

‘She cut into his arms with the knife, she got tired. I then used the hammer and hit his legs a number of times. It took us a few hours to do it. Me and Charlie took turns cutting him and breaking the bones.’

The Stanley knife made an unsuitable tool for dismemberment. While the same knife had cut Noor’s flesh with relative ease, it was unable to divide the cartilage and bone without excessive effort. However, this resistance didn’t stop Charlotte, who had boundless energy from the ecstasy in her bloodstream. It should be remembered the two of them had taken more ecstasy tablets.

Although the sawing action was exhausting, Charlotte cut and cut at the body with the knife until she could cut no more. Linda sat beside her, helping and encouraging her. When they encountered resistance in the form of bone and cartilage, Charlotte didn’t give up. Instead she took hold of the hammer and began to strike Noor’s legs in a battering fashion. While this motion was aimed at dismembering his joints, it caused the body to haemorrhage excessive amounts of blood, which spilled from the body.

A man of Noor’s size and weight normally has about 5.6 litres of blood—Charlotte’s butchery caused much of this to depart from the body. This flowed on to the floor. In a desperate attempt to stem this, the two women placed towels around the severed wounds, but this had little effect. The blood continued to flow; there was nothing they could do to stop it.

The bathroom of the flat now resembled a slaughter house; a horrid smell engulfed the room and permeated everywhere. It was foul. Of the night in question, Linda would later say the ‘smell was ... it wouldn’t go away. I think about it every night.’

The act of dismemberment proved to be a highly physical process for the sisters. Charlotte continued to tear and hammer at the bones and sinews that somehow held Noor’s legs together.

Sweat poured from her body, and her arms were soon covered in blood and pieces of flesh. The scene was one from the bowels of hell; nothing had prepared them for this. They tried looking away from the body but it was no use. They also changed positions and swapped implements on several occasions but it didn’t make the butchering process any faster. When one got tired of hammering, they would rest by using a knife to cut at another section of the body.

One noticeable fact was that they used no coherent method to dismember Noor’s remains. High on drugs, confused and terrified, they just cut away and hammered at the victim’s flesh and bones, mutilating him, in no methodical way.

Perhaps the most gruesome part of the dismemberment was Linda’s decision to remove the victim’s penis. This was a brutal act of barbarism.

‘Me ma had told me already that he had raped her and I said, “He won’t rape me Ma again.” I cut his private parts off, the long piece, not the balls,’ she later said.

The mutilation of the genitalia was significant insofar as it had nothing to do with disposing of the body but everything to do with revenge. Noor had beaten and attacked women; by cutting off his penis, Linda believed she was avenging the violence he had dispensed on her mother.  

In total, the sisters spent five hours cutting Noor’s corpse into eight separate pieces of varying weights and sizes.

The largest body segment was the upper torso, which involved his disembowelment, revealing his intestines and internal organs.

Once this bloody act had been accomplished, his lower torso was left with the hip joints fully intact; it should be noted that they had earlier cut off his legs, but now they removed the femurs, leaving his lower legs intact with the feet attached.

His right and left upper limbs were also broken above the humerus using the claw hammer; this was difficult as a variety of muscles were attached. When he had been alive, these enabled movement at the elbow and at the shoulder. Now they held what remained of his body together. These particular muscles were hard to cut through as Noor had been strong and athletic in life.

The head was the final body part to be removed.

In their subsequent statements to gardaí, both sisters admitted that they took turns at cutting it from the torso.

However, removing the head was particularly traumatic for Linda, who later recalled that she wasn’t able to look at the face while she cut and hammered.

She was consumed by guilt, which she somehow managed to block from her mind. In many ways, she was unable to evaluate the situation she found herself in. Rather than even think about what she and Charlotte were doing, even for a second, she forged ahead with the cutting.

Of course, they knew the life had long since gone from Noor’s eyes, but they still haunted Linda. She could not help but look at the expression on his face while she engaged in the savagery.

The look of terror was too much. Eventually, she placed a towel over his face while she finished hammering his neck, in a final attempt to dislocate it from the shoulders. This made it easier for her to butcher the body and cut off the head.

It was a bloody operation, as the towels were completely ineffective at soaking up the blood that flowed from every wound. In fact there was so much blood that a crimson pool formed on the floor.

‘I had the towel over his head, over his face, and kept using the hammer. It would not come off. Both of us had to take turns with the hammer. I did not think about chopping it up but Charlotte said to do it,’ she said in a statement.

Linda and Charlotte were now completely panic-stricken and called their father. Linda rang John Mulhall Snr from her mobile at 11.41pm as Noor lay dead on the floor. They spoke for about two minutes and Linda told him what had happened. It is likely that he couldn’t understand his daughter or didn’t believe her, as he rang his estranged wife ten minutes later to verify if what Linda had said was true—if they had actually killed Farah Swaleh Noor. He also spoke to Kathleen for about two minutes, before speaking to her briefly one last time just before midnight. All three women had consumed drink and several ecstasy tablets, so perhaps it took him some time to comprehend what had happened.

*****

Now they had finished butchering him, it was time to dispose of the body. This would be the most important part of the killing. The dismemberment had already taken six to seven hours. It was now night and the streets around Richmond Cottages and the north inner city were largely empty apart from the odd vagrant wandering around.

Their father had initially thought that Linda and Charlotte were high on drugs when they called to say what they’d done. Though, when he thought about the conversation, he began to panic. While he wanted to believe his daughters were claiming to have killed Noor because they were high; something in their voices caused him to worry. Driven by fear, more than anything else, he drove from his home into the city. He arrived there at 1.30am.

He rang the flat’s doorbell and walked in. When he walked through the front door, he saw Linda, Charlotte and his estranged wife. The flat was clean, almost as if nothing had happened. Neither Linda nor Charlotte was soiled by blood stains. He momentarily relaxed. He had been estranged from his wife for years but very much cared about his daughters.

According to the statement he later gave to detectives, he asked where Noor was. Linda told him his body was in the bedroom. He looked in the room but could see nothing. He returned momentarily, and said he wasn’t there. He never suspected that the body had been dismembered.

Linda told him to look again, and then confessed as to what had happened—that they had dismembered his remains. He looked once again. This time he saw a black bin liner in the corner. It was full. He suddenly felt nauseous. He moved a little closer and momentarily glanced into the bag. What he saw made him run from the flat. He threw up on the steps. When he pulled himself together, he said he wanted to have nothing to do with them. He then left. He didn’t care what happened to them. As far as he was concerned, they were on their own.

The departure of their father from the scene sent the women into a blind panic that gripped them, according to statements they later made. Though it should be noted that they made sure not to mention his visit to the flat in any of their subsequent interviews. It is also noteworthy that Kathleen also never mentioned her estranged husband’s visit.

The effects of the alcohol and ecstasy were also beginning to wear off, making it more difficult for them to function as they were confronted by the reality of what they had done. However, their actions from this point onwards, suggest they still operated with some degree of clarity and forethought.

Realising they would have to act alone, they were careful not to try move the entire body at once. They had packed the separate body parts into black plastic bags; these were then placed into sports bags, Linda recalled:

‘Charlotte started pulling the heavy pieces into sports bags. Charlotte put the main parts of the body into the sports bag; she put it into a black plastic bag at first. I put the legs into the black plastic bags but I let the legs come out.’

They then lifted the battered and bruised head into a plastic bag, which they placed in a suitcase. Rather than dispose of the head with the rest of the torso, they left it in the back garden of No. 17 while they went about disposing of the remaining body parts, one by one.

Linda would later admit it was her idea to separate the head from the body.

‘I decided we were not throwing the head in. I said it to Charlotte so that it would not be identified.’

They all hoped the decision to hide the head elsewhere would ensure the gardaí would not identify the remains.

Perhaps their greatest mistake was to dump the body parts locally rather than at some remote location, away from the city. If the body parts had been hidden at several different locations, without leaving any clothing behind, it is likely the killing would have gone unnoticed, or certainly unsolved. But this was out of the question because neither Linda nor Charlotte drove a car. They couldn’t transport the body out of the city so, due to the circumstances, they had no choice but to dispose of it locally.

While they figured it was the safest thing to do—moving the body parts through the city during daylight hours being too risky—it was also the clumsiest.

They carried the body parts to the Royal Canal, which flowed through the north inner city. It was no more than a five minute walk from Richmond Cottages.

The place they chose to dump the body was Clarke’s Bridge, near Ballybough, just minutes away from the flat. In the dead of night, the two sisters carried the bags to the canal bank. Linda carried the light bits while Charlotte carried the heavier ones.

During the course of the trial, Linda’s statement was produced as evidence. It indicated that her mother accompanied Charlotte and her when they went to move the bags, saying: ‘Charlotte took the heavy bits, we walked down to the canal, me ma walked with us.’

As they made their way down the bank and under the bridge, they operated under the cover of darkness. When they stumbled down the bank, they opened a bag and threw a body part into the water.

They made the journey several times, all the time watching for passers-by or unwanted strangers. They could just about see what they were doing, it was so dark. After they had dumped the final body part; there was some panic about whether a scar on Noor’s arm would identify him. Suddenly the sisters were gripped by fear, but by this stage, it was too late.