The Scissor Sisters: An Irish Nightmare
There are crimes that stick in the mind like a shard of glass embedded deep, refusing to be dislodged. Crimes that crawl into the dark recesses of our imaginations and squat there, feeding on our fears, waiting to be remembered in the dark.
The story of the Scissor Sisters—Linda and Charlotte Mulhall, the sisters who dismembered a man with the cold indifference of butchers at a slab— is one such tale.
A story soaked in blood, set in the narrow, crumbling flats of Dublin, where secrets fester behind thin walls and the shadows have shadows of their own.
A Night of Madness
It all began, as these things often do, with a drink. Or several. It was March 20, 2005, a Sunday, and the Mulhall family—two daughters and their mother, Kathleen, an aging, washed-out woman who'd long ago let life slip from her grip—sat together in their flat in Ballybough, Dublin.
They were joined by a guest, Farah Swaleh Noor, a Kenyan immigrant, a man with his own skeletons rattling around in his closet.
He had a past—a rap sheet longer than an Irish winter, crimes that spanned continents. But that day, he was just a man sharing a drink. Maybe he felt safe in that shabby little room, hemmed in by the smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke.
Maybe he even let himself relax, not knowing he was about to step over the edge into a hellish landscape.
It was Linda, the older sister, who first lost her temper. Noor was leaning too close, his breath hot and rotten with alcohol.
He muttered something—a joke, a suggestion, something that pushed Linda past the breaking point. Her hand found the claw hammer on the kitchen counter, and it flew across the room like a comet.
The sound of the blow—a dull thud, a crack—split the air. Noor staggered, his head split open, blood pooling at his feet.
But that wasn't the end; it was just the beginning. Charlotte, her sister, a wild glint in her eye, grabbed a kitchen knife.
The blade flashed in the dim light, slicing through the thick, cold air, sinking into flesh again and again. The sisters were in a frenzy, a red mist descending.
There was a madness there, in that tiny flat—a madness that smelled of blood and fear and stale beer.
When Noor finally lay still, his body crumpled on the floor, they didn't pause. No, they knew what they had to do.
There was no question, no hesitation—only the raw, animal instinct to survive. They dragged him to the bathroom, leaving a slick trail of red across the linoleum floor. They shut the door.
And in that cramped space, they set to work.
A Grisly Task
They were not surgeons, these two—no, they were more like wolves with knives. There were no precise cuts, no careful dissections.
Just hacks, and slashes, and the wet sound of metal against bone. The head came off first, rolling away like a grotesque doll's head.
Then the arms, severed at the shoulder. They worked feverishly, their hands slick with blood, their breath coming in ragged gasps. The bathroom tiles, once a dingy white, were painted in crimson.
They stuffed the pieces—his legs, his arms, his torso—into black plastic bags.
Linda’s hands were trembling, her eyes wide, but Charlotte had that wild grin, the look of someone who’d crossed over into some dark territory and found herself at home.
They dumped the bags in the Royal Canal, the water swallowing them up like some ancient beast, leaving only ripples behind.
But the head—that was a problem. It wouldn't sink, bobbing like a macabre apple.
So they weighted it down with rocks, tied tight in another plastic bag, and hurled it into the black water.
Then they went home, cleaned up the gore with bleach and towels, and left the flat smelling like a swimming pool.
The Water Gives Up Its Dead
The canal, dark and quiet, held its secrets for a while. But rivers and canals, they have a way of giving up their dead.
Ten days later, on March 30th, a jogger noticed something strange in the water—something that didn't belong. He peered closer, his breath catching in his throat.It was a leg. Human. The Gardaí were called, and the investigation began.
One by one, the body parts surfaced, as if the canal itself had grown tired of holding onto the evidence of such a monstrous act.
DNA testing soon identified the victim: Farah Swaleh Noor. A man who’d come to Ireland seeking a new life and had found only a brutal, unmarked grave instead.
The Gardaí began piecing together the puzzle, sifting through the debris of human lives, asking questions no one wanted to answer.
They followed the trail to the Mulhall family, who, when questioned, offered nothing but a thin veneer of lies.
But the Gardaí dug deeper, sniffing out the secrets hidden in the shadows of Ballybough. They examined phone records, scoured surveillance footage, and spoke to anyone who might have seen or heard something that terrible night.
Then Linda cracked. Maybe it was the weight of it all—the blood, the secrets, the sleepless nights, the endless questions.
Maybe she saw her sister Charlotte, with her wild eyes and her caged animal grin, and felt something shift deep inside her. Whatever it was, she confessed.
She told them everything. The hammer, the knife, the blood, the water, the dark thing that had overtaken them both.
Charlotte tried to deny it at first, but the story was out there now, clinging to her like a second skin. She was arrested, charged, and marched into the courthouse, her face pale, her eyes dark and haunted.
Judgment Day
The trial was a circus. The newspapers gobbled it up, splashing the sisters' faces across their front pages, calling them the "Scissor Sisters" like it was some kind of sick joke.
In the courtroom, the truth spilled out in lurid detail: the drugs, the drinking, the hammer and the knife, the dismemberment, the cold, filthy water of the canal.
Linda Mulhall, the older sister, the one who swung the hammer first, pled guilty to manslaughter.
She was sentenced to fifteen years. Charlotte, the one who had wielded the knife with a fury that seemed to know no bounds, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life.
And their mother, Kathleen, who had cleaned up the blood and scrubbed the floors and washed the stink of death from her hands?
She got five years for helping her daughters cover up their crime, though she served only three.
The Haunting Aftermath
The city of Dublin shuddered at the horror of it. People whispered their names in the pubs, in the shops, on the buses.
Mothers watched their daughters with a new kind of caution, wondering just what dark thoughts might be swirling beneath the surface.
And the canal, that dark, oily water that had held the secrets so briefly, flowed on.It had witnessed the worst, the madness, the frenzy, the blood. But water forgets.It moves on. It leaves behind only the faintest traces, ripples fading into the night.
Linda was released in 2018, her sentence reduced for good behavior.
She emerged into a world that had moved on, but a world that still remembered.
Charlotte remains behind bars, a life sentence stretching before her like a long, dark road.
And as for the head—Farah Swaleh Noor’s severed head, that piece of evidence that could never be found?
It’s still out there somewhere, deep in the muck, a secret waiting for someone, someday, to stumble upon it in the murky depths of the Royal Canal.
Maybe the water will give it up. Or maybe it will keep it, one last secret clutched tight in the cold, dark heart of Dublin.
Comments