‘I’ve done my time but I can’t change what I did’
Killer Jacqui Noble freed
KILLER Jacqui Noble, who has just been released from prison 14 years after hiring a hitman to murder her abusive partner, says ‘what’s done is done’.
The mother-of-one was freed from the women’s Dóchas Centre in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin.
The 51-year-old from Ballymun, north Dublin, was jailed for life in 2004 for paying a doorman to kill Derek Benson, the father of her only child, in May 2000.
Her trial heard how Noble had lived for a number of years with Benson, who regularly beat and raped her in front of their child.
During the 30-day trial, the jury heard evidence of shocking and extreme physical, sexual and emotional abuse against her for nearly two decades.
She was freed after Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan signed off on her release.
Yesterday Noble, who was described as a ‘model prisoner’, said yesterday she was ‘happy to be out’.
Speaking for the first time since her conviction, Noble, who was on the way to see her daughter, said she hoped to write a book and then get on with her life.
Speaking to the Irish Daily Mail, she said: ‘What’s done is done, you know. I’m glad I’m out. I just want to get on with it.
‘I’m a bit lucky in a way because even though I’m nervous of reporters, they have always been all right to me.
‘To be honest, I’d like to write a book about my life and just get on with it.’
Dressed in a denim jacket, jeans and boots, softly spoken Noble, who has had her once curly brown hair straightened and darkened, implied she had to pay for her crime.
‘What happened happened and I went in [jail] for it and that’s the way it is.’
I can’t change it and that’s the way it is.’
The petite grandmother, a former heroin addict, got clean from drugs and became an aerobics instructor behind bars.
‘I looked after myself as best I could,’ she said.
As a reward for her good behaviour behind bars, Noble was given
‘Now I’d like to write a book’
temporary release and days out of prison a number of years ago. She said she is now working in Dublin and just wants to spend time with her family.
‘I want to take care of my daughter and grandkids and get on with it,’ she said.
Noble served her time in jail with high-profile killers such as Linda and Charlotte Mulhall, and Catherine Nevin.
Nevin, who has brain cancer, was released on compassionate grounds last year and is being cared for in a hospice, while killer Linda Mulhall was released this week.
Nevin was convicted of hiring a hitman to kill her husband at Jack White’s pub in 1996.
Meanwhile, Linda Mulhall was convicted in 2006 of the manslaughter of the ‘body in the suitcase’ Farah Swaleh Noor, who was stabbed to death by her and her sister Charlotte. The pair have both become known as the Scissor Sisters.
For lifers like Noble, her release comes only after a recommendation is made by the Parole Board which has to be signed off by the Justice Minister.
During her trial, the court heard she could not take any more abuse and hatched a plan with doorman Paul Hopkins to kill Benson after she drugged him.
Noble had inherited money and claimed Benson was trying to take the money from her.
On May 11, 2000, two days before the murder, the mother met Hopkins whom she knew and got sleeping tablets from him and a phone.
The court heard Noble had drugged Benson before Hopkins arrived with a samurai sword and killed him.
It took State Pathologist Marie Cassidy almost an hour to read out the injuries Benson had sustained during the attack which lasted ‘for hours’ and resulted in 25 stab wounds and 60 incised cuts on his body.
Both Noble and Hopkins were sentenced to life.
A prison source said: ‘Anytime there was anything about Jacqui’s life on TV she would get really upset and would cry a lot in prison about it. She always found it very hard to watch anything about her.’