In the early hours of March 25, 2019, Evelyn Mitchell was found unresponsive behind the wheel of her car on a residential street in Hulme, three miles outside Manchester city center. She was pronounced dead at the scene, with a postmortem report later determining the cause of death to be blunt force trauma to the head. The coroner noted that her skull had been broken with such ferocity that brain tissue was visible to the naked eye. That she walked the twenty-seven feet from the home of her attacker to the relative safety of her vehicle is hardly surprising. Evelyn’s strength could be incredible, at times almost unrealistic, and it endured, dynamically, until the very end. Had it not, perhaps her story would close like that of so many others, like the Zoe Nolans of the world. Young women filled with promise who vanish from the face of the earth through no fault of their own. Evelyn’s bloody-minded determination meant that she left a trail leading from her car to the front door of her attacker.
Her final email to me left a similar trail.
It contained the name Connor Sullivan, listing him as one of five casual laborers employed by a maintenance firm working in Owens Park during the preterm summer of 2011. As Evelyn must have immediately seen, it was also the name given by Fintan Murphy as his alibi for December 17, 2011, the day that Zoe Nolan disappeared. Far from being an alias or the invention of a fevered mind, Connor Sullivan was Fintan Murphy’s birth name. According to Greater Manchester Police, the alibi Sullivan gave for Murphy was corroborated by officers in 2011. Unfortunately, neither one of the constables taking the statement at Sullivan’s home had been involved in the search of Owens Park. They could have no idea that Sullivan and Murphy were one and the same, not least because Sullivan was able to provide two items of legal identification and spoke with a broad Mancunian accent. Connor Sullivan—Fintan Murphy—was born in Stretford, England, and was some six years older than he claimed to be, an old soul, as so many people went on to describe him. He had never so much as traveled to Ireland. Most disturbingly, despite his many claims to the contrary, authorities have been unable to find any evidence that he ever met Zoe Nolan, much less that he was her treasured friend.
Sullivan changed his name to Fintan Murphy in 2009 after being convicted of the 2008 assault of a Manchester Metropolitan University student. The young woman, who has asked not to be identified, discovered him hiding beneath her bed in the early hours of the morning, clutching a bag filled with her personal possessions. He had twice been cautioned for stealing clothes from young women, although authorities concluded at the time that these crimes were not sexual in nature. Sullivan’s sexual preference was for men, and while he expressed no interest in identifying as a woman, he admitted to an obsession around certain objects, considering them to be talismans that would aid his fertility. Searching his home in 2008, authorities found a large collection of stolen clothing, hairbrushes and used tampons.
Sullivan often talked about wanting children, starting a family, “righting the wrongs” that had been done to him. It seems, in spite of his temperamental dishonesty, that there was some sad truth in the back story he wove for Fintan Murphy. His mother really had struggled with profound mental health problems, resulting in a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and Sullivan’s placement into foster care at the age of thirteen.
Registrars at Manchester University confirmed that no persons giving the names of Connor Sullivan or Fintan Murphy were ever enrolled in any course during the 2011–12 term, nor at any time prior. It seems that a man matching Sullivan’s description was asked to leave the first meeting of the Choir and Orchestra Society held at St. Chrysostom’s church that term. While it’s tempting to believe that this is where he saw Zoe for the first time, the truth is likely far more sinister. The professional working theory is that Sullivan discovered the crawl space unique to apartment 15C while performing maintenance in Tower Block, working for Fairfield Property Management under his birth name, some months before Zoe even arrived in Manchester. The odds of him going on to meet or become infatuated with a young woman who happened to live there seem small. More likely, Sullivan positioned himself inside the apartment—was already inside the walls—when Alex, Kimberly, Liu, Lois and Zoe arrived in the week commencing September 24, 2011.
After that, he fixated on Zoe.
His presence accounts for Zoe’s missing underwear, Liu’s sense that a man had been inside the flat, the voices Lois heard at night, and perhaps even the ghost that Alex claimed as her roommate. His presence accounts for the vicious essay left on Zoe’s computer, the theft of a personal recording made by Andrew and Kimberly, and the assault that took place on January 30, 2011, in which a prospectus was taken by force from Kimberly’s hands. Evidence recovered from Sullivan’s home suggests that he studied the personal texts, direct messages and emails of Zoe, his easy access to her room giving him ample opportunity to do so. He discovered that she was in a clandestine relationship with Professor Michael Anderson, whom she had met as a fifteen-year-old music student. It’s impossible to say whether Sullivan led the investigation in Anderson’s direction out of a desire to help expose an abuser or out of a desire to provide a promising suspect. It’s impossible to say if the apparent rift between Anderson and Zoe—her aggressive spending of what was likely his money—was a result of Sullivan’s interference or not. It’s impossible to say whether Sullivan followed Andrew and Jai to Tree Court, whether he stole their flatmate Harry Fowles’s keys and was also responsible for the thefts that took place there.
It’s impossible to say, because Connor Sullivan—Fintan Murphy—took his own life on March 25, as well as the life of Evelyn Mitchell. Greater Manchester Police discovered a so-called suicide kit in Sullivan’s home, suggesting he had long been prepared for his eventual outing.