This week's Special Criminal Court judgment, which found Gerard Hutch not guilty of murder, also points to new possibilities as to who may have planned the Regency attack and why.
It highlights the nexus between organised crime and violent dissident republicanism.
It also suggests that Gerard Hutch's older brother Patsy could have planned the attack on the Regency and that Gerard only became involved as part of a life-saving damage limitation exercise.
The origins of the feud, which began with an attempt on the life of the Hutch Organised Crime Group's rival gang leader Daniel Kinahan and led to the murder of his nephews, "wasn't his fight".
Daniel Kinahan gets lucky again
At 2.32pm on 5 February 2016, a man dressed as a woman whom the Special Criminal Court has been told was Patrick Hutch junior and the dissident republican gunman Kevin 'Flat Cap' Murray walked arm in arm into the ballroom at the Regency Hotel and started shooting.
MGM promotions, which is controlled by Daniel Kinahan, was running a boxing weigh in at the time and 250 men, women and children were there.
Pandemonium ensued and Kinahan ran out a back door of the hotel with the two gunmen in hot pursuit.
Kinahan turned left into the car park behind the hotel and ran for his life.
The two hitmen turned right and came back towards the service entrance of the hotel.
The 'couple' met up with three other hitmen dressed in fake tactical garda uniforms carrying AK-47 assault rifles.
They were all looking for Daniel Kinahan but he had gotten away.
"Luck was with him," the Special Criminal Court concluded this week.
Kinahan gang member David Byrne was not so lucky. He died instantly after he was shot six times in the lobby of the hotel.
Four of the 12-man gang behind the attack have been convicted and jailed, one has died, but nobody has been convicted of the murder.
The case against Patrick Hutch for the murder of David Byrne collapsed over four years ago, while Kevin 'Flat Cap' Murray died before he could stand trial for the murder.
The murder charge against former Sinn Féin councillor and Hutch gang member Jonathan Dowdall was dropped after he agreed to testify against Gerard Hutch.
The man known as 'The Monk' was found not guilty earlier this week and walked out of court into a blaze of publicity.
Feud escalation
The murder of David Byrne was the second time in two years that members of the Hutch Organised Crime Group failed to kill one of the leaders of their now deadly rivals, the Kinahan Organised Crime Group.
A year-and-a-half earlier, in August 2014, innocent boxer Jamie Moore was shot and seriously injured in a case of mistaken identity.
Daniel Kinahan was the target but Moore was staying with him at his villa in Spain and the gunmen waiting outside for Kinahan shot Moore instead.
The Kinahan organisation retaliated by shooting two of Patsy Hutch's sons.
Daniel Kinahan is said to have shot Patrick Hutch junior in the leg in a punishment shooting in Dublin on 15 August 2014, while Gary Hutch was shot dead after he was chased around the pool in his apartment complex in Spain on 24 September 2015.
The Hutch Organised Crime Group tried to settle the dispute once and for all by paying Kinahan €200,000 compensation but that did not satisfy their thirst for vengeance.
They tried but failed to kill Gerard Hutch in Lanzarote in the early hours of New Year's Day 2016.
The Hutchs retaliated at the Regency but missed Daniel Kinahan.
They would not get another chance.
The Kinahan gang embarked on an assassination spree, beginning three days after the Regency with the murder of Eddie 'Neddie' Hutch.
Over the next two years, 14 people were shot dead, including two totally innocent victims, two dissident republicans, and two of Gerard Hutch's friends, three of his associates, three of his nephews and his brother Eddie.
Sixteen of the 18 deaths so far in the Hutch-Kinahan feud can be attributed to the Kinahan Organised Crime Group.
The Hutch Organised Crime Group are deemed responsible for two.
Motive
Jonathan Dowdall said it was Patsy Hutch's two sons that started the feud when they tried and failed to kill Daniel Kinahan in Spain on 3 August 2014.
Gary was subsequently shot dead on the orders of the Kinahan gang. Patrick junior was shot and injured.
Patrick junior was subsequently named in court as the gunman dressed as a woman at the Regency.
He was tried for murder but not convicted after the trial collapsed in February 2019.
Dowdall was very close to Patsy and his family. Patsy's sons worked on Dowdall's mother's stall as children and Patrick junior had started an apprenticeship with Dowdall who was an electrician and ran his own successful business.
It was Dowdall that Patsy's wife rang looking for her husband after she had heard that Eddie had been shot dead.
Naturally, she was worried about his safety. But while Dowdall's mother was friendly with Gerard Hutch's wife, Patricia, Dowdall wasn't close to Gerard Hutch.
He knew him and would acknowledge him if he saw him, but they were not friends. Patsy was Jonathan Dowdall's friend.
The van and the key
Dowdall often borrowed money from Patsy for cashflow for his business.
He recommended him for carpet laying work on jobs he worked on. He also helped Patsy Hutch to buy a commercial vehicle, a Transit van, which was bought through Dowdall's company so the VAT could be reclaimed.
The van was registered in Dowdall's name and Dowdall says Patsy subsequently asked him to lie about it and tell the gardaí that he had the van during the time of the Regency.
Dowdall told Patsy he wouldn't.
A Ford Transit van was used to bring the six-man hit team to and from the Regency Hotel and later found burned out in the nearby Charlemont Estate.
When the gardaí searched Patsy's home, they discovered a key to a Transit van hanging on a hook but they didn't take it. When they came back for it a second time, the key was gone.
Gerard Hutch knew nothing about this until Jonathan Dowdall told him about it on their trip to Northern Ireland to get the dissidents to intervene in the feud.
Dowdall couldn't believe how "stupid" the gardaí were.
Even Gerard Hutch was somewhat taken aback.
JD: "They (the cops) came in (to Patsy's house)… and they seen a bleeding Ford key right, so whatever cop put it down asked about the key, went out to the avenue checked every van, car the whole lot in the avenue for this Ford f**kin key, nothing was there for it."
GH: "He's thinking that could be off the f**kin Ford van."
JD: "Off the main van Transit right, so they f**ked off but they came back on the Thursday say."
GH: "And they had to prove what the car, and they went to the key technicians and they told them the Reg did they."
JD: "No. They never took the key, forgot to take the key, this is how stupid they are."
GH: "Ah for f**ks sake."
JD: "Right so then they went back to Pat's, went in looking for the key, raided the gaff again, we're here for the key where's the key, he says I don't know what key you're talking about. He had a big box of bleeding keys."
An IRA garda killer
With the feud not resolved in early 2016, Patsy asked Dowdall to get help from his IRA connections to help the Hutch family in their dispute with the Kinahans.
Dowdall contacted Pearse McAuley, the notorious IRA terrorist and killer of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe in 1996. Supported by Sinn Féin and collected by former Sinn Féin TD Martin Ferris when he was released from jail for that crime on 5 August 2009.
In 2015, he was sentenced to 12 years with the final two years suspended for a savage attack on his former wife, Sinn Féin TD Pauline Tully. He was released last year.
Dowdall was a regular visitor to McAuley in Castlerea Prison. He saw him 14 times though he would only admit in court to two or three visits.
McAuley put him in contact with dissident IRA member Paul 'Bosco' McCreary, whose nickname was 'Wee'.
Dowdall said he drove to Northern Ireland in January and February 2016 hoping to meet Kevin 'Tyrone' O'Neill, whom he said was a member of the army council.
Instead, he met 'Wee' and a second IRA man Shane Rowan, who was known as 'Fish'.
From then on, Dowdall said he was constantly being contacted by Gerard and Patsy Hutch about meetings with the dissidents, and then subsequently by the dissidents asking him to bring Gerard Hutch to the North.
A room for a gunman
On the eve of the Regency murder, the 4 February 2016, Dowdall was driving back from his second trip to the North when he says he got a call from Patsy Hutch.
Patsy asked him if he had booked the room at the Regency for a friend of his yet. Patsy had asked him to do it the night before.
Dowdall regularly booked hotels and flights for the Hutchs on his credit card so he didn't think Patsy's request was unusual.
His father Patrick, who was in the car with him, rang his wife and she booked the room on her credit card. Father and son then drove to the hotel where Patrick Dowdall paid for room 2104 in cash, collected the key card and went upstairs to check it out.
Patrick had been asked to meet the friend for a drink that night but said no because he was tired from travelling to and from the North that day.
They arranged with Patsy to bring the key card to his (Patsy's) home instead.
However, Patsy rang and the plan was changed. He told them to meet him on Richmond Road in Drumcondra.
Dowdall said they pulled in at a garage half way up Richmond Road but that it was Gerard Hutch, not Patsy, who came to the passenger window and collected the card. "Nothing much was said," Dowdall said.
The court rejected this and said the key card could have been handed over to any one of the Hutch gang, including Patsy Hutch.
It also pointed out that if the Dowdalls had gone to Patsy's home with the room key as originally planned, they would most likely have driven down the Richmond Road anyway on their way to his house.
This would explain their phones pinging on a nearby cell site.
"The reality is that this key card was handed over to someone within the Hutch clan who passed it onto Kevin Murray, whether that was Patsy Hutch, Gerard Hutch, Kevin Murray or someone else. Furthermore, as the key card was handed over, it had to be handed over somewhere, whether that was the Richmond Road, Patsy Hutch's house, as had originally been organised, or elsewhere."
Jonathan Dowdall rang Patsy Hutch after he and his father left the Regency at 7.40pm with the room key. Just over an hour later, at 8.44pm, the gunman Kevin 'Flat Cap' Murray arrived at the hotel, bypassed reception and went straight to the room.
Murray had a few drinks in the bar that night and left the next morning. He took a taxi to Amiens Street, met a man and walked up to the meeting place for the hit team at Buckingham Village in the north inner city.
Dowdall said afterwards that Patsy had lied to him about the room because he told him it had nothing to do with the Regency. This clearly wasn't the case.
The centre of operations
Buckingham Village in Dublin's north inner city was "the centre of operations" for the Regency attack. It is a gated apartment complex off Bella Street. Corinthians Boxing Club, Gerard Hutch's club, is also off Bella Street as well as other housing.
Once you turn in to Bella Street there is no other exit. To get out you must come back out Bella Street on to Buckingham Street. Entry and exit to the complex is controlled by a swipe card security system.
The people, the getaway cars and the Transit van carrying the hit team met up at Buckingham Village on the morning of the murder and left there to travel to the hotel and the escape location.
Guns in the village
The three AK-47s used by the gunmen dressed as armed gardaí were also stored afterwards in Buckingham Village.
The court found the bugged conversations between Jonathan Dowdall and Gerard Hutch established "that the guns were kept in Buckingham Village, that Patsy Hutch had control of them and that Gerard Hutch had difficulty getting Patsy to get them out of Buckingham Village".
Gerard Hutch didn't even know that "the village" had been searched but by the time the gardaí got there, the guns were gone.
JD: "You were away right, and it was red hot Gerard, was still knocking at doors."
GH: "I just said when you're ready let me know… get rid of them… but I had to push him to get them outta the village. Did the village get raided?"
JD: As far as I know your woman (the woman who worked there) got lifted a few times.
GH: Yeah.
JD: You know the bird that works there.
GH: Well when you say lifted; cops came down and tried to interview her.
JD: Oh, they interviewed her.
GH: Yeah.
JD: Yeah, they did interview her, yeah.
GH: Probably asked for the CCTV.
JD: Em, I think that was gone but isn’t it.
GH: Yeah. JD: Yeah.
GH: She told them that that’s gone.
Later in the bugged conversation Hutch insists that the guns be given to the dissident IRA.
GH: "That's why I said to Patsy, I wanna throw them up there to them regardless. It's a present for them (the dissidents)… Even if they do nothing for us, I said you should have done, but I says, I says boll**ks, I said they should have been sent up last week."
Jonathan Dowdall agreed.
JD: "Hindsight's a great thing. I says to Patsy at the time, well before it, I says what the f**k are ya doin with everything in that village."
By this time Patsy's sons had been shot by the Kinahans, one of them, Gary had been shot dead. Jonathan Dowdall said they had started the feud when they tried to shoot Daniel Kinahan.
Patsy Hutch had a van which Dowdall had registered for him through his business. A van had been used by the hit-team at the Regency and the gardaí saw a key to a van in Patsy's house but didn't take it. When they went back it was gone.
Patsy also had control of the Regency AK-47 rifles in the "centre of operations", Buckingham Village. The hit team left from there on the morning of the murder.
Was Gerard Hutch a Patsy for the Regency?
Part 2 tomorrow.
