This is Part Two. Read Part One here.
Gerard Hutch was recognised by fellow Hutch Organised Crime Group members as the head of the family.
The Special Criminal Court this week found the 60-year-old not guilty of the murder of David Byrne at the Regency Hotel on 5 February 2016.
He walked out of court a free man with a judgment that vindicated him but raised serious questions about the role of his older brother Patsy Hutch.
The judgment also highlighted the criminal connections between violent dissident republicanism and organised crime and convicted two more members of the 12-man gang responsible for the Regency gun attack.
The getaway drivers
The first getaway driver, Paul Murphy, arrived at Buckingham Village at 10.15am on the morning of the murder. He was supposed to meet Eddie Hutch but he hadn't showed up, so Murphy spent around 40 minutes talking to Patsy.
Originally from Seán McDermott Street in the north inner city, Murphy was the second eldest of 11 children, six boys and five girls. He was raised by his granny until he was 11. He left school after primary and joined the army at 15 where he became a three star private.
After that he worked in Dunnes Stores, then became an apprentice barman in Jury's Hotel and Madigan's Pub before going on to work for the Irish Press delivering newspapers on scooters.
He left after eight months and moved into security where he worked for several companies before getting his taxi licence.
He lived in Swords in Co Dublin and worked in the taxi business for over 20 years. He knew the Hutch family and was a friend of the Hutchs.
Eddie Hutch also worked as a taxi driver and loan shark. He loaned Paul Murphy money from time-to-time for a fee.
Murphy bought his 07 Toyota Avensis taxi from Eddie for €9,100 and paid him €175 a week for a year before he owned it. It was the car he used on 5 February 2016 to drive one of the gunmen away from the murder scene.
Murphy was also close to Jonathan and Patsy Hutch. He said he would be in contact with them sometimes once or twice a day and that they also loaned him money.
Murphy had a swipe card to gain access to Buckingham Village, which sequentially was one number away from Patsy's swipe card. When gardaí searched Patsy's home on Champions Avenue, three weeks after the Regency, they found his swipe card in the pocket of a jacket hanging on the stairs along with a wallet with Patsy's driving licence. Gerard Hutch knew nothing about it until Jonathan Dowdall told him.
JD: "They found the key or a card an all for the bleeding gate of the village."
GH: "What?"
JD: "They found a card or a fob."
GH: "To open the gate? Where, in his gaff."
JD: "In his jacket."
The gunman Kevin Murray walked into Buckingham Village at 11.23am and left in the back of the Transit van at 12.59pm. The van drove out in convoy with Paul Murphy's taxi.
The other getaway driver, Jason Bonney, had left there earlier. The former boxer had been involved with Gerard Hutch at Corinthians Gym before he branched out on his own.
Jason Bonney worked as a builder and had amassed a substantial property empire over the years. Originally from Donaghmede, he lived in a luxury home in Drumnigh Woods in Portmarnock.
Bonney was also friends with the Hutchs and knew Gerard and Patsy well. He had also been in Buckingham Street with Murray and Murphy before the murder at the Regency.
Bonney's Jeep and Murphy's Avensis paired up together in convoy at the Beachcomber Pub in Killester at 1.41pm and drove to Donnycarney Church where they met up with four other cars.
All six then drove to St Vincent's GAA club where they picked up the six-man hit team and drove them away after the murder of David Byrne. The gunman Kevin 'Flat Cap' Murray jumped into Bonney's Jeep.
Jason Bonney tried to claim seven years later that his late father Willie had been driving the Jeep at the time of the Regency murder, much to the distress of his family.
He waited until his mother and father had died before introducing this defence at the start of his trial. He had never said it to the gardaí when they had spoken to him several times before, not even when he was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the murder.
The court, however, totally rejected this assertion. It accepted 100% the evidence of Willie's son-in-law Paul Byrne who testified that he and his wife were with Willie and Gretta Bonney that afternoon and they all heard about the Regency on the TV or Radio. It also accused Bonney's two defence witnesses, Peter Tyrell and Julie McGlynn, of lying.
"This court was lied to in the most malevolent manner," Ms Justice Tara Burns said. "A dead father has been implicated in the Regency by his son's witnesses. That anybody thought that these lies would be accepted by the court is quite frankly amazing."
Paul Murphy and Jason Bonney are currently in prison awaiting sentencing on 8 May.
Meeting the IRA dissidents
In the aftermath of the murder of David Byrne, the dissidents started hearing that the Hutchs had carried out the attack and they wanted to know how Kevin Murray had gotten involved.
'Wee' (Paul 'Bosco' McCreary) called Jonathan Dowdall and asked about 'Flat Cap' (Kevin Murray).
Dowdall told him he didn't know anything about Murray before the attack but things didn't look good for him and he was worried. He had been "up in the North looking for help and now an IRA man was involved in the Regency shooting".
It turned out to be an IRA man that the dissidents from whom he and the Hutchs had previously sought help, knew nothing about.
Dowdall told 'Wee' that Gerard Hutch was looking to talk to them and a meeting was set up with the dissident IRA for 12 February 2016, a week after the murder.
Dowdall and Hutch met Bosco McCreary and Shane Rowan (Wee and Fish) in a pub.
Gerard Hutch explained the Hutch family predicament.
A second meeting was arranged, and Dowdall was asked to bring Gerard Hutch to Shane Rowan's home in Forest Park, Killygordon in Donegal on 20 February.
From there they were brought to Strabane where they met Kevin 'Tyrone' O'Neill, the so-called member of the dissident IRA Army Council.
Dowdall explained to O'Neill that Hutch wanted someone to step in and meet the Kinahans.
O'Neill, however, would not at that stage give any commitment. He told them he had to speak to others.
Two weeks later, 'Wee' contacted Dowdall again and told him to bring Gerard Hutch to Strabane on 7 March 2016 for another meeting with Kevin O'Neill.
By this time, Gerard Hutch had already decided to give the dissidents the guns, regardless of whether or not they arranged a meeting with the Kinahans.
GH: "Ah no, no, with your things it's like that, but with these three yokes we've thrown them up there either way… You know, even if we split here and say were not meeting again, there is a present for them, them three yolks."
First, they met Bosco McCreary and Shane Rowan. They were then brought to meet three other men, Kevin O'Neill, Tommy Mellon and another individual. The encounter was brief. They discussed arranging a meeting with the Kinahans to stop the feud and Hutch and Dowdall returned to Dublin in his bugged Jeep.
The dissidents were very interested in the involvement of Kevin Murray. 'Wee' spoke to Hutch about it before they left, saying the word on the street was that Murray had been paid €50,000 for the shooting. He admitted, however, he didn’t expect 'The Monk' to confirm this.
Wee: "Right, I'll give you an example Gerard right and I’ll not be asking you. I’ll not be asking you anything right."
GH: "Yeah."
Wee: "And I’m not. I’m just gonna end the conversation in relation to it right. I respected what Murray got right but I’m gonna give ya a figure right, you probably know and I don’t want, I don’t want ya sayin’ aye or no, d’ya get what I’m saying."
GH: "Yeah"
Wee: "And I picked this on the street right. He had to tell somebody that he got 50 why, now what I heard, what his f**kin brother which is married to a girl in Lifford was telling the pub, so where did the figure come out of, think about it, no what, on the subject d’ya get."
GH: "I know what you mean yeah."
Hutch didn't confirm or deny the figure.
"There is a reality to the context of this discussion," the three judges found, "which is that it is between criminals, hard men, men who size each other up, who are constantly suspicious of each other and who do not have honest conversations. Kudos is king in this world."
"More importantly, Gerard Hutch denying that Kevin Murray was paid or that the Hutchs weren't behind the Regency would, in effect, jeopardise getting the assistance of the dissidents."
The judges were satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Patsy Hutch asked Dowdall to use his IRA contacts for help to broker a ceasefire with the Kinahans. It was Patsy's son Gary who had been murdered by the Kinahans in Spain. His other son Patrick was shot in Dublin and Dowdall made two of his four trips to see the dissidents in the North, before the Regency attack. Gerard Hutch only went with him the two other times after the Regency.
Patsy and the guns handover
Two days after Gerard Hutch and Jonathan Dowdall had travelled to the North to offer the AK-47 assault rifles to the dissident republicans and ask them to mediate in the feud, IRA man Shane Rowan drove to Dublin.
He collected a car from a car sales company near his home in Donegal and was seen by a garda surveillance officer on the Malahide Road in Dublin at 3.30pm that day.
He parked his 09 Insignia in the car park of Clarehall Shopping Centre. Two minutes later, Patsy Hutch arrived in a Toyota Yaris.
Patsy drove past Rowan's car and Rowan followed him to the nearby Mattress Micks in the Newtown Industrial Estate. They parked and Rowan got out of his car, into the front passenger seat of Patsy's car and Patsy drove off.
They went to the Applegreen in Kinsealy where they had coffee and pastries and stayed for an hour. While they were away a man arrived and drove off in Rowan's Insignia. He took it to a crash repairs. He got out and went to a Nissan Primera parked beside it. Then he went back to the Insignia and both cars drove off.
The Insignia was left back at the Iceland car park in the Newtown Industrial Estate. Patsy Hutch dropped Shane Rowan back near his car and both men drove off. The guns had been handed over to the IRA in an elaborate exchange involving the complex counter surveillance movement of several cars and personnel.
Shane Rowan drove north but was stopped by armed gardaí from the Special Detective Unit, a half-an-hour later, near Slane in Co Meath. The three AK-47s used at the Regency were found in the boot of his car. Rowan was jailed for seven years.
An hour later, gardaí raided Jonathan Dowdall's home in Cabra.
"The court is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Gerard Hutch had control over and was in possession of these guns at this point in time," the three judges found, and "on the basis of the evidence of the NSU, (National Surveillance Unit) the court is further satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Patsy Hutch was centrally involved in this movement of these weapons."
The burner phones
At least four burner phones were used by the gang on the day of the Regency attack.
The 085 numbers were loaded up with €10, activated and only used on that day. They pinged only at cell sites near the Buckingham Village centre of operations, the north inner city and the Regency Hotel.
One of the phones was found four days after the murder in a Black Skoda parked on North Charles Street in the north inner city. Jonathan Hutch told gardaí he owned the car. They searched the car and found the phone in the glove box. The numbers of the three other phones were saved on this phone.
Jonathan Hutch is Gerard Hutch's nephew. He became a target of the Kinahan Organised Crime Group following the Regency murder. They tried to kill him on 17 August 2016 in Majorca but instead they shot dead a totally innocent, law-abiding council worker, Trevor O’Neill, in front of his wife and children.
Hutch had met the father-of-three earlier in the hotel and told the Spanish police that he believed the gunmen were trying to kill him.
Jonathan Hutch's older brother Gareth Hutch was also shot dead by the Kinahan Organised Crime Group three months earlier in Dublin.
Two years later three people, brother and sister Thomas Fox and Regina Keogh from Avondale House on Gardiner Street and Jonathan Keogh from Gloucester Place, were convicted of his murder at the Special Criminal Court and sentenced to life in prison.
"The court is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt, having regard to the times of the calls and the cell site used; the fact that the person wearing a wig was on a phone as he entered the Regency; and the timing of the movement of the Transit van towards the Regency Hotel entrance which coincides with the connected phone calls as detailed, that these phones were used in the course of the Regency attack having been activated earlier that morning."
"It notes that the glovebox phone was found in a car stated to be owned by Jonathan Hutch and it notes that the phones were activated in a location consistent with being in the north inner city."
The Regency
Patsy Hutch's sons had been shot as part of the feud, one was murdered. Patsy was Jonathan Dowdall’s friend. He admitted helping the gang commit the murder and is now serving a four-year prison sentence.
Dowdall said Patsy asked him to lie about the van but he refused. A van key was seen in Patsy’s home during a search but when gardaí went back to get it, it was gone.
Patsy had a swipe card for Buckingham Village, "the centre of operations" for the Regency attack. It was sequentially one number away from the card that convicted getaway driver Paul Murphy was caught with. Patsy was in the village on the morning of the attack when the getaway drivers and at least one gunman, Kevin Murray, was there.
Gerard Hutch said he was having difficulty getting Patsy to get the guns out of the village. Patsy was centrally involved in the movement of the weapons.
Gerard Hutch was aware he would be blamed for the attack on the Regency. He told Dowdall when they were in Spain that it wasn’t his fight and they discussed it on their final trip to see the dissidents in the North.
JD: "I know you've more balls than any c**t that I know like doin that an all, I don’t necessarily I don’t wanna see you doin that, no more that I wanna see bleedin Patsy, d’ya know. I don’t want to, or Johnny or f**kin, I just think ya do something enough ya get caught Gerard. I just don’t think you deserve this, it’s not your bleedin, and you said it to me in Spain, I didn’t twig with me at the time but this is not your fight. It can’t be all left on your shoulders either Gerard."
GH: "Kinahan’s supposedly back. He was supposed to come back Friday, the same day as me."… "The performance of what happened in that hotel they’ll put that down to me."
Patsy Hutch has been under 24-hour protection for the past seven years. There is a permanent armed garda post outside his home in Champions Avenue in the north inner city.
The Kinahan Organised Crime Group have been particularly anxious to kill him and have made several attempts on his life.
Nine Kinahan gang members, which included two separate hit teams and a former British soldier who served in Afghanistan, were jailed for an elaborate plan which involved trying to lure Patsy out of his house and shoot him on 10 March 2018.
Another Kinahan gang plan to kill Patsy at the graveside of his son Gary was also foiled, while Patsy along with Hutch gang member Gary Hanley each survived a third attempt when they were tricked into going to a meeting in Ballymun in Dublin in November 2018.
Several shots were fired at them. They were lucky to get out alive.
Hanley had also been targeted the previous year by a five-man Kinahan hit team. His life was saved in an operation by the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau which ran for over 12 weeks, involved over 200 gardaí and cost over a million euro.
Conclusion
The Special Criminal Court this week came to "the inevitable conclusion that members of the Hutch family were responsible for the murder of David Byrne".
It named members of the Hutch family in its 158-page judgment including Gerard, Eddie, Patsy and Jonathan and identified their connections to the planning and execution of the Regency attack.
The three judges also concluded that it was "a reasonable possibility" that it was Gerard's older brother Patsy Hutch who "planned" the Regency and that Gerard "stepped in, as head of the family, in an attempt to sort out the aftermath". He wanted to stop the killings "particularly as his own life was at risk".
The garda investigation into the attack on the Regency, the murder of David Byrne and the activities of the Hutch Organised Crime Group continues.
