Daniel Kinahan was lucky that he turned one way and not the other on this day ten years ago when his friend and fellow gang member David Byrne was murdered.
When two gunmen burst into the ballroom at the Regency Hotel at 2.32pm on 5 February 2016, they started shooting and panic ensued.
Daniel ran out the back door with the gunmen in hot pursuit. He turned right but they turned left, arriving back at the service entrance to the hotel.
Luck was not with David Byrne that day however, because he took a wrong turn.
He too fled the ballroom towards the hotel reception while three men dressed as gardaí carrying AK-47 assault rifles were coming towards him.
For one moment, Byrne stopped and turned back towards the ballroom before continuing towards the front exit.
It cost him his life.
It allowed the first assassin in the foyer to pick him out and shoot him to the ground beside the reception desk.
The second assassin then shot him again when he was on the ground before jumping onto the reception desk and shooting his motionless body as it lay on the ground.
He was shot six times and died at the scene.
The murder of David Byrne was an affront to the Kinahan Organised Crime Group, a transnational drugs and firearms trafficking network and the most powerful criminal gang in the country.
It was also an attack taken personally not just by Daniel Kinahan, the target that day, but by his family, his brother Liam, the gang leader in Dublin and his father, veteran criminal James 'Jaws' Byrne.
James Byrne, who died last year, was the patriarchal figure in the gang who, according to gardaí, became the principal driving force seeking vengeance for the murder of his son.
His grief manifested itself in a series of murders where some victims were targeted while others were the victims of mistaken identity and incompetent hitmen.
The patriarchal figure of the rival Hutch Organised Crime Group was Gerard Hutch, the man known as the Monk.
As elder statesmen among the next generation of criminals, Hutch and Byrne had been long-time friends within the criminal fraternity, with Byrne even spending some time with Hutch in Spain where Hutch has a house.
The murder of David Byrne however, led to a falling out between the two men as 'Jaws' Byrne and the Kinahan gang blamed the Hutch gang for the murder of David Byrne.
The Kinahan Organised Crime Group rapidly and dramatically commenced a series of murderous retributions.
Gerard and his brothers, Patsy, Eddie and John, along with their sons and other members of the Hutch family were nominated as targets for the Byrne and Kinahan Organised Crime Groups, whether they were involved in organised crime or not.
Eighteen people were shot dead in the Hutch-Kinahan feud, two before David Byrne was gunned down at the Regency. The killings began in Spain with the murder of Gary Hutch in September 2015.
Gary Hutch had tried but failed to kill Daniel Kinahan at his home in Spain the year before but €200,000 compensation was paid and an agreement was reached between the Kinahan and the Hutch gangs that Gary was not to be touched.
As part of the deal, his younger brother Patrick Junior was also shot in a punishment shooting on 15 August 2014.
He was subsequently treated at the Mater Hospital for a gunshot wound to the leg but refused to make a complaint or give any information to gardaí.
However, 'there is no honour among thieves' and if Gary thought his life would be spared, he thought wrong.
He was unable to outrun the gunman who pursued him through the apartment complex in Estepona and around the swimming pool before shooting him dead on 24 September 2015.
And so began the feud, shootings and killings.
A failed attempt was made again to shoot Daniel Kinahan, this time in November 2015 at the Red Cow Hotel in Dublin.
The Kinahan gang retaliated and shot dead the suspected gunman Daniel Kearns in front of his wife as they left a pub on Blackhorse Avenue in Dublin on 30 December 2015.
The following night in Lanzarote in Spain, two gunmen went to kill Gerard Hutch in Mulligan’s Irish pub.
Hutch was fortunate to have moved seats and they could not find him, so they left.
The Hutch Organised Crime Group subsequently retaliated at the Regency and the feud intensified.
Three days later, on 8 February 2016, Gerard Hutch's brother Eddie was shot dead, followed by his friend Noel Duggan, then his nephew Gareth Hutch.
Eleven men were shot dead that year including three innocent people.
Martin O’Rourke was shot dead in the north inner city.
Noel Kirwan, who happened to be photographed with Gerard Hutch at Eddie’s funeral, was shot outside his home three days before Christmas, while Trevor O’Neill, a council worker on a family holiday in Spain was shot dead by a gunman who mistook him for one of the Hutches, who was also in Spain.
The Kinahan gang did not forget the dissident republicans either for the role one of their own, Kevin 'Flat Cap' Murray, played in the Regency attack.
First, they shot dead Vincent Ryan three weeks after the murder at the Regency, outside his partner’s home in Finglas.
The gang then shot dead Michael Barr in April 2016 in the Sunset House, the pub where he worked in Dublin’s north inner city.
The Kinahan Organised Crime Group also made several unsuccessful attempts on the lives of other Hutch family and gang members, including John, Gerard, and Patsy Hutch and on the life of the senior gang member James ‘Mago’ Gately.
Armed patrols and checkpoints were set up in north and south Dublin’s inner city and armed gardaí were posted outside the homes of senior Hutch gang and family members.
Known hitmen and organised crime figures were put under surveillance and their cars and vans bugged.
Gerard Hutch was horrified by the indiscriminate nature of the feud murders. It not only affected him personally, it was also bad for business.
In conversations recorded by gardaí, he said the strategy of kill and be killed was "not good".
"There has to be another way," he said.
"Don’t be using a gun all the time. The heartbreak that’s left behind."
Gerard Hutch knew that along with Daniel Kinahan, James 'Jaws' Byrne would need to be consulted and "on board" to stop the killings.
"It’s gonna be Jemmy Burns decision ya know," he was recorded by gardaí telling Jonathan Dowdall, the Hutch gang member who entered the witness protection programme and testified against Gerard Hutch in court.
When Dowdall asked him "And what’s he like?", Hutch replied: "Well it'd be do you wanna lose another son Jemmy."
However, the Hutches never got to sit down and negotiate a ceasefire with the Kinahans.
The killings continued for another two years, with five more people shot dead in 2017 and into the first month of 2018, including Jamie Tighe, Michael Keogh, Kane McCormack, a son of Noel Kirwan and Gerard Hutch's nephew Derek, who was shot dead in a car outside Cloverhill Prison.
The last victim of the feud Jason 'Buda' Molyneux was shot dead ten days later on 30 January 2018, by which time gardaí were beginning to get a handle on the killings and people were being brought before the courts.
There were plenty of journalists and photographers at the Regency on 5 February 2016, but no garda was on duty or working undercover at the 'Clash of the Clans' weigh-in, where the most senior members of the country's largest and most dangerous criminal gang had mingled among boxing fans, innocent civilians and their families.
The murder at the Regency was seen as a major garda failure and an indication as to how weak the police service was at the time in terms of resources, personnel, equipment and intelligence.
Cutbacks resulted in intelligence files not being updated, armed and dangerous criminals not being kept under surveillance and gardaí left to play 'catch up' after the fact.
However, the Regency and the escalating feud was also quickly recognised for what it was, a threat to the State, and the resources of the State were activated.
New legislation was introduced, new garda armed support units were set up all over the country and gardaí used covert surveillance and widespread bugging to identify and target the feuding organised crime groups.
The following month on 9 March 2016, the Criminal Assets Bureau raided the Kinahan gang's Dublin stronghold in Raleigh Square and €1 million worth of cars, motorbikes, jewellery and luxury goods were seized.
The homes there of Liam Byrne and Sean McGovern, along with those of Daniel Kinahan and James Gately, were subsequently seized.
Later that night in March 2016, gardaí also stopped a car and seized the three AK-47 assault rifles used in the Regency murder by the three hitmen dressed in fake garda uniforms.
The Special Criminal Court later found that while Gerard Hutch was not guilty of that murder, he had possession of and was in control of the guns at least two days before they were seized.
Two months later, Gerard's nephew, Patrick Hutch Junior was arrested and charged with the murder of David Byrne.
Aged 34 at the time, he was subsequently named at his trial in the Special Criminal Court as the gunman dressed as a woman at the Regency.
Patrick Junior was identified by two gardaí whose evidence was accepted by the court.
He was, however, not convicted because his trial collapsed in February 2019 after the Senior Investigating Officer, Detective Superintendent Colm Fox, took his own life at Ballymun Garda Station.
Gardaí, however, secured a breakthrough in November 2016 when Paul Cleary, now acting Deputy Garda Commissioner, arrested senior Kinahan gang member Freddie Thompson in a toilet in the City North Hotel in Drogheda.
Thompson was subsequently tried and convicted of the feud murder of Daithi Douglas and is serving life in prison.
Gardaí then discovered the Kinahan gang's armoury in the Greenogue Business Park in Rathcoole in Co Dublin, with loaded revolvers, semi-automatic pistols, a machine gun and thousands of rounds of ammunition ready for use.
They also arrested a previously unknown senior Kinahan gang member, armourer and logistics manager Declan Brady.
"Mr Nobody" as he was known, only came on the garda radar when he was seen at David Byrne’s funeral.
Brady is currently serving lengthy prison sentences for possession of the weapons and ammunition and for his role in the murder of Noel Kirwan.
Four other Kinahan gang members were also jailed for their roles in the murder, while one of the most senior figures in the gang, Sean McGovern, last year became the first person to be extradited from the United Arab Emirates to Ireland.
Mr McGovern remains in custody charged with the murder of Noel Kirwan and is currently before the Special Criminal Court.
The Kinahan gang’s international connections were also revealed during the course of the investigations when gardaí arrested one of the biggest gangsters in Europe at the time, Naoufal Fassih, in the Kinahan gang's luxury apartment in Baggot Street, Dublin.
Fassih was later extradited to Holland and is currently serving 18 years in prison for his role in a gun attack in Amsterdam in 2015.
The following year, gardaí arrested Imre Arakas, an Estonian hitman brought into the country to kill James "Mago" Gately.
Arakas was subsequently jailed for six years before being extradited to Lithuania for murder.
The three leaders of the Kinahan Organised Crime Group, Daniel, Christopher Senior and Christopher junior, fled Spain after their boxing gym MGM on the Costa Del Sol was raided by Spanish authorities and shut down.
They re-invented themselves as "respectable businessmen" in Dubai and broadened into sports promotion with a new company MTK, (Mack the Knife), and tried to move into soccer along with boxing.
MTK entered into a partnership with KHK Sports which was founded by His Highness Sheikh Khalid Bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the fifth son of the ruler of Bahrain.
Daniel Kinahan became "special advisor" to the company.
The Kinahans also embarked on a propaganda campaign, which included the release of a book and a film that gave a fictionalised account of what happened at the Regency.
The campaign, however, came to a shuddering halt when the WBC champion Tyson Fury publicly thanked Daniel Kinahan for "getting this deal over the line" as he reached an agreement to fight Anthony Joshua twice, with the first bout to be held in 2021.
The social media clip went viral and the world suddenly woke up to the reality of who Daniel Kinahan is and what he was doing.
Gardaí reacted and the late Assistant Commissioner John O'Driscoll was instrumental in putting a stop to the campaign.
He spearheaded the formation of international relations and co-operation with law enforcement and governments in Europe, the US and the Middle East.
KHK pulled out of the arrangement with Daniel Kinahan and the police in the United Arab Emirates began co-operating with gardaí.
US authorities sanctioned Christopher Senior, Daniel and Christy Junior and offered a $5m reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any of them.
British authorities dismantled the gang’s UK drug-dealing and money-laundering network, which resulted in the jailing of Thomas "Bomber" Kavanagh and Liam Byrne, the heads of the UK and Irish branches of the Kinahan Organised Crime Group.
In Ireland, 98 Kinahan and Hutch gang members and associates have been convicted and jailed in the past ten years, most by the Special Criminal Court.
There are now so many feuding gang members in the country's overcrowded jails that they have to be detained in separate prisons, Mountjoy for the Kinahan gang, Wheatfield for the Hutch gang.
While some of those in custody are senior gang members, the vast majority are small-time criminals who are drug addicted and vulnerable.
David Hunter was in the words of his own lawyer, "a two-bit car thief" from Liverpool who is now serving life for the murder of Michael Barr.
The members of the hit team put together to kill Patsy Hutch, Gerard Hutch's brother, in March 2018 had similar issues, as heard in court, which made them susceptible to also being used by the Kinahan Organised Crime Group.
Mohammed Smew was a drug addicted college dropout who became homeless and whose mental health was badly affected following a serious motorbike crash.
Mark Capper has ADHD, and an IQ of 63, and was sent to a special school before becoming involved in criminality.
The "looker" on that attempted shooting was Ciaran O'Driscoll, a north inner city drug addict with 90 criminal convictions, whose parents were also drug addicts and had died.
Even the director of that sub-cell, Patrick Curtis, has crippling mental health problems, excessive compulsive disorder and irrational behaviour.
In spite of his debilitating fear of confined spaces, he, like the other cell members, was locked up in Portlaoise Prison where the prison doctor said he suffered from claustrophobia, anxiety, depression and blesses himself 60 times a day to soothe his fears.
In the last ten years, gardaí have also saved 51 lives through active interventions, arresting gunmen and hit teams from both the Hutch and Kinahan Organised Crime Groups.
Seventy firearms, 4,300 rounds of ammunition, €11.1m in cash and €31.8m worth of drugs have also been seized from the two feuding gangs.
Four people, Jonathan Dowdall, his father Patrick, Paul Murphy and Jason Bonney, have been convicted and jailed for their roles in the murder of David Byrne at the Regency Hotel, but none of the six-man hit team has ever been caught.
A fifth man, the dissident republican Shane Rowan who was caught with the AK47s used in the gun attack was jailed for seven years.
Gerard Hutch was found not guilty of the murder, the trial of his nephew Patrick Hutch Junior collapsed, and Kevin 'Flat Cap' Murray died before he could be put on trial for the murder.
Spanish authorities say Gerard Hutch remains under criminal investigation and that charges against him for alleged money laundering are still being considered.
Files on the leadership of the Kinahan gang are currently with the Director of Public Prosecutions as the investigation continues and gardaí say they are continuing to pursue those involved in the feud and extradite them home where necessary to face trial.
