Key witness Jonathan Dowdall has denied suggestions that he is a “master manipulator” and there are “two big lies” at the heart of his testimony in the Regency Hotel murder trial.
Brendan Grehan SC, for Gerard Hutch, opened his cross-examination of Dowdall with a suggestion the first of the “two big lies” is Dowdall’s evidence that Mr Hutch collected key cards for a room in the hotel from Dowdall and his father Patrick on Dublin’s Richmond Road the evening before the attack on the hotel on February 5th 2016 during which David Byrne was shot dead.
The second lie is that Mr Hutch had “confessed” to Dowdall in a park in Whitehall a few days late, counsel said.
Dowdall denied he was lying about those matters and also denied he is a “master manipulator” who had “waited a long time to insert Gerard Hutch into your account”.
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There were “other references” which caused him to believe Gerard Hutch was at the Regency hotel but Gerard Hutch “never directly repeated the words that he was the one who shot dead Byrne other than in the park”, he said
In other exchanges, Dowdall said he was not lying when he told the Joe Duffy show in March 2016 he was not involved in criminality.
When counsel referred to a serious incident involving a man being “waterboarded” in 2015 which led in 2017 to Dowdall being jailed for 12 years, Dowdall said he was under a lot of pressure at the time of the Joe Duffy interview and the waterboarding incident slipped his mind.
He said there were comments during searches of his home at the time that made him aware the searches were to do with the Regency Hotel murder. He was not involved in the Regency Hotel murder, he said.
In relation to evidence from the witness concerning efforts to have republicans mediate the Hutch/Kinahan feud, Mr Grehan remarked, to some titters of laughter in the court: “Since when did the IRA get into the mediation business?”
During his evidence, Dowdall also said he learned, while in prison, the “real reason” the Hutch/Kinahan feud started was that Gary Hutch and Patrick Hutch had decided to take some €4.5 million linked to the Kinahans and to shoot Daniel Kinahan but that Patrick Hutch Junior, while hiding in bushes, shot a boxer instead.
In other exchanges, counsel asked Dowdall was he “seriously asking the court to believe” that, when he travelled to Donegal with Gerard Hutch on February 20th 2016, he had carried a bag of electrical tools into “an IRA man’s house” to fix a plug.
Dowdall said that was “the truth” and he had fixed a plug socket for a TV in the man’s house.
He agreed he made references to “timers” and “circuits” during a recorded conversation with Mr Hutch when they again travelled north on March 7th 2016. He said those references were “nonsense”, he was never involved in “bomb-making” or building timers and did not know how to build a timer.
The cross-examination began on Tuesday afternoon in the continuing trial before the three judge, non-jury Special Criminal Court, of Mr Hutch (59), last of The Paddocks, Clontarf, Dublin 3, who has denied the murder of Mr Byrne at the Regency.
At Mr Grehan’s request, some glass screens in the courtroom were taken down so he would have a clear view of Dowdall, who, surrounded by several gardaí and prison officers, was seated in the foreperson’s seat in the jury box. Mr Hutch, sitting directly across the courtroom from Dowdall, also had a clear view of the witness.
The court was crowded with the parents of David Byrne, and other Byrne family members, again among the attendance.
During the cross-examination, Mr Grehan asked Dowdall several questions concerning his 2017 conviction for falsely imprisoning and threatening to kill a man in 2015 during an ordeal involving the man, whom Dowdall believed was trying to defraud him, being “waterboarded” at Dowdall’s home. Dowdall and his father Patrick were respectively jailed for 12 years and eight years over the incident. Dowdall said he had pleaded guilty over that incident, had served his sentence, and was very sorry for what he had done.
He said he had learned about waterboarding “from the telly”.
He agreed one of his children videoed the incident but would not name them. He agreed, during the earlier trial over the ‘waterboarding’, he had told the trial he did not know who had videoed the incident.
Asked about the booking of the Regency hotel room on February 4th 2016, he said his wife had regularly booked hotel rooms, flights and made payments for Patsy Hutch using credit cards.
He said his father had been asked by Patsy Hutch to book a room for a “friend” in the hotel for February 4th and he drove his father to the hotel that evening to pay for the room and get the key card. Dowdall said he rang Patsy Hutch after his father collected the key card and was told to leave the key “on Richmond Road”.
He denied as “absolute nonsense” a suggestion he sought to incriminate Gerard Hutch by saying it was he, not Patsy, who collected the key on Richmond Road. He said Gerard Hutch asked for the cards, got the cards, said “Thanks”, and left and his father is prepared to give evidence about that if called on to do so.
The court has heard CCTV evidence showed Kevin ‘Flatcap’ Murray, a deceased dissident republican, entering the room later than evening. The prosecution contend Murray was one of six people involved in the attack on the Regency.
The cross-examination continues on Wednesday.
