On Monday, Gerard Hutch was found not guilty by the Special Criminal Court of the murder of David Byrne at Dublin’s Regency Hotel in February 2016.
In the attack, armed men dressed as gardaí entered the hotel and opened fire during a boxing weigh-in attended by rival gang lieutenant Daniel Kinahan. Byrne was killed, and the shooting was a key event in the escalation of the so-called Hutch-Kinahan feud.
Following a 13-week trial, the court said it was satisfied there is a Hutch criminal organisation and that it organised the Regency attack. However, it was not satisfied that Hutch was one of the gunmen.
The three judge, non-jury court held that the evidence of Jonathan Dowdall, a former Sinn Féin councillor who had pleaded guilty to facilitating the killing, before becoming a witness for the prosecution, was in itself not reliable enough to sustain a conviction of Hutch. Dowdall’s pattern of lying meant the court had to approach his evidence concerning Hutch with scepticism and extreme care, Ms Justice Tara Burns said while delivering the court’s judgment.
A key piece of evidence in the trial was a 10-hour recording of conversations between Hutch and Dowdall on March 7th, on a car trip from Dublin to Northern Ireland and back. In it, they discussed disposing of three “yokes” (which the prosecution said were the AK47 guns used in the shooting), the rivalry with the Kinahans, and the prospect of Northern republicans mediating to end the feud.
The recording betrays Dowdall as a “ruthless, callous, base” criminal, Ms Justice Burns said. The tape did not offer evidence of Hutch’s guilt, but does give insights into the relationship between the two men, into how Hutch went about his business, and into the organised crime world in Ireland.
This is what it said.
2.23pm on Monday, March 7th 2016: Keeping your head up
Jonathan Dowdall pulled up at Kealy’s pub on the Swords Road in Cloghran near Dublin Airport just after 2.20pm.
Gerard Hutch, wearing a dark beanie pulled tightly over his forehead down almost to eye level, got in.
While settling into their seats, singer Birdy’s high-pitched Keeping Your Head Up trumpeted from the radio:
“Times that I’ve seen you lose your way
You’re not in control and you won’t be told
All I can do to keep you safe is hold you close
Hold you close
Till you can breathe on your own
Till you can breathe on your own”
That day, Dowdall would drive Hutch to meetings in Northern Ireland, including one with dissident republicans in a laneway in Strabane, Co Tyrone – the second, or perhaps, the third held in efforts to defuse the murderous feud between the Hutch and Kinahan gangs.
Less than six years later, in 2022, Dowdall (44) would perform what Gerard Hutch (60) would consider the ultimate act of betrayal by turning State’s witness and giving evidence for eight days to the Special Criminal Court against his old friend and former co-accused.
The conversations that day in Dowdall’s car between the two men have been central to the State’s case that Hutch was behind the February 6th attack on the Regency Hotel by men dressed as gardaí, but carrying Russian-made AK47s that left Kinahan loyalist, David Byrne dead.
Gerard Hutch (59), last of The Paddocks, Clontarf, Dublin 3, always denied murdering the 33-year-old Byrne during a boxing weigh-in at the Regency. Hutch’s two co-accused – Paul Murphy (61), of Cherry Avenue, Swords, Co Dublin and Jason Bonney (52), of Drumnigh Wood, Portmarnock, Dublin 13 pleaded not guilty to participating in or contributing to the murder of David Byrne by providing cars on the day. Both were convicted of facilitating the attack by providing getaway vehicles.
Signalling to pull out on to the busy road that snakes around the airport runways that morning, Dowdall drove off. Just a month after the Regency killing, the two men did not know it, but they were being watched by members of the Garda National Surveillance Unit (NSU).
[ Gerard Hutch not guilty of the murder of David Byrne at Regency HotelOpens in new window ]
And the jeep was bugged. The 10 hours of conversations recorded that day proved the centrepiece in An Garda Síochána’s bid finally to jail Hutch, for decades one Ireland’s best-known criminals.
Seeking approval to use the bugs, the Garda surveillance unit said they had intelligence that Dowdall had previously travelled to Derry on January 5th, 2016 to meet Martin McLoone of the Real IRA.
Intelligence suggested, too, that Dowdall had brought Hutch to Derry a fortnight later on January 18th, 2016 and there was intelligence that Dowdall had also travelled on his own to Northern Ireland to meet the Continuity IRA on February 11th, 2016.
However, the bugs were not installed in time for those journeys, or during Hutch and Dowdall’s February 20th journey to Donegal, when a promise to deliver three AK-47 assault rifles was used “to curry favour” with the dissidents.
The recording unit was fitted to Dowdall’s jeep on a date after February 17th. By the time it was retrieved by undercover officers on May 14th, it had recorded 420 hours of audio recordings.
Once on the road, Dowdall and Hutch immediately started talking about getting the AK-47s used in the Regency Hotel attack just a month earlier into the hands of republican dissidents, in a bid to get them involved to stop the Kinahan/Hutch feud escalating further.
However, Dowdall and Hutch were scathing about some of the dissidents. One of them, Shane Rowan, known as “Fish” was as “thick as f**k”, said Dowdall. Hutch agreed, saying: “He’s a screw missing.”
Hutch let Dowdall in on the plan to move the three assault rifles, saying Rowan was supposed to “park his motor, a lad is going to pick it up, go down and take it, bring it back” with the guns inside.
Two days later, on March 9th, Rowan and Patsy Hutch would be seen pulling up at Mattress Mick’s car park in Coolock in Patsy Hutch’s car, before going for coffee at a nearby Applegreen.
Meanwhile, Rowan’s Vauxhall Insignia had been driven to a yard where the rifles were put in the boot and driven to the Coolock car park. Hours later, Rowan was stopped by gardaí outside Slane, Co Meath driving north.
The gardaí found the assault rifles wrapped in a rug and a shirt in the boot. Rowan, of Forest Park, Killygordan, Co Donegal, was later jailed for seven-and-a-half years for possession.
Now released from prison, Rowan has said in a national newspaper interview that he had agreed to pay €30,000 for the guns and he accepted that he had been “caught red-handed”, boasting in one interview: “When I’m sitting on my deathbed, at least I can say I done something.”
Of the two, Dowdall did most of the talking during the day, often repeating himself at length. By comparison, Hutch was a man of few words, replying often with just murmurs, or vague agreements: “Yeah, yeah” or “Sure”.
Later, Dowdall would tell Hutch’s trial that he had felt nervous and uncomfortable throughout and had said things that he thought Hutch wanted to hear, “talking rubbish” because he was taking tablets to sleep.
The Hutches and the Dowdalls
Jonathan Dowdall knew the Hutches as a teenager firstly through his mother Bernadette, a third-generation market trader with a clothing stall on Coles Lane, just off Henry Street in Dublin’s city centre, with Dowdall’s grandmother, and alongside Gerard Hutch’s aunt, May Hutch.
There were other links, too.
Bernadette Dowdall was friends with Hutch’s wife, Patricia. Dowdall’s sister, Janice was friendly with Hutch’s eldest daughter Jennifer. Dowdall and Hutch met “the odd time” when Hutch collected his wife from the Dowdall house in Ballybough on the North Strand, or when the Hutch children popped “in and out” of his north-inner-city home.
However, it was only years later that Dowdall would became more familiar with Hutch. Their paths crossed at social events in Corinthians, the boxing club run by Hutch on Buckingham Street, heartland of the Hutch clan in Dublin 1.
While Dowdall had no interest in football, he was proud that the electrical company he had started with his brother Damien in 2007 sponsored training kits for the Summerhill boxing club, and inner-city football teams.
Dowdall Electrical Limited, which traded as ABCO Limited, was “flying high” at one time securing contracts with blue-chip clients including Bank of Ireland, Government departments and security company G4S, and employing up to 20 staff.
Dowdall was able to buy a €425,000 family home on the Navan Road with a €90,000 deposit, from compensation received from a car crash that left Dowdall needing spinal surgery and with spasms that “feel like the muscles are ripping off your neck”.
Even today, Dowdall’s legs shake and he falls if he walks too fast. The house, though, came after years of hard work. He had left O’Connell’s Secondary School on Richmond Street North in Drumcondra aged just 13 with no exams.
“I worked my hole off my whole life and so did my wife, and every penny I earned I worked hard for,” he told the trial, which heard that an n enormous fish pond had been constructed in the garden.
Though familiar with Hutch from the boxing club, Dowdall was adamant that he did not know him well: “Gerard wasn’t my friend. I didn’t drink with Gerard. I never was a trusted friend of Gerard until they decided it was a good thing to have me as a trusted friend,” he told the trial.
When Dowdall was arrested for the murder of Crumlin man David Byrne at the Regency in Whitehall, Dowdall told gardaí that Hutch was “very quiet and distant” and not one who “goes around shooting his mouth off”.
During seven days of questioning in May 2016, Dowdall went on: “I have respect for him; that’s as far as it goes ... I was a public figure in that community. That was my job; I fixed problems – antisocial behaviour – got people jobs, homes.”
Dowdall knew Hutch’s older brother, Patsy snr, better, looking on him as an uncle or a second father figure. “I trusted Patsy,” and he knew Patsy’s three sons- Gary, Derek and Patrick jnr – after summers and Saturdays spent working on his mother’s clothes stall.
In time, Patsy Hutch would lay and fit carpets for Dowdall’s company. Such was the trust between them that Dowdall insured Patsy Hutch’s van under his company name for tax purposes. “There was never an issue, never a parking ticket, never speeding,” said Dowdall.
In exchange, when Dowdall was short of cash, he would borrow up to €5,000 from Patsy Hutch. That was what the Hutches did, they would “lend you money. Any of the Hutches will lend you a few bob”, declared one of Hutch’s co-accused during the trial.
Dowdall’s mother had borrowed money from them in 2007, but had not been able to pay it back. In turn, the Dowdalls made online purchases for the Hutches, such as holidays, and were then later given the money to cover the bills.
Of Patsy’s three sons, it was Patrick jnr who worked the most on Dowdall’s mother’s stall. Patsy and his wife Kay did not want their youngest son to get involved in crime like his two older brothers.
Dowdall promised Patrick jnr an apprenticeship, a promise honoured until the youth cut his training short and went to Spain to work in the “MGM Marbella” boxing club, a gym Daniel Kinahan cofounded in 2012 with UK boxer Matthew Macklin.
Patrick Hutch jnr of Champions Avenue in Dublin 1 walked free from the Special Criminal Court in 2019 after charges against him for the murder of David Byrne at the Regency Hotel were dropped by the State. He had pleaded not guilty to the murder.
Dowdall was elected as a Sinn Féin councillor in the north-inner-city ward in May 2014, but resigned less than a year later. His electrical business in 2017 when he was given an eight-year jail sentence for falsely imprisoning and threatening to kill Alexander Hurley. Dowdall had waterboarded Hurley, shaving his head and telling him he would chop him into bits and feed him to his Doberman. Dowdall believed Hurley had tried to rip him off.
2.30pm: ‘Kevin is sound’
Making their way northwards, Hutch and Dowdall talked about a senior dissident figure called Kevin “Tyrone” O’Neill. Hutch was worried. “What’s the story with this lad, Kevin lad. Is he like us, or is this guy that I’m going to meet up to his bollix in everything?”
Dowdall assured him: “No, this Kevin is sound, Gerard.... he’s straight as by the book, like.”
He warned Hutch not to “go through Fish Rowan” and Gerard butted in: “Yeah, but through your man who’s locked up, what’s his name?”
“Pearse McAuley,” said Dowdall.
McAuley is a senior republican from Strabane jailed for the manslaughter of Det Gda Jerry McCabe who had been killed during a failed armed raid in Adare in Co Limerick in 1996. McAuley was later jailed for stabbing his estranged wife, Pauline Tully, multiple times.
Dowdall told the trial that he did not judge McAuley, whom the prosecution called “an absolute thug”, but he acknowledged that what he had done to his ex-wife, a former Sinn Féin councillor, was “horrendous and terrible”.
Dowdall visited McAuley 14 times in Castlerea Prison between February 3rd, 2015 and January 2nd, 2016, though he lied under oath in the Special Criminal Court when he put the number of visits to McAuley at just two or three.
McAuley was Hutch’s and Dowdall’s “in” with Northern republicans, and the prosecution alleged that the only reason Hutch had engaged with Dowdall at all was because of his connection to McAuley.
Dowdall sought McAuley’s help to defuse the Hutch-Kinahan feud in January 2016, though McAuley advised him not to have anything to do with it and to leave them at it. In the end McAuley gave him a number for Paul Bosco McCreedy, also known as “Wee”.
2.31pm: ‘In your pocket’
The conversation in the jeep quickly turned to plastic explosives, described as “the rubber stuff”. In a calm voice, Hutch said: “I reckon I can get some of that,” though he wanted to know if Semtex had a “sell-by date”.
Dowdall said: “No, and it’s odourless.” Semtex is safe to carry around and would not explode even if you threw it against a wall, he went on. “Gerard, you could have that in your pocket,” he said.
Explaining how to make and detonate a bomb, Dowdall said: “The only problem is that you need the det [detonator], and that’s the hard part, right.”
The detonator could be activated by phone, he said, adding that Semtex could destroy a whole building and take the bottom out of a car: “Whatever it’s stuck to it blows it up,” Dowdall told Hutch.
Dowdall had used the promise of bomb timers or electrical circuits as a bargaining tool to get dissident republicans to mediate in the Hutch/Kinahan feud, following a demand for help from Rowan and his “IRA compadres” in early February.
Dowdall told Hutch that he was being put under pressure to come up with “these circuits” and was playing along with them to buy time as he could not tell them that he was not going to supply them.
While Dowdall agreed with Hutch’s defence at the trial that it might be dangerous to promise the IRA something that could not be delivered, the former councillor said he had work set up in Dubai in May 2016 and had no intention of coming home to Ireland.
Coming out of Rowan’s house in Donegal with Gerard Hutch on February 20th, 2016 Dowdall was photographed holding a small black holdall bag with an orange trim, which he placed in the boot of his jeep.
Asked at the trial what was in that bag, Dowdall said “tools”. When asked what he was doing bringing tools into the house and was it to “fix a plug or something”, Dowdall said: “I was actually, yes.”
“Are you serious?” asked Brendan Grehan, senior counsel for Hutch, as those present in court laughed out loud.
“I am totally serious,” replied the witness.
“You travelled to Donegal from your home in Dublin with Gerard Hutch to meet IRA men to go in and fix a plug in their house. Are you serious?” scoffed the barrister.
Dowdall replied: “I am serious, it’s the truth.”
Grehan said: “When I mentioned changing a plug, which I meant because it’s such a ridiculous suggestion, you seized on it. Are you serious that that’s the explanation?”
When asked what plug he had fixed, Dowdall said it was one for Rowan’s television which was tripping out. “There was an earth fault. Earth loose, it was the earth that fell out. It was a socket for a TV,” he added.
The defence suggested that Dowdall had, instead, gone into the house to show Rowan how to build a timer, though Dowdall told the trial he did not know how to build one and he put his recorded talk down to bluffing.
Anyone who knows about bombs would know what he had said was not right, he said: “I was asked loosely. I had said I’d try. There was phone calls being made to me to ask had I got it. I kept making excuses and that’s where it ended.”
His knowledge about bomb-making, such as it was, was learned from TV programmes such as “Border Patrol and all that stuff. Them airport things, whatever it is” and “every war film,” he told the court.
2.36pm: ‘These three yokes’
But the talk about explosives and detonators between Hutch and Dowdall was a distraction. Regardless of whether they could help the dissidents with explosives and a detonator, Hutch wanted to give them a gift of the AK-47s, “these three yokes”.
“We’re throwing them up to them either way,” Hutch told Dowdall in the jeep. Within seconds he could be heard saying: “you know well even if we split here and say we’re not meeting again, there’s a present, them three yokes.”
Hutch speculated on what would happen next: “Twelve months time, there’s two RUC men dead there and them things are ballistically traced.” Such killings could have an advantage, thought Dowdall, “Yeah, they’re going to blame the [republicans] on the Regency.”
By then, Hutch knew that he was a suspect for the Regency attack. During a recent flight into Dublin he had been met by two National Bureau of Investigation Garda detectives, who wanted to know where he was on the day of the Regency shooting.
Cautioning him, they told him he was not obliged to say anything, Hutch remembered as the journey continued, telling Dowdall: “I says, okay, I’ll say nothing.”
By 2.43pm, the jeep travelled through the toll bridge at Drogheda. A little after this, they turned again to dissident involvement in the Regency shooting. “One way or another, they’re in it, Gerard,” said Dowdall. “Whether the Real’s [Real IRA] like it or not, they’re in it. There’s too much stuff after being like ...”
“Ah, you wouldn’t believe that they’re not associated with it,” interrupted Hutch.
Hutch, with an air of authority, added: “That’s why I said to Patsy, I wanna throw them [the guns] up there to them, regardless, it’s a present for them. Even if they do nothing for us ... I said they should have been sent up last week.”
It was the prosecution’s contention that this showed that the AK-47′s were in Hutch’s gift, that he had control over them at a time that was proximate to the Regency shooting and that they were his to do as he wished.
Hutch thought that “any smart copper would be saying it’s a joint yoke” between republican dissidents and the Hutches.
2.51pm: Daniel
It took less than a half-an-hour for the talk to turn to Daniel Kinahan, the cartel boss who had been the target of the Regency attack. “Like, Daniel looks in a f**king heap,” said Hutch. “From the photographs I seen of him ... on the paper.”
Hutch added: “I can see why he’s like the way he is. I’d be like that if some c**t came running in with an AK-47 ... and I got out by the skin of me teeth.”
Hutch had heard from “a lot of people” that Kinahan was “in an awful way”. “I said, ‘he f**king should be’,” added Hutch. “If he wasn’t in an awful way you’d say he f**king he’s totally disturbed.”
Dowdall had read that the Spanish authorities were coming down on the Kinahan gang and “rushing their case through”. “Either way, they’re going to jail, Gerard. Either way. There’s no question about that.”
The conversation died down for a time as the stream of thought appeared to have run dry. Radio Nova continued in the background, covering the silence.
Not guilty: why did the state's case against Gerard Hutch fail?
“It just goes to show you,” piped up Dowdall, opening up a new line of conversation. “I don’t think the way the papers are portraying it that they know, I don’t think they actually have a f**king clue about the Regency, Gerard.”
“What d’you mean?” asked Hutch.
“I don’t think the police know what is being portrayed in the paper that they’re saying we know who the six people are,” said Dowdall.
Hutch replied: “Ah, they don’t know, they don’t know ... Sure the f**king six people don’t even know.”
“Who the other six people are,” Dowdall chimed in.
“No one f**kin knows,” said Hutch. Dowdall agreed.
Dowdall told the trial that Hutch had lied to him in this exchange when he said the assailants did not know each other. Dowdall said he knew Hutch had been involved because Hutch had already told him as much in a north Dublin park on the Sunday or Monday after the attack.
“When I seen the book of evidence, they’re all family members and they’re all his friends ... but he’s telling me they don’t know each other. But they all know each other.”
In the jeep, Hutch accepted that people would know the “man and the woman [a man dressed as a woman]” who raided the venue armed with handguns. “The rest is all speculation”.
It is accepted that “the man” is now-deceased Kevin “Flat Cap” Murray, who had paramilitary links.
“There’s loads of f**k-ups after being made,” said Hutch. “The cops are going around like headless chickens.”
It was twelve minutes past 3pm when they crossed the border at the Carrickdale Hotel in Dundalk, Co Louth.
3.36pm: Liam Byrne and ‘Bomber’ Kavanagh
A short while later Dowdall started talking about someone who sent him a picture of a white Lamborghini, “you’d wanna be a millionaire”. Hutch replied: “Who the f**k be going, be buyin cars like that? Who does he think he is, Liam Byrne?” Liam Byrne is a trusted lieutenant of the Kinahan cartel and brother of Regency victim David Byrne.
Dowdall jumped in with: “Sure talk to the Kinahans or the Byrnes, I says they’re the ones that’d be able to buy that. They’re the ones with all the money.”
Hutch replied: “They’re the ones who are selling it probably.”
The conversation turned to Kinahan associate Thomas “Bomber” Kavanagh, who is currently serving a lengthy sentence in the UK for a serious drugs offence. He had been described as the Kinahans’ UK enforcer before he went to prison.
Dowdall, again acting as adviser to Hutch, told him that every year “there’s a yoke on in Ennis” and Kavanagh’s “bird” [who is David Byrne’s sister] would always be at it.
“Not saying do anything to the bird, Gerard. I’m just saying there’s a thing on. It’s something to do with this big bleeding competition every year. It’s like a big, dancing yoke.”
“It might be something they might be interested in, say they grabbed her, Gerard. Get them to do it, no?” Again, it was reference to the IRA getting involved.
Hutch wasn’t biting at kidnapping the woman when she was vulnerable. “I don’t know,” he said. “Patsy and the family and all that are talking about some peace f**king process.”
Whatever happened with the peace process, there were certain people who were not entitled to an amnesty. “Them little c**ts that did Neddie,” said Dowdall.
Just the previous month on February 8th, the older brother of Gerard and Patsy Hutch, Edward “Neddie” Hutch, had been shot dead by hitmen hired by the Kinahans at his north-inner city home at Poplar Row, Fairview in Dublin 3. This was believed to be a revenge attack for the Regency Hotel shooting three days earlier.
Taxi driver “Neddie” Hutch was returning home and after he exited his taxi and entered his house, a number of men got out of a BMW and fired at him, before following him into his house and shooting him.
Dowdall suggested to Hutch that he should make up a list of people to be executed by the IRA as “part of the peace deal” with the republicans.
“I’d do some sort of deal that they’re given up,” suggested Dowdall.
Dowdall was convinced the Kinahans would give up their hitmen. “And they’re c**ts, Gerard, they’d give up their ma, they would,” he said.
“Mm, yeah, I think so, yeah,” replied Hutch.
3.56pm: ‘You can’t kill them poxy twice’
Dowdall raised the subject of former Dublin Real IRA leader, Alan Ryan, shot dead in 2012. His younger brother, Vincent had been shot dead on February 29th, just a week before the recorded conversation. “[Re] Member his [Alan Ryan’s] grave got it, I thought that was disgraceful,” said Dowdall.
“Yeah, ahh, horrible, yeah,” said Hutch.
“Coz if someone is dead, you can’t kill them poxy twice like, d’you know what I mean,” said Dowdall.
“No exactly,” replied Hutch.
Dowdall continued: “Leave them be and to be honest with you, even though, I think it was terrible what happened to the young fella, Vinny, and I tell you why Gerard I do, he was brainwashed from Alan say from the age of 16.”
“The f**kin mother must be in f**king bits,” said Hutch.
Dowdall replied: “That’s what I’m saying, yeah when you read stuff like that bleeding poor bird and the baby five weeks old”.
Dowdall told the trial that he had known the Ryan brothers. He said a “hard working” family he knew was being terrorised so he rang Alan Ryan to tell him to get this stopped. And it stopped.”
But he denied involvement with the IRA.
‘There has to be another way. There’s other ways of punishing people. Don’t be using a gun all the time. The heartache that’s left behind when a f**king person’s dead’
“In the inner city, people don’t go to the police. I tried to stop it and it was stopped. Stuff like that happens every day in working-class areas, where people have to resolve it or talk to somebody that they know. That’s the way life works in there,” Dowdall said.
He also denied that he was the “go to guy” for contacting paramilitaries and IRA people. “The fella in the know, the cognoscenti.”
The Ryans and their “heavies” came to Dowdall’s Navan Road house before 2012, but he would not tell the trial why they had called. He said he had probably met the Ryans on another occasion, but denied drinking tea with Alan Ryan in his house.
Despite growing up knowing republicans who lived in his area in the north inner city, Dowdall denied he had “fairly heavy republican contacts”.
He said: “After 1997 there was a ceasefire, there was men that lived in the north inner city that were ex-Republican. I have and had an interest in Irish republican politics but my interest was in ceasefire Irish republican politics, Good Friday [Agreement policies and not dissidents].”
3.58pm: ‘Half a million quid to have you done’
Back in the jeep, the men were nearing their destination in Lisburn and Hutch started joking “make sure we’re not in Ashbourne or f**king ambushed”. They both laughed before Dowdall said: “But you have to think about the bleeding worst, don’t you.”
Hutch replied: “Ah you have to think, yes, well with the likes of these Kinahan c**ts. They’d pay half a million quid to have you done.”
Dowdall agreed and told Hutch that at a previous meeting he had been ready to use his jeep to “ram” the man they were meeting. “I put that straight into gear, did you not see that,” he said. “I was watching his hands, what he was doin with his hands and all like, you f**kin have to.”
But he reassured his friend: “No Gerard, you’ll be alright. They’re not going to do that Gerard. Money’s not everything to everybody Gerard, you know. It is to some people.”
“To a lot of people it f**king is,” said Hutch.
At 3.59pm Hutch and Dowdall got out of the jeep and returned exactly one hour later. As the engine kicked back into life both men seemed pleased with the hour-long meeting. “Nice enough fella your man,” said Dowdall. “Seemed very fond of you, Gerard.”
Hutch said: “Yeah, he’s a cool lad, you know but you know it’s like anything like; people can only do so f**king much you know.”
“Gerard, he offered you to help you there about 15 poxy times,” said Dowdall.
Hutch noted that the people they had been talking to are “getting stronger” but Dowdall pointed out that “they’re badly stuck for a few bits,” so it was in their best interests to work with Hutch.
A man with a northern accent could be heard from outside the car telling them: “Go straight up there.”
The next stop was further north, into Belfast.
5.42pm: ‘Me purse’
The chat continued for 10 minutes until they pulled up to the Maldron Hotel at Belfast International Airport to pick up a purse belonging to Hutch. When Hutch returned to the car he told Dowdall that there was a thousand pounds and over a hundred euro in the purse which had previously been left behind at the hotel.“
Hutch asked Dowdall where they were going next. “Strabane,” said Dowdall. They could stop somewhere to eat along the way. “I have me purse, we’ll be alright,” said Hutch, drawing loud laughter from Dowdall.
Within 10 minutes they were back on to the subject of “bleedin killings”. Dowdall said he did not agree with killing people.
“It’s disgraceful,” said Hutch. “There has to be another way. There’s other ways of punishing people. Don’t be using a gun all the time. The heartache that’s left behind when a f**king person’s dead.”
Dowdall lamented the days when men like Gerard Hutch could talk to people and get them in line. “I know it’s terrible, there has to be f**king mediation, for jaysus sake,” said Hutch, showing concern as to the way things had got out of hand.
Dowdall talked of the “Kinahan gang” being “took out of it hard enough” so that “it puts stuff back into order”.
“I think they’re after getting a good wallop and a good bang there,” said Hutch.
Dowdall, using the word “yokes” to talk about the Regency AK-47s, replied: “All they done was Gerard, they just pushed too hard this time on the wrong c**t so that’s what happened. And d’you know what the best move you did was the, I know it’s a small thing right and I don’t know if you thought of it Gerard at the time, I certainly didn’t, but the best thing that happened was the particular yokes that was used ... That in itself made some f**king statement.”
“Ah, massive statement,” agreed Hutch. It was the prosecution’s contention that this declaration showed “almost an expression of pride” in the choice of weapons used and what was singularly absent from Hutch that day was any denial or push back against the implication that he was centrally involved in the Regency attack.
And then they talked about three raiders disguised as armed gardaí storming the Regency Hotel, and how “people looked at them and thought they were cops, coz anyone with cop-on would know immediately that cops don’t use them [AK-47s].”
6pm: ‘I’m not gonna show a weak hand’
At 6pm the Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) News could be heard in the background behind the men’s chatter.
Dowdall wondered if the Kinahans would “make any more moves on anybody” and Hutch said he thought they would “weather the storm” but be on their “f**king guard watching”.
Hutch did not want to approach the Kinahans directly; he wanted the republicans to do it for him. “I’m not gonna show a weak hand and go looking for peace,” he said.
Dowdall said: “I was gonna say that to you, that I’d be careful of any meeting of anybody for peace or anything ... Gerard, you don’t need to tell me pal and I’m only doing it out of concern.”
At 6.13pm they both got out of the jeep for 39 minutes to eat.“
6.54pm: ‘Go down as part of the deal’
When they returned to the car 40 minutes later Dowdall again talked about “six names” – the four killers of Eddie Hutch and the “the two fellas” for the attempted assassination of Hutch in a pub in Lanzarote on New Year’s Eve, 2015 who would “go down as part of the deal”.
Dowdall said they were not going to be able to get Kinahan at the minute and Hutch agreed. “Forget about him for the moment,” said Hutch. “We don’t want any innocent c**t getting shot. Like, I could go over and kill Johnny Cunningham [a known Kinahan associate]; he’s in Spain with Kinahan, I could go over and kill his brother tomorrow.”
“Yeah, but why would ya, Gerard?” said Dowdall.
“Terrible to do that,” said Hutch.
Dowdall advised Hutch to make the republicans “work for what they’re getting”.
But Dowdall believed Hutch would have to “get rid of them two c**ts that tried to do that to you”, referencing the attempt on Hutch’s life.
Dowdall asked if there was anyone Hutch could trust for an address for the two men who had done that to him in Spain.
“No,” said Hutch. “I’d have to be in Dublin maybe, go round and get them.”
Dowdall said: “Right, oh right, you can send it up to Wee later on if it’s agreed up here now.”
The conversation turned to “bugs” and Dowdall asked if Hutch had a device for checking for “stuff like that”.
“No, I haven’t got one, no,” said Hutch.
“Would you have a use for one?” asked Dowdall. “What about say if the cops raided your gaff Gerard. Would you not be wary of them putting them in or something like that, or would they bother their bollox?”
“I’d say they have a lot of places bugged, yeah,” said Hutch.
7.24pm: ‘See you at the usual spot’
By now, it was dark, with the jeep’s satnav leading them on black country roads. Dowdall received a phone call from Paul “Wee” Bosco McCreedy, one of their contacts among the northern republicans.
“We’re on the way. This thing is bringing me through back roads,” he said. About another 45 minutes and he’d “see you at the usual spot”.
They again talked about what they would do at the meeting. Dowdall put in: “So we’re clear on that, Gerard, that we’re gonna push for them two and the others, yeah” – again referring to the men that should be killed if a peace pact was successful.
7.34pm: ‘He does my bleeding head in’
They began talking about David Byrne’s funeral, with Hutch believing Daniel and Christy Kinahan would have “summonsed everybody” to attend to make it look like there were “millions of them”.
Hutch said Kinahan had been threatening everyone not to go to the funeral of Gary Hutch, gunned down the previous September beside a swimming pool in the Angel de Miraflores apartments complex near Marbella in Spain.
As they approached their destination the pair had instructions on the phone from Rowan or as Hutch called him “A fish called Wanda” to pull in at a takeaway and shops and wait for him there before following him to a new location. The hotel was “too hot”, he said.
“I’d love ta down that c**t and I’m not being bad, he does my bleeding head in,” said Dowdall, later calling him a “bleeding Dime bar”.
At 8.13pm a door could be heard opening and Rowan said they would have to wait for Kevin “Tyrone” O’Neill as there was a society meeting going on. “The Dublin society for the prevention of cruelty to animals,” joked Hutch. “Like the loyalist society or republican society,” explained Dowdall.
8.29pm: These Kinahans are brainy f**kers
At 8.29pm the pair got out of the jeep and returned 16 minutes later. They were both confused about what had just happened. Dowdall especially was not happy that they had been standing, talking with “three lads in the lane” for 10 minutes when it was “freezing” and he couldn’t walk away like on the previous occasion in February and let Hutch do the talking.
Hutch, who is hard of hearing, said he did not hear everything that was said in the laneway, but he thought the gist of it was that, “they’ve sent a message up there, they don’t want anything happening the f**king Hutches, stop what youse are f**king doing. And we’re from the north and this is who we are.”
Dowdall believed that the “whole leadership” would meet the Kinahans to stop the feud, perhaps in England, and he added: “And they sent it through that they’d know that it is coming from the Northern Command [of the dissident republican group] that it’s coming from the leadership.”
They had also learned during the meeting that the republicans got word that well known debt collector for the Kinahan cartel Paul Rice wanted to meet with the republicans but they told him to “f**k off”. “They want to meet the Kinahans,” Dowdall said.
Dowdall told Gerard that he was probably too pushy with them, but he’s not afraid of “any c**t like that”. Hutch said he wasn’t afraid either.
Dowdall felt a responsibility following the meeting because, he said: “I’m after bleedin bringin youse in down this road and I just wanna make sure that it’s as tight as net.”
Dowdall thought the republicans would think the Kinahans were “just drug dealing thicks” but he warned: “They’re not thicks,” and he thought the Kinahans would try to work out how close the relationship was between the republicans and Hutch, and whether they could “manipulate it and pull them”.
The engine started up but the doors were opened and Paul “Wee” Bosco McCreedy came over.
Dowdall warned him: “Just make it clear there, Wee that there’s no bleeding grey area there. See them Kinahans ... These are brainy f**kers ... and they’ll manipulate you.”
McCreedy responded, “Aye,” and told Dowdall about the backgrounds of some of the men who were at the meeting. “The m’s there part of the Army Council,” he said.
Dowdall complained about Rowan’s eagerness to get the guns and that he did not listen. “He was on to me every bleeding day, can we have them, it’s red hot, Wee.”
McCreedy turned to Hutch, and said he didn’t want him “saying aye or no”. He wanted to know what gunman Kevin “Flat Cap” Murray had received for his role in the Regency attack.
McCreedy he had heard from “talk in a pub” that he got €50,000. He asked Hutch not to answer now and Hutch, as usual, was entirely non-committal, telling him, “I know what you mean, yeah.”
Dowdall was getting jittery. He was worried that senior republican Kevin “Tyrone” O’Neill had been staring at him and thought that they blamed him for getting Murray involved. He asked Wee: “Did you see the way he’s looking, kept staring at me.” McCreedy agreed but added nothing.
Dowdall was preoccupied. “That c**t Kevin thinks that’s me Gerard, d’you know that, d’you know that, I’ll get one in the back of the nut over Murray.”
Dowdall told Hutch’s trial that he feared afterwards that he would be killed by the dissidents: “If they believed I was up on February 4th trying to stop a feud and then got Flat Cap involved, then I was in serious trouble,” he said.
9pm: ‘No grey area’
At 9.02pm Dowdall and Hutch got out of the jeep, returning an hour later. McCreedy was back talking to them, saying that he would see Dowdall on Saturday. But before the jeep pulled off Dowdall wanted reassurances about what was discussed at the meeting, saying: “There’s no grey area, there’s no black and white, they’re 100 per cent.”
McCreedy told him: “That’s okay, no Gerard, there is no grey area, they’re looking after you, they’re looking after your family.” He assured Dowdall that they were looking after him too.
“Yeah, but I’m not worried about me,” said Dowdall.
McCreedy replied: “No, no, no but you’re, at the end of the day, everybody’s in the one boat.”
10.10pm: They’ll probably kill that guy
Dowdall apologised “if it was a waste of time going up,” but Hutch accepted that Dowdall had no control over what had happened.
Dowdall thought that the best that might come of it was that the republicans would meet the Kinahans and the Kinahans would tell them to “f**k off”. Dowdall said: “They’re not eejits, but I think they’re probably underestimating Kinahan as well that they think they’re just dealing with the normal young fella.”
“You’re not hopeful of them, Gerard, now are you not?” he asked. Hutch said he wouldn’t “rule them out” and he believed that, “the way they’re talkin, like they’ll probably kill that Murray guy,” referring to “Flat Cap”.
Dowdall said there were always suspicions that Murray was “working in the background, and tipping the INLA off with different stuff.” Again Dowdall started worrying about the fact that “Kevin thinks I’m behind that; he thinks I’m behind Murray coming in.”
Dowdall told the trial that he was constantly asked by the republicans to find out how “Flat Cap” was involved with the Hutches. Dowdall said he was worried that the republicans thought he had known “Flat Cap” but he hadn’t known him.
“F**kin four hours’ drive to stand in a lane for five bleeding minutes,” complained Dowdall.
Hutch still was not sure about what had been agreed at the meeting. He asked if the republicans had “sent word to the Kinahans” and Dowdall explained that he had no doubt there would be a dissidents/Kinahans meeting. Hutch wanted to know what that would mean.
Hutch said: “But like the meeting like, he’d be forcing them to have a meet with them and they’re gonna tell them there cannot be any more messing with them, we’ve a vested interest with them or they’re working with us? So then what do the Kinahans say, so what do we do? Sit down and let them murder us?”
Dowdall told him there was “no two ways about it,” they were going to do what they said. “It’ll suit Kinahan,” Hutch said, adding: “This is grand, get a meet, we’ll sit down and we’ll dish it out and we’ll guarantee youse nothing’ll happen.”
Hutch thought he would be happy to have peace as long as the republicans were “standing on it” to make sure they could trust Kinahan’s word. Dowdall told him they should “do what suits us”.
Hutch, speaking of peace and an end to bloodshed, said: “No, I know but for, for the sake of everyone involved, it’s the best option or go to war. I’ve talked to one or two of me mates, close mates and they’re saying well everyone is advising on, f**king ceasefire ... Put it to bed, yeah. Coz there gonna be casualties on both sides, he says anything will happen in a year, a year or two, one of his own men might turn on him, he might get locked up anything can happen, put it to bed.”
Dowdall said the world was turning against Kinahan and “it’s only a matter of time”.
Hutch wondered if a figure like former president of Sinn Féin Gerry Adams, “someone who they won’t act the bollix with” would get in the middle.
Later, the conversation turned to killing again. “What d’you think about getting Wee to do your man?” asked Dowdall.
Hutch replied: “Well, they said they would do it.”
“Wee would do it,” Dowdall confirmed. “Yeah,” said Hutch. “We’d have to do it pretty quick, wouldn’t we?”
Dowdall suggested that Wee could do the hit or execution when he comes to Dublin on Saturday as part of the deal and all he needs from Hutch is the go ahead and the addresses of the targets.
Dowdall wanted to make sure Hutch was “comfortable” with it. “Ah well,” said Hutch. “If there’s a deal done and we’re f**king sitting down and the f**king deal is done, I think it’d be awkward enough to try and do anything then.”
Dowdall, advising Hutch on strategy again and who to get “whacked”, thought it would be unwise “to let them c**ts off the hook”.
They weren’t going to go after Kinahan or others in “the gang” but, Hutch said: “The hitmen have not to do with anyone ... They f**king fired guns ... They’re gonna be dealt with.”
“Yeah, they killed your brother,” said Dowdall, referring to Neddie Hutch.
“And they’re killing people in the community,” added Hutch.
“Yeah, they have to go and that’s it,” said Dowdall.
10.40pm: ‘I’d like it put to bed’
As they approached the border the talk turned to the inner workings of Sinn Féin and Dowdall criticised the leadership for not attending Neddie Hutch’s funeral. He criticised leader of Sinn Féin Mary Lou McDonald, among others, saying they should have declared that Neddie Hutch was an innocent man, that “the so-called Monk has no connection with drugs” and that Sinn Féin had used Hutch for fundraisers.
Hutch said McDonald had said “they’re all scumbags” after Neddie got shot.“
“And Neddie’s funeral,” said Dowdall. “She shoulda went to it, d’you not think so?” Hutch complained that “there wasn’t one a them were at it” except independent Dublin City Councillor Christy Burke.
McDonald had stayed away from Neddie’s funeral on purpose, Dowdall said, and added: “But youse were good enough to use Gerard for votes, youse were good enough to use for money.”
Dowdall asked Hutch if he had been in Mary Lou’s shoes would he have said it. “They try to keep away from dodgy subjects at a dodgy time, they were in enough sh*t with the f**king Special Criminal Court Slab Murphy all that type of stuff, you know,” replied Hutch, adding that without a doubt it would come back to bite her.
At the trial Dowdall retracted the comments he made about Mary Lou McDonald calling it “very unfair on a personal level”.
At 10.45pm talk turned again to Kinahan and his arrival back in Ireland. Hutch thought that the newspapers were hinting that he and Kinahan were home in Dublin to negotiate.
“You want it put to bed, Gerard, don’t you, deep down?” said Dowdall.
Hutch replied: “Well I don’t want anyone else getting f**king injured like, you know ... I’d like it put to bed and I’d like to be able to go out and get these assassins.”
Dowdall speculated that part of the deal could be that “Kinahan does them or he hands them over to be done, or whatever.” He mentioned Kinahan gunman Trevor Byrne, who has been named in the media as a suspect for Neddie Hutch’s killing, and labelled him a “bleeding liability”.
10.50pm: ‘The million dollar man’
As the jeep crossed back into the Republic at Aughnacloy in Co Monaghan at 10.50pm, Dowdall said the only advantage Kinahan had over the Hutches was “them little w**kers running around doing his dirty stuff”.
Even if the gardaí “sit on the Kinahans and the Liam Byrnes and all them” they could still “get all the young fellas to go around doing their dirty sh*t,” he said.
He warned Hutch to be careful “over the next week or two” with Kinahan home.
Dowdall asked if it was true that there was “a million quid” on offer as a bounty for Hutch’s life. “That’s what it said in the paper,” said Hutch, adding with a laugh: “The million dollar man.”
Hutch believed that with the IRA now involved, Dowdall was going to be “watchin your back for the rest of your f**kin life, all of us are ... including Kinahan, he’ll be thinking the same.”
Dowdall thought the Kinahans would tell the republicans to “f**k off” unless the agreement was done behind a curtain because the republicans would want Kinahan to “bend over a barrel ... give them head nearly and if they don’t do that, they’re gonna turn on him.”
For emphasis, Dowdall added: “If Kinahan doesn’t take it every way they want it, I’d say they’re gonna turn on him.”
Dowdall was still thinking about the detonator for the bomb. “I don’t really want to give them that yoke, d’you know that?” he said.
Hutch didn’t care much about the explosives as long as the three guns used in the Regency were handed over. “We’re giving them these three yokes,” he said. “There’s no bother with it, we’re giving them something, there you go, there. I want them three yokes outta here, get them.”
As he was speaking, the jeep crossed over the border back into the Republic. It was 11pm.
Dowdall wanted guidance.
“If you’re not comfortable giving it, don’t,” said Hutch.
Dowdall said he wasn’t worried about being comfortable, but once they hand over the explosives, “what else have we really got besides the other stuff to sort a bargain with them?
“I wouldn’t give them everything until they’ve seen Kinahan, until we know what the read is with Kinahan and all.”
11.15pm: Finish the f**king thing
Dowdall asked if Hutch wanted him to push any particular agenda with the republicans.
Hutch replied: “Well maybe if, if they say, that they’re gonna, they’re gonna do away with the half dozen hitmen in Dublin. They’re taking them half dozen hitmen out. They’re responsible for a lotta f**kin c**ts, f**kin unnecessary killing.”
In hindsight, Dowdall told the trial that the republicans would never have agreed to act as hitmen and explained what he said in the audio as “loose talk”. “All they were going to do, if anything, was try and stop the feud”.
Back in the jeep, Dowdall thought that they should have told the republicans that “You never did the f**king Regency”. He said, “I know it’s a stupid thing and it’s a lie,” and added: “I know that sounds f**king stupid but ...”
Hutch interrupted: “No, I don’t think anything should be brought up; who done what. We don’t want him telling us we didn’t do Gary, we’re not getting into who done what ... We’re not looking for admittance off anybody.”
The State’s contention was that this pointed to acknowledgment by Hutch that he was part of the team at the Regency hotel, and that he didn’t demure from the fact that Dowdall said it would be a lie to say he had never carried out the Regency attack.
Hutch just wanted to “finish the f**king thing,” referring to the feud. “If ye start going into that, you know, ye just can’t go into it.”
As though he was trying to coax an admission from Hutch in the jeep, Dowdall said: “Can you remember that meeting with Kevin [Tyrone O’Neill], you never admitted that, that was you at the Regency, did ye not?”
Hutch replied: “What?”
“Well we did obviously, if ye’re giving them the bleeding yokes but he’d hardly go in to that would he?” said Dowdall.
“What d’you mean, say that again,” said a hard-of-hearing Hutch.
Dowdall said: “I said we never admitted that that was anything to do with youse at the Regency, but obviously we did by giving them the yokes.”
And Hutch said “Yeah, he knows, yeah”, something the prosecution maintained was an admission by Hutch that he was one of the gunmen who engaged in the attack at the Regency.
“I wouldn’t say they’d be stupid and f**king say anything,” replied Dowdall.
Asked by the prosecution at trial to explain the quote “you never admitted that, that was you at the Regency, did ye not?”, Dowdall said he was referring to a meeting with Kevin “Tyrone” O’Neill three weeks previously: “I wasn’t in the room [on February 20th] when Gerard had spoke about giving the guns. I didn’t know what he told them and I was concerned that they didn’t know what they were getting. And that’s why I asked him and he had told me he did tell them.”
Dowdall continued to the court: “Whether he had told them that it was him and that them guns were connected to the Regency. And that’s what I was trying to find out. That’s why I was asking him that and I knew it was him because he told me it was him.”
11.25pm: ‘Murdering bastards’
Dowdall wondered how hard the “cops” would push to find those responsible for the Regency.
“They’ll try all their avenues,” said Hutch. “I don’t think they have much to go on.”
Dowdall said the best thing that happened was David Byrne’s funeral and Hutch interjected: “Well it makes them, f**king showing them what they really are, you know”.
Hutch joked that Irish republican “Slab Murphy” was the only man that could “get in the middle” of the feud and sort it.
Dowdall thought Kinahan would regret not sticking to the first deal, where the Hutch’s allegedly paid €200,000 to the Kinahans and Kinahan allegedly performed a punishment shooting on Patrick Hutch jnr. However, despite the pay-off and the revenge shooting, Dowdall told the trial that more demands for money were being placed on Patsy’s family by the Kinahans. Family members were also being threatened and an attempt was made to kill Patsy outside his grandson’s school when he was collecting him.
“Some people, it’s just not enough is it, no matter what they get,” Dowdall told Hutch in the jeep. They had a good business going, but their “own f**king paranoia and power hunger was the ruins of it”.
Both men agreed that others “in that game” would have nothing to do with the Kinahans any more. Hutch said: “A lotta people who’ve been in the game over the years that were with them have walked away from them.”
“Murdering bastards,” said Dowdall.
“Yeah,” said Hutch.
‘There’s nothin worth a bleeding child dying or f**king anything like that but them stupid c**ts don’t even, don’t even see that’
After midnight: ‘It’s not a war, Gerard’
Dowdall said that at the back of his mind was the fear that the “yoke” he was supposed to supply to the dissidents would be used and he’d read in the papers that “four babies was killed”.
“That would destroy me, Gerard,” he said. “I’m not into that, there’s no cause for that any more, Gerard ... There’s nothin worth a bleeding child dying or f**king anything like that but them stupid c**ts don’t even, don’t even see that.”
Hutch agreed: “They’d just say, ah these things happen in wars.”
“It’s not a war, Gerard,” said Dowdall.
Their journey was coming to an end as they arrived into Dublin and Dowdall dropped Hutch back off at his BMW car which was parked up at Kealy’s.
“Gerard, do us a favour when you get home, just give me a text,” said Dowdall.
“Yeah, I will yeah,” said Hutch.
Dowdall said it again: “Let me know you’re f**king alright. Come here, I’ll talk to you tomorrow or I’ll get on to Pearse in the morning, get up to him Thursday.”
It was 15 minutes past midnight as they said their goodbyes and Hutch’s door could be heard opening and closing. “Be good, thanks, good luck,” said Hutch.
Dowdall told Hutch he would drive out after him.
Muttering to himself “where’s me bleedin smokes”, Dowdall switched on his indicator and pulled back out on to the Swords Road.
