Dowdall criticised Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald for not attending Hutch funeral, trial told
Former Sinn Féin councillor Jonathan Dowdall (pictured) in the audio recording refers to "all the bleeding killins" and "dealing with the bleedin little wankers that are up and comin". File picture
Former Sinn Féin Councillor Jonathan Dowdall criticised party leader Mary Lou McDonald for not attending the funeral of murdered man Edward 'Neddy' Hutch and told his brother, Regency Hotel murder accused Gerard Hutch: "But ya's were good enough to use Gerard for votes, ya's were good enough to use for money", the Special Criminal Court has heard.
In conversations captured by a garda bugging device when Dowdall and Mr Hutch allegedly travelled to the North to meet with republicans, Mr Dowdall also says Ms McDonald should have stated it was untrue that "Gerard Hutch so called Monk, is involved in drugs".
Mr Hutch replied that "they try to keep away from dodgy subjects at a dodgy time. They were in enough shit with the fuckin Special Criminal Court and Slab Murphy".
The trial has heard the men continued to discuss a wide variety of topics, from the death of Supreme Court judge Adrian Hardiman, whom Mr Hutch deemed a "very good judge", to journalist Paul Williams, whose writing on a purported meeting between Mr Hutch and others in Holland was described as "bollocks".
When the song "Missing" by UK duo Everything But the Girl came on the jeep's radio Mr Hutch laughed as he said "get two Es will ya".
Earlier, the trial heard a recording of Dowdall tell Mr Hutch that the accused's "best move" was the "particular yokes used", in what the prosecution alleges is a reference to the three AK-47 assault rifles used by the gunmen who murdered Kinahan Cartel member David Byrne.
In the recording, Dowdall told Mr Hutch: "And d'ya know what the best move you did was. I know it's a small thing. 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 fuckin statement".
Mr Hutch replied: "Ah massive statement". He later says that "anyone with cop on would know immediately that cops don't use them".
The accused tells Dowdall that it's "very hard to get involved where the Kinahans are concerned coz it doesn't work, the messenger gets it" and that he was "not gonna show a weak hand and go looking for peace".
In the recording, the court heard, Mr Hutch said that there had to be "fuckin mediation for jaysus sake" and that the Kinahans had "after getting a good wallop and a good bang there".
Dowdall replies: "They pushed too hard, didn't they Gerard on the wrong c**t so what's what happened". The accused agrees with this statement.
The trial of Mr Hutch has heard that the two men, in conversations captured by a garda bugging device as they allegedly travelled to the North to meet with republicans, also discussed many topics including the death of former Supreme Court judge Adrian Hardiman who died in March 2016. Mr Hutch was recorded as saying that he was a "very good judge". "He was a great barrister, he went from being a barrister straight to the High Court and Supreme Court," he added.
Dowdall tells Mr Hutch that "there's nothin worse than a bully Gerard" and that he'd be "careful of any meetin of anybody for peace or anything". He can also be heard telling the accused "like if some c*** came in looking for you like that" and asked him if he had read about the Kinahan's "destroying themselves" in the newspaper and that they were "runnin out of money".
In another clip, the court heard Dowdall talking about how "cops are sayin that they can't get over how hard, how focused they are" and their "hardened attitude". Dowdall tells the accused: "This is not your fight, it can't be all left on your shoulders either Gerard...............ya reared your kids right, they need you as much as the next fella needs their da".
Dowdalls refers to "all the bleeding killins" and "dealing with the bleedin little wankers that are up and comin". Mr Hutch calls it "disgraceful" and says that "there had to be another way". "There's other ways of punishin people. Don't be using a gun all the time. The heartbreak that's left behind when a fuckin persons dead," says the accused. Mr Hutch added. "We don't want any innocent c**** shot" and that "it's terrible to do that".
Later in the conversation, Dowdall asks Mr Hutch if there "was anyone that you can message that you trust 100 per cent for your man's address for them two c**** that did that to you in Spain". "No, I'd have to be in Dublin, maybe go around and get them," replies Mr Hutch.
For a second day at the non-jury court today, the audio recording was played of a conversation between Mr Hutch and Dowdall while they were allegedly travelling north to a meeting in Strabane in Co Tyrone on March 7, 2016 in Dowdall's Toyota Land Cruiser jeep, that had been bugged by garda detectives.
The pair discussed mobile phones on today's audio recording and Mr Hutch said that with the phone he was using he could put in a new chip and "the minute you get rid of that chip you don't have to get a new phone, just get a new chip". He added that they're "supposed to be illegal" and that there's a "yoke on them that if you're making a call it will alert you if it's being scanned."
Dowdall asked if Mr Hutch would be "weary" of someone using a bug on him and suggested someone could use a battery for a watch as a bug.
Dowdall then referred to "that c**t", asking if it was true that he was back. Mr Hutch replied: "Kinahan's supposedly back, yeah. He was supposed to be back Friday. Same day as me."
They discussed journalist Paul Williams, describing as "bollocks" something he wrote about a meeting between Mr Hutch and others in Holland. Dowdall asked: "Where did he get that shit Gerard?". Mr Hutch replied: "He got it off the cops."
Dowdall was driving and they were discussing how long they would take to reach their destination when Mr Hutch asked, "do you want to let me drive for a bit? I'd probably get ya there a little bit faster, five minutes faster."
Both men laughed when Dowdall said, "If I was going fast you'd say to me, bleedin' slow down!".
They discussed the "skinny little roads" they were driving on and Mr Hutch said you "have to watch when you don't know the roads." Dowdall responded with a laugh: "If the Kinahans didn’t get us Jon's driving did, two of us in a bleedin' ditch."
The conversation shifted again when Dowdall said: "So we're clear on that Gerard that we're gonna push for them two and the others, yeah?"
Mr Hutch replied: "Yeah, what about them going up and knocking on a few doors and telling them like, telling them who they are and if there's any fucking one moving on any of our families."
They discussed the MGM gym, with Dowdall saying "that has to be fucked now". Mr Hutch replied: "It has to be damaged." He said he was was surprised about the English boxing council, adding: "They are very fucking strong, there's fucking cops and all on it."
When the song "Missing" by Everything But the Girl came on the radio Mr Hutch laughed as he said, "get two Es will ya," while Dowdall said, "they were good days them."
Later in the car Mr Hutch says: "Like the gist of it is they've sent a message up there, they don't want anything happening the fuckin Hutch's".
Dowdall says: "The whole leadership are meetin them. And they sent it through that they'd know that it is comin from the Northern Command that it's comin from the leadership. So they want to meet the Kinahans".
Dowdalls says: "I'm after bleedin bringin ya's in down this road".
Regarding the Kinahan's, Dowdall says: "He thinks he's dealin with a normal druggie with these, these are brainy fuckers". They'll try and manipulate it".
Mr Hutch said that when "word goes back to the Kinahan gang, they go around and tell everyone".
Dowdall said Kinahan associate "Paul Rice offered to come up on on behalf of the Kinahan's and they told him to fuck off".
At one stage, Mr Hutch tells Dowdall he gets emotional looking "at the little girl with no arms and no fuckin legs" and calls her a "beautiful little girl". "When I see her on the telly I sit and listen. She has so much life in her but no limbs. The doctor told her mother when leaving the hospital that she'd die and said your daughter is a rag girl".
After what the prosecution alleges were meetings between Mr Hutch and Dowdall and the republicans had concluded, the accused tells Dowdall: "Do you not realise you were talking to the three wise men, the three chiefs" and that "basically in a nutshell they're saying they sent somebody to the Kinahan gang".
Mr Hutch tells Dowdall "so then what do the Kinahans say, so what do we do sit down and let them murder us".
Mr Hutch said that the cease-fire will "suit Kinahan" and 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 sayin everyone is advising on fuckin ceasefire," the accused says, adding "put it to bed". Mr Hutch said "coz there gonna be casualties on both sides".
Dowdall says "the world is turning against him Gerard, it's only a matter of time". Mr Hutch calls Kinahan "weak at the moment".
Dowdall tells Mr Hutch that "they will never get an opportunity with you again" and "they're getting the cream of the crop". "Your bleedin a needle in the haystack to them and they'll never get that needle again," he adds. Mr Hutch said the republicans "mentality is different than ours, they're bit of dictators themselves" and "they just wanna go in with an iron fist, they don't wanna take advice off us".
Referring to Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald, Dowdall says she should have attended Eddie 'Neddy' Hutch's funeral and that she stayed away from it on purpose. "She didn't attend the innocent man's funeral. She was on the telly the night Neddy got shot and she branded everyone as scumbags, she said they're all scumbags," he says.
"She shoulda turned around and said, I know that deceased man and I know that family. It'd be different Gerard if she was a politician and it was not her area. You's are in her area and she shoulda said that," he said.
Mr Hutch says there wasn't "one of them at" the funeral and agrees that only Christy Burke was there.
Dowdall says: "But ya's were good enough to use Gerard for votes, ya's were good enough to use for money". He says she should have come out and said that it's actually untrue that "Gerard Hutch so called Monk, is involved in drugs".
Mr Hutch says "they try to keep away from dodgy subjects at a dodgy time. They were in enough shit with the fuckin Special Criminal Court and Slab Murphy".
Dowdall says "it's in her area" and that she was "stickin her head under the sand on it". He said "that'll bite her".
Eddie 'Neddy' Hutch was shot dead at his north-inner city home on February 8 2016, in what was believed to be a revenge attack for the Regency Hotel shooting three days earlier.
Later Mr Hutch says: "And then the performance of what happened in that hotel, they'll put that down to me".
Dowdall tells Mr Hutch to be careful with Kinahan being home. "I don't know a million quid, is that what they said is on ya now?". Mr Hutch says "yeah thats what was said in the paper".
Mr Hutch laughs saying: "The million dollar man" and Dowdall laughs saying: "Million dollar man, you're a mad c*** ya know that".
The accused says: "You're gonna be watchin your back for the rest of your fuckin life, all of us are includin Kinahan".
Dowdall says: "I nearly bet me life on it, Kinahan will tell them to fuck off unless its done behind a curtain and there is some agreement done".
The accused tells Dowdall he wants "them three yokes outta here".
Dowdall says "we never admitted that that was anythin to do with yous at the Regency but obviously we did by givin them the yokes" and Mr Hutch replies "yeah he knows, yeah".
Transcripts of the recordings, which are are being relied on by the prosecution, are being displayed on several screens in the courtroom and have been described as "part of the core" of State's case in the trial of Mr Hutch (59), last of The Paddocks, Clontarf, Dublin 3, who denies the murder of Kinahan Cartel member David Byrne (33) during a boxing weigh-in at the Regency Hotel on February 5, 2016.
Last week, the three judges ruled that they would listen to the ten hours of conversations between Mr Hutch and Dowdall that were captured by gardaí, despite having heard that Dowdall's bugged jeep had been outside of the State during the majority of the recordings.
Mr Hutch’s defence lawyer Brendan Grehan SC has submitted that their "core argument" would be that gardaí were aware that Dowdall's jeep was outside the jurisdiction for eight of the ten hours of those recordings from March 7, 2016 and that the evidence harvested from that "illicit fruit" should be excluded from the trial.
The non-jury court will hear the ten hours of audio recording which began at 2.20pm on Monday, March 7 2016 leading into the early hours of Tuesday, March 8. After this the court will hear full legal argument from counsel on both sides as part of a 'voir dire' - a 'trial within a trial' - before the three judges rule on the admissibility of its contents having regard to the extraterritoriality issue.
The Special Criminal Court has viewed CCTV footage of what the State says is Mr Hutch making two separate journeys to Northern Ireland with Dowdall on February 20 and March 7, 2016, just weeks after Mr Byrne was murdered.
CCTV footage has been shown to the court of Mr Hutch getting into the front passenger seat of Dowdall's Land Cruiser at 2.23pm on March 7 at Kealy's pub of Cloghran on the Swords Road. Further CCTV footage showed the jeep at the Maldron Hotel in Belfast at 5.35pm that evening. Another clip showed the jeep returning to Kealy's car park at 00.15 in the early hours of the morning on March 8, where Mr Hutch gets out of the jeep and into a BMW.
The State's case is that Mr Hutch had asked Jonathan Dowdall to arrange a meeting with his provisional republican contacts to mediate or resolve the Hutch-Kinahan feud due to the threats against the accused's family and friends.
Jonathan Dowdall (44) - a married father of four with an address at Navan Road, Cabra, Dublin 7 - was due to stand trial for Mr Byrne's murder alongside Gerard Hutch but pleaded guilty in advance of the trial to a lesser charge of facilitating the Hutch gang by making a hotel room available ahead of the murder.
Dowdall has been jailed by the Special Criminal Court for four years for facilitating the Hutch gang in the notorious murder of Kinahan Cartel member David Byrne.
The former Dublin councillor is currently being assessed for the Witness Protection Program after agreeing to testify against former co-accused Gerard Hutch, who is charged with Mr Byrne's murder.
Mr Byrne, from Crumlin, was shot dead at the hotel in Whitehall, Dublin 9 after five men, three disguised as armed gardaí in tactical clothing and carrying AK-47 assault rifles, stormed the building during the attack, which was hosting a boxing weigh-in at the time. The victim was shot by two of the tactical assailants and further rounds were delivered to his head and body.
Mr Byrne died after suffering catastrophic injuries from six gunshots fired from a high-velocity weapon to the head, face, stomach, hand and legs.
Mr Hutch's two co-accused - Paul Murphy (59), of Cherry Avenue, Swords, Co Dublin and Jason Bonney (50), of Drumnigh Wood, Portmarnock, Dublin 13 have pleaded not (NOT) guilty to participating in or contributing to the murder of David Byrne by providing access to motor vehicles on February 5, 2016.
The trial continues tomorrow before Ms Justice Tara Burns sitting with Judge Sarah Berkeley and Judge Grainne Malone.
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