As Hutch awaits verdict, what do we know of the six-minute attack and a trial six years in the making?
The attack team that killed David Byrne in the Regency Hotel were in and out in six minutes. File picture: Gareth Chaney Collins
“I’m not going to go to town on him,” said Brendan Grehan SC, for Gerry ‘the Monk’ Hutch.
Mr Grehan was speaking about Jonathan Dowdall, the former Sinn Féin councillor, who he would go on to call “a proven and admitted liar and perjurer” in his closing statement this week before the Special Criminal Court.
The trial had reached its endgame, and Mr Grehan was not going to leave anything out on the pitch.
“He’s a liar who got caught out repeatedly lying and carries on as if nothing of significance has happened,” he said of Dowdall. “He tells all manner of lies. Big lies. Little lies. Just to see if he can get away with it.
“He’s like the famous cartoon character. ‘I didn’t do it, nobody saw me do it, I didn’t do anything’.”
Mr Grehan’s client faces a life sentence if found guilty of the murder of David Byrne in the Regency Hotel on February 5, 2016.
The prosecution said this week that Mr Hutch was one of the gunmen who carried out a "brutal and callous execution" and the three-judge court could be satisfied of his guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
But the State, in this case, came to rely on the man Mr Grehan labelled a “master manipulator” as its star witness. The man who could’ve been sitting in the dock with Gerard Hutch instead of pleading guilty to a lesser offence just before the trial began and turning State’s evidence.
The man who Mr Grehan said all roads lead back to in this case. Jonathan Dowdall.
The attack team that killed David Byrne in the Regency Hotel were in and out in six minutes. The trial of the Monk for Byrne’s murder was six years in the making. The events of the day date back to well before that.
A boxer named Jamie Moore had been shot a number of times in Spain in 2014. In this trial, the court heard it was a case of mistaken identity, and Dowdall told the court that it was Patrick Hutch Jr, a nephew of Gerard, who carried out the attack. In retaliation, it was gang boss Daniel Kinahan himself who shot Patrick Hutch Jr in the leg as punishment, the court heard, later that year.
But things escalated from there. Gary Hutch was shot dead in Marbella in Spain in September 2015. Gary was another nephew of the Monk, son to Patsy Hutch, and brother to Patrick Hutch Jr.
It was at this point that Jonathan Dowdall says he got involved in the whole affair.
By his account, his good friend Patsy asked him to help the family. They feared further attacks. Other members of the family could be in danger, he said. And would he reach out to republicans to try to help broker some kind of peace because “so many innocent lives would’ve been at stake”?
But something else was in the offing. A major boxing event was going to be held in Dublin in early February, billed as the Clash of the Clans.
The event, widely publicised on social media, was a co-promotion between Queensberry Promotions, run by boxing promoter Frank Warren, and MGM, a Marbella-based firm which runs a boxing management company and a boxing gym.
MGM was founded by Daniel Kinahan and he himself was going to be at the weigh-in due to be held at the Regency Hotel in north Dublin. On the night before, CCTV showed men in MGM-branded clothes sitting in the bar. Many of them were staying in the hotel.
Another man in the bar that night had a pint before going back up to a room that had been booked by Jonathan Dowdall’s father, Patrick. By Dowdall’s account, he had driven around to Richmond Road and handed the key card for the room to Gerard Hutch.
In any event, the man sipping his pint in the fairly busy hotel bar would return to the Regency again the following afternoon during the weigh-in. Wearing a flat cap, accompanied by a man dressed as a woman, and armed with a gun.
Shortly after this pair went in the side entrance, three men dressed in garda tactical gear and carrying AK-47-style rifles entered the front of the Regency. The court saw CCTV of events as they played out. Fiona Murphy SC, for the prosecution, this week called it “complete carnage”.
People were running to and fro after the shots started. Panic gripped the hotel. The gunmen were seeking a particular person. They couldn’t find him. They ran through the hotel and around it.
“He’s not fucking here,” one witness told the court he’d heard a gunman say. “I can’t fucking find him.” But one person they did find was David Byrne, a trusted lieutenant and associate of Daniel Kinahan. Two of the men in the tactical gear fatally shot the 33-year-old at close range.
The gunmen made good their getaway. In and out in six minutes.
It’s the State’s case that Gerard Hutch was one of the men who shot David Byrne. It’s also the State’s case that Paul Murphy and Jason Bonney, sitting in the dock with Mr Hutch, participated in or contributed to the murder of Byrne by providing access to motor vehicles to the organised gang that carried it out.
Across 52 days, the court heard reams of evidence in the case. Extensive CCTV footage, phone records, garda surveillance evidence, eyewitness accounts.
But the case hinges on two critical aspects – the infamous audio tapes and the testimony of Jonathan Dowdall – and it was these that Ms Murphy zeroed in on as she gave the closing statement for the prosecution.
In the case of the tapes, they arose from a bug gardaí placed on the car of Dowdall and covers a journey he and Gerry Hutch made to the North on March 7, 2016. The inclusion of the tapes in evidence had been challenged by the defence, but was ruled admissible by the judges.
This was a month after the Regency. The Monk’s brother Neddy had already been killed in the wake of the Regency. More bloodshed was to follow. The aim of the trip was to meet Republican contacts brokered by Dowdall to try to secure a peace with the Kinahans.
Ms Murphy told the court that Mr Hutch was clearly the “man in charge” on the trip. She said that what’s said on the recordings show that Mr Hutch had “authority” over the AK-47s used in the attack and was talking about the movement of the weapons at a crucial time in which they ultimately ended up in transit and seized by gardaí from convicted IRA man Shane Rowan just two days later.
She also said there was “no denial or pushback” from Gerry Hutch in the audio when it is implied he was centrally involved in the Regency attack and audio showed at worst a tacit acceptance of Mr Hutch's central involvement in the Regency, but in truth it was almost an expression of pride in the choice of the weapons.
Addressing the elephant in the room, Ms Murphy said that there was “no two ways about it” that Dowdall had been convicted for a very serious and disgusting offence previously, in relation to his waterboarding of a man which was captured on camera.
"Not only that, he is a man who admits he told lies in the past. It's fair those things do nothing to endear him to you, but that doesn't mean you can't believe him," she said.
His allegations are central. Namely that he and his father met Gerard Hutch the night before the murder and gave him key cards to a Regency Hotel room. And the second that he met Gerard Hutch in a park a couple of days after the murder, and the Monk admitted to him having been one of the men who’d shot Byrne.
Having originally faced a murder charge along with Mr Hutch, Dowdall pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and is being assessed for the witness protection programme.
She called Dowdall a broken man and said he was shown to be every inch the man who had engaged in disgusting behaviour. But none of this assisted Mr Hutch, she said, it didn't erase the audio nor did it erase his independent evidence with Dowdall's account.
Dowdall featured heavily in Brendan Grehan SC’s closing speech. Defending Gerard Hutch, he said the prosecution case “stands or falls on whether the court can believe the evidence of Mr Dowdall in respect of that matter”.
“Prosecution from the opening appear to be running two parallel but different cases as to why they say Gerard Hutch can be found guilty of murder,” he said. They're trying to ride two different horses at the same time.
“What Ms Murphy has done in her speech is marry a bit from the audio and a bit from Mr Dowdall. Two bad halves don't necessarily make a whole.” He said Jonathan Dowdall was primarily motivated to give evidence against Gerard Hutch because he himself was facing a murder charge. And by turning State’s witness, he got that charged dropped.
On the question of the audio, Mr Grehan said he’d challenge anyone to listen to those tapes and find an admission from Mr Hutch that he’d carried out the attack. Furthermore, if Dowdall is telling the truth and the Monk had previously confessed, he asked why there was no reference to that on the tapes.
“In all the hours of unguarded conversation of the audio evidence it's never referenced,” he said. “Why would Mr Hutch lie to him in an unguarded conversation on audio, when he'd already confessed? It doesn't make sense.
“Why if he was involved, would he not be using language to clearly indicate that? Why would the prosecution be grasping at tacit suggestions.? Mr Grehan concluded that the State had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr Hutch was guilty of the murder, and therefore the three judges could not reach such a conclusion.
Judges Tara Burns, Grainne Malone and Sarah Berkeley will now decide on the question of the three men’s guilt.
Ms Justice Burns said they would return a verdict on April 17, if not earlier. That gives them plenty of time to dig through the plethora of evidence put before it.
Central to their deliberations will of course be the star witness and whether or not, in fact, all roads do lead to Jonathan Dowdall when determining if Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch committed murder in the Regency Hotel on February 5, 2016.
