The alleged head of an Irish underworld family has been acquitted of murdering an associate of a rival gang at a boxing weigh-in event at a hotel in Dublin in 2016.
The prosecution had claimed that on Feb. 5, 2016 Gerry “The Monk” Hutch was trying to kill his arch rival Daniel Kinahan, but the gangster slipped away and Hutch and his accomplices instead gunned down David Byrne, 33.
But on Monday a panel of judges at Dublin’s Special Criminal Court found Hutch, 60, not guilty of Byrne’s murder.
The judges, led by Mrs. Justice Tara Burns, said they were not satisfied about the credibility of the prosecution’s main witness, former Sinn Fein councillor Jonathan Dowdall.
Dowdall gave a statement implicating Hutch just 10 days before he was also due to stand trial for the murder.
Burns said: “It cannot be said he found God or decided to do the right thing. He was acting out of his own self-interest.”
She said the way in which Dowdall told lies to the Garda immediately after the shooting was “extremely concerning for this court” and she added, “A significant question hangs over Jonathan Dowdall’s character [because of his] patterns of lying, the court must approach his truthfulness with scepticism and extreme care.”
Byrne was shot dead when gunmen, dressed as police officers and armed with AK-47 assault rifles, attacked associates of Kinahan at a weigh-in for a WBO European title fight between Kinahan’s fighter, Jamie Kavanagh, and Antonio Joao Bento.
The attack was initially claimed by the Continuity IRA but this was later denied.
The shooting is believed to have been carried out in revenge for the murder of Hutch’s nephew, Gary Hutch, in Spain in September 2015 by the Kinahan gang.
After the Regency Hotel shooting a series of tit-for-tat killings occurred over the next three years, but Hutch was arrested in Spain in August 2021 and extradited to Ireland.
Hutch went on trial last year along with Paul Murphy, 60, who was accused of supplying logistical support to the killers, and Jason Bonney, 51, who provided the getaway cars.
Judge Orders Immediate Release of Gerry Hutch
But Hutch was acquitted and the judge ordered his immediate release. He is expected to return to Spain, from where he was extradited in 2021.The prosecution pinned its case on Dowdall’s statement but the judges said he was not credible and more corroboration was needed.
Dowdall had been charged with murder, but after he agreed to cooperate with the Irish police, the Garda Siochana, he was given a four-year prison sentence for facilitating Byrne’s murder.
His 65-year-old father Patrick also pleaded guilty to facilitating murder. The trial heard the pair procured a hotel room at the Regency which was used by the gunmen.
Dowdall, 44, testified Hutch told him afterwards he had been one of the gunmen who killed Byrne.
Hutch—who has been known as “The Monk” since murdered journalist Veronica Guerin gave him the moniker in the 1990s—was said to have asked Dowdall to contact dissident Irish republicans in Northern Ireland in a bid to resolve the underworld feud with Kinahan’s gang after the shooting.
Dowdall said he knew it would be a “waste of time.”
Dowdall said on the eve of the shooting, his father collected a key card to a room at the hotel which was being used by one of the gunmen. He said he saw the key card being given to Hutch.
Dowdall testified that he heard about the shooting on the radio and a few days later was asked to meet Hutch at a park in the Whitehall district of Dublin.
Key Witness Said Hutch Was ‘In a Panic’
Dowdall said: “He was in a panic. He wasn’t like any other time I seen him.”“He said it was him and Mago Gately who were at the hotel and had shot David Byrne. He was upset and saying how he was not happy about shooting that young lad David Byrne dead,” said Dowdall.
Dowdall added, “He was not himself and he seemed to genuinely know that [expletive] was hitting the fan.”
The witness added: “He said there was going to a be lot of innocent people killed, family and friends. People were knocking on family members’ doors and he needed to get someone to try and sort out everything out.”
Dowdall said Hutch acted strangely in the park: “He had a black cap and brown jacket on. He was paranoid about people watching him. There was a man walking in the park and he stopped and looked at Gerard and Gerard thought he was a cop.”
He said Hutch asked him to try and contact dissident Irish republicans in Northern Ireland in a bid to somehow resolve the feud with the Kinahans but he knew it would be a “waste of time.”
Nevertheless Dowdall drove Hutch to Strabane in Northern Ireland, where they met senior republicans.
The trial has heard from prosecutor Sean Gillane that Hutch referred to giving “three yokes” to the republicans as a gift and he said the inference was that it was a reference to the three guns used in the Regency shooting.
The court has been told that several republicans were allegedly involved in the feud on Hutch’s side, including former IRA man Kevin “Flat Cap” Murray, who is believed to have been one of Byrne’s killers. He died of motor neurone disease in 2017.
Dowdall is understood to have joined Ireland’s witness protection programme and his lawyer Michael O’Higgins has told the court: “His life and the life of his family is effectively over, he will have to get a new start, and he will spend his life looking over his shoulder. Every conversation with a stranger, he will have to remind himself to be discreet.”
Hutch’s nephew Patrick Hutch, 24, was originally charged with Byrne’s murder but his trial collapsed in 2019 after the senior investigating officer in the case, Detective Superintendent Colm Fox, committed suicide by gun at a Dublin police station.
