Dubliner convicted over killing that started Hutch feud
DUBLINER James Quinn was convicted yesterday of the murder in Spain of Gary Hutch – the killing that sparked the bloody Hutch-Kinahan feud.
But a jury in Malaga ruled Quinn, 35, was the getaway driver and not the gunman.
The five women and four men of the jury found Quinn guilty of a second charge of illegal weapons possession after a trial.
Jose Barba, prosecuting, called on Judge Ernesto Carlos Manzano to jail Quinn for a total of 28 years after the jury verdict: 25 years for murder and three years on top for the weapons conviction.
Quinn’s lawyers urged the judge to jail him for the minimum 20 years a murder conviction carries in Spain and two for the gun crime.
Afterwards, Assistant Garda Commissioner John O’Driscoll said: ‘The successful outcome to particular court proceedings in... Spain this week is a very positive development in the efforts being made by law enforcement authorities at an international level for the purpose of tackling criminality associated with organised crime groups.
‘The Garda Síochána will continue to liaise with law enforcement in as many jurisdictions as is necessary for the purpose of achieving additional success into the future.
‘We are currently engaged in liaison of this nature, which... will soon lead to significant additional success.’
Quinn showed no signs of emotion as he was told via a translator of the jury’s unanimous verdict on the murder charge. He waved to a woman sitting in the public gallery – who did not want to comment outside court – and shook his lawyer’s hand before being led away by police.
The jury forewoman told the court jurors conviced Quinn of murder as a necessary participant in the September 24, 2015, killing. They ruled it had been proven he acted as a lookout and getaway driver as a baseball cap with his DNA on it found in the stolen BMW X3 after it was dumped near the murder scene.
But she said they could not conclude he was the man who chased 34-year-old Hutch round a swimming pool at the victim’s gated estate in Miraflores near Fuengirola on Spain’s Costa del Sol before shooting him dead.
The possibility of a life sentence was extinguished as jurors rejected prosecution claims Quinn belonged to a criminal organisation blamed for the killing, despite the prosecutor saying it was linked to the Hutch-Kinahan feud. Jurors also ruled it had not been proven he was paid for the murder.
The forewoman said: ‘The jury considers James Quinn is guilty of causing the death of Gary Hutch by participating in the murder itself by performing lookout functions and helping the unknown killer to reach and flee the scene.’
She added: ‘The jury considers it has not been proven the accused was the wearer of the baseball cap the gunman changed out of before lying in wait for the victim, chasing him round the estate where he lived and killing him with two shots to the head.’
The firearms conviction relates to a Glock pistol found at Quinn’s luxury home near Estepona with his DNA on it, not the two pistols recovered from the getaway car.
Father-of-one Quinn was arrested in September 2016 after undercover police got his DNA from a water bottle he had drunk from in a Madrid train station and discovered it matched the DNA they had from the baseball cap in the getaway BMW. Five other people were held over the killing but only Quinn was charged.
He broke a near-two-year silence over the murder to insist at the start of his trial he was in bed with a hangover and a prostitute when Hutch, nephew of Kinahan rival Gerry ‘the Monk’ Hutch, was killed.
The judge will deliver his sentence in a fortnight. Quinn’s lawyer Pedro Apalategui said he would appeal.
Gary Hutch shot dead in Spain
Quinn was the getaway driver