Conversations with friends (as caught on tape by a Garda bugging device...)
What a court heard Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch and ex-Sinn Féin councillor Jonathan Dowdall, who is now a co-operating State witness, chatted about following the Regency Hotel shooting
THE murder trial of Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch heard compelling evidence this week in the form of taped conversations between the accused and convicted former Sinn Féin councillor Jonathan Dowdall.
Hutch, 59, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of David Byrne at the Regency Hotel in Dublin in February 2016.
They were recorded on a secret bugging device as they drove from Dublin to the North in Dowdall’s Toyota Land Cruiser on March 7, 2016, to meet the Continuity IRA.
DANIEL KINAHAN
Hutch tells Dowdall he saw Kinahan ‘in the newspaper’ and noted he looks ‘in a f***ing heap’.
HUTCH: ‘I can see why he’s like that. If some c*** came in with an AK47 and I got out by the skin of my f***ing teeth. If he wasn’t in an awful way, I’d say he’s totally disturbed.’.
KINAHAN GANG
HUTCH: ‘The English are all over them a long time, and CAB will be on to them.’
DOWDALL: ‘Why I think they got away with it for so long, they weren’t located anywhere. It’s like a company in the North, operating in the South. Bouncing between countries. I think those days are up. It makes them all look very stupid.’
HUTCH: ‘If that was in England, everyone would be nicked.’
THE KINAHAN HUTCH FEUD
HUTCH: ‘It’s very hard to get involved where the Kinahans are concerned cause it doesn’t work, the messenger gets it.’
Hutch goes on to says he’s ‘not gonna show a weak hand and go looking for peace’, but adds there had to be ‘f***ing mediation for Jaysus’ sake’. Referring to the Regency attack, he said the Kinahans are ‘after getting a good wallop and a good bang there’.
DOWDALL: ‘They [Kinahans] pushed too hard, didn’t they Gerard, on the wrong c***, so what’s what happened.’
HUTCH: ‘It’s disgraceful. 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 f***in’ person’s dead.
‘We don’t want any innocent c*** shot. It’s terrible to do that.
‘I’ve talked to one or two of me mates, close mates, and they’re sayin’ everyone is advising on f***in’ ceasefire. Put it to bed... coz there gonna be casualties on both sides.’
THE MURDER OF EDDIE HUTCH
HUTCH: ‘The c***s who done Neddy have to f***ing go.’
He then refers to his brother’s killers as ‘just f***ing hitmen’, before adding: ‘The shooting has to stop.’ Hutch also says the IRA ‘would have to be at the meet’.
DOWDALL: ‘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.
‘She shoulda turned around and said, “I know that deceased man and I know that family.”
Hutch noted ‘not one of them’ attended his brother’s funeral but said former Sinn Féin and IRA member and now Independent councillor, Christy
GARDA LEADS
HUTCH: ‘The cops are going around like headless chickens.’
He goes on to say ‘loads of f***-ups have after being made’ in the aftermath of Regency murder.
DOWDALL: ‘I don’t think the way the papers are portraying it that they know. I don’t think they actually
Burke, did join the mourners.
DOWDALL: ‘But ya’s were good
have a f***ing clue about the Regency. I don’t think the police know what is being portrayed.’
HUTCH: ‘Ah, they don’t know. Sure, the f***ing six people don’t even know who the six are. I definitely know two people there don’t know each other.
‘They’ll definitely be 100% on the man and the woman, they’ll know who they are. The rest is speculation.’
enough to use, Gerard, for votes. Ya’s were good enough to use for money.’
Dowdall also comments that Mary Lou McDonald should have come out and stated it is untrue that ‘Gerard Hutch, so-called Monk, is involved in drugs’.
HUTCH: ‘They try to keep away from dodgy subjects at a dodgy time. They were in enough sh** with the f***in’ Special Criminal Court and Slab Murphy.’
DOWDALL: ‘It’s in her [McDonald’s] area [constituency]. She was stickin’ her head under the sand on it. That’ll bite her.’
GERRY HUTCH’S ‘BEST MOVE’
DOWDALL: ‘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 [AK 47 assault rifles] that was used. That in itself
IMELDA MAY
Hutch is recorded as saying he likes the singer Imelda May.
DOWDALL: ‘She’s mad as a bleedin’ brush.’
made some f***in statement.’
HUTCH: ‘Ah massive statement’.
Hutch later says ‘anyone with cop on would know immediately that cops don’t use them’.
GUNS ALLEGEDLY USED AT REGENCY
The pair are also heard discussing the ‘three yokes’, allegedly used in the murder, and a plan to send the weapons up to the North.
HUTCH: ‘You wouldn’t believe they’re not associated. That’s what I said to Patsy. I want to throw them up there regardless.
‘They should’ve been sent up last week.
‘They’re not on the fringes of the city. They’re not in bleeding town. I just said, “when you’re ready, let me know, get rid of them”. I had to push him to get them outta the village.’
VINNIE AND ALAN RYAN
Vinnie Ryan had been shot dead a few days previously. Alan Ryan was murdered in 2012.
DOWDALL: ‘Even the [Vinnie] Ryan thing, coincidence or not, the car. They disowned him there yesterday or the day before saying old Provos and basically Alan [Ryan] and him sickened the old Provos with their whole high-profile appearances.
‘His brother came out with a statement that the Regency was nothing to do with him. There’s too much, Gerard, leading back up there. If I was a copper, it’d be confusing. Who did it?’
HUTCH: ‘I’d say any smart copper be saying it was a joint yoke.’
SINN FÉIN’S MARY LOU MCDONALD