The Kinahan gang member and father-of-two was killed when five armed raiders, three disguised as ERU gardai with assault rifles, stormed the hotel and opened fire.
Two other men were found guilty of facilitating the murder by providing escape cars for the attack team. Jason Bonney (52) and Paul Murphy (61), who had denied the charges, were also convicted today.
Earlier, Ms Justice Burns said the Regency attack was “a meticulously planned, high-velocity assassination event occurred which left one man dead and two injured.”
It was an “atrocity” that “sparked mayhem on the streets of Dublin resulting in a series of callous murders,” she added.
The judges said it was a “high-velocity event with the shooters running around the place at a fast pace” and Mr Hutch, then in his 50s, “does not fit the movements of the shooters.”
The backdrop was a boxing weigh-in for an event co-promoted by MGM, which ran a Spanish gym linked to the Kinahans. Daniel Kinahan was seen by a journalist at the event.
An attack team of six, including a driver, arrived in a silver Ford Transit van.
A young man dressed as a woman, in a blonde wig ran in with a second, middle-aged man in a flat cap – paramilitary-linked Kevin Murray.
Firing handguns, they sent people fleeing in panic. Moments later, three masked gunmen in “tactical” gear with AK-47 assault rifles ran in. David Byrne was shot by two of the tactical team. The second shooter jumped the reception counter to stand and “calmly and coldly” fire more rounds into Byrne’s “prone” body.
Gardai discovered a room had been booked by ex Sinn Fein councillor Jonathan Dowdall’s father Patrick the day before the shooting.
Patrick Dowdall was seen on CCTV collecting the key cards and entering the room briefly that night. Less than an hour after he left, Kevin Murray arrived and used the room.
Jonathan was already being watched by gardai for suspected links with dissident republicans and gardai kept him under surveillance.
A garda covert tracking device was on Dowdall’s Toyota Landcruiser jeep on February 20, 2016 when he drove Mr Hutch to the Donegal home of IRA member Shane Rowan
A surveillance officer saw Mr Hutch and Dowdall go into Rowan’s house at Forest Park, Killygordon that day.
On March 7, 2016, Dowdall and Mr Hutch drove to Strabane, Co. Tyrone, in a bid to get republicans to mediate in the escalating feud with the Kinahans. This time, gardai had also installed a separate audio device inside the jeep. The tape
A recording from the March 7, 2016 journey was at the core of the prosecution case against Mr Hutch.
The trip came a month after Gerard Hutch’s brother Edward “Neddy” Hutch had been murdered in a reprisal for the Regency attack.
It was believed Gerard Hutch was trying to get republicans to broker peace with the Kinahans amid fears of further escalation of the feud.
Two days after Dowdall and Mr Hutch’s trip north, on March 9, 2016, the IRA man, Shane Rowan drove to Dublin where he met Patsy Hutch, Gerard Hutch’s brother.
Later, Rowan was intercepted driving north outside Slane, Co Meath with three AK-47s that had been used at the Regency in the boot of his Vauxhall Insignia.
The judges found that on the tape there was a reference to the arrangements which were being made for the transfer of the guns from Dublin to the North which “mirrors the transaction which occurred with Shane Rowan.”
“The court is satisfied that Gerard Hutch had control over and was in possession of these guns at this point in time,” the judges ruled.
