Jonathan Dowdall says Gerard Hutch told him that ‘him and Mago Gately’ shot David Byrne

The key prosecution witness in the Regency Hotel murder trial has told the Special Criminal Court Gerard Hutch said to him, three days after the killing of David Byrne, that “him and ‘Mago’ Gately” had shot David Byrne.

Jonathan Dowdall said Mr Hutch had asked to meet in a park in Whitehall, Dublin, a few days after the shooting at the hotel on February 5th, 2016. Mr Hutch was “in a panic” and had said he wasn’t happy about the shooting of Mr Byrne, he said.

Asked by prosecuting counsel Seán Gillane if Mr Hutch had said who had shot Mr Byrne, Dowdall replied: “He said it was him and ‘Mago’ Gately.”

Dowdall took the witness stand about 11.30am on Monday to begin his evidence from the jury box in the non-jury three-judge court, sitting almost directly across from Mr Hutch in the packed courtroom. Mr Byrne’s parents, Sadie and James, and other family members sat in the body of the court.

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Armed gardaí were outside and inside the Criminal Courts of Justice building where the trial of Mr Hutch and two co-accused has been continuing since mid-October. Dowdall was brought into the courtroom via the jury entrance, rather than the public entrance or cells.

Mr Hutch (59), last of the Paddocks, Clontarf, Dublin, denies the murder of Mr Byrne (33) during a boxing weigh-in at the hotel on February 5th, 2016.

Dowdall had also been charged with the murder of Mr Byrne, which he denied. The murder charge was dropped when, having pleaded guilty in September, alongside his father Patrick, both of Navan Road, Dublin, to a lesser charge of facilitating the murder by making a hotel room available to the perpetrators the night previously. Jonathan Dowdall was jailed in October for four years.

On Monday, Dowdall said, when he and his father were driving back from Strabane in Co Tyrone on February 4th, 2016, his father took a call from Patsy Hutch. He learned his father had been asked by Patsy Hutch to book a room at the Regency Hotel that evening but had forgotten.

His father organised for the room to be booked and he had driven his father to the hotel that evening to collect the key cards and pay for the room.

Dowdall, who told the court of knowing Patsy Hutch and other family members for many years, said there was nothing unusual in being asked to book rooms, holidays and flights for Patsy and there was “never any problem”.

He said he and his father were told later that evening to leave the key at Richmond Road and, when they got there, Gerard Hutch arrived and his father gave him the room key cards.

When he met Mr Hutch in the park near Whitehall church, Mr Hutch had asked did he speak to Patsy Hutch and whether he saw the Sunday World newspaper the previous Sunday, Dowdall said.

He said he told Mr Hutch he had seen the paper – which the court has heard featured a photo of two people, a man and a man dressed as a woman, at the Regency Hotel on February 5th, 2016.

He said Mr Hutch was “in a panic” and had said it was “them” in the hotel and he wasn’t happy about the shooting of the young lad David Byrne and about Mr Byrne being killed. Asked by Mr Gillane if Mr Hutch had said who it was that shot Mr Byrne, Dowdall replied: “He said it was him and ‘Mago’ Gately.”

Dowdall said Mr Hutch had asked him to contact people in the north because “a lot of innocent people were going to get killed, family and friends”.

Dowdall said: “I just wanted out of the park. I was worried over the room being booked.” He told the court of travelling north with Mr Hutch, on February 20th and March 7th, 2016, to meet republicans with a view to trying to sort out the Hutch-Kinahan feud.

Mr Hutch’s trial, which continues on Tuesday, is running alongside the trials of two other men – Paul Murphy (59), of Cherry Avenue, Swords, Co Dublin, and Jason Bonney (50), of Drumnigh Wood, Portmarnock, Dublin. Both have denied participating in/contributing to activity that could facilitate the murder of Mr Byrne by a criminal organisation by providing access to specified motor vehicles to that organisation.