The murder of Gareth Hutch in an ambush outside his Dublin home more than eight years ago was “a violent and callous crime” in which no value was placed on human life, the deceased’s mother has said.
In a victim impact statement read out ahead of the sentencing of Thomas ‘Nicky’ McConnell in the Special Criminal Court, Vera Hutch said her son was “senselessly and cruelly taken” in May 2016 and this had changed her family’s world “forever”.
Ms Hutch said Gareth’s son had been “left without a father, a friend, a mentor” and “has lost his sense of security and stability”.
Having heard Ms Hutch’s statement, presiding judge Mr Justice Alexander Owens sentenced McConnell to the mandatory term of life imprisonment. This was backdated to July 20th, 2020 when he was taken into custody by Turkish authorities before being extradited to Ireland.
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McConnell (39), of Sillogue Gardens, Ballymun, Dublin 11, had pleaded not guilty but last month became the fourth person to be convicted of murdering Mr Hutch, a nephew of Gerard Hutch, following a trial before the three-judge, non-jury court.
In November 2018, the Special Criminal Court found Regina Keogh (47), of Cumberland Street North, Dublin 1; Jonathan Keogh (39), of Gloucester Place, Dublin 1, and Thomas Fox (32), of Rutland Court, Dublin 1, guilty of his murder.
Mr Justice Owens said the evidence showed, beyond reasonable doubt, that McConnell was the second assassin involved. He had worked with Jonathan Keogh who followed Mr Hutch from his home and shot him. The attack happened at the height of the Kinahan-Hutch feud.
The court found that Keogh’s gun discharged a number of bullets at close range, fatally injuring Mr Hutch, while McConnell’s gun was later found to have the safety catch on and not to have fired any rounds during the ambush.
However, the court held that even if McConnell deliberately left the safety catch on, his actions in preparation for the shooting showed he was part of a plot with Keogh and others to commit murder.
Det Garda Raymond Lee told Fiona Murphy SC, prosecuting, that McConnell has 105 previous convictions for offences including assault, threatening to kill and cause serious harm, and knife possession.
McConnell’s trial began in 2023 but was postponed for 16 months, firstly, when one of the judges was unable to continue and then as the court awaited a Supreme Court ruling in a separate case. The trial continued after the Supreme Court found in that case that traffic and location data relating to mobile phones could be used as evidence, even though the data was harvested using a now-invalidated law. This data linked McConnell to the other murder plotters.
The court also relied on CCTV footage connecting McConnell to various vehicles used in the plot and lies told by the accused to gardaí that were indicative of guilt and on emails found on a phone linked to the accused which the judges said showed he had an “intimate knowledge of the murder”.
In particular, the court said it was satisfied that McConnell parked a black BMW in front of Avondale House with the intention of using it as the getaway car. Following the shooting, Jonathan Keogh and McConnell got into the BMW but could not get it started, so they then ran to a Skoda Octavia, which the court said had also been parked nearby by McConnell that morning.
When gardaí searched the BMW, they found McConnell’s DNA, a can of petrol and two changes of clothes that the prosecution said marked it out as a getaway car. McConnell would later tell gardaí he had sold the BMW to a man who looked like him, which Mr Justice Owens said was a “yarn” aimed at hiding McConnell’s guilt.
Speaking outside the Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin, Det Supt Colm Murphy thanked the people of the north inner city for their support and said McConnell’s sentencing was an “indication of An Garda Síochána’s determination” to combat organised and serious crime.
Ms Hutch told reporters the outcome would not bring her son back but “we got justice for him today”.
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