GANGSTER John Gilligan says he was delighted Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch was acquitted of the Regency Hotel attacks — because he ‘isn’t a rat’.
The convicted drug dealer and former mob boss, 72, told Hot Press magazine he wished his fellow gangster well after he was found not guilty of murder at the Special Criminal Court.
The trial took place last year in relation to the 2016 murder of David Byrne at a boxing match weigh-in.
Gilligan said he was “a million per cent” happy his fellow crook Gerry got off following the high-profile trial.
He said: “I wish him well. I knew him many years ago.
“The Hutch family was always known as a staunch criminal family. They were no rats, they were against the police. I always respected them for that. And when I learned later about the Kinahans, the same.”
Speaking about the victim of the Regency, he said he didn’t know David Byrne or his brother Liam, but knew their parents, James ‘Jaws’ Byrne and his wife, Sadie.
Gilligan added: “The Byrne lads, the man that got shot, Lord have mercy on him, I didn’t know them — but I knew their father and mother, and they were good people.
“I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to them.”
The pint-sized thug, once known as Factory John, has been living away from Ireland since 2014.
He was released from Portlaoise prison in 2013, after serving 17 years of a 20-year sentence for trafficking cannabis.
He had stayed in Dublin until he was shot four times attending a family christening in Clondalkin.
After being released from hospital, he fled by ferry to Spain.
And he said looking at the current crime gangs in Ireland, they had “gone mad.”
He said: “It’s a terrible shame, because there’s no future in their lives with the things that they’re doing — they’re all going to end up in prison.”
In the chat he also reveals he has no fear of dying, and may have a secret love child. He also insists he’ll never return to Ireland.
Health rumours
Speaking in the latest issue of Hot Press, which is out now, he also rubbished reports that he has prostate cancer, saying: “I just couldn’t stop laughing when I read that. No, I don’t have prostate cancer.
“On my mother’s grave, I don’t have cancer. I will not die of cancer one thousand million per cent because, from my head to toe, there’s no cancer in my body.”
The interview is the first he’s done since a controversial docu-series about him, called Confessions of a Crime Boss. It aired last year on Virgin Media and showed his new life in Spain.
In it, he said: “I’m sorry I went into crime but I’m not really sorry for the things I done. I could say I’m sorry, I could lie and say I’m sorry . . . it doesn’t stop me sleeping.”
The full interview features in the latest issue of Hot Press magazine, which is in shops now.
