A TOP Garda has told how no one could have predicted that the murder of Gary Hutch would kickstart a violent feud that would kill 18 people.
A new podcast from The Irish Sun, The Kinahans, examines the deadly rise of the cartel from Christy Kinahan’s early days as a heroin smuggler to a €1billion empire.
Speaking to the Irish Sun’s Damien Lane, former Garda Assistant Commissioner John O’Driscoll told how Gardai were on high alert following the murder of Gary in Spain on September 24, 2015, but had no idea just how bloody the tit-for-tat gang warfare would become.
The Hutch gang would later retaliate by attempting to kill Daniel Kinahan at the Regency Hotel, an incident which resulted in the murder of Kinahan cartel member David Byrne instead.
In total, 18 lives – including those of many innocents like Noel ‘Duck Egg’ Kirwan– would eventually be lost through the violence between the gangs.
Former Assistant Commissioner O’Driscoll said of Gary’s shooting and how it became a watershed moment in Irish gangland history: “Well, obviously, we were very much aware of of the fact that Gary have been murdered.
“The extent to which any particular organised crime group would engage in a tit-for-tat sort of situation is just impossible to establish.
“And obviously we monitored the activity, the criminal activity. The difficulty I suppose we had from the Garda Siochana perspective was that, you know, you had a murder in Spain.
“But it would have been very difficult to foresee that the criminality involved and particularly the threat to life aspect was going to extend to the level that that it eventually did.”
CLOUDS FORMING
And former Assistant Garda Michael O’Sullivan added: “You could see the clouds forming when that happened and you could see it was starting to get out of hand.
“And it’s very easy for these things to get out of hand. As I say, the paranoia and the cocaine and everything else you could see that it had the potential to get out of hand.”
The Kinahans charts how Gary Hutch was once a popular figure with the Kinahan cartel and formed a deep friendship with Daniel.
He was one of the criminals involved in a 2009 Bank of Ireland tiger kidnapping and robbery, the largest heist ever carried out in the Republic, which netted his gang €7.6million.
Red hot Gary, cash rich from his big break, forged links with the Kinahans as they laundered his cash, a relationship which developed into a friendship.
However, relations soured between Gary and the Kinahan cartel when Spanish police – working through Operation Shovel – carried out a series of raids on the gang’s operation on the Costa Del Sol.
Gary was in Holland at the time of the raids, a coincidence that would lead to him coming to the suspicion of other gang members.
MISGUIDED BELIEF
Former Assistant Commissioner Michael O’Sullivan said: “When you’re dealing with criminals. There’s such a level of paranoia between them, a lot of them use coke.
“And it is very easy to be best friends one day and to be plotting to kill somebody the next day. That’s the way they operate.
“Sometimes they have a misguided belief that somebody has done something wrong on them.
“And a lot of feuds start like that both here and abroad. People are just paranoid.”
Christy, Daniel and Christopher Junior would face a total of just seven months in jail as prosecutors found it impossible to pin them down with anything concrete.
But this didn’t mean that Gary Hutch was back in the fold.
Having laundered the gains from the tiger kidnapping in 2009, Gary Hutch hadn’t gotten much back, even well after the heat from Operation Shovel had blown over.
NO RETURNS
Irish Sun Crime Editor Stephen Breen explained: “He made the investment and he waited patiently on any returns. It didn’t come.
“He would have known as well in the past, Daniel Kinahan had ripped off other criminals from across Europe in terms of money laundering.”
An escalation in the breakdown of the relationship came at the funeral of Jean Boylan, Christy Kinahan’s first wife and mother of Daniel and Christopher Jr.
As a procession of friends and family arrived at Mount Jerome cemetery in Harold’s Cross, south Dublin, they noticed a piece of graffiti across the road.
On a grey concrete stairwell, the words ‘Gary Hutch U Rat’ were spelled out in bright red spray paint.
It was an indication of how toxic Gary Hutch’s name had become. Not just that, Gary was still awaiting the return of his cash from the bank robbery.
BAD TO WORSE
By the late summer of 2014, things between Gary Hutch and the rest of the Kinahan gang had gone from bad to worse.
Paranoia was rife on both sides of the table and the embers of a feud were starting to smoke.
Stephen Breen tells the podcast: “Gary Hutch didn’t have the money that he wanted.
“And I think there was a complete relationship breakdown between him and Daniel Kinahan despite attempts from Gary to reach out to Daniel that didn’t yield any results.”
Gary Hutch had decided he would attempt a hit on Daniel Kinahan’s life.
On a hot summer night in Marbella, Spain, Gary organised for an associate to wait outside of Daniel’s home as the gang were out partying, celebrating the birthday of a boxing coach.
But Kinahan had left earlier and was already inside.
The inexperienced, coked-up hitman ended up blasting innocent boxer Jamie Moore instead.
BOTCHED HIT
Owen Conlon adds: “It was a hugely botched hit and it didn’t take Daniel Kinahan very long to figure out who was behind it.”
After the botched hit, Gary moved to Amsterdam and kept a very low profile. He split his time between Holland and Dublin, but he was well aware he now had a possible target on his back.
In deep over his head, he reached out to the one man he felt might be able to de-escalate the scenario – Gerry Hutch.
Owen Conlon tells the podcast: “He was relying on his famous uncle, The Monk, to protect him.
“Hutch had a degree of protection in that regard.
“I mean, if it was anybody else, he would have been hunted out and shot down.
“But because The Monk was there to intercede on his behalf, a number of representations were made to Daniel Kinahan’s father.”
Eventually, a deal was thrashed out – €200,000 would be paid as compensation for the incident, or Gary would be taken out.
Plus, a punishment shooting would be carried out on Patrick Hutch, Gary’s brother – with Daniel himself pulling the trigger.
NOT LETTING GO
Owen added: “It was thought by the Hutches at least that the whole matter had been buried.
“But Daniel Kinahan was not prepared to let this go.”
Sometime around summer of 2015, Gary Hutch returned to the Costa, believing it was now safe.
He was returning to his apartment complex in Estepona, Spain after a jog on the morning of September 25, 2015 when he was chased and shot dead by a balaclava-clad assassin.
The gunman caught Hutch after the latter had run up against a locked gate trying to make his escape.
Owen Conlon adds: “He was heard by witnesses to shout ‘no, no, no, no’ and put out his hands. And it was to no avail.”
Gary’s funeral took place 10 days later back in Sean McDermott Street in north Dublin.
Inside the church, Gary’s mother pleaded to the fellow mourners: “We don’t want retaliation”. The appeal would fall on deaf ears.
The Kinahans is available on all popular podcast platforms including Apple and Spotify, with new episodes weekly.
