A meticulously planned assassination that lit a fuse across Dublin's streets.
On the morning of April 17th, 2023, armed gardaí took up positions inside and outside Dublin's Criminal Courts of Justice as three judges prepared to deliver their verdict in one of the most consequential criminal trials in the history of the Irish state. In a packed courtroom, Gerard Hutch — grey-haired, bearded, dressed in a navy jacket and white shirt — sat and listened as the Special Criminal Court began reading a judgment that had been years in the making.
The case traced back to February 5th, 2016, when a group of men stormed the Regency Hotel in Dublin during a boxing weigh-in. David Byrne, 33 years old, was shot dead. Two others were injured. Ms Justice Tara Burns, delivering the court's findings alongside Judge Sarah Berkeley and Judge Gráinne Malone, described the assault as a meticulously planned, high-velocity assassination attempt — one that did not end with the hotel attack but instead ignited a cycle of violence that spread across Dublin's streets and claimed further lives.
Two of the three accused received guilty verdicts that morning. Paul Murphy, 61, of Cherry Avenue, Swords, and Jason Bonney, 50, of Drumnigh Woods, Portmarnock, were both found guilty of facilitating the murder by making vehicles available to a criminal organisation. Both had denied the charges.
The court's findings against Bonney were particularly pointed. He had argued that his father, William Bonney — who died in 2019 — was behind the wheel of a black BMW X5 at key moments on the day of the attack. The court rejected that account entirely. Ms Justice Burns said the court had been lied to in the most malevolent manner possible, with Bonney attempting to use his dead father as cover. The judges were satisfied that Bonney himself drove the BMW, that the vehicle formed part of a convoy used in the attack, and that he was at the wheel when Kevin 'Flatcap' Murray — a now-deceased dissident republican alleged to have been among the attackers — got into the car after the shooting.
For Murphy, the case rested on a Toyota Avensis taxi seen at multiple locations on the day of the attack. The court was satisfied the vehicle was his, that he drove it in convoy with other cars, and that it was used to collect one of the raiders from the car park at St Vincent's GAA club after the assault. The court also found that Murphy knew the Hutch criminal organisation and held a key card to Buckingham Village, which served as a hub for the operation.
The prosecution's central witness throughout the 52-day trial was Jonathan Dowdall, a former Sinn Féin councillor who had himself been charged with murder before that charge was dropped last October following his guilty plea to the lesser offence of facilitating the killing — specifically, by booking a hotel room the night before the attack. Dowdall and his father Patrick were jailed for four and two years respectively on that charge. Days later, the trial of Hutch and his co-accused opened.
Dowdall testified that his father had been asked by Patsy Hutch to book the room for a friend, and that Gerard Hutch had collected key cards from him and his father on Dublin's Richmond Road the evening before the attack. He also said Hutch had confessed to him in a park in Whitehall shortly afterward. Defence counsel Brendan Grehan SC called these claims the two central lies of Dowdall's evidence, and described him as a master manipulator. Dowdall denied both characterisations. He had previously been jailed for 12 years in 2017 for serious offences including the waterboarding of a man at his home.
The prosecution acknowledged Dowdall was a self-admitted liar but argued that fact alone did not disqualify his testimony. The court's verdict on Gerard Hutch himself — on the charge of murder — was not yet delivered at the time the guilty findings against Murphy and Bonney were announced, with the judgment still being read.
Before proceeding, Ms Justice Burns paused to acknowledge that John Caldwell, a senior PSNI detective who had given evidence during the trial, had been shot while off-duty in a car park outside a GAA club in Omagh on February 22nd. The court extended its best wishes for his recovery.
With Murphy and Bonney convicted, attention turned to the remaining question of what the court would find regarding Gerard Hutch — the man the prosecution placed at the centre of the attack itself.
Notable Quotes
The court was lied to in the most malevolent manner in Bonney's effort to implicate his dead father.— Ms Justice Tara Burns, Special Criminal Court
Dowdall was an admitted liar, but that did not mean his evidence in this case could not be believed.— Fiona Murphy SC, for the prosecution
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does this trial carry so much weight beyond the verdict itself?
Because it sits at the heart of the Hutch-Kinahan feud — a gang war that killed dozens of people across Ireland and beyond. The Regency attack was the opening shot in that conflict, or at least the most visible one.
What made the prosecution's case so difficult to build?
The main witness was Jonathan Dowdall, a man with a serious criminal record who had already pleaded guilty to a related charge. Asking a court to convict on his testimony meant asking them to trust someone they also had to acknowledge was a liar.
And yet the court convicted two men on that day. How?
Not on Dowdall's word alone. Murphy and Bonney were convicted on circumstantial evidence — CCTV footage, vehicle movements, their known associations. The court was careful to say circumstantial evidence isn't lesser evidence. It just requires more assembly.
The detail about Bonney blaming his dead father is striking.
It's the moment the court's language sharpens most. The judges didn't just reject his account — they said the court had been lied to in the most malevolent way imaginable. That's unusually direct language from a bench.
What was Dowdall's account of why the feud started in the first place?
He said he learned in prison that Gary and Patrick Hutch had planned to steal roughly four and a half million euros linked to the Kinahans and to shoot Daniel Kinahan — but that the operation went wrong when Patrick Hutch Junior, hiding in bushes, shot a boxer instead.
That's an extraordinary claim to make in open court.
It is. And it illustrates why the defence worked so hard to discredit him. A man who tells stories like that, from prison, about events he didn't witness — the defence had plenty to work with.
The PSNI officer mentioned at the end — why does that moment matter?
John Caldwell was shot in Omagh while off-duty, just weeks before the verdict. The court pausing to acknowledge that, mid-judgment, is a reminder that the violence surrounding this world doesn't stay inside courtrooms.