Gardaí got search warrants for five locations in Hutch enclave after Regency murder

Officers went to the District Court, where they obtained warrants for shops at 20A, B and C on Buckingham Street Upper and two houses at numbers 26 and 27.

The Special Criminal Court was told that searches were later conducted at an apartment at Buckingham Village and twice at the house of Patsy Hutch on Champions Avenue.

During the first search of Champions Avenue, where Patrick Hutch Jnr also lived, an officer said a key for a Ford transit van was spotted in the hallway on a hook but that it was never removed for evidence.

It’s presence in the house was used to get a second search warrant days later which was issued by the District Court. During the second search a log book for a van was seized but the key was gone.

The focus of the investigation team on properties around the north inner city in the days and weeks after the Regency attack happened as the feud between the Hutch and Kinahan gangs intensified resulting in multiple murders and terror in the area which came under siege from hit teams and would be assassins.

The team investigating the Byrne murder collected CCTV around the north inner city from the morning of the murder.

Separately, members of the National Surveillance Unit were watching Gerry Hutch and Jonathan Dowdall as they made their way to the north on February 20 and again on March 7.

The State will argue that state witness Dowdall was tricked into being embroiled in the Regency attack and that he only drove Hutch north to meet subversives to act as a peace broker.

Hutch and Dowdall were pictured at the home of Shane Rowan in Donegal who would later be caught by members of the Special Detective Unit with the Regency AK47s in his car.

The State say that the van used to transport the hit team and two cars, which they allege were driven by Jason Bonney and Paul Murphy, met in the car park at the back of the Buckingham Village apartment complex on the morning of February 5 and later left in convoy from that location.

The search carried out at the complex was the apartment of a woman managing the security at the gates and where a number of access swipes were found.

Buckingham Village, a complex of 155 apartments, was developed in the late 1980s at the old Buckingham Buildings. The car park is accessed through a small laneway called Bella Street that runs down the side of the complex off Buckingham Street.

The weathered apartments are understood to have been developed by Gerry Hutch, the late criminal Paddy Shanahan and murdered Eamon Kelly as they started to buy up many of the buildings in the area at a time when they were not sought after.

Buckingham Street and the small roads off it have long been the stronghold of the Hutch family and the organised crime group that has built up around it.

This week, Detective Superintendent David Gallagher told the Special Criminal Court that Hutch Organised Crime Group was an intergenerational group that had a patriarchal structure. It was a fluid group, he said and members often came together in criminal enterprise but also worked independently.

The Sunday World understands that the properties which were listed for the initial search warrants in the aftermath of the Regency attack were those linked to close associates of the Hutch mob ,including Kinahan target James ‘Mago’ Gately.

He ran a shop in one of the three units which were subject to warrants while one of the houses searched was the family home of The Monk’s late brother Derek.

Gerry Hutch purchased his first property on Buckingham Street in the 1980s when he was still a teenager and expecting his first child with wife Patricia Fowler.

The couple, who have five children together, lived there for years before moving out to Clontarf.

Gerry Hutch is named on a leasing agreement between the charity Barnardos and a property on Buckingham Street. The charity pay reduced rent for the property if they continue providing services to underprivileged children there.