Who are the Hutches? A profile of the Dublin family

The murder of Eddie Hutch snr on Monday night represents the second time that a member of the Hutch family has been shot dead.

Gary Hutch (34), nephew of Eddie, was shot dead near Marbella last September after a life of crime.

Both killings are believed to have been carried out by the Spain-based drugs gang led by Christy Kinahan.

The escalation in violence has thrown the Hutch family name back into the media spotlight, but who are the criminal members of the family from Dublin’s north inner city?

Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch

While regarded as the head of the family because of his involvement in serious crime, Gerry Hutch has insisted he has never sold drugs.

Having lived in the middle class suburb of Clontarf for two decades, he had also steadfastly avoided becoming embroiled in gangland disputes and in the last 15 years has made a multimillion euro settlement with the Criminal Assets Bureau and diversified into buying and renting properties in Ireland and abroad.

Gerry Hutch was regarded as the main mover behind the robbery of £1.7 million from a Securicor cash in transit van in Marino Mart, north Dublin, in 1987.

He is also the prime suspect for the Brinks Allied depot robbery in Clonshaugh, north Dublin, in which £3 million was stolen in 1995.

However, in a television interview in 2008 he denied any involvement in the robberies and said the multimillion settlement he eventually reached with the Criminal Assets Bureau related to tax problems rather than crime.

“I done a lot of business in property, it was a good time and that’s where I made me money,” he said.

“If people say armed robberies, so be it. I mean, I was questioned about these armed robberies . . . we’ll let them decide - the people.”

Of the robberies he has been linked to, he said: “Yeah, I know all about it. I’ve been arrested, questioned about it, been writ about. I’ve read all about it in the newspapers. That’s what I know about it and anytime it’s writ about my photograph is thrown in.

“I’m beginning to believe I done it myself from reading it in the paper. When you read these things every week after week, there must be no smoke without fire. It looks that way, it sounds that way. If it barks it’s a dog. I didn’t do the robbery, you know.”

Gerry Hutch also said he came from a poor background and there “was nothing around” as a boy.

“I mean first up, best dressed. Yeah, I had no choice. You had to get into crime to feed yourself, never mind dress yourself.”

He was sent to prison at 15 and said it was like “going to college for criminals”.

“I have a kid now of 15 and I look at the kid and I say ‘my God, when I was 15, I was in prison’. I mean, I was in prison with murderers, rapists, bank robbers, everything.

“I’ll agree I done wrong but I think the severity of being put into Mountjoy Prison at that age, it was like going to college for criminals.”

He also agreed that he was a man of influence in his community and may be feared in some quarters.

“Probably so. I mean, a guy came up to me one day, a councillor, one of the local councillors and he said ‘there’s a guy there and he’s owed 10 grand for drugs and the drug-dealer is giving him a terrible time and he’s telling him that he’s going to get you to sort it’. I said, ‘well tell him that the kid gave me the money’, and that’s the end of that.”

When the Criminal Assets Bureau began operating in 1997 Hutch was one of its first targets and by 1999 its case against him had reached the courts.

In its evidence before the High Court, Cab claimed Hutch was the leader of a criminal gang and it is investigating the whereabouts of more than £4 million – from the armed robberies - which it suspects are the proceeds of his criminal activities,

The Cab suspected that Hutch was the leader of the gang, that there were four other “core” people, and others who were used to hide the money, including partners, wives and children.

A Cab officer said the bureau hoped the end result of its action against Hutch would be to get to the “pot of gold hidden away in properties and bank accounts”.

Hutch claimed he had no money available to him and had to sell certain properties to pay legal fees. The bureau’s staff told the High Court this was untrue and that over the years sought to hide and disguise monies and properties in his control, including placing them in the names of other persons and in offshore accounts.

Gerry Hutch was, for example, dealing at the time with Halifax International Jersey Ltd, of St Helier, Jersey.

He had presented himself as P. Fowler (his wife’s name was Patricia Fowler) at United Parcel Service (UPS) in Glasnevin on March 20th, 1996 and dispatched an envelope to the Jersey bank.

A Cab office also told the High Court Gerry Hutch had had a beneficial interest with others in a commercial development in Drury Street, Dublin, adding that the bureau could show Hutch investing £130,000 using monies he had hidden in his wife’s name in TSB Northern Ireland.

Hutch’s legal team told the High Court Cabhad seized the title deeds of four properties at Lower Buckingham Street and he wanted them back. Two of the houses were in the name of his late mother, another was in the name of his sister, Margaret, and the fourth in his wife’s name.

Hutch claimed that these properties were readily sourced through legitimate financing, much of which came from settlements in various personal injuries actions.

These included £8,250 from Securicor Ireland in June 1991; £2,000 from the Sunday Tribune and sums of £1,000 and £25,000 in claims against the State.

Eddie Hutch snr

Eddie Hutch was known to gardaí for involvement in more minor crimes but was drawn into the Criminal Assets Bureau’s investigation of the proceeds of his brother’s robberies.

A bank account containing €160,000 in Eddie Hutch’s name was found and seized by Cab as part of that inquiry.

In the late 1980s the courts in Dublin ruled Eddie Hutch was not entitled to compensation from Dublin Corporation after a fire destroyed his local authority home while he was in prison for breaching a barring order.

However, that Dublin Circuit Court ruling was overturned when Hutch appealed to the Supreme Court.

The court was told Hutch had claimed £20,000 in compensation from the council under the Malicious Injuries Act following a fire at his home on Portland Place, North Circular Road, Dublin.

The Circuit Court allowed him £1,250 in 1987, the same year his brother Gerry reportedly carried out the Brinks Allied robbery.

Eddie Hutch was dissatisfied at the award by the Circuit Court and two years later the High Court heard an appeal which referred a number of questions to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court on April 1st, 1991, ruled Eddie Hutch was entitled to compensation for the furniture, furnishings and domestic equipment destroyed.

One of the judges said the contention by Dublin Corporation that the goods were purchased with the proceeds of crime could not be proven.

Mr Justice McCarthy said the argument took no account of the money available through social welfare to buy the items lost in the fire or any casual money he may have come into.

Eddie Hutch outlined some of his income during the court action, saying in December 1982 his father had loaned him £3,000 from a redundancy payment he had received.

He also got a loan of £7,000 from his mother. He also told the court he earned money from breeding dogs and gambling and that he sold “colours” – hats and scarves in county colours – at Croke Park close to his home.

Having taken his case through the Circuit Court, High Court and Supreme Court over an eight-year period, Eddie Hutch was awarded the full £20,000 in compensation for the 1984 fire at his home.

Gary Hutch

Gary Hutch (34) was shot dead by the major Spain-based Kinahan drugs cartel near Marbella last September after a life of crime.

He was a suspect in the murder of Derek Duffy in Finglas in September, 2007. He was also charged in relation to the non fatal shooting in the stomach of a Ballyfermot man but escaped conviction.

His murder last year represented the third occasion an Irishman connected to the Kinahan gang was shot dead in Spain in recent years, with two of those being murdered by the gang after falling foul of its leaders.

Gary Hutch was on the scene when close associate and multiple murder suspect Paddy Doyle (27), from Portland Place, Dublin, was shot dead near Marbella in February 2008.

His younger brother Barry Doyle (29), who is also a hired killer, is currently serving life for the 2008 murder of Shane Geoghegan in Limerick.

Hutch was associated with Dubliner Gerard Kavanagh (44), an enforcer and debt collector for the Kinahan gang who was shot dead in Spain in September, 2014.

In 2006 when a young Dublin man was shot and wounded in Dublin city, he named Gary Hutch as the person who tried to kill him.

However, the witness later resiled from his evidence, claiming he had only named Hutch as the gunman to get revenge on him after hearing rumours he was having an affair with his girlfriend.

When asked to confirm whether he had told a garda that Hutch had shot him while in the Mater hospital, the shooting victim said:

“I couldn’t tell you, I could have said Mass and I wouldn’t have known”.

In 2001, Hutch was jailed for six years for his role in the robbery of jewellery worth £32,000 and £5,000 cash from a businessman in Malahide, north Dublin.

The man was in bed with his wife when they woke up to find four masked men in the room, brandishing a shotgun. They handcuffed the man, brought him downstairs and forced him to open his safe.

Hutch never entered the house, but acted as the getaway driver.

He was on bail at the time in relation to other theft charges, for which he was later jailed for four years.

Despite a judge ordering that a four-year and six-year jail term should run consecutively because the jewellery raid was carried out while Hutch was on bail, he was freed from prison in 2006.

Following his release he had spent much of his time living in Spain, working in the drugs trade.

He also spent some time in Ireland and was involved in organised crime in Dublin.

Hutch was a chief suspect in a case where a bank official was kidnapped at a house in Co Kildare six years ago and threatened that he must go to his place of work at the Bank of Ireland vaults on College Green in Dublin’s south inner city and take money for the gang.

The official was told his girlfriend’s family would be harmed if he did not comply. A total of € 7.6 million was taken, almost all of which was never recovered.

Derek ‘Del Boy’ Hutch

Another family member, Derek ‘Del Boy’ Hutch (30), is currently in jail for stabbing a man to death after a house party in Ashbourne, Co Meath, on St Stephen’s Day, 2007.

Hutch killed one man and injured another man at the same time, causing him serious harm.

While jailed for 10 years for the victim’s manslaughter, Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy suspended four years of his sentence to “keep light at the end of the tunnel” and ensure “the business of sentencing” was not about “locking someone up and throwing away the key”.

Hutch had 39 previous convictions at the time, some of which related to gangland crime.

The trial heard the victim had just spent Christmas with his family and had gone to the aid of friends involved in a fight with Hutch at the entrance to the Milltown estate close to Ashbourne Garda station.

As well as the manslaughter sentence, Derek Hutch is also serving 16 years for his role in the attempted armed robbery of a cash-in-transit van in Lucan, Co Dublin, in 2009. One of his accomplices was shot dead by armed gardaí who foiled the raid.

On the night of August 2nd, 2009, a man cycling a yellow bicycle and carrying a bag was seen going into Croke Villas flats in Sackville Avenue in Ballybough.

A few minutes later Hutch came out of the complex on the bike. When Hutch stopped briefly at a bus shelter gardaí moved in. Hutch fled on the bicycle.

Det Garda Wayne Kelly saw Hutch carrying a semi-automatic pistol with silencer fitted in his right hand.

He chased Hutch, who then fell off the bicycle as Det Garda Kelly caught up with him, tackled him and arrested him.

Det Garda Kelly recovered Hutch’s gloves, mobile phone and the gun. The safety catch was off on the gun, it was cocked for shooting and had a round in the breech and six other bullets loaded.

Hutch later gave a false name during questioning and “adopted a position of no comment”.

When the issue of the gun was put to him, Hutch replied: “Load of bollocks.”

“We could take that as a denial,” Remy Farrell, for the DPP, told Judge Hogan at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in 2010.

A letter written by Hutch apologising for his crimes was handed in to the judge. The court was also given written representations on Hutch’s behalf from well known social campaigner Fr Peter McVerry.

Det Insp Doyle said Hutch had 25 previous convictions, including one for drugs, dealt with by the Children’s Court.

He had another conviction under the Firearms and Offensive Weapons Act, for which he was jailed for two years, and other convictions for criminal damage, motoring offences, obstruction of gardaí and public order.

Judge Hogan sentenced him to seven years on the firearms offence. He also sentenced him to a consecutive three-year term for a range of theft and motoring offences. Hutch was out on bail for the various motoring and theft offences when he was caught with the gun.

Three theft counts before the courts related to Hutch’s role in an organised crime ring stealing motorcycles for resale. The bikes were described by Sgt Oliver Henry in his evidence as “at the very top end of the range”.

Some of the bikes were stolen from outside offices in the Citywest area of Dublin.

*This article was amended on February 12th 2016