The Hutch organised crime gang is in the frame for at least nine murders and is worth millions of euros, it has emerged.
An Irish Mirror investigation has established that the mob is active in Ireland, Spain and Britain and has assets of as much as €20 million – which it amassed on the back of robberies, drug scams and property deals.
“The gang is a major player in Irish crime and they have been for decades,” a source said. “Its tentacles are everywhere and it is extremely dangerous.”
READ MORE: Patsy Hutch dodges our questions over his alleged role in organising Regency Hotel shooting
Sources have told the gang has been involved in:
- Murders
- Financing drug deals
- Armed robberies
- Extortion
The gang has even corrupted Gardai. We have also established that it has ties with gangsters overseas - and even collaborated with the Kinahan cartel to murder a feared criminal in Dublin.
Our investigation has also discovered that investigators now fear the gang – which has been active for more than 40 years – has compromised gardai who are secretly working for them.
“The suspicion is that it has agents in the organisation,” a senior source told us.
The source told us those feared sleeper agents in the force are on top of three serving officers who have been suspended on suspicion of connections to the gang.
One is a member of the elite Special Detective Unit, while two others are in different organisations.
The SDU officer is suspected of acting as an enforcer for the gangs in extortion rackets around Dublin – and was allegedly in control of some €40,000 when he was arrested in March.
The two other Gardai are suspected of passing information to the Hutch gang via disgraced and jailed ex-Garda Superintendent John Murphy – although investigators believe one of them was duped into helping him.
But investigators also fear that the Hutch mob has other serving gardai on its books.
“The fear is there are others in the organisation,” a source said.
“We are talking about sleepers who are in the Garda Siochana and have not been discovered yet.
“The Hutch OCG is so sophisticated that it is capable of corrupting serving members.”
Sources have also told us that Gardai believe the Hutch mob – despite the clean living reputation of senior members – is involved in the drugs trade. We have been told that it has financed drugs gangs in both Ireland and Britain.
Leading members of the organisation were also heavily linked to the Kinahan cartel before their relationship soured.
Gary Hutch – a nephew of Gerry “The Monk” Hutch – was a right-hand man of cartel king Daniel Kinahan (45) until he tried to mount a coup and take control of the organisation himself in 2014.
That led to a key associate trying to murder Kinahan in his Spanish bolthole – a hit Daniel survived but which saw innocent boxer Jamie Moore being shot in the leg.
Gary (34) was later murdered by the Kinahan cartel in Spain in September 2015 – a killing that sparked the deadly feud that has now left 18 men dead.
But other members of the Hutch gang – including a close ally of Gary – had strong links to the Kinahans and were even involved in businesses with senior cartel figures.
We have also been told that a Hutch boss previously held meetings with Daniel Kinahan and other cartel leaders – and helped finance drug deals.
Sources have also told us the Hutch and Kinahan cartels collaborated to murder a notorious gangster in Dublin more than a decade ago.
It’s understood key members of the Hutch mob had been directly threatened by mobster Eamonn “the Don” Dunne during his reign of terror in the city in the late noughties.
It’s now understood a senior Hutch OCG member approached the cartel and persuaded the mob to shoot him dead.
Dunne (34) – who had been blamed for up to 20 killings – was shot dead in a north Dublin pub as he enjoyed a pal’s birthday party in April 2010.
Sources say the cartel agreed to murder him after a request from the senior Hutch figure, who was afraid for his life and those of close relatives – and decided Dunne had to be killed before he tried to murder one of them.
That killing is one of at least nine murders linked to the Hutch mob since the early 1980s.
The first was of a 15-year-old boy called Gerard Morgan in Crumlin, south Dublin in May 1982.
It was connected to an armed robbery the Hutch mob had carried out several weeks earlier in the city that netted the gang the equivalent of €100,000.
But one other robber hid some of his takings in his garden and it was found by a pal of Gerard Morgan, who told him about it. They spent some of it, but the rest of the haul was then stolen by two older boys.
The Hutch gang soon identified the suspects and began putting pressure on young Gerard Morgan and the other suspects.
The gang visited the Morgan house at one stage and weeks later the boy was shot dead when a bullet was fired through the front door, killing him instantly.
Then in June 1983, the gang murdered a criminal called Danny McOwen, shot dead in central Dublin.
He was murdered after a feud developed when a pal of his assaulted a female associate of a gang leader. Tensions flared and peace talks broke down with McOwen (33) threatening the gang leader.
A few days later, he was signing on at the Cumberland Street labour exchange in inner city Dublin when a man approached him and shot him dead.
The Hutch gang is also blamed for the murder of Mel Cox in Blanchardstown, west Dublin in June 1987. Cox (47) had earlier badly assaulted another relative of a Hutch gang boss in a bar in the city centre.
The Hutch gang is also suspected of involvement in the murder of drug dealer Gerard Hourigan (25) shot dead in Ballymun, north Dublin in January 1983.
And in December 1983, the gang was also suspected of involvement in the murder of ex-boxer Eddie Hayden, gunned down in Ballybough, near Croke Park. He was targeted because he tried to frame one of the Hutch gang on drugs charges.
And in December 1991, the gang organised the murder of ex-INLA terrorist John Patrick Pearse McDonald (41). McDonald, who was shot dead in his hairdresser’s shop in north-central Dublin, was gunned down after he had a falling out with the gang.
The Hutch gang also carried out the audacious February 2016 attack on the Regency Airport Hotel in north Dublin – in which key Kinahan associate David Byrne (34) was murdered.
The gang had intended to kill Kinahan himself – but he had a narrow escape.
Gerry “the Monk” Hutch (60) went on trial late last year for that murder, but the non-jury Special Criminal Court acquitted him last month. He had denied the charges.
The final murder pinned on the Hutch mob is the May 2017 killing of Michael Keogh (37) gunned down in a flats complex in central Dublin.
He was targeted as part of the Kinahan Hutch feud but was not a serious player.
He was the brother of Johnny Keogh, who is serving life for a Kinahan feud murder.
As well as murders and drugs the Hutch gang has also been heavily involved in armed robberies.
It made more than €14 million from two major heists in the 80s – both of which were linked to Gerry Hutch in court hearings, although he was never convicted of either.
And the gang is also suspected of masterminding the February 2009 heist of the Bank of Ireland branch at College Green in central Dublin.
The gang escaped with some €7.6 million – most of which has never been recovered.
The gang has used the cash from the robberies and drugs operation to buy a huge portfolio of properties in Ireland, Britain, Spain, Bulgaria and Turkey, sources say.
Investigators told us the portfolio includes business premises – and even entire apartment blocks.
During Gerry Hutch’s trial, a senior Garda detective gave evidence for the first time about the existence of the Hutch crime gang.
Detective Superintendent Dave Gallagher, of the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau, said in his opinion the group is made up of “close family members” and came together and “galvanised” after the Kinahan feud exploded.
He described it as being made up of “intergenerational” family bonds and was based predominantly in Dublin City Centre.
The *Hutch* criminal organisation is made up, he said, of “close family members,” and is “less hierarchical” than some other criminal organisations.
It operates on what he called a “patriarchal system” and that it was based off “loyalty” and “monetary gain.”
The Detective Superintendent said that historically the *Hutch* criminal organisation was “quite a fluid organisation” that had participants, associates and affiliates working together to commit certain crimes.
But it often consisted of those individuals operating independently at times, and working with other criminal organisations, he said.
However he said since 2015 and the emergence of the feud, he became privy to knowledge of a “galvanisation” of positions within the *Hutch* criminal organisation.
That galvanisation, he said, came as a result of that feud with the Kinahan organisation.
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