State witness Jonathan Dowdall has been challenged on the fact that phone records show he wasn’t in a park at the time he claimed Gerry Hutch confessed to him there.
The bombshell revelation came at the end of what was Dowdall’s final day being grilled by Defence Counsel Brendan Grehan - after eight days in the witness box.
Hutch (59) is on trial before the Special Criminal Court for the murder of Kinahan cartel associate David Byrne in Dublin’s Regency Hotel on February 5, 2016 - a charge he denies.
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During the course of his final day of cross-examination on Wednesday, Dowdall also spoke about how he would “always rebuild” his life even if it meant he had to “dig up dogsh*t” in a kennel.
The witness, who admits he lied in the past but says he is telling the truth now, also claimed before the non-jury trial that he’d heard in prison that co-accused men Jason Bonney and Paul Murphy would be shot if they plead guilty.
Mr Grehan SC, defending for Hutch had also hoped to play a portion of a tape Dowdall once had someone record of him waterboarding a man in his home - but presiding Judge Ms Justice Tara Burns ultimately ruled against it.
The key accusation made by Dowdall, who is serving a four-year prison sentence for facilitating the murder of Byrne, is that Hutch confessed to him in a park in Whitehall, Dublin on either the Sunday or the Monday after the Regency Hotel attack in February 2016.
Dowdall claims ‘The Monk’ told him he wasn’t happy “about shooting that lad David Byrne,” and claims the accused confessed that he and James ‘Mago’ Gately shot him sometime between 11am and midday.
But today Mr Grehan put it to Dowdall that a phone analyst had been brought in to confirm his whereabouts at the time and found that his phone was pinging off a mast near the Navan Road at the time on Monday, February 8.
After that it pinged off the Dundalk area after 1pm, he said, causing the witness to say “then it wasn’t the 8th was it?”
Mr Grehan put it to the witness that he had repeatedly given gardai the impression that it was on the Monday, as this was the same day he later got a call from Patsy Hutch’s wife Kay who told him that Eddie Hutch had been shot dead.
Mr Grehan challenged Dowdall that these were “kind of two very significant events” in his life, and said it “should be clear in your mind.”
