Gangland Shootings part 4 - Read OP before posting - updated 30/12/23

Alright. Moving on. Or back.

Was listening to a repeat of a Tallant 4 parter on the Regency there and was reminded of something that bugged me during the trial.

Jonathan Dowdall, his da, and the hotel booking.

The hotel room was booked so as to allow Kevin Murray (Flat Cap) a base to let him reccy the layout of the hotel before the attack (pre trial there was wild theories that, as a qualified spark/ CCTV installer, Dowdall had been in messing about with the CCTV systems, but as far as I know that was nonsense).

Why in the jaysis did Dowdall use his card (or his father's, or wife's, can't recall now) to book the room in his dad's name, and then have his father collect the key the night before?

The organiser of the operation (not G Hutch, he was completely innocent as decicded by a judicial panel har har har) would surely know post attack that the guards would trawl the CCTV and the bookings and see that a best mate of Patsy Hutch who lived 4 odd miles away had booked a hotel room the night before (a hotel room that CCTV presumably showed Flat Cap entering the next day, sealing the connection), which would be stretching the bounds of coincidence and bad luck to a serious level.

Flat Cap was dying and (presumably) took the job on to leave a fat wedge for his family knowing he was too ill to ever face trial or remand. Why didn't he book the room himself and collect the keycard? The effort he put into disguising himself shows he had little fear of going down for any of it.

If that wasn't an option, just pay an old local alco/ gambling addict with no real record to book it, some eejit who the Gardai would know full well wouldn't be privy to the seriousness of what was about to go down, and thus wouldn't find themselves facing serious charges at all (he could claim he was told it was for something mad like a swingers orgy or a porno being filmed, but that he was now too scared to tell who put him up to it). Or a foreigner who was permanently leaving the country soon.

Dowdall used that to his defence, why would I be mad enough to use my own card (or was it the wife's) to book a room if I knew what was about to go down.

It was about the only part of his defence that made a bit of sense.

Neither his conversations in the car nor his alleged meeting with GH in the park the day after correspond to this line of reasoning.

Was it a case of GH told JD to book a room but figured he surely wasn't daft enough to book it or collect the key using the card/ anybody remotely connectable to himself? And big brains just ploughed ahead?

Dowdall doesn't to my knowledge ever mention any sort of financial payment for booking the room, making contact with the dissidents etc etc.

You could argue NCH and Mago took part out of loyalty (although I'm sure they got a payment regardless, and NCH would be hungry for a few quid given his drug habit).

But Dowdall was a mate of PH but hardly as close a one as Mago was to GH. I'm friendly with lads 18 years older than me, but not to the extent I'd take part in a murder conspiracy for free for them.

From RTE

"Referring to Brendan Grehan’s suggestion that it was Patsy not Gerard Hutch who collected the room keycard from him and his father, he said "your client is willing to throw his own brother under the bus, Gerard got the card your honour"."

This was another bit I found very strange. Wasn't Grehan, under instruction from his client, introducing PH as a suspect? Is there any way PH would see this and think it's just part of the game? What if JD suddenly cracked during this piece of testimony and shouted out "alright alright look, that night it was Patsy I gave the keys to but so what, I still met GH in the park 2 days later and he told me he was a gunman, who cares".

Or were they all playing the long game, luring JD into making such a fool of himself he could never be taken seriously in any future prosecution of Patsy? (though you might argue on a professional level Grehan has no interest in getting PH off the hook as he isn't his client, but then again GH was paying from his own pocket so he can have him do what he likes?)

May that have been the plan- using a stressed JD to start shouting allegations against PH in the court, but then making him look like such an eejit that nothing he said about PH could ever be taken seriously?

If you type "Gerry Patsy hutch rift" into Google there are numerous stories about how they apparently hadn't met up since his release, but I could swear I'd seen stuff since showing he was in the company of either him or some of the sons. Not to mention I doubt the likes of Mago would have much time for GH any more if he felt he had sold PH out to save himself.