state witness | 

Mum of Jonathan Dowdall says she’s a ‘broken woman’ after Regency Hotel fallout

Dowdall’s mother fled Ireland when she found out her son was to give evidence against Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch

Today at 07:00

The mother of State witness Jonathan Dowdall said she has been left a “broken woman” by the Regency Hotel fallout.

The Dublin woman initially fled Ireland after it emerged her son was set to give evidence against Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch in the murder trial of David Byrne.

In his testimony, ex-Sinn Féin councillor Jonathan told the court that his mother had received threats from Hutch gang associates over the phone.

However, the 62-year-old is now back openly working and living in Dublin.

She is now working on a market stall where, she says, she is “just trying to make a living”.

But when asked about the effects the trial and the conviction of her son has had on her as a mother, she said she was “broken”.

“How do I feel as a mother?” she asked. “How would any mother feel? It never goes away,” she said. “I’ve been left broken. I haven’t seen my son in 13 years.

“The last time I did he was living his own life, he was running his own company.

“I never asked for any of this,” she added. “I did my best, I really did, to bring up my children, the best I could.

“I don’t wish anybody any harm,” she said.

“I just want to be left alone. I am just an ordinary, decent person, trying to make a living.”

During the Regency trial, Jonathan Dowdall gave details of threats, he claimed, his mother had received after he turned State witness.

“My mother is being rang by people who she was kind to when kids, telling a 62-year-old woman she’s dead, that my children are dead.

“This is a whole different level and this is why nobody comes in and gives evidence.”

He also claimed other members of his immediate family were also threatened.

“Children as young as ten, their lives are under serious threat, they haven’t been in school since September and death threats are issued on their Twitter pages. The schools won’t take them back. My daughter had to leave her job as the company said it’s too dangerous to have her coming in and out of work.”

The former electrician also told defence barrister Mr Brendan Grehan: “Everything I feared happen has happened and worse. They had people lined up to come in and lie. The level of pressure people get put under”.

Dowdall told the trial he couldn’t say in an initial Garda interview following his arrest in May 2016 that he knew who was involved in the Regency attack.

“It was a lie out of necessity. My family would have been killed if I said who was involved in the Regency,” he added.

“No decent man threatens a 10-year-old kid and a 14-year-old kid or gets someone to ring my mother.”

Dowdall recently lost his appeal against his prison sentence for helping the gang behind the murder of Kinahan Cartel criminal David Byrne.

Dowdall was originally due to go on trial alongside Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch for the murder of Byrne but the charge was dropped after he pleaded guilty to facilitating the killing and agreed to testify against his former co-accused.

The day before the Hutch trial began, he was sentenced to four years in prison for facilitating the murder of Byrne.

His father Patrick got two years in prison last October at the Special Criminal Court but time already served was taken into account and the sentence back-dated and has since been released.

The Special Criminal Court later found Hutch not guilty of the murder of David Byrne at the Regency Hotel in north Dublin in February 2016.

Dowdall’s family’s links to the Hutches were also revealed during a hearing at the Special Criminal Court, in October 2022.

Garda Detective Sergeant Patrick O’Toole had told the court how Dowdall’s relatives would likely have to be resettled abroad under new identities and will never be able to return home, after he agreed to tell all on the Regency attack.

Det Sgt O’Toole said Dowdall had known the Hutch family since he was 15 and his mum, a third-generation market trader, grew up next door to them and had been friends with The Monk’s wife.

The Dowdalls would occasionally borrow large sums of money from Gerry’s brother Patsy, the court heard, and the Dowdalls often booked holidays for the Hutch family on a credit card but these “smaller sums of money” were always paid back.