Ireland's Deadly Gang War: The Hutch Kinahan Feud
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Welcome to the Underworld Podcast, where we dive into the secret world of organized crime and other transnational criminal elements. I am your host, Danny Gold, and I'm joined today by Jake Hanrahan of Popular Front, who's going to school us a bit when we get down to some of the nitty gritty in Ireland and paramilitary gangs and fun stuff like that. I'm not Irish, by the way, just my heritage is. I'm a plastic paddy, but I know a bit about it.

I mean, you know, our audience will be some Americans who I think associate Northern England, Ireland. You're all just Guy Ritchie characters when it comes to co-Americans, you know? Well, Americans think that, like, if your dog is Irish, then you're Irish. You know what I mean? They're like, I'm Irish. It's like, no, stop. But yeah, like, you know, I'm like, what, second generation, first generation, born here. Yeah, so, and also you've done a lot of reporting there. You know, you've done that documentary on dairy and drug dealers and other criminal elements there. And that's what we'll be talking about today is the...

Ireland's fearsome gang war between the Hutch and Kinahan clans and how it jumped off and all the craziness involving that. There's even a Conor McGregor appearance. There's a Tyson Fury appearance. You know, we're going to we're going to have some fun with this. Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of bad eggs, a lot of them around there. It's a good time, though, you know, and we'll get down to it. But Jake, you know, just this is a crime podcast. We'd like to banter a bit. Have you done any any crime recently?

I don't pay TV license that's a big dispute I have with the British government right now um

Yeah, I mean, I did get in trouble last year, actually. But I don't know. Don't actually incriminate yourself on this. I mean, that's more of a... Yeah, yeah. But it wasn't my fault. It was like a total self-defense situation. But the police here don't care about that. But yeah, TV license, not paying that. We'll stick to it. We don't have to discuss your cases. We'll stick to TV license right now. Jake is a very law-abiding citizen and a good man. Yeah. All right. So let's dive into this. Mm-hmm.

There's a video online, and it starts off the same way that all boxing weigh-ins do. There's a muscular man on stage in Superman underwear. He's flanked by two older bald guys in suits with clipboards, checking the scales, jotting down notes. There's like cheesy rock music blasting out of speakers and a bunch of press that are filming and writing on their notepads.

The weigh-in is at the fancy Regency Hotel in Dublin. It's the first week of February, February 5th, 2016. And there's a WBO lightweight title between Irish fighter Jamie Cavanaugh and Portuguese fighter Antonio Joao Bento. You know, it's like a crowded press conference, one of those big hotel banquet rooms. And all of a sudden, there's just pandemonium.

Camera shaking. You hear a crazy commotion. People are running this way and that. And you actually see this poor, mostly naked boxer in his Superman underwear. And he's just kind of running back and forth on the stage, not sure what to do. And just as the video is about to cut out, you hear a gunshot. And then it's just like nothing.

Yeah, that was terrible, man. There was children there as well and everything. It was just it wasn't just a gunshot either. They had like fucking automatic rifles. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when the smoke clears, it's it's it's not exactly clear what happened, but sort of clear a bunch of hit men.

Dressed like Irish Guardia. Am I saying that right? Guardia? It's like the Irish police force? It's Guardia. I mean, you can just say guards. They call them the guards. But yeah, the Guardia. It's like the police, but it is the police. They just call it the Guardia. It's like their national police force, right? Like the FBI? Yeah. No, no, no. It's just the police. It's the Guardia. Okay. So the Irish guards, they're dressed like the Irish guards. They're wearing balaclavas, holding AKs, along with one of them who's dressed like a woman.

And they swarmed the event to take out a guy named Daniel Kinahan, who was the son of a notorious cartel leader named Christy Kinahan. Daniel may have been tipped off at the last moment. He got away, but one of his cohorts was killed. And let me just interrupt to say, like, I don't know how the conversation went, why there was one dude who decided to dress up like a woman. I didn't even hear about that. He was one of the guys with the weapon.

Yeah, yeah. Maybe he was scouting it out, but I know these are pretty machismo sort of dudes, right? So I don't know how that conversation... I don't know whether he picked the short straw or maybe he was like, I'll do it, like he volunteered for it, whether he was scoping it out. It seems so pointless, though. It's like...

You know, it's not like, oh, well, there's not going to be any men here. One of you better dress up as a woman. Like, he would have been fine to just be dressed as a man, surely. Look, man, I'm not passing any judgments, man. How you do your hits is your business. Yeah, maybe he's a transvestite hitman, you know, and he's like, you know what, fuck it. I want to go out like this today.

Yeah, I'm not going to dive there. These guys are still pretty powerful, I think, so I'm just going to let them do what they're doing. But yeah, one guy dressed like a woman. So instead of getting the Kinahan kin, they kill another member of the cartel named David Byrne, not that David Byrne, and set off the most vicious part of a back and forth gang war that would see 20 people killed across multiple countries in daring hits.

You know, ironically, the boxing event was advertised as a clash of clans. And that's kind of what we have right here is two Irish gangs, the Kinnehans, who are, you know, international drug cartel, and the Hutches, who are each led by an infamous kingpin that have fallen out. And it just goes haywire. And it's been all over the Irish media for the past six, seven years of this international cartel battling it out with a gritty local cell. Yeah, the crime over there is like...

I mean, this is not directly related to the Kinahans, but the level of brutality over there is becoming like Mexico level. I mean, not on the scale, but the brutality of what they do. Like, you know, there was a guy that murdered someone and then dug up his corpse and like scattered it. Like,

Hey, we'll get there. We'll get there. I think that's one of the ones. It's horrible, right? My friend said the other day we were talking about this and he was like, when we do shit, we go so hard. And he just meaning the Irish, you know what I mean? He's like, it's unnecessary. Do you think it's almost a reflection of the fact that there are these paramilitary groups there and they've sort of picked that up from the criminal elements have picked that up from them?

Yeah, I think that's part of it. I mean, but I think it's just because there's been a culture of violence, purely because there has had to been because of the self defense to protect the country when it was occupied and being attacked by the British forces. So like that culture of like, you know, extreme violence is definitely stayed there to some degree, I think, yeah.

So the Regency Hotel hit, I mean, this is an unprecedented attack. You don't do something like this unless you're trying to send a message. And the message is basically, fuck you, which is to your opponents, you know, the ops, as the kids say, and to the police as well, which is just like, we're going to do this and you can't stop us. We don't we don't give a shit about being out there, you know, in public on camera.

Doing this complete broad daylight as well. Right. And the country is shocked after this. I mean, it's all over the papers. There's an air of fear for revenge killings and violence all over Dublin. One would actually happen a few days later. I mean, this is like the mafia wars in New York in the 80s when when Polly Castellano, who was the Don of all dons, gets gunned down outside of a steakhouse in front of a ton of people. Like you don't do this unless you're just trying to be blatant and send a message.

I think as well, like people should remember how unbelievably small Ireland is in that context. You know what I mean? Like New York, I mean, obviously it's a big place, but to do something that blatant in like Dublin, Dublin is not a big city, you know what I mean? By any real standard. So yeah, it's very, it's daring. And it's like you said, they're just trying to say like, yeah, we can do whatever we want right now. I mean, it's shocking too, right? Because Ireland, I didn't know that, like literally,

Looking this up, I was surprised because there are so many Irish in New York and all over the world. There's Irish bars. There's only five or six million people in Dublin. So when you're talking about a gang war that's killed 20 people, I mean they have less than – like less murders in the entire country than St. Louis has, which is a city of 300,000 people. There aren't that many murders there. So this is above and beyond. And I kind of hate to admit this.

But you don't think of this sort of attack like on camera as something that happens in Western countries with like legitimate law enforcement. Like you said, this is a cartel thing almost.

Yeah, I mean, when does that happen? Like a turn up at a boxing event in like, you know, an English speaking country or whatever in the West, Western Europe. It just doesn't happen. And it's not like they came in and stabbed someone like that happens every day here. But it's like they came in with like a fucking like automatic or semi-automatic rifle, you know, and just shot up people in front of children and women. And yeah, it was nasty, man. And you guys do love your knife crime over there, man.

Oh, God, man. Yeah. Yeah. Someone got stabbed in the corner shop on my street the other week. And then a woman got stabbed allegedly over a parking space and killed. Like this. And I live in like nowhere. Like I'm living some like dead end place. Like it's terrible, man. It's so sad. I don't even know why. Like I couldn't even tell you why it's happening now. It's just mad. Knife crime island, baby. Mm.

So how do we get here? What kicked this off and what happens? To do this, we've got to go to the slums of Dublin. We've got to go to the Spanish coast. We've got to go to Dubai. And we've got to start with the two patriarchs at the center of all this, Jerry Hutch and Christy Kinahan. So Jerry Hutch, some of this info is from a book by Paul Williams called Badfellas. And he's a fantastic reporter. People have done a lot of great reporting on this, especially in Ireland. Jerry Hutch is born in 1963, and he's raised in the slums of Dublin.

He starts his life of crime at the young age of 10, running with a gang of other juvenile delinquents called the Bugsy Malone gang. Now, I didn't know who Bugsy Malone was, but I Googled it. And Bugsy Malone is like a gangster musical comedy from the 70s. Yeah, you didn't know Bugsy Malone? Nah, dude. I mean. Oh, man. Come on. It's just like a weird thing to name yourself after. Like the Guys and Dolls gang or like the West Side Story gang, you know? Like Bugsy Siegel. I get Bugsy. Anyway, all these guys eventually end up dead or in jail, except for Jerry.

And they start off and they're just doing scams, burglaries, robberies. In no time, Jerry graduates to being a bank robber and a damn good one at that. Though he, you know, he's in and out of jail. But in 1985, he gets out of jail for some charge involving robberies. And he goes on the straight and narrow, kind of.

He comes out a changed man. He starts living an aesthetic lifestyle, whatever that means. He isn't flashy and he's dubbed the monk. They call him Jerry the monk, which is a great gangster nickname when it comes down to it. He finds a, you know, he, he founds a boxing club, starts getting in that a property stays away from the gangland stuff. Though the rumors are that he heads up the hitch Hutch family gang. By all accounts, he also stays away from drugs, starts running a car service that sometimes takes celebs on Ireland, including Mike Tyson and just runs his boxing gym. And yet everyone in the circle, uh,

families, friends, criminals are in and out of jail. Oh, and he's allegedly involved in two of the biggest robberies in the history of Ireland. Millions of dollars worth, though he's never charged. One was in 1987, a 1.7 million pound robbery of an armored truck and one in 1995 of a Brinks Depot for 3 million pounds. Wow, that's pretty cool. I mean...

I mean, I don't know. It's like, it's maybe not cool, but like, that's a big, that's a big job. That's not paid. You know what I mean? That's some heat stuff, man. That is, that is. Yeah, exactly. That's professional stuff. You know, this isn't like robbing a corner store, but it's weird because of the way the criminal assets bureau in Ireland works. He doesn't ever get convicted, but he still has to pay back taxes on the money, which, yeah, I don't, I don't understand it too well either, but you know, like,

Capone will tell you, man. Ireland is very strange. Like, Ireland has a really weird relationship. Like, even with, like, the guards, like, the police, they're way more likely to kind of let you off for something. Not because they're corrupt. They're just not as... I think it's a cultural thing, you know? Like, they're way more likely to be like, hey, I didn't see that. Whereas, you know, in the UK, you know, you, like, spit on the ground and you might get arrested. You know what I mean? Like, our police here are, like...

were seriously bullied in school. Whereas I think in like Ireland, it's a little bit different, you know? They seem to... So I don't know if that goes all the way up to the fact where this guy ends up like not getting caught, but kind of getting caught. I mean, maybe they couldn't prove it, but the money was still in a bank account somewhere. You know, I could get into the nitty gritty of that, but it's kind of boring. Like, you know, money laundering, all that stuff. No one wants to deal with that.

Then you have Christy Kinahan. And Christy is like the real deal international drug lord, cartel leader, all that. A lot of this information is based from Conor Lally of the Irish Times, who's done great reporting, and Harry McDonald at The Guardian. So they call him the Dapper Don because he jets around Europe by helicopter, wears nice suits, Panama hats, which is how you know someone's sophisticated if they're a criminal wearing a Panama hat. Of course. Whereas Hutch is like a North Dublin boy. Christy's from the South. Yeah.

His father was a dairy farm manager, but he managed to get involved in the underworld at a young age. He ends up getting knocked for heroin smuggling in 1986 when he's kind of like a low level street dealer. But this is where his legend really starts. I mean, the dude has clearly got a plan.

You know those stories you hear about like Chapo and other cartel leaders about how they weren't doing something illegal, they could be in charge of a Fortune 500 company or a CEO? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've met people like that. It's like this guy, if he wasn't in this line of work, he would be a boss of like a huge company. Yeah. I mean, this is – Christie really comes across like that. You know, he's not – this guy, he goes to jail. He's not going to remain some low-level dealer middleman like his whole life.

So while in prison, he earns two degrees and allegedly turns down early release to finish his second degree.

And he also picks up a bunch of languages. They say, you know, this is actually different from different reporting. Some people say Dutch, some say Spanish, others say Arabic or French. But the purpose for that was that so he could communicate with international criminal organizations and really expand his business, which is, you know, like that's that's, you know, it's like these guys learning Mandarin right now. Like they are focused on 10 years down the road. How are they going to grow their businesses? How are they going to get big? And he has that sort of focus and dedication.

I find it hard to like, I can't, you know, I actually, I'm really against like drug dealing and all that because I've seen it kind of destroy my own community here in the UK. So I'm not like pro drug dealer or anything. Like I hate them, but like there's, when it's that level, there's part of me that at least respects it in a way. It's like they're actually putting in the work on like a next level to really, you know, they're enterprising, even though they are criminals.

Yeah, I mean, you can kind of see the movie montage in your head, right? This guy in prison, just like studying, reading textbooks and drawing charts of different criminal organizations and learning all these languages. I mean, it's really, you know, he is out there and he's going to go off and make millions off it. So he serves six years. He gets out. He starts bouncing around Belgium, Amsterdam, Spain, connecting with other gangsters, most notably Colombians, Dutch Moroccans, people who run a lot of the drug trade in Europe.

He gets arrested again in the late 90s. He serves only a couple years, gets out in 2001, and relocates to Spain to set up drug trafficking routes, using his language skills to connect with the Dutch Moroccan gangs, the Colombians, North African smuggling groups. He's even connected to the Russian mafia, allegedly. He's making real deal money, hundreds of millions, they say, running one of the biggest cartels in Europe, bringing drugs in from North Africa and Latin America up through Spain and into the United Kingdom.

No more small time like street dealing bullshit. He's at boxing matches in London, Dublin, Vegas. I mean, real money. He's getting involved in legit industries to wash his money, import, export, cement, produce, buying property all over Brazil and Spain, even moving weight into Australia. And at some point, it's rumored he was making so much money, he considered buying his own container ship to bring stuff in.

Jesus Christ. You'd think that at one point they would stop and be like, right, I'm rich forever. But I think that they become addicted to the game.

I mean, that's the one thing that I always ask myself. And, you know, I've met not people at that level, but met people at the top of the game, making money, people that are that are doing this sort of thing. And it's like you can retire now. Who really needs more than 20 million dollars to live the life of their dreams? Right. No one. But they can't because they don't do it just for the money. You know, I think there must be a rush to knowing you're outsmarting the law like that as well, depending on the kind of person that gets into like criminal life.

there's got to be that you know they've already stepped over the line now they just want to like destroy it you know i mean like run miles from it there's also a fear that i think that getting out your your your uh your opponents or the people you work with might target you but there are people who i mean mayer lansky right like didn't he live into his 70s or 80s in miami just living the good life there are some people who manage to do it it's just really rare

I think as well, though, once they step out, it's not just that they lose their power in terms of like social currency. You're no longer the big man anymore. You're no longer the guy that does the wheeling and dealing and can make the yeses into or the nose into yeses rather. You know, it's I think there's a lot of ego involved in it. There must be, you know. And lots of TV shows tackle this, but I feel like it'd be a fascinating psychological study to really look into why people don't just walk away when you've made enough to last you, your kids, your grandkids for the rest of your lives. Yeah.

It's got to be a rush. Everyone likes the rush of something. So the Kinahan cartel was so big that they were being targeted by Spanish, Dutch and U.S. authorities. Spanish authorities launched something called Operation Shovel in 2010, which is how a lot of this information got released, like the container ship. But Kinahan was still never prosecuted.

And one thing we have to explain is the Costa del Sol in Spain, where Kenahan bases himself and where some of the murders happen. Well, if you look at... Costa del crime. Yeah, exactly. If you look at Spain on a map, it's just to the east and a bit north of Gibraltar. And I'm going to butcher, you know, I butcher every pronunciation. The Alboran Sea, which is a short boat ride to Morocco. It's

It's known to be this great vacation spot. Marbella is part of the Costa del Sol. I think I went there when I was 20 and just got drunk a lot and saw a lot of trashy Europeans at bars just getting absolutely hammered and getting burned. Yeah, that's where you will see the greatest of our British nation in Marbella, like fat, overweight,

getting sunburnt to fuck, like drinking drugs, like Brits abroad. That's where we made our name, like in Marbella, places like that. I've been there. I've been to, like as a kid, the only place we ever went on holiday as a kid was like Spain and Spain. You know what I mean? It's just a really British staple. So it had these beautiful beaches, you know, sun, yachts, women. It was a perfect vacation spot where celebrities were going like Acapulco and Americans.

So, of course, the criminals and gangsters, high-level guys, they start moving there. Some of the older guys are even retiring there. The Exorcism Treaty gets reinstated in 1985. It took another decade for things to really come into force, and even then it was pretty relaxed.

Olive Press has a really good rundown by this writer, David Baird. He says that in 2004, things really changed with the intro of the European arrest warrant. But still, you know, it had this rep and it had this system. There were links to North Africa, South America. You had ports. You had shipping. You know, it was a gateway.

In the 1980s, when the criminals start flocking there, the main game is weed and hash from Morocco, which I think you've done some stuff on that too, haven't you? Yeah, man. I went, so I did a thing about the deep web. So I spent a weekend with what is one of the biggest deep web drug dealers. And I met him in Spain.

And then we went across to Morocco and then we went up to his, like, this mountain area in one of the mountain ranges there. And he just had this crazy warehouse and, like, this factory, basically, where he just paid the Berbers to, like, you know, grow his crops for him and pick them. And then he took me to his, like, this other little kind of, like, house he had in the mountains.

And it was crazy, man. He would just like, that's where he did his business. He would just plug in his laptop, print out all these orders from the deep web, and then they would get flinged over again. He would put them on a speedboat that would go across into Spain, and then he would sell them from there. It was wild, man.

Another guy that I was thinking, why the hell are you agreeing to this? You know, like all of this stuff. There's a really good Netflix series called Cannabis. It's only four episodes, but it sort of deals with the trade from North Africa, from Morocco into Spain and then to France, I think. It's really, you know, it covers all that. It's really gritty, really well done. So this guy spoke Arabic, English, Spanish and French. And again, it was because he said...

Well, part of it is because of his heritage, I think. But like there's part of the way he was just like, I learned these languages because I knew I was going to be in these markets or similar. Yeah, smart, man. A friend I know who regularly works with Spanish law enforcement security services told me that the drugs now aren't actually imported that much into Costa del Sol. They come into Cadiz, which is, I think, a little west and south. Yeah, Cadiz. But, you know, it is a center for money laundering. He called it, quote unquote, Monaco for violent criminals.

His original answer of why so many gangs set up shop there was that Marbella, Jesus Gill, international gun runners, the most exclusive and almost unheard of private neighborhood in Europe. So Gill was a businessman and mayor of Marbella for a decade in the 90s who was, you know, let's just say open for business business.

And lots of gang members flock there during this time. The Spanish government now has estimates of 114 organized crime gangs operating in the province where Costa del Sol is, including 14 from the UK alone. But there's more Colombian, Spanish and Moroccan gangs there. But yeah, that's where that's where Christy Kenahan sets up shop. And that's where things kick off that set the Hutch Kenahan feud into motion. There's a prequel of sorts from from the Irish Times that that comes out in 2006. It's about Gary Hutch, who was the nephew of Jerry.

And it's about a robbery that happened six years before. Quote, unquote, Wow.

Could you imagine? You become a millionaire within a couple of hours. Jesus. It's unreal. I mean, these guys are slick. So Gary ends up going to jail for a robbery in 2006. Gets out. In 2007, he flees Dublin after the murder of a guy named Derek Duffy. He heads to Spain and he links up with a buddy from his rough and tumble Dublin neighborhood called Paddy Doyle, which is like as Irish a name as you could possibly get. Yeah, it's like a cartoon of an Irishman.

And they call Doyle a hitman, but it's weird to call these guys hitmans. They kind of feel like shooters as well. But basically, they kill people for money. So whatever you want to call it, that's what Patty Doyle does. He's wanted for three murders, and he's now working with the Kinnehans in Spain. So Gary also knew Daniel Kinnehan, which is Christy's son.

And he also knew a guy named Fat Freddy Thompson, who was a gangster who was working with Kinahan as well, who had ran some stuff in Dublin before he got into trouble with the INLA, or Irish National Liberation Army, which is a communist paramilitary group. I think an Irish group? I mean, yeah, they were like, so they're around at the same time as the Provisional IRA. And they would often like, you know, they were kind of friends. But yeah, the INLA is like way more like less focused on nationalist liberation and more on like,

like real hardcore socialists, you know, very red, whereas the IRA was less so, but still a socialist revolutionary movement. But yeah, less so. Yeah, I'm glad you're here. Like I have you here to do this because I honestly, you know, once you start diving, it's hard enough to keep the criminal gangs, you know. It's alphabet soup in Ireland as well. You know, you've got the real IRA, the provisional IRA. There was the official IRA. There's now the new IRA and there was the continuity IRA. Like it's just crazy.

Yeah, I'm not diving into that. You know, I'll leave you to do that. But it's interesting, like there are interactions between these criminal groups and these paramilitary groups. It seems like sometimes they target each other. Sometimes they work with each other. Sometimes one gets extorted, but they interact. They intersect at various parts. Yeah, well, unfortunately, a lot of the former paramilitary men ended up at a loss, I guess, after the war. And just a lot of them

They grew up for their teenage years. All they knew was violence, and they just kind of ended up falling into violence as criminals rather than revolutionaries. So certainly, like the real IRA, there was two members of them guys got killed, and it turned out it was over a gang drug war, which they were involved in. So a lot of them will pretend like, oh, we kill drug dealers in our area. We don't want them. But actually, they never kill the kingpin. They actually kill people for selling on the turf. So this guy, Fat Freddy Thompson, he comes to Spain.

Starts working with the Canadians and they all start setting up shop. They're meeting with international crime leaders from the Balkans, Russians, Turks, North Africans, like real big time movers and shakers. Fat Freddy himself is wrapped up in a local Dublin gang war, but he's also kind of possibly pissing off some of the international players and

Doyle ends up getting gunned down in 2008 in Spain. Some people think it was Russian gangsters. Others think it might have been an internal Irish dispute. Hutch and Thompson are actually there with him, like in the car. Hutch gets paranoid. He starts bouncing around Amsterdam, Dublin, a little bit in Spain. And there's some interest in him from the Dublin police for some crimes, including murders and robberies. So he dips back out to Spain to hide out. The Irish Herald says at this time that Hutch was actually a pretty major player in the Kennehan cartel.

Documents also say Hutch and Thompson are just a step below Daniel Kinahan, Christie's son, who eventually takes over like lieutenants. So remember, we have Jerry Hutch and his nephew, Gary Kinahan. And then we have Christie Kinahan and his son, Daniel. So meanwhile, during this time, Ireland is having a bunch of lower level petty gang wars, some of which Hutch and Kinahan men are involved in, obviously.

The Guardian says between 2000 and 2016, 200 bodies dropped, which again, small country. That's a lot of bodies. That's a hell of a lot of killings, yeah.

Another Guardian article says from 2009 to 2020, 161 bodies were dropped. But apparently Kinahan and Hutch themselves, the higher guys, they mostly avoid it. You know, they're smart. They don't want to get involved in these little gang wars. But it's interesting to think, like you said, Ireland's such a small country. How much money could be getting made from drugs? And the truth is even a lot.

A lot, yeah. They flood them neighborhoods, you know. And just to give you an idea of scale, so within the Troubles, right, the wars trying to get the Brits out of Northern Ireland. So I think something like 4,000, maybe 3,000 people died in that war, right, which spanned like 10 years or something. And now if you're talking about 300, 200 people dying in a drugs war, like that's crazy. That's a lot of people, you know.

Yeah, it is pretty insane. I mean, it's just a lot of deaths. And you look at how many deaths Ireland actually has and how many of them came from this and probably the paramilitary groups. It's pretty – it's crazy. It's rough. But yeah, when you look at how much money can be made from drugs from these small populations, I like to think of Naples, which is a city of, what, a million people? And you have the Camorra that are just killing each other left and right, just dropping bodies for the drug money that comes from a city of a million people. It's just –

There's just so much money from the drug war, man. It's just billions. There's no stopping it either. There's no way. It's too late. So the Hutch is Gary, the nephew. He's struggling to make his gangster dreams come true. A big cocaine shipment gets seized in Liverpool and rumors start to spread that Hutch is informing on the Kinnehans. He also apparently takes a shot at a senior member of the Kinnehan cartel. And there's rumors that it may have been Daniel, Christie's son. And, you know, one of the top guys. Hutch then gets attacked in the summer of 2014. He manages to get away.

But word filters out that he's an informant and there's a price on his head and the Kinnehans want him dead. So he flees back to Dublin. And according to Conor Lally, negotiations ensue between Jerry Hutch and the senior Kinnehan. There's rumors of a 200,000 euro settlement to buy Gary's life back.

Gary, yeah, dude, 200,000. By his life, man, Jesus. Gary returns to Spain. He thinks it's safe. According to the Journal Irish, quote, Spanish police have records of a number of phone calls between the two men leading up to the murder. And it was the contention of both the police and the guard, guard, guard. I got to get this right. The guard that Hutch was being told not to worry about the rumors that he was an informant and that he still had the trust of the higher ups of the cartel. But that apparently was not the case.

September of 2015, Gary Hutch is cornered at a complex in Marbella, chased around the pool by men in balaclavas and gunned down. And that sets this whole thing off. Wow. That's a big deal. You know what I always find really weird with these crime families is how like,

So their sons get involved. So was this guy just like, as a kid, like, yeah, we're criminals and you're going to be a criminal too one day, son. You know, like, I mean, I know they don't say that. They call themselves businessmen or whatever, but come on. Like, you would think you'd want something better for your kids. It really is. I mean, it's amazing, especially, and I'll get into it later in the podcast. All these guys are related. It's cousins, it's family or whatever, but it really does seem like it's generational. I tell you one thing though, in Ireland, there will be people that,

Your family might know and suddenly they become your uncle, you know, and then if you fall out with them, you might be like, oh, are you the uncle? Like, he's not even your uncle. Forget it. It's like, oh, what? You know, like I've got so many aunties, which are actually great aunties or great cousins or, you know, so it's one of them ones, man. But still, yeah, it's a big network.

It's generational. You'll see some of these guys are the actual sons or nephews of this famous drug dealer or this old general, this old guy. It really is wild. I'm glad you brought that up. I think it's worth pointing out as well, though, just thinking this has been going on for a long time. And now Ireland is ostensibly prosperous, even though Dublin is a cesspit for anybody who isn't a millionaire. But it

It was extremely poor, you know, like, let's not get it wrong. Like, it wasn't like, oh, you know, like nowadays, a lot of people just choose the life of crime because it's easy. And I'm not excusing them, like, fuck them. But at the same time, you got to think back. It was unbelievably poor in Ireland, like compare it to England was just not even in the...

I remember my grandma says that like when she first went to Ireland, she said it was like going to a different world, you know, because my granddad was from Ireland. She went over there with him and she was like, it was just a different world. Like it was not like she came from like the north, which was very poor in England. But she said like an island. No, she was like, it's just next level. They don't even have roads even in places, you know. So, I mean, I'm not excusing the Kinahan family or whatever. Like I said, like a lot of this would have come from like we're just not being we're not having that poverty anymore, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. But it is weird when the father has money and the son still are like, you know, I got to carry the family business. Why not? True. Yeah, that is true. Yeah. Don't go to uni. I got no job for you. Kill this guy. Like, yeah, OK. At least, you know, go the go the rap, become the family's lawyer, you know. Right. At least. Jesus. At the funeral, Hutch's mother apparently tells people the family doesn't want retaliation.

Yeah, we'll see about that. And also at the funeral, just to give you an idea about the Hutchins and who they were, you had local politicians there. You had a junior minister there. You had the Dublin senior football manager there.

But like I said, Mother Hutch's words fall on deaf ears. Hits start popping off. I thought about listing like all of them, but it's just like this guy gets killed. You know, this guy with an Irish name gets killed. This guy with an Irish name gets killed. This guy with an Irish name gets killed. And it kind of, you know, it gets a little boring. So we'll just kind of cover that. That sounds anti-Irish racism. That's what that sounds like, Danny Gold. Yeah.

I'm trying to say we've all got the same name. Not at all. I'm saying that Kinahan and Hanrahan, it's like barely any different. I grew up in like a very Irish and Italian Catholic community. You know, I've been to, I was going to say the Seven Fish Dinner, but that's an Irish thing. I mean, it's an Italian thing, isn't it? Oh, no. Well, yeah, no, it's Catholic. Like, yeah. I mean, there's so, yeah. But I mean, there's so much bullshit. Like, it's so much. My granddad's really funny. He's like, you know, very Irish, but he's not a romantic. And he's like...

He's like, God, we're annoying people. You know what I mean? He's like anti-bullshit. You can't even exaggerate around him. He'll chop you down, you know? So to be an Irish guy like that around people that will just cause chaos, like, yeah, it's mad. But yeah, no, I know exactly what you mean. Like so many Irish names, it's like,

Not just the names. It just gets repetitive. I wasn't insulting the names. It just gets repetitive. I got your number. I got your number. This guy gets gunned down. That guy gets gunned down. We don't know who these people are. Next time I have to speak about a Jewish gang war, I'm going to be like, nah, I'm not mentioning the names just for you. Dude, we have a Brighton Beach Russian Jewish Mafia episode that's going to come up soon. Oh, that would be cool. But those names are pretty... They're like Russian...

weird names so it's a little uh god now i'm saying anti-russian stuff calling russian names weird man cancelled on episode i knew i should have known having you on was gonna get me cancelled i'm only joking man let's go

So, yeah, it's cousins, brothers, uncles, soldiers, bodies just keep popping up damn near every month in 2016. You know, there's arrests. Some people are getting caught. People are getting locked up. But there's even attacks in prison. You know, in 2015, there's two different attacks on Hutch's brother, Derek Delboy Hutch, in prison who was in there for manslaughter. There's, like I said, family stuff. There's even an attack on a prison in 2017 where a guy gets stabbed up who was in there for killing a Hutch.

But some big names get killed. There's a guy named Noel Duggan, who's another heavyweight gangster, cigarette smuggler. He gets shot dead. They call him King Size. He's a former butcher, which is always like a great gangster job. There was a dude in my old Brooklyn neighborhood who I loved.

the butcher who honestly ran the best butcher shop I've ever been to had the best, like big Italian sandwiches. People will notice if you lived off Graham app, like 10 years ago, he actually ended up being a Gambino. I think soldier. He got locked up, uh,

I think shortly after I moved away, he apparently had a book of, um, of all the extortion debts that, uh, that people owed him, uh, really suck because the sandwiches were incredible. He ended up letting, he ended up getting let out on like a compassionate release because he had cancer and passed away. But,

Fucking great sandwiches. You ate some criminals, mate. Dude, his name was Mikey the Butcher not because he killed people, because he was the really good butcher. My great-grandad, he was a... Well, my grandad's stepdad, he was a butcher. O'Malley's Butchers. And basically, like...

Because his family were very poor. But back then, being a butcher, so my Nana Josie, God rest her soul, she married this guy. And it was kind of like a well-to-do job. It's like, wow, we have a bit of money now. Being a butcher in Ireland back then was like, wow, big thing. Not so much now, but I hope he wasn't a criminal. I don't think he was.

Dude, my great uncle on my father's side, who was a partisan in Slovakia in the war, came over to Montreal and became a kosher butcher in Montreal. And my dad always used to joke about him having some connections there with all the old Jewish mafioso types. And at his funeral, there were all these old, dapper guys in suits. I mean, I was too young to really try to press the issue, and maybe I'm just creating folklore in my head. But I like to think that Harry the Butcher had a few connections. Maybe not like getting guys whacked, but...

Maybe he could get you like, you know. Yeah, he knew them, but he didn't do anything. Yeah, maybe he'd get you a car at a cheap price. I'm not saying that we all create our own legends. But yeah, so this guy was friends with Monk Hutch. He gets gunned down. Apparently he was very shrewd, but it didn't really help him. He gets popped.

So the shooting and the hits continue. Some get botched. One's attempted at a national boxing stadium, and they all follow the same sort of MO. You know, shooters and balaclavas with rifles. After they get away, you find a burned-out car that was used in it. The victim usually has a ton of charges himself. One guy, I think, had 122 convictions. Just, you know, wild, wild stuff. But to give you a feel for the type of people involved on the lower level,

You have James Quinn, who was the getaway driver for the hit on Gary Hutch in Marbella and worked for Kenahan in Spain. When he was caught in 2016, police confiscated a Bentley, a yacht, fake IDs, financial documents for properties and foreign bank accounts. And I think there's an assumption that these guys are like a bunch of meathead boxer Irish guys, but they're also like a sophisticated global vicious criminal network who also are meathead Irish boxers.

You know, it's real general. Yeah, yeah. But they're very smart people, you know? Oh, yeah. I think there's a difference between the culture in Ireland. It's actually quite different. I've noticed it. Like, within, like, Britain, there's a lot less snobbery. I mean, I'm sure a lot of Irish family would tell me that's not true, but there is. I've noticed it. There's less snobbery, and there's also, like...

I don't know, like, for example, I have a friend who does a lot of the graphic work for Popular Front, and he's like a very working class, broke as hell kind of kid. But he knows so much about his history, and he knows exactly how the politics works. You know what I mean? It's just, there's something, the youth are a little bit more conscious of everything, I find, over there. So, yeah, it's not...

I don't know. It's definitely, there's something in the culture there where like what you might think or presume is like some meathead guy. It's like, no, like he's surely going to be a smart guy. Yeah. Not just because of the crime, but you know, that will help. You have to be sharp. I mean, these aren't street dealers, right? They're washing money. They're investing in property. But yeah, like we were saying, it's real generational. Quinn is the nephew of a famous Irish gangster called Martin the Viper Foley, which I mean, I think I rate that nickname. Like the Viper is pretty similar. He's a mafioso and he worked for another famous general, uh,

famous mafioso, Martin the General Cahill. Cahill? Cahill, yeah, Cahill. Yeah, which is, I mean, the general is just like a classic mafia nickname, you know? General Cahill, though, that's like, that's a war criminal that you want to get behind, you know? Yeah. Quinn is a former boxer because, of course, he moved around between Dublin and Marbella. He was an enforcer for a street gang and also suspected of killing another Kinahan soldier in an internal dispute.

He was also convicted of a bunch of violent crimes before. You know, he's done time. And here's a quote from an article by Conor Lally again. In July 2013, he was given a two-year jail sentence with one year suspended at Dublin Circuit Court for threatening a bouncer who had ejected him from a city center pub.

The sentencing hearing was told when Quinn was ejected from a city center pub in May 2008. He told the bouncer, I'm not threatening you, but you're going to be very sorry for putting me out of the pub, which that is a threat. He returned later and followed the bouncer as he drove home. When he stopped his car at traffic lights at the Red Cow, Quinn appeared with a hammer and smashed the windscreen of the other car. I told you you'd be sorry, you bastard, he told the security guard.

But yeah, I mean, that's a Kinahan man. So like we said, very smart, but like not, not exactly disciplined. He's living the fantasy of so many European young men, though, just attacking a bouncer, you know? I mean, who hasn't? Who hasn't? It must be the same over there, right? Yeah, they're just awful. I'm not going to say bouncers deserve to get beat up sometimes.

No. Sometimes they deserve to get beat up. Yeah. Sometimes people just, you can fantasize about it, right? He just went next level. Also his alibi, his alibi when he got picked up for the Hutch hit was that he told the police he was hung over in bed with a hooker.

Okay. Well, yeah. Most people would just be like, oh, I was shopping, but all right. I was working down at the local food kitchen. He's like, nope. I was hungover and bedwetter, which you got to respect, you know? Yeah. I mean, do you know what's kind of dumb though? It's like, if you're involved in that level of crime, you would think, just let that bouncer go. It's not a big deal. But he's an angry, violent man. That's actually, I mean, the next note that I had to talk about, which is like, why would people making big money in criminal transactions...

you know, why are they always so fucking stupid? And they do these petty crimes that aren't related to their business. And it's kind of part of the underlying theme in this and in, in,

A lot of organized crime you see now in general, which is you have these younger reckless generation that are doing stuff either for, for cred or for, for, you know, for their respect or whatever. And look, I'm not saying older criminals didn't do the same sort of thing, but every time I talked to OGs for some situation, they're always like these younger guys, man, you know, they're doing stuff for, for Instagram, for clout, money. Yeah.

Yeah, these guys aren't making money. We did stuff back then. Yeah, we were reckless. We, you know, fired shots. We did dumb shit, but we did it for money. We went to war over money. These guys are doing it over likes and Facebook posts. I think with that guy, though, it's more just just a very violent man. You know what I mean?

Yeah, and you're at the pub. I mean, I'm sure they're coked to the gills. They're drunk. But it's just like you need discipline. That's what these older guys, Monk, Christy, they have discipline. They don't go off and blow their business interests for pub fights. And you kind of have to respect these older disciplined guys who are like that. But this feud itself is kind of weird because it doesn't seem like it's about money too, right? It's revenge. It's personal. Yeah.

And usually when it comes to these things, it's about power and money and about control. And the more professional organization, you usually assume that that's what they fight about because this is definitely costing them money. I mean, the heat alone that's being brought on them. You've got to imagine tens of millions of dollars in profits are being cost here. I would easily bet on that. If not hundreds of millions, like it's decimating their group. Every time someone gets locked up, you know, there's the potential they'll flip and their shipments are getting tagged up. It's just costing them a lot of money.

But the alternative for them is to look weak, which they just cannot accept. You know, I think that's a problem with a lot of that kind of hardcore gangsterism stuff. It's like if we ever look weak, I guess in one level, it's kind of makes business sense to be that violent because it's like if they do look weak, then people won't trust them or they won't respect them rather. So maybe then you could lose money as well. But I don't know, man. It sounds tiring to me.

It just, you know, it cuts into the way of business, baby. And when it comes down to it, a lot of this stuff is about the business as well as the power. But anyway, 2016, you have that Regency Hotel hit, the boxing way and the chaos. And that's a big attempt from the Hutchins to go after the Kinnehans because most of the time, it's the Kinnehans that were just mopping the floor with the Hutchins.

I think something like 13 out of the first 15 hits are Hutch men getting killed. And the Hutch's, they just can't compete with the Kennehans. The Kennehans just have too much money to throw around. You know, they're big time international players. Kennehan reportedly paid one hit man $150,000 for four hits. And there's a $1 million offer on Father Hutch.

Well, not father, but Uncle Hutch. The big man. There's a $1 million offer on Jerry. And we'll get to some of that hitman stuff in a bit, which is really interesting. But, you know, Daniel Kinahan, he narrowly escapes. David Burnerhan gets gunned down at the Regency. David's brother, Liam, according to Conor Lally of the Irish Times, again, is the top boy for the Kinahans in Dublin. He controls the gang there and is involved with gun and drug trafficking. And they call him Bugsy. Again, fucking Bugsy, man. Bugsy Malone, man.

But Lally writes, quote,

Byrne has lived his whole life in the same Dublin street where he grew up, planning his crimes and running his empire from there. And the thing is that the Kinnehans, right, they're the big time international players in Spain, later Dubai. They have their local guy on the ground who oversees things, who's more of the street level guy, which is who Liam and David are. But fat Freddie Thompson in Spain is Liam's cousin. His dad was involved with Martin the General.

Fat Freddy was a violent gangster from a young age, did some prison time, sold drugs on the street, and he progressed in later years. Christie would supply him with the drugs wholesale from Spain. And remember during this time, the Kenhans are untouchable to the Dublin gang wars because they're overseas. So Fat Freddy and Liam were handling it before Fat Freddy fleed to Spain. So yeah, sorry, getting a bit convoluted now. But Daniel escapes.

And it's a show of force that needs to be answered. So three days later, Jerry Hutch's older brother, who's a low-level criminal, just a petty guy who was mostly a taxi driver, is gunned down. And his funeral is the last time that Jerry Hutch was actually ever seen. And remember, this is 2016. There's a substantial bounty on his head. You know, they say he's in Turkey, somewhere in Europe, but nobody knows. Three weeks later, according to the Scottish Sun, a tabloid, a real IRA top guy by the name of Vinnie Ryan is killed by the Kinnehans.

So the real IRA, again, another dissident paramilitary group that's violent and powerful. It's said that Kinahan's thought he might team up with the Hutchins and bring in guns for them.

He also killed a friend of the gang in 2011. So Vinny's brother, Alan Ryan, was actually killed in 2012, allegedly because he was trying to extort criminal gangs in the area. He was allegedly killed by a guy named Robbie Lawler, who we'll get to later. But yeah, so it's just a big mess of these paramilitary gangs and then these other relatives, everyone killing each other back and forth. And that's why I kind of stayed away from giving the play-by-play because it gets real convoluted real soon. I think Alan Ryan's brother got killed as well, maybe. Yeah.

There was another riot, anyway, not just those two, there was another one that got killed. But yeah, again, that's like the real IRA, where like, oh, we kill drug dealers in our area, we kneecap them, and it's like, no, you're all involved in basically bringing the drugs into the community. So, you know, they're hypocrites. - So, you know, the Canans, they have a ton of money, and they're putting bounties out left and right.

which may explain why in April of 2017, things turn up a notch. And a 58-year-old Estonian man named, again, I'll butcher this, Imre Arakes is arrested. He's caught with a hit list of hot soldiers found on him. And he was brought in because a previous hitman, who was some amateur, killed the wrong guy. Now this guy...

Imre, he's well known and he's a bit of a legend in Estonia. I mean, Google a photo of this dude and he just like type in Estonian hitman and he'll come up and he just looks the part. Like he looks like a more angrier, scarier Paul Newman, just slick, well-dressed, just, you know, handsome. And he got nabbed because the Irish police were warned about him coming over from the Estonian guys. Oh, wow. They like, they like shipped him in.

Yeah. Well, they didn't ship him in. Well, the Kinahan shipped him in, right? Yeah, right. They shipped him in to do the killing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, this guy is like Conor Gallagher of the Irish Times wrote up his life, and he's just fascinating. He might even put Carlos the Jackal to shame. Really? So this is a quote from Gallagher. He's been an actor, a freedom fighter, and a wrestler. But in his native country, he's mainly known as the butcher for killing people, not for serving meat. A ruthless criminal at the center of Estonia's bloody post-Soviet gang wars.

That's not to say he's universally reviled. Depending on who you talk to in Estonia, he's either a folk hero or a murderous gangster or a little bit of both. Gallagher speaks to an Estonian journalist who said a newspaper even ran an ad with his photo saying something like, you might be afraid to talk to some people, but we aren't. Like as an ad for the paper, which is, that's a fucking good ad, man. Pretty good. It's so weird to think he comes from Estonia though. Like I've never met an Estonian that isn't completely chill.

But not this guy. I mean, this guy was chill. He just murdered people. And apparently...

He said during a jailhouse interview that he thought the conditions in Irish jails were great because they had TVs, PlayStations, and all that sort of stuff. And you'll see he served time in a Russian prison, which is decidedly not – during the USSR, which is decidedly not like a Western prison. So his background, he starts off robbing a shooting club in Estonia in the 80s. He steals a bunch of guns, ends up getting arrested. And he's sort of viewed as this freedom fighter who wanted to free Estonia from the USSR.

At one point, he escaped from the courthouse and went on the lam, but was eventually caught. He gets sentenced to 15 years in a high-grade Russian prison.

Meanwhile, there's this mafia war breaking out between Russians and Estonians where eventually kills over 100 people. He killed 100? No, there were 100 people killed. He was involved on the Estonian side. Oh, right, right, right. Okay. He gets pretty high up on the Estonian side, eventually runs away to Spain, survives assassination attempts done by the Russian mafiosos, then becomes almost a better version of Carlos the Jackal. He's just...

I tell you what, though. Carlos the Jackal, if you read about him, this is a weird one, but I was obsessed with Carlos for a long time. He was actually a complete idiot. He was basically one of the worst criminals ever. He fucked up a lot. Yeah, the media basically blew up his profile. He was actually a complete buffoon. And he said he actually only ever killed because he was so scared of... He was scared of getting punched in the face or something. So if anything happened...

He would just be like, like pull a gun and kill someone. Yeah, the guy was an idiot. But yeah, anyway, sorry. Carry on. It's just the A side. But...

Everyone should Google this guy. Like he is not, you can just tell by looking at this guy, you know, he has made, he could play himself in the movie version of his life. He is apparently one at one point involved in a hit targeting a guy who had an affair with a Lithuanian pop star. But yeah, anyway, I mean, he gets busted. Um, and, I think he's still locked up to this day or he might've been deported. I should probably look into that. But in 2018, the Guardian reports that there was 29 Hutch affiliates found on a hit list. Um,

The Irish authorities alerted all 29, and a city councillor tells the reporter Harry McDonald that the Kinnehans have the resources to pay younger criminals to carry out the hits. They're offering petty criminals cash and wiping out drug debts for attacking the Hutches. Another councilman told McDonald, quote, in certain pubs and clubs, whether here in the south inner city or in the north side of Dublin, there are people who get up and leave at the first sight of certain individuals they think are either under threat or involved in the shooting war.

The fear is everywhere in these communities and no one in them feels safe anymore. Yeah. I mean, I've definitely heard of, I don't know about like getting up and leaving. I mean, I'm sure it happens, but I know that like a lot of people are scared that they'll kind of accidentally even get involved, you know, like it's, it's not even like they're not, they're not involved in the crime, but it's like, they might know someone and if they're with them and they get shot or whatever, it's yeah. Dublin, there's a, there's a place called Tala and there's some other places like rough areas in Dublin, which,

Man, it's so hard. It's a harsh life there. You know what I mean? McDonald, the reporter, actually has an interesting theory, which is different from anything I've read elsewhere. So who knows whether it's true or not. But he says the Hutchins have always controlled the Dublin ports and the Kinnehans wanted to wrestle away control of them. So I'm not sure if I buy it. It hasn't been reported elsewhere, but it's another theory on to why this feud has carried on so long and is so vicious.

By the end of 2018, there's rumors that things are slowing down, that the police are starting to shut this thing off. There's been 70 attempted murders that were preempted by the Irish police. Informants are turning. Fat Freddy gets turned out. You know, Ireland publications are speculating that the Canadiens are being broken up a bit and

And they even lack, you know, like I said, they lack up Fat Freddy, who's a pretty high guy. By July of 2019, it's just fizzling. The Kinnehan started relocating from Spain in 2017 and have set up shop in Dubai because things got too hot in Europe. And, you know, Dubai these days is just like this fascinating city of just organized criminals from all over the world. Militias, you know, you have Hamas guys there. You have Hezbollah guys. It's just like everything seems to go through Dubai right now.

Money laundering. As well as like influences from Instagram as well. It's a very strange place. It's one of the ugliest places I've ever seen in my life, frankly, but I can see why it would become this hub. I've never been, but I love these situations in like fancy hotels where it really is almost like a movie where you just have people of all criminal elements that are there like really doing these deals. And it's shocking, but like so much arms trafficking, money laundering and drug dealing goes through Dubai. It's really...

You have to wonder if they're ever going to crack down on it or not, or if they can. So allegedly there's even a rift brewing between the Ghanaians sitting pretty in Dubai and their man in Dublin, Liam Byrne, who was handling all the local drug business and having to fight, you know, the local street war.

So recently, the Kinahans were in the news big time again from Dubai because, you see, Daniel had opened up a boxing gym in Marbella in 2012 and later turned into a promo and management company. Ends up being called MTK, short for Mack the Knife. The company manages a lot of MMA and boxers and also pretends that Daniel isn't involved. Conor McGregor has actually been photographed with a few of them and was allegedly involved in a bar fight with one of them. And there was...

you know, I hate on him, but I think it's not like tabloid nonsense. And the Riddlesy Hotel hit, the one in 2016, that was supposed to be Daniel's coming out party as a clean, legal, legitimate. So in 2020, Kenahan has organized a two-fight series between Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua in Dubai.

And it's been touted by all the big time boxing promoters like Bob Arum. And he was just all over the news for organizing it while politicians and newspapers in Ireland have been just going bonkers. Like you're letting this guy organize this fight. He is like the leader of a cartel. Boxing is just so corrupt. When I saw about that, I was like not even shocked at all, to be honest.

It's so corrupt, man. All these guys, all these guys. But like, this is pretty, I mean, like Don King killed the guy and used to run numbers, but this is an international drug cartel. It's like one of Chapo's sons, you know, organizing an international boxing match. It didn't help that Fury was thanking him on Twitter for setting this all up. Money talks, man. Yeah. But meanwhile, in Ireland, things have slowed down within the Hutchins and Kennehans, but the hits keep coming in some way because there are all these low level street fights that are happening everywhere.

Because you have a power vacuum, right? The Hutchins and Kinnehans have been decimated by the police. So you have these other gangs that are rising up and really going after each other. In April, there was a hit in Belfast in Northern Ireland. Remember, most of these are Southern Ireland things.

things they're they're dublin things the republic it's it's not this yeah it's people will i just just to i think people kill you for calling it southern ireland it's it's the republic and it's northern ireland yeah i'm friend to all irish here i just want to i was just i was just saving you on the podcast i mean the only time i've been to ireland was a weekend in dublin when i was like 20 yeah and we just got absolutely shit-faced and stumbled around and

temple bar you know what tourists do it was great yeah but that's like all I mean that's all I did anyway when I was 20 just get shit-faced sometimes an Irish pub is in different countries so I have nothing of value to add it's a beautiful part of the conversation country man oh great I mean you know you go into a bar and people are playing the fiddle like what more do you want in life right you know yeah yeah

But this notorious gangster, Robbie Lawler, who we mentioned earlier, was killed. And there's fear that the Dublin-Spain wars are moving north. Though this looks like it could be unrelated. So Lawler got out of prison recently and he was robbed and beaten by a bunch of young kids leaving a gym. They took his gym bag and apparently all at the behest of some gangland rival, potentially in Dubai, they posted photos with his flip-flops, like on Instagram.

A 17-year-old kid apparently involved in the beating disappears shortly after. Then separate gym bags start turning up, one with limbs and some flip-flops, another with a head and other parts, body parts, and a burning car. Yeah, that's that extreme violence we were talking about the other day. Have you seen photos of this kid?

like no he was a baby man i mean he was actually himself like you know a little shit like he was actually not a good guy but obviously he didn't deserve that you know what i mean but um he was just he looked so young man like to dismember a 17 year old boy i mean jesus christ a real message was sent yeah dismember in general it's just like another it's another level man it's crazy um

So Lawler, he goes to Northern Ireland to pick up some drug cash. He gets popped himself four times in the head. And like all these guys, he had plenty of gangland foes, including dissident Republicans who blamed him for the murder of Alan Ryan, Vinnie Ryan's brother, who was an enforcer and thug for the real IRA that we mentioned earlier.

And the theory is that Lawler was betrayed by an associate to some of his Dubai-based enemies who might have tipped off the real IRA. But after his death, rivals were posting photos of them cheering and toasting and celebrating, according to The Guardian. And I mean, honestly, at this point, it's just so convoluted. I don't know who's on what side. But it seems like for the most part, the Hutch-Kinahan feud has slowed down and you have newer, younger gangs getting involved in multiple feuds fighting for this drug market. Yeah, and that's something that you touched on there, which is really...

Like, it's not unique, but it's really brutal in Ireland right now where the gangs will make these videos. Like, I saw a video recently. My cousin, I think, sent it to me. Someone sent it to me anyway. And some guy has, like, shot a guy...

Allegedly he did it. And the guy is now disabled, right? So the guy's in hospital. And then this guy that's shot him and disabled him calls him up and is like, Hey, like, how are you? Should we go for a little walk? You know, like mocking this guy, like telling him like, he's like, how do you feel? You're never going to walk again. Like laughing his head off. And this guy is like, I'm going to come for you. And it's just like next level, man. Again, that thing I spoke about earlier where there was a guy, like, I think he killed a guy in front of his children, uh,

And then when he was buried, then the gang went up. That wasn't enough. They went there and dug up the body and left the corpse hanging out of the fucking casket. Just next level evil, man. You know what I mean? And they're all getting off on it. They're all like, who can be the most evil? It's becoming like... I know it sounds mad, but it's like narco-terrorism. It's getting there. It's disgusting, man. And it's really... I mean, these guys just love to incriminate themselves. They do. It's...

And it's one thing, I mean, it's one thing if you're in a militia or like, you know, in a cartel in Mexico where you make these videos or whatever else. If you're in a Western country, I mean, I tell these young kids all the time, like, stop putting your crimes on Instagram. Stop.

Stop flashing giant wads of money because there's so many. I mean, that's probably how half these busts got made. There's units of police forces in places like New York, I'm sure in Dublin. All they do is come social media, but it doesn't stop these kids because it's all about the clout and sending these messages. And if they go to jail, they're like, they got like 50 friends in there anyway. And they get a TV, you know, I know people that have been in jail in England and it's like, I mean, it's not great, but Jesus, you know, you get a TV, you can get a PlayStation, you go to the gym every day, you get three square meals, you know,

you know, there's for a lot of these kids, it's like, oh, well, I'll go to prison. You know, it's like not that much different. Yeah. And that's, that's where we leave off right now. Thank you, Jake, so much for coming on. Thanks, man. Really appreciate it. Do you

Do you have anything? I mean, you do Popular Front. If you guys don't know it, you really should check it out. I was on a couple episodes, but there's a really good MS-13 one I did with Jake a couple years ago, one of his earlier ones. Anything else you want to add about anything else you're working on? No, man. Just keep up to date. I'm on Twitter, I guess. Follow me there to see what I'm doing, at Jake underscore...

Hanrahan which is H-A-N-R-A-H-A-N but yeah man just listen to Popular Front search for it in your podcast app and thanks very much for having me on mate yeah thanks so much for coming on and please you know look for us on Spotify Stitcher iTunes you can donate to our Patreon to keep us going I think it's the Underworld Podcast at Patreon just google that it should come up and thanks again for tuning in