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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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I'm Nicola Tallent and Crime World is back at Cork Opera House on March 27th, where Niall and I will be uncovering the secret world of Christy, the dapper Dawn Kinahan. Join us for this live show.
Five members of the violent Hennessy gang were sentenced today at the special criminal court for the terrifying torture ordeal victim Barry Moore faced as he was branded with a cattle iron, beaten and stabbed. But was justice done or did the Hennessys beat the system? Myself and Niall were there to hear how soon they'll be back on the streets.
You're listening to Crime World, a podcast from crimeworld.com. We're just back from the special criminal court and I feel that was a bad day for the Gardaí who have been relentlessly pursuing the Hennessy criminal organised crime group. I feel it was a bad day for justice. I think something has gone wrong here. The sentences feel so light in relation to the crime.
I'm not criticising the judges because they were presented with guilty pleas on assault charges with the maximum sentence of 10 years and they had to take in the mitigating factors, including the guilty pleas, some of them being later than others. But...
The tale that played out in that courtroom today, and OK, we know it, but we're going to go back over it for the listeners and viewers, was one of absolute savagery. And to see the three Hennessy brothers and their co-accused sitting laughing in the courtroom today, you know, smiling, giggling, nudging one another. They were only short of whooping.
Yeah, they were delighted, I think, with the sentencing. I mean, was it a bad day for the Gardaí? I think the Gardaí did their job.
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Chapter 2: What happened to the Hennessy gang members in court?
intention of enhancing the activities of a criminal organization.
Now, the rest of these guys were all charged with the same similar offenses. And obviously we can relate to an earlier case similar to this, which was the case of Kevin Lunney, the director of Quinn Holdings, who was kidnapped, tortured and branded. and left with a broken limb and, you know, he was beaten, stabbed.
I think he was pretty much similarly terrified because his family were threatened, etc. In that case, the three accused go to trial. They plead not guilty. They're on charges of false imprisonment. And is it what's the other charge they're on?
Is it assault? Yeah, there's assaults as well, and they're on slightly different charges. But the basic, the main charge is false imprisonment. Now, I suppose the equivalence would be that Kevin Lunny was, well, he wasn't branded, but he had letters cut into his forehead with a knife, if I remember correctly.
Chapter 3: Why do some believe justice was not served for Barry Moore?
Now, this is similar to the Hennessy case in that, except for this Hennessy case, the Hennessy gang case, if you want, it's even more gruesome. It is more gruesome.
The judge actually refers to the branding as a humiliation, you know, and because it was around the face, which would be similar to Lunny, even though it wasn't a cattle iron that was used on him, a knife. I mean, he was left with a branding essentially on his forehead. Yeah. So for the purposes of sentencing, we can equate them. Yes.
So the three who were found guilty in that case, Scott, and you read it out there.
Yeah, well, Alan Hart, who was regarded as being the leader of the gang, he got, in that case, he was found guilty of falsely imprisoning and intentionally causing harm, and he got a total of 30 years, a really long sentence. The second man, Alan O'Brien, got 25 years. He was also regarded as being... you know, heavily culpable.
And the kind of the lesser guy, a guy called Darren Redmond from East Wall, he got a total of 18 years. There was a fourth guy was acquitted. So those sentences are huge. I mean, 30 years in prison, you know, it would only happen maybe once every year somebody would get that length of sentence. Obviously, people get life sentences. And that case.
There's aggravating factors because they have gone to trial. Yes. And as was stated today in this sentence, in this sentencing, the fact that the victim is brought through an entire court case that everybody has to give evidence, the expense to the state, et cetera, et cetera. It becomes an aggravating factor if there's a guilty plea at the end of it.
Yeah, so obviously this case, it began, it ran for a couple of days, and in which case four of the five men agreed to change their pleas, the guilty, to the charge of assault. So they were originally charged with false imprisonment, which has a potential for a much higher tariff. I think you can even be given a life sentence. But assault has a maximum sentence. of a 10-year sentence.
So the second these guys come into that courtroom today, looking, you know, wearing their tracksuits and looking not too stressed out, they know the worst case scenario is a 10-year sentence. Jason Hennessy Jr., the two Fitzsimons and Brandon, they know that's the maximum they can get. They know also that they have pled guilty, so they're almost automatically going to get something off it.
And to explain that, You know, the judges have to give people an incentive to plead guilty.
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Chapter 4: What details emerged about the Hennessy gang's violent actions?
But this was something we absolutely wanted to because we will be producing a longer form podcast on all of this, on all of what's happened, what created this grouping, what went before them and what is likely to happen in the aftermath of their demise, if we'll call it this today. So in a way, I wanted to slightly tire kick. I wanted to see what the Hennessys looked like in particular.
I saw them going in and out of court on the television and on camera footage. They were wild when they were going in. First of all, they were shouting at the judge. We've seen Jason Hennessy and his brother, is it Devon, on the quay? Inside the quay. Inside the quay. We saw them threaten or goad police, suggest that maybe, you know, male police officers wanted...
To be raped, we have seen this disgusting, vile, grotesque nature they have. But I just wanted to see them in the flesh. And they didn't disappoint.
Well, I mean, yes. I mean, for a start, Jason Hennessey is probably smaller than he looks like. on TV. He's not tall. The guy in the middle. Yeah, he's not tall. With that width.
Chapter 5: How did the courtroom atmosphere reflect the gang's demeanor?
But he is huge. Huge. Huge in his width now.
And carries himself, his shoulders back and he bulks himself along like that. Wouldn't want to be sitting beside him because they get much space on a plane.
So they walk in. When you see people come into a court, obviously they're accompanied, particularly people of that ilk, they're accompanied by prison officers. And people are going into a courtroom to be sentenced in front of a judge and Quite regularly people turn up in suits and all of that.
Now these guys are, they're wearing their tracksuits, they're wearing their jacket, the normal sort of puffer jackets. I think Devin has an Under Armour tracksuit and one of Dean Fitzsimons has a G-Lay. They... Exactly. They do the kind of Conor McGregor walk into court. Yeah. They have their girlfriends, friends, supporters there. Not a huge amount of people.
Not many. A couple of young women, very young women. A couple of young women. Also dressed in tracksuits, glamorous, you know, straightened hair, nails, makeup on them for the day and the occasion. But not many of them. They're sitting behind us.
Yeah.
In the seats.
And they're making a few... gestures to each other of a quite subdued initially. But as soon as the sentence is given, they become animated, start laughing and start looking delighted.
In particular, Jason, who's the big bulky guy in the middle and really seems to be the leader of the pack from the body language and from the way he behaves and the others follow him.
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Chapter 6: What were the sentences handed down to the Hennessy gang members?
I mean, I don't know the exact time, but they can't have been out too long. And he has another new partner who writes a letter of support for him and also refers to the death of his previous partner, the impact that it had on him. So he gets eight years in total. He actually gets a bit of mitigation for the fact he's older, which is a strange thing, actually.
Mitigation or aggravation?
No, mitigation. They say, well, he's older than the other people, so that has to be taken into account. Maybe prison would be more difficult. But he gets an eight-year sentence where his son, Dean, gets eight and a half years.
And what age is he? Hang on a second. He's five years younger than me.
There you go. He's 46, is he?
And 46 because he's older and he might find prison harder. Anyway, okay, let's not. Now, by way of comment, the judges initially say that they sort of, there's a little bit of a a pullback from this.
They initially say they find it difficult to accept the remorse expressed, save in respect of Devon and then they come back and they say they actually do accept that remorse has been expressed but that the weight of it is not as noteworthy as it is with Devon because he had entered his plea earlier and the others entered their plea and are remorseful after the trial has commenced and that more is produced in court, right?
Yeah. And also it seemed irritating that the court sat on a Saturday
I think they're trying to, this is obviously looking at, because we always hear appeals and one of these are not, a typical basis for appeal of sentence would be not enough weight given to something. So the judges are careful to say, we accept the remorse has been shown and a guilty plea has been given. That is of benefit to the court.
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Chapter 7: What mitigating factors influenced the judges' decisions?
They think they are the celebs there today. It's bravado, isn't it? Total bravado. Absolute total bravado and smiling and, you know, winking over at the cops and whoever else they can, whoever's eye they can catch. Yeah. And this kind of sense of, you know, we beat the system, which in a way they did beat the system and they beat it because the director of public prosecutions accepted those lesser
convict those lesser guilty pleas. And we've talked about this. There's a lot of this going on. We understand why it's probably better to get a guilty plea than a not guilty verdict. OK, but we never hear an explanation of why. If we did, it might help. The DPP is answerable to nobody. The decisions are answerable to nobody. We have had a series of things that have happened before the courts.
We've had the disastrous
absolutely disastrous Regency Hotel trial where Jonathan Dowdall was given a place on the state's witness protection programme along with his entire family where he was initially charged with murder where a far lesser charge was accepted and he has been facilitated to move out of the country to a new location under a new identity along with his wife and all his children and his father
and has been facilitated with that, despite the fact that he was an appalling witness, which the judges pretty much described as a liar. OK, so we have that. And before I finish my rant, you have Gerry Hutch standing trial on one single charge of murder. And the judges said pretty much in the judgment that had they been presented with other charges, it might have been a different case.
than him being found not guilty. You have more recently Sean McGovern being brought home in absolute, you know, in the glare of the media across the world as Daniel Kinahan's number two. You have him brought home from Dubai, extradited to the country. You know, the first of those that have been sanctioned by the US Treasury. He's brought home to face a murder charge and instead a deal is done.
And he pleads guilty to a lesser charge. You remind me, it's just gone out of my head what he pleaded guilty to directing a criminal organization. Okay, now that is going to presumably... give him a fairly hefty sentence although we don't quite know but nonetheless these deals are being done with people that you wonder Should there be no criticism about this?
Should those Hennessys not have stood trial for a far higher charge, which they clearly deserve when you see what happened here?
I mean, look, we haven't seen a book of evidence, so you don't know what the flaws in the case might be.
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