Regency hotel getaway driver Jason Bonney has insisted he is an innocent man to fellow jail inmates.
The Hutch gang associate also believes his conviction will be
overturned on appeal. The 52-year-old, who fled Ireland a month after the attack in which an armed gang shot dead Kinahan enforcer David Byrne, is serving an eight-and-a-half year sentence in Wheatfield Prison.
He is housed on 3G, also known as the Hutch landing, which is segregated from the rest of the prison population due to the threat that exists against them.
But Bonney has reportedly not adjusted well to life behind bars. A source said: “Bonney is giving out all the time and he is telling everyone he’s innocent.
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“He isn’t living in reality at all and not accepting it.” Another source said Bonney is “deluded” and added: “You’d swear he had a solid alibi, but what he pulled out of the bag was never going to get him off the hook.”
Bonney, of Portmarnock, North Co Dublin, sensationally claimed his late father William, who died in 2019, had been driving his BMW X5 jeep on February 5, 2016. The shock claim was corroborated in court by two defence witnesses Julie McGlynn and Peter Tyrell.
But it was rejected by the Special Criminal Court, which insisted it had been lied to.
The court held Bonney was the sole driver of the flash jeep which collected gunman and dissident republican Kevin “Flat Cap” Murray from St Vincent’s GAA car park in North Dublin following the shooting at the nearby Regency Hotel.
While Bonney struggles inside, his co-accused Paul Murphy, 61, of Swords, North Co Dublin, also convicted of assisting the Hutch gang on the day as a getaway driver, has settled into life in prison as he serves a nine-year sentence.
The pair have been in Wheatfield Prison since April 17. Earlier that day they walked into court as they were on bail while Gerry “The Monk” Hutch was brought from the same prison under armed guard.
But at around 4pm that evening, Hutch was the only man to walk out the doors of the Criminal Courts of Justice after being acquitted of Byrne’s murder at the Regency.
After spending just over a month in Dublin, Hutch left for Spain at the end of May where he is expected to remain.
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