Glasgow Crime Stories: Len Murray and his client Tony Miller

Five miles away in Glasgow's tough Barlinnie Prison Tony Miller was about to die.

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Tony Miller 

Two grim-faced prison officers had just entered the sparsely furnished cell where he had spent his last night.

They led the terrified 19-year-old to a room next door where leather straps were quickly tied to his body.

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There Britains' Chief Executioner Harry Allen, above, covered Miller's head with a black cloth bag and placed a noose around his neck.

A trapdoor beneath his feet was opened with a lever and the youth fell to his death.

Tony Miller's final last plaintive words to Yorkshireman Allen were - 'Please, mister!' - before he was left dangling at the end of a rope.

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Back in the offices of Levy & McRae solicitors, 27-year-old Len Murray, above, waited on the news that his client was dead.

There would be no phone call from the prison to him or the victim's family.

He would just have to hear it on the radio and read about it in the newspaper just like everyone else.

A month earlier, November 1960, Miller had been convicted of the murder of a gay man in Queens Park in the city's south side.

Sixty years later Mr Murray, now 87, remembers the day of execution as if it was yesterday.

At the time he had only been a lawyer for three years but Miller was already his second capital murder client.

Mr Murray retired in 2003 after a glittering career as a criminal lawyer spanning six decades.

He told the Glasgow Times: "The Miller case took up four months of my life from the day I received a phone call from his father asking me to represent his son.

"On the day of his execution death, I was in my office in West Campbell Street as I didn't want to be at home.

"It may sound daft but I was sitting there praying for that boy.

"Emotionally Tony Miller's case taxed me more than any other in a 50-year legal career.

"I never took a capital murder case after that."

Miller's execution shortly after 8 am is on December 22, 1960 three days before Christmas marked the beginning of the end for capital punishment.

He was the last person to hang in Glasgow for murder and the last teenager in the UK More than 30,000 Scots petitioned the Secretary of State for Scotland in a failed bid for clemency.

Many of them were collected by his mother Marie and father Alf, above, standing in George Square or Sauchiehall Street in the rain and freezing cold.

They were respectable working-class parents and their son had no previous convictions.

His accomplice, in the murder of a gay man they had robbed, James Donevan only escaped the hangman's noose because, at 16, he was too young.

Miller was a former apprentice cabinet-maker who had a job with a removals firm at the time of his arrest He lived with his parents and younger brother in a comfortable flat in Dixon Road, Crosshill, Glasgow Denovan, who had no convictions, also came from a good home in nearby Calder Street and his father was a respected shop manager.

Both boys were regulars at a popular teenage hangout the Cathkin Café in Victoria Road near their homes.

There they would chat up girls and listen to records on the juke box.

But it was also the place where they hatched an evil plan to attack and rob gay men.

Both also lived close to Queen's Park which, in 1960, was a known haunt of gay men at night.

At that time sexual relationships between males was still against the law.

Men who frequented the park at night ran the risk of violent muggings or gay bashing as its is known now.

Fearing exposure, police charges and public ridicule few victims reported the attacks to the police.

Outside Barlinnie after Miller was hanged 

For almost a year, Miller and Denovan trawled the park at night claiming victims.

Denovan was the bait, approaching men in park toilets and enticing them to an isolated wooded area where Miller lay in wait.

The men were threatened with violence, beaten up if necessary, and robbed of cash and valuables.

Miller and Denovan's vicious scheme was working well until the night of Wednesday, April 6, 1960, when they picked on a gay man who was not quite as vulnerable as their previous victims.

John Cremin, 48, was a well-known local criminal with a reputation as a hard man and for violence.

When the pair attacked him he fought back.

He was beaten so severely with a wooden plank by Miller that he died of massive head injuries.

The pair also took the dead man's watch, a knife, his bank book, and £67 in notes (worth £1300 now).

Miller, then 18, and Denovan appeared to show no remorse for their evil act and targeted other gay men for weeks after.

The following night they even went to the cinema to see Tommy the Toreador, a film starring Tommy Steele.

Witnesses said they splashed out £5 notes on drinks and claimed Miller even lit a cigarette with one of the fivers.

In fact, they almost got away with murder but for a simple mistake by Denovan.

Denovan cut out a newspaper story about the murder and kept the clipping in his wallet.

When he was arrested in Queens Park on an unrelated indecency charge detectives discovered the article and became suspicious.

Denovan began panicking and confessed his crime to his horrified father. He in turn took his son too nearby Craigie Street police station where he incriminated Miller.

Mr Murray added:"One of my biggest difficulties was telling Tony Miller's parents that their son could hang.

"They had assumes he was too young and would get a prison sentence if convicted.

"Until this case I had been a supporter of capital punishment like most people.

"The attitude of the day was if you have killed someone you must hang for it.

"As a result of the Miller case I became firmly against it "That's because the punishment is not on the offender but his family.

"I also think it was inhuman what society did to a 19-year-old boy who'd never previously broken the law in his life."

The two teenagers went on trial in November 1960 at the High Court in Glasgow and the jury took just 33 minutes to return a guilty verdict on both.

The trial judge, Lord Wheatley, imposed a life sentence on Donevan.

But on turning to Miller, he had donned the notorious 'black cap' and told the terrified teenager that he was to be hanged within the prison walls the following month.

One juror who had just helped to convict Miller, wept. An appeal was dismissed as 'completely devoid of substance' by three judges.

Miller's only hope was a public campaign to persuade John Maclay, the Secretary of State for Scotland, to recommend the Royal Prerogative which would have commuted the death sentence to one of life imprisonment. But on December 19, the 30,000 signature petition was rejected.

Following the execution, the prison authorities reported that Miller had gone to his death with 'composure'.

A spokesman said: 'There was no trouble at all.'

Mr Murray, went on to represent stars like Paul McCartney and Billy Connolly, but never heard from the Miller family again.

He added:"I can understand that because contacting me would only open old wounds they were trying to heal.

"That was the end of it and I was glad that was the end of it."

Only one more Scot, Henry John Burnett, was executed - at Aberdeen in 1963 - before hanging was abolished in 1965.

A theatre play about Miller's last days in the condemned cell, Please, Mister was performed in 2010 starring Iain De Caestecker (in the role of Miller) and David Hayman. A TV movie was made in 2014 Mr Murray concluded:"As a criminal lawyer you forget about most cases with the passage of time.

"There was never any chance that I would forget about Tony Miller."