Queens Part - Part Two - 1960-2008

Forty years after the 1920 Fraser and Rollins trial, in 1960, 19 year old Anthony Miller and 16 year old James Denovan were charged with beating and murdering a man in near identical circumstances to the Henry Senior murder, in the very same part of Queens Park Recreation. Yet, in this case, it was Denovan who played the part that Helen white had played in 1920, luring the victim to a secluded area of the park with the promise of sex while Miller hid ready to ambush the unsuspecting john. Miller and Denovan had perpetrated a series of violent muggings in the area, a local cruising spot, but due to the fact homosexuality was still illegal in 1960, none of the victims came forward to report the incidents to police. The younger man Denovan would later describe in court how he was used as bait, he would wait until he was approached by a likely mark before leading them to a remote corner of the park whereupon Miller would step out and demand that they hand over all their cash and valuables, using violence if they resisted. It was a system that worked for over a year, the pair comfortable in the knowledge that their victims would be unlikely to go the police. But one robbery on April 6^th 1960 went wrong.

The victim, 48 year old John Cremin, had been battered around the head with a wooden plank and left for dead under a bush in Queens Park Recreation Ground, his body would not be recovered for three days until it was stumbled upon by a dog walker. It was initially believed that Cremin had fallen while drunk and died of natural causes, he had been wearing a cap that night which hid the severity of his injuries. However, a subsequent police post-mortem would reveal that Cremin had died due to a massive brain haemorrhage caused by being struck with a heavy implement and a murder investigation was launched.

Despite the fact that the pair would soon learn from the newspapers that their last attack had been fatal, Miller and Denovan continued their string of robberies undeterred. They even seem to revel in the news that they had committed murder. The pair were regulars of the Cathkin Café on Victoria Road, and a number of friends would later tell police how Miller and Denovan would often boast loudly in the café about what they had done to Cremin. Some even recalled one occasion when the two ghoulishly pointed out the very spot in the Recreation Ground where Cremin had been murdered, with Denovan jokingly suggesting that the party observe two minutes of silence for him. It was not until Denovan was arrested on a charge of ‘indecency’ that the pair were linked to the Cremin murder. During his arrest officers found a neatly clipped newspaper article on the murder on his person, no doubt kept to validate his frequent boasting, it was when he was questioned on it that the young man broke down and confessed.

Queen's Park, 1960s

At the trial that November, the 16 yr old Denovan, a minor, gave crucial evidence against his older companion. During the trial it was crucial to establish which of the pair had delivered the fatal blow that night. Due to the terms of the recent Homicide Act of 1957, only the person whose hands had dealt the fatal blow could be hanged for the crime, an effort to avoid a repeat of the controversial Craig and Bentley case. Denovan claimed that the length of wood which had been the murder weapon had been wielded by Miller and Miller alone and that he has no idea that his friend was going to strike such a severe blow. The jury took only 33 minutes to return a guilty verdict, with the younger man sentenced to indefinite detention and the 19yr old Miller sentenced to death by hanging.

Miller’s parents immediately launched a public campaign to have their son’s sentence commuted to life imprisonment, setting up a permanent stall in Glasgow’s city centre and with the help of many volunteers they quickly amassed more than 30,000 signatures in their favour. Miller’s appeal lawyers argued that Anthony was only 19 years old, he had no previous convictions, he came from a good home, and the murder was obviously not premeditated. However, the appeal court dismissed the case out of hand, and calls for the then Secretary of State for Scotland to recommend a royal pardon were ignored. Len Murray, who would go on to become one of Scotland’s most respected lawyers, oversaw Miller’s appeal, he would later speak of the indifference he felt the judiciary showed to the case: ‘A boy’s life was at stake but we were made to feel that it was an impertinence to bring that case into the Appeal Court. We were left with a thoroughly unpleasant taste in our mouths.’ 

Miller would be the last person ever to be hanged in Glasgow, the second last in Scotland before Henry John Burnet in 1963.

Queen’s Park would again feature in a prominent homicide in 1995 when 35 year old Michael Doran was brutally murdered by a gang of four teenagers in an unprovoked homophobic attack. The four had already attacked three other homosexual men in the park that night, but the Doran attack was particularly frenzied, he was stabbed several times, stamped and kicked, and his face and skull were smashed beyond recognition. He was left for dead suffering severe brain damage with every bone in his face broken, he was only discovered when a police man investigating one of the earlier assaults heard gurgling coming from one of the bushes. He was taken to hospital but succumbed to his injuries soon after. Three of the youths, their clothes still stained with Doran’s blood, then gate-crashed a party on Pollockshaws Road, boasting of what they had just done.

The four accused, one a 14yr old girl, a boy of 16 and a young man of 20, and one of 18, all from the Cardonald district of Glasgow, appeared in court accused of assault and murder. Due to the brutality of the case, the judge took the unusual step of lifting reporting restrictions which would usually prevent the 14 year old girl being named in the press, when the verdict was announced her mother was reported to scream: ‘No! No! She never done it!’  It was discovered during the trial that one of the accused proclaimed an intense hatred of homosexuals following abuse by a neighbour as a boy.

 The victim’s sister told press outside the trial: ‘These monsters should be dangling from the end of a rope too for what they did to our Michael (alluding to similarities with the 1960 Anthony Miller case)…They picked on my brother because he was gay and they did it for the pure fun of it. We had to identity by mother in the mortuary, it was horrible, his face was unrecognisable, the only way we could tell it was him was by a burn at the top of his chest.’

Yet again in 2008 Detective Chief Inspector Derek Robertson heard the now familiar words ‘You need to take a call. We have found a body in Queen’s Park.’ Thus began perhaps the case that still looms largest in the city’s consciousness when it hears the words ‘murder’ and ‘Queen’s park.’ The semi naked body of a woman had been found lying face down behind a privet hedge, immediately the entire park was in lockdown as police attempted to preserve the crime scene.

Moira Jones with a friend

 Detectives found business papers and toiletries among the items found scattered around the body, but no form of identification. Officers checked missing person reports and started ringing around local hotels to see if any guests had failed to check out. The strongest lead was a recent invoice recovered from the scene belonging to a sales executive for the drinks giant Britvic, her name was Moira Jones, 40 years old, who lived in a tenement flat on Queen’s Drive, overlooking the park. The home was empty, but once officers forced entry, they found family photographs which confirmed their suspicions that Jones was the dead woman. Moira had lived in Glasgow for five years, but was originally from Weston in Staffordshire.

Queens Drive, where Moira lived

As detectives began to construct a timeline of her final movements they discovered that she had left her boyfriend Paul Thomson’s flat in Minerva Street, Cranstonhill the previous night following an argument. This explained why Jones was carrying an overnight bag when she was ambushed, less than 60 yards from her front door. Due to the argument, Mr Thomson was taken in for questioning and his flat was searched, but he was quickly dismissed as a suspect. Of the scene, lead forensic scientist Carol Rogers recalls: ‘As soon as I saw her I knew it was going to be sexually motivated because of the state of her clothing.’ 

A post-mortem examination would later reveal that Jones had suffered 65 injuries during an ordeal which lasted more than two hours, the savage nature of the crime suggested that it was not the work of a first offender. Forensic officers were able to recover DNA from semen and constructed a full DNA profile, but it failed to match any profile on the UK database. During the early stages of the investigation suspicion initially fell on the 22 registered sex offenders who lived near the murder scene, police also compiled a list of everyone who had committed a criminal offence in or around the park, including crimes ranging from underage drinking up to violent sexual offences. Officers carried out extensive door to door enquiries in the area, taking more than 3,000 statements and more than 250 DNA samples, yet the killer remained at large.


It was not long however before detectives were able to establish where Moira Jones had first come into contact with her killer, they discovered a piece of handbag strap and some toiletries on a grass island on Queens Park. The spot was only 10 yards from where Moira has parked her black Toyota Rav4, at approximately 11.30pm on the 28^th of May, it would become known as the ‘strike scene.’ Another breakthrough quickly followed, CCTV footage recovered from a moving bus showed a couple crossing Langside road and walking along the perimeter of the park. The woman was identified as Moira, Inspector Robertson describes the footage: ‘He (the suspect) is monstrously bigger than Moira. He has control of her and he has control of her property (her overnight bag). He is deciding where she is going.’ In light of what happened next, Carol Rodger, the lead forensic scientist on the case would say: ‘The CCTV from the bus, I think, is the worst thing I have ever seen. It is horrendous.’

A holly bush near the park tennis courts was identified as a second key location after a witness reported to police that he had spotted a couple there, a search recovered six buttons from Moira’s blouse and a cigarette butt, matching the suspects DNA. Meanwhile, detectives uncovered CCTV footage of a man matching the suspects appearance leaving he park, near Queen’s Park Baptist Church on Balvicar Drive at approximately 2.15am. Separate clips captured the same figure discarding a laptop then checking the back of his hand as he walked along Nithsdale road. Detectives consulted the UK National Criminal Database to see if such a pattern had been seen before – but they came up empty handed.

Harcar 

 Then, in June, an eastern European witness came forward, living in a bedsit in the area of the murder, she claimed that she had been living with a man named Marek Harcar for a few days but that he had left after Moira Jones has been killed. Harcar, 32, had slept in the same bed as the witness, Lucie Pechtlova, but she had always turned down his sexual advances. Around 10pm on 28^th May Harcar left the bedsit, returning at 3.15am the following morning. From then on Lucie said Harcar appeared ‘scared of something’, on the 1^st of June he fled Scotland without his belongings. Glasgow officers soon after obtained a European Arrest Warrant against Harcar and faxed it to the Slovakian authorities, within 24 hours Harcar was arrested, hiding in a friend’s house in the rural village of Nalepkvovo. Police recovered specks of Moira Jones’s blood from the leather jacket he was wearing during his arrest.

 Harcar maintained his innocence throughout the trial at the High Court in Glasgow, despite this the jury required less than an hour to return a unanimous guilty verdict on the 8^th of April 2009. Harcar was sentenced to spend a minimum of 25 years behind bars, and faces deportation when he is released. The judge told Harcar during sentencing that ‘your conduct that night reflects a level of wickedness very rarely encountered.’