Accused launched vicious attacks on three homosexual men in park in

the one night.

FOUR accused, one a 14-year-old girl, were sentenced to life yesterday

at the High Court in Glasgow for beating a man to death and attacking

others.

They picked on homosexual men in Queen's Park, Glasgow. In one night,

they attacked three, killing one.

The murder victim was Mr Michael Doran, 35. He was left dying, his

face and skull smashed.

Midway through the trial, Richard Bell, 20, and Richard Ferguson, 16,

both of Tarfside Oval, South Cardonald, Glasgow, changed their pleas and

admitted the murder and assault charges on June 2.

This left John Cairns, 18, of Shawholm Terrace, Shawlands, Glasgow,

with his girlfriend, Claire Codona, 14, of Hillhead Avenue, Blairbeth,

Glasgow, a pupil at Shawlands Academy, facing the charges.

The jury found them both guilty of murdering Mr Doran, of Allison

Street, Govanhill, Glasgow. Cairns was also found guilty of the two

other assault charges.

A fifth accused, James Knox, 20, of Langside Road, Govanhill, was

found guilty of one assault and was ordered to be detained for two and a

half years.

Lord Morison lifted reporting restrictions which had prevented the

girl's identity being revealed during the trial. The judge said it was

in the public interest that she should be named.

When the verdict was announced, Codona's mother screamed: ''No, no.

She never done it.''

During the trial Mr Colin Boyd, QC, prosecuting, described Queen's

Park as a favourite place for homosexual men meeting after dark.

The first two men assaulted were kicked, punched and threatened with a

knife before being robbed, and were left dazed and bleeding.

Then they ambushed Mr Doran.

He was stabbed several times as he lay on the ground.

The gang then stamped and jumped on his head and face before tearing

off his jacket and running away.

He was found by two policemen investigating one of the other attacks

after they heard gurgling noises coming from the bushes.

Every bone in his face and skull was fractured and he had severe brain

damage. Mr Doran died soon after he was taken to hospital.

The three youths, their clothes still covered with Mr Doran's blood,

then gatecrashed a party in Pollokshaws Road and boasted about what they

had done.

By that time Claire Codona had gone home, but she was arrested next

day in a flat where Cairns was staying.

During the trial her defence counsel, Mr Gordon Jackson, QC, claimed

she had been pressed for hours by two policewomen into finally admitting

that she had kicked Mr Doran ''once on the foot'', but she consistently

denied everything else.

Mr Jackson also pointed out that the only other person present during

the long interrogation was the girl's father, described in court by a

psychiatrist as a chronic alcoholic, incapable of safeguarding his

daughter's interest.

Mr Donald Findlay, QC, told the court that Bell hated homosexuals

after two years of abuse by a neighbour when he was a boy.

The murder was similar to an incident in the same park which shocked

Scotland in 1960. Mr James Cremlin, 48, was battered to death for #67 by

Antony Millar, 19, the last man to be hanged in Barlinnie Prison.

Yesterday, Mr Doran's sister Mrs Sandra Hepburn, 28, of Torrance,

Stirlingshire, said: ''These monsters should be dangling from the end of

a rope too for what they did to our Michael.''

She added : ''I just don't know how people can be so violent.

''We had to identify my brother in the mortuary. It was horrible. His

face was unrecognisable and the only way we could tell it was him was a

burn at the top of his chest.''

She went on: ''They picked on my brother because he was gay and they

did it for for the pure fun of it.''

Sentencing the gang Lord Morison described the offences as vicious and

cowardly attacks. He said he was refraining from ordering a minimum

sentence because of the ages of the accused and the fact they had no

previous convictions for violence.