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.
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