By Sophie Law
He was the Scottish baby-faced killer who was the last teenager to be hanged in the the UK.
Anthony Miller was only 19 when he was led to the grim gallows at Barlinnie Prison - known as the Hanging Shed - three days before Christmas in 1960.
His last words - "please, mister!" - were said to have echoed around the room as he fell to his death at the end of the hangman's noose.
Miller, known as Tony, had been convicted at the High Court of Glasgow the previous month for the murder of John Cremin in Queen's Park in a trial lasting just three days.
The young man had been caught up in a robbery gone wrong which ultimately ended with his life on line in an infamous trial.
His death would be one of the final nails in the coffin of the abolition of capital punishment in the UK.
In the Sixties, death by execution was still in effect and hanging was the penalty for murder.
Miller was an apprentice cabinet-maker who lived with his hardworking parents in Crosshill, Glasgow.
The 19-year-old had teamed up with local teenager James Douglas Denovan, 16, and they hatched a plan to become partners in crime and make some easy money.
The pair lived close to Glasgow's Queen's Park which was infamous as a pick-up place for gay sex when it was illegal.
They would trawl the park at night and lured, threatened, and robbed homosexual men - known at the time as "queer rolling".
Few victims complained to the police about the muggings over fear of being exposed as gay and being charged themselves.
Young Denovan, described as a 'pretty boy', was used as bait to lure men from the toilets into wooded areas of the park where Miller would lay in wait, pretending to be drunk.
The pair would then pounce and rifle the pockets of their victims, beating them up if necessary.
For almost a year they stole cash and valuables from vulnerable men, until things went horribly wrong on the day of April 6, 1960.
John Cremin, 48, was a local hardman and thief who resisted their attempt at what they thought was another routine robbery.
But it wasn't to be another steal and dash - and their newest victim fought back.
The pair beat him over the head with a plank of wood and left him for dead under a bush - but not before stealing his watch, bank book, a knife and £67.
Following the botched mugging, witnesses testified the pair splashed out on alcohol, and even lit a cigarette with one of the stolen £5 notes.
A dog walker found Cremin's body and police initially believed he had fallen. Because he was wearing a cap at the time of death, his head injuries were concealed.
Two days later, the Daily Record published a story appealing for possible relatives of a missing man found dead to come forward.
In an odd twist of fate, a newspaper cutting of the very report would eventually bring the young killers to justice.
Following a police post mortem, a murder investigation was launched.
Denovan had seen the Record's coverage, cut it out and put it in his wallet.
Seemingly undeterred by the death, they carried on with their criminal racket until Denovan was arrested on an indecency charge - and the cutting was found.
The 16-year-old eventually broke down and confessed, giving crucial evidence against his friend during the trial.
It took the jury just 33 minutes to convict both teenagers.
Female jurors wept as judge Lord Wheatley reached for his black tricorn and sentenced Miller to death by hanging.
But while Miller was found guilty of capital murder, Denovan's part in the killing would result only in an indefinite detention.
Amid growing public outrage at the death penalty, a petition was launched to save the life of Miller - a first-time offender.
The Miller family's petition attracted 30,000 names, but it was rejected.
The day before the execution, Miller's mum stared into a coal fire in her living and told the Daily Record: "Tony will be hanged but I will never remember him as a killer.
"Now is the end of everything for Tony and me. He used to bring stray cats and dogs into the house - once an injured bird.
"Violence was alien to him. But what's done cannot be undone."
Following his execution, prison authorities said he had died with "composure".
"There was no trouble at all," a spokesperson had said.
Young solicitor Len Murray - who was to become one of the country's most acclaimed lawmen - previously said of the trial: "My experiences in Tony Miller's case made me a confirmed abolitionist, so far as the death penalty is involved.
"I saw at first hand the appalling hurt it caused perfectly innocent people.
"I saw what effect the sentence of death on Tony had upon his father and mother.
"No society has the right to inflict that never-ending torment upon innocent people.
"Those poor souls would carry that cross for the rest of their lives. That memory would never ever be erased from their minds."
