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00:00He was found lying in a pile of rubbish. His body burned and dumped in a lane off Harewood
00:11Crescent. Baby Craig Miller's real identity was never discovered, but this community made
00:18him its own. I'm Jamie Saunderson reporting for Shots TV and today we're going to take
00:22a deep dive into this, one of the capital's most shocking cold cases.
00:29Craig Miller is one of the most deprived areas in the city of Edinburgh, but no one
00:33was left in doubt about his community spirit after this horrific ordeal. Nowadays Harewood
00:38Crescent is replete with new flats, with just a single physical reminder of Craig Miller's
00:43tragic story. In 2001, the Edinburgh neighbourhood of Craig Miller had just begun a long regeneration
00:50process. It consisted of a high street, rows of council houses and empty streets that should
00:55have been lined with homes. Throughout decades this church has been a bulwark of this community
01:01and we came here to speak to Reverend Liz Henderson, who's been a minister here since
01:051997. So my name's Liz Henderson and I've been minister here at Richmond Craig Miller
01:11Church in Nidri for the last 26 years. Nidri Craig Miller in my time has always been designated
01:19as an urban priority area and there has been, you know, people are quick to criticise. Yes,
01:26there's been issues in the area, as there are in most poorer areas in Scotland and sometimes
01:33the area has been tarnished by those opinions of the area. So at the time that the baby's
01:39body was found, we were still undergoing that process of regeneration. So the church for
01:45example was sitting in the middle of knocked down houses and derelict houses as well as
01:51people still living in some of the houses. There was a lot of people who were unsure
01:55about their future at that time because people's houses were going to be knocked down and they
02:00were offered the right to return. So a lot of people weren't sure when that was going
02:04to happen, where they were going to end up staying or whether they would or would not
02:09get a new house. I think when the baby died, it touched a chord with lots of other people
02:17about their own tragedy and suffering and perhaps extended family amongst friendships
02:23or on others in the community. And it's known fact that where you have a lot of poverty
02:30and large families, then you have more experience, perhaps sadly, of death and loss. And so I
02:38think people, it resonated with them when the baby died. It appealed to what they already
02:46knew. So I think that people felt it deeply because they had experience of death in their own lives.
02:57Billy Franks, a former soldier, was walking his dogs at around eight o'clock in the morning
03:01when he made the shocking discovery. A petrol can and a multicoloured baby girl with Mickey Mouse
03:05and Donald Duck on it lay at the side of the boy's remains. His body had been set on fire
03:10deliberately. A post-mortem was unable to establish the cause of death, but police said he had been
03:16alive for at least a couple of days. Officers said he had been bottle-fed, bathed and clothed during
03:21his short life. Meanwhile, there were no records of his being born at any hospital in the area,
03:26leading police to conclude his birth had been hidden.
03:29Just a stone's throw away, more than 60 people were on their set of playing fields,
03:33playing football in the shadow of the tragedy. It was not known for how long the baby's body
03:38had lain there. Nobody knew who this little boy was, and in spite of all the investigations,
03:46it was never discovered his identity, nor that of his parents, and everybody around him,
03:53nor that of his parents, and everybody around him, including me because I live
03:58quite locally, found it very hard to hear and very upsetting.
04:07After Mr Franks called the police, more than 30 officers were tasked with finding the boy's
04:11parents. Detective Inspector Ewan Morrison, of the then Lothian and Baldur's Police,
04:16was put in charge of the case, and with the death being treated as suspicious,
04:20an urgent appeal was issued for the boy's parents, or anyone who knew them, to come forward.
04:26In the early days of the case, enquiries focused on that blonde-haired woman who was seen on
04:30Harewood Drive looking distressed. She was with a man who was described as being in his late 20s
04:36or early 30s, while a witness said she could well have been a teenager. The pair were seen standing
04:42by a bench at the top of the street before taking a seat. The man, who was of medium height and
04:47build, seemed to be trying to screen the woman from view. Police issued several calls for them
04:53to come forward, but they never did. Meanwhile, officers' efforts to trace another couple who
04:58had been seen in their lives that Sunday, and the car park of the Jelly Club in the
05:02Peffermill Industrial Estate, also came to nothing. The spot where the baby boy was found
05:07became a shrine for mourners, with toys and flowers laid down in the days after the shocking news
05:12emerged. Locals raised money for a headstone and funeral, while more than 400 people turned out
05:18to see him put to rest. And with his identity still a mystery, locals decided to adorn him with the
05:25name of their neighbourhood. From then on in, he would be known as Craig Miller. There was a real
05:32desire in the community that the baby should have a proper burial, that the baby shouldn't just be
05:37forgotten, and that the community wanted to look after the baby almost as one of their own.
05:43And that came to the fore, and so people wanted to raise money for that, and just wanted to express
05:50emotion in a way that perhaps I didn't expect as much emotion. One of my sons was only a year old
05:56at a time, and in my mind it was like, oh my god, how's the mum, and what's the mum thinking, and
06:04is she okay? It was just a shock to the community. After that, the community came together and
06:09done all sorts, and this was our answer today. But as I say, Craig Miller will always be in our hearts,
06:16and he'll always be a memory, and we take him under our wing, he's now ours. And I'm glad that
06:23the stone's back out here, because everybody can come and pay their respects, and do what they've
06:28done before, because people used to leave flowers. One of the memories that I have was of the service
06:33that we held for the baby in here, because the community had decided that we didn't know if the
06:39baby was a Catholic or a Protestant, and so they decided that the Father Francis from St Teresa's
06:46Church and myself should conduct a service, so we did. And we had chosen between us to sing
06:53a song called The Peace of the Earth Be With You, it's a blessing for the baby at the end.
06:58And we chose it in good faith, and realised as we began to sing it, that our congregation and
07:06the people that were there didn't know it very well, and as we carried the baby out of the church,
07:13our people were singing it not very well. The Catholic church joined in, picked it up quickly
07:18and sang it, and by the time we reached the door of the church, everybody in the community
07:22was singing this blessing for the baby, and it was very powerful. Very soon after we heard,
07:28I think the same day about the baby's death, people from the community came to the church
07:33and asked us to look after the collection that was being held in the community, and the police
07:40came and asked us if we would take the flowers that were being laid, because it was a crime scene.
07:45So the church, which had a, we've got a cafe, and lots of people at that time came in and out of
07:50the cafe, and so through the community and speaking to the community, we arranged to have
07:56the flowers brought to the church and kept in this room. I knew the community quite well, but was
08:04surprised by the outpouring of sadness about the event, and also the desire to want to do something.
08:12Not because I didn't expect people to be sad, but not maybe as sad as they were, and as keen to do
08:18something. Sometimes it helps to understand that there's big families here, and a real sense of
08:24community, so the more people you know, the more likely you are to have met somebody who's been
08:29touched by the loss of a child, and I think that was part of what came to the fore, that people
08:35immediately thought about the mother, thought about what the mother was going through, felt for her
08:40emotion in this, that not only had her baby died, but her baby died in these violent and difficult
08:45circumstances. People wrote cards on the flowers, we kept the cards, we stole the cards in the church
08:52that people wrote at the time, and those cards do nothing except express sadness for the baby,
08:59and concern, and I think love for the mother. It didn't take long for the police to realise
09:03that solving this case would be far from easy. Apart from the sighting of an upset girl near
09:08the scene, there were no clues as to who the baby's mother might be. Five years on from the tragedy,
09:13the case was reopened, with police hoping that DNA advances would finally help them get to the
09:18bottom of Craig's death. The force's Serious Crime Review Unit was placed in charge of launching
09:24fresh inquiries, and locals were urged to search their memories for a pregnant woman who didn't go
09:30on to have a baby. They thought that given the passage of time, people who didn't come forward
09:35in 2001 might do now, and even though those investigations were unsuccessful, Craig's DNA
09:41remains on record. Police Scotland still hope that new evidence will allow them to solve the
09:45case someday. In my time in Adrian Craigmillar, there's been a lot of tragedies, a lot of
09:54sad losses and deaths, and I think that the baby's death somehow or other for me
10:00is part of that, it's part of what a community remembers, and part of what a community has been
10:08shaped by, and that coming together as people do here for funerals over and over again, often in
10:14the church as the baby's funeral was, it builds a sense of a community that cares for each other
10:21and understands suffering.
10:30A funeral director who decided to remain anonymous donated a granite stone which would be used as a
10:34memorial at the site of baby Craig's discovery. It was removed in 2019 due to work at Castlebury
10:39High School. When you hear the story and how much the community feel, it's very typical of the people
10:47of Midray and Craigmillar, they really do feel it belongs to them, so we were really, really keen to
10:54work with the community to find what would be best for the community going forward, and so many
11:00people have been involved like storing the memorial and renovating it, siting it, but it does
11:07again show the strength in the community still.
11:14But it was reinstalled in 2024 here on Harewood Road.
11:21There was a big turnout at the official opening in April, demonstrating that this area keeps the
11:25tragic youngster close to its heart more than 23 years on. The stone reads,
11:31Craigmillar, found March the 11th 2001. We will never forget you. A little baby boy,
11:38we never got to know you, but you will always be in our hearts. We were never given the chance
11:43to show the joy you could have and would have brought. God bless you.
11:55you