A new bid to challenge a 1967 conviction for a murder that inspired the classic crime thriller Get Carter has been rejected by the High Court.
For over 50 years one of the convicted men, Michael Luvaglio, has been fighting to prove his innocence.
Now nearly 80 and living in west London, he listened as a senior judge rejected his latest application - this time a bid to challenge a Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) refusal in January to refer the case back to the Court of Appeal.
His lawyers argued fresh evidence pointing to the convictions being unsafe had been rejected irrationally or unreasonably by the Commission.
Mr Justice Langstaff, sitting in London, refused Luvaglio permission to seek a judicial review saying: "I do not see any realistic prospect of this challenge to the Commission's decision succeeding."
Luvaglio later expressed his disappointment, saying: "I am innocent and don't deserve to die as a legally convicted murderer."
Luvaglio and co-accused Dennis Stafford were both found guilty at Newcastle Assizes of the shooting murder of money collector Angus Sibbett. Both men always protested their innocence
The judge said: "This case has on a number of occasions trod the boards from the Court of Appeal to the House of Lords (formerly the highest court in the land) to the Court of Appeal on a number of occasions."
It had also been referred on more than one occasion to the CCRC.
The judge said of Luvaglio: "Despite his age and age of the case he has never given up trying to show his conviction was unlawful."
Stafford and Luvaglio each served 12 years of their life sentences before being released on licence.
The murder of Mr Sibbett, who collected cash from fruit machines in Newcastle, laid the foundation for the novel Jack's Return Home, by Ted Lewis, later made into 1970s cult film Get Carter, starring Michael Caine.