Notorious murderer Crump loses legal bid

One of Australia's most notorious murderers has lost his latest legal bid for a chance at freedom.

Kevin Garry Crump's file was marked "never to be released" in 1974 when he was sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes so grisly most details have remained suppressed.

He was convicted of conspiring to murder mother-of-three Virginia Morse, whom he tortured and raped, and of the murder of itinerant worker Ian Lamb.

Crump was resentenced on appeal in 1997 to a minimum of 30 years' jail over the murder of Mr Lamb by Justice Peter McInerney, making him eligible for release on parole in November 2003.

After a public outcry, the NSW government made several legislative changes so that lifers such as Crump - whose original sentencing judge considered he should never be released - could be considered for parole only if they were so frail or close to death that they would pose no danger to the community on release.

Crump challenged those laws in the High Court and lost in 2012, and on Friday he lost a bid to be granted leave to appeal against the sentence Justice McInerney imposed in 1997.

The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal's Justice Anthony Meagher wrote that it was in the public interest that Crump, who is now 66 and has spent more than 42 years behind bars, had been given another chance to appeal against his sentence.

"Notwithstanding my view that his appeal does not have good prospects of success, the interests of justice required that he be given the opportunity to argue his application for leave and have this Court's fairly extensive reasons for rejecting it," Justice Meagher wrote.

"Nevertheless, in light of those reasons, his application for leave to appeal should be dismissed."

Crump is now one of the nation's longest-serving prisoners, and was famously described by former NSW premier Bob Carr as "evil incarnate".

The slaying of Mrs Morse, who was kidnapped from her farmhouse in NSW and taken across state lines into Queensland bushland where she was raped and tortured, shocked Australia.

After a 20-hour ordeal, Mrs Morse was shot dead on November 7, 1973.

Mr Lamb was shot in the neck as he slept in his car, after Crump and his co-offender Allan Baker stopped to rob him of $20 near the NSW country town of Narrabri.

The judge who initially ordered the murderers' files be marked "never to be released" remarked in 1974: "The description `men' ill becomes you. You would be more aptly described as animals and obscene animals at that."