A double rapist from East Sussex, jailed 38 years ago for murder, has failed in his fourth High Court battle for freedom.

Peter Baxter, 64, imprisoned to life in 1963 for stabbing Burgess Hill housewife Linda Bennett to death, was yesterday refused consideration for release despite a Parole Board recommendation.

Baxter's barrister, Flo Krause, told the court its refusal to follow the board's advice was unlawful.

She quoted a prison discipline officer as saying: "If it is unlikely he will ever be released, he deserves to be told so, if not for his own sake, at least for his wife's."

Former Sunday school teacher Avril Baxter, three years his senior, still wanted to live with him, Miss Krause added.

But judge Mr Justice Turner said other reports had shown Baxter to be manipulative and reluctant to discuss his offence.

The former handyman, from Portland Place, Hastings, was 26 when he was given a mandatory life sentence in December at the Sussex Assizes, in Lewes, for killing Mrs Bennett, 54.

She had been stabbed six times in the neck and chest, during or after sex, in August 1963, at her bungalow in Windmill Drive, Burgess Hill.

Her husband, a thrombosis patient, died two days later after suffering a heart attack on hearing of her death.