A MURDERER jailed after the notorious “Essex Boys” gangland killings has lost his latest attempt to appeal his conviction.

Michael Steele was one of two men jailed for life in 1998 after being found guilty of shooting dead three drug dealers in Rettendon.

He has launched repeated appeals against his conviction, but has now been told by a judge he cannot apply again unless his lawyers present “new and compelling” reasons.

The three victims, Basildon drug barons Tony Tucker, Pat Tate and Craig Rolfe, were found dead in a Range Rover in Workhouse Lane, Rettendon, in December 1995.

Steele, of Great Bentley, and Jack Whomes, of Suffolk, were convicted of the murders at the Old Bailey in January 1998.

The following year, Steele unsuccessfully appealed the conviction.

It was again referred and dismissed by the Court of Appeal in 2006, before a further attempt to launch a judicial review was refused in 2013.

Last year, Steele launched a further judicial review, against the Criminal Cases Review Commission, in respect of the earlier decisions.

The commission refused to refer the case back to the Court of Appeal, a decision which has now been supported in the High Court of Justice.

Steele’s appeal centres on the reliability of evidence given by Darren Nicholls, a former friend who testified against him in court.

It has been alleged phone records used to support Mr Nicholls’s evidence are “not consistent” and may have been tampered with.

In his ruling, Mr Justice Ian Dove decided the commission was right to block further appeals unless new evidence emerged.

He said: “While I obviously appreciate the deeply held feelings of injustice which clearly still trouble the claimant, the task which I have is a narrow one focused on seeking to identify whether there has been any public law error in the decision which the defendant has reached.

“The defendant has limited resources and it must be a misuse of those resources for them to be deployed reinvestigating points that they have previously considered and rejected.

“There should be no further applications unless a legal adviser makes clear that the application proceeds on the basis of new and compelling grounds of substance.”