Murderer Keith Rose had his appeal to cut his life sentence turned down by judges sitting at London’s Criminal Appeal Court. Rose murdered Budleigh mum Juliet Rowe in 1981.

A murderer who ‘executed’ a Budleigh Salterton mother during a bungled kidnap attempt has failed to win a jail sentence cut.

Keith Rose, 62, last week pleaded before judges at London’s Criminal Appeal Court to cut his 25-year life sentence.

Rose, in September 1981, killed Juliet Rowe, from Budleigh – shooting her several times in the back – when she tried to flee his attempt to kidnap her from her home.

In November 2009, Mr Justice Akenhead, reviewing the case, ruled Rose must serve a minimum of 25 years for the ‘execution’ of Mrs Rowe.

Last week, lawyers for Rose argued there had been a miscalculation by the judge and appealed for the date he can seek parole, 2016, to be bought forward by more than a year.

Rejecting the appeal, Lord Justice Aikens said the basis of Mr Justice Akenhead’s ruling had not been arguably wrong.

Rose’s 25-year life sentence was added to a 15-year term for the attempted kidnap of Surrey food wholesale company deputy chairman Victor Cracknell, 31.

Rose was jailed in 1991 after comments he made to Mrs Rowe’s widower, prior to attempting to kidnap Mr Cracknell, led to him being linked to her murder.

Some four weeks before he kidnapped Mr Cracknell – who was blindfolded, gagged, handcuffed to a tree and left with a wire noose around his neck for four days – Rose ‘boasted’ to Mr Rowe in a pub he had been questioned by police in connection with his wife’s death.

Police grew suspicious of his behaviour and he was later found guilty at Exeter Crown Court of Mrs Rowe’s murder.

Rose, a former computer company director, was one of two high-risk prisoners accused of cutting an internal fence to scale a security wall at Parkhurt Jail, on the Isle of Wight

It is thought he escaped with a fellow prisoner during a gym session, letting themselves out of a back door with a duplicate key and cutting through the perimeter fence before scaling a 15-foot prison wall with a 25-foot step ladder.

They were caught five days later after a five-day police search of the island.