CONVICTED killer Jeremy Bamber has vowed to continue his fight to clear his name, despite losing the first stage of his latest legal battle.

Bamber is serving a whole life sentence for murdering five relatives in Tolleshunt D’Arcy in 1985.

But the 51-year-old has always maintained his innocence.

Yesterday, a High Court judge in London rejected his application for permission for a judicial review into an earlier decision not to refer his case back to the Court of Appeal.

His lawyer, Simon McKay, said he and his client were expecting their application to be refused on paper and the next step would be to take the case for an oral hearing in the next six weeks.

He said: “We anticipated it was a real possibility they would refuse on paper and we expected this to go to an oral hearing. It’s all part of the process.

“We’ve got to keep moving on and there is still a lot of fight left in Jeremy and determination on my part.”

Bamber claims his schizophrenic sister Sheila Caffell shot their wealthy parents, June and Neville, and six-year-old children, Daniel and Nicholas, before turning the gun on herself, in a remote Essex farmhouse.

The decision not to refer his case was made earlier this year by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), an independent body which investigates possible miscarriages of justice. The evidence that had gone before the CCRC surrounded the analysis of burn marks found on the body of Neville Bamber and gunshot wounds on his sister.

A spokeswoman for the Judicial Office confirmed that a judge had turned down Bamber’s judicial review application.

But it is still open to Bamber to seek to renew his application before the full court.

Mr McKay added: “We are confident that in the end Jeremy will prevail, whether it will be on this application remains to be seen. I think the CCRC was wrong and the courts should give him permission to review the decision.

“If it does not come this time, then we will begin a new application.”

Mr McKay said: “He’s obviously disappointed with the latest decision, but he’s fairly philosophical and still determined to continue the fight to clear his name.”

When announcing its decision in April, the CCRC said that despite a lengthy and complex investigation, it “has not identified any evidence or legal argument that it considers capable of raising a real possibility that the Court of Appeal would quash the convictions.”

Bamber is also having an appeal against his whole life sentence heard at the European Court of Human Rights next month.