A paedophile couple serving life for murder who want the right to phone each from different jails have lost a bid to have their case heard at the UK's highest court.
Charles O'Neill and William Lauchlan were allowed to call each other after being jailed in 2010 but this was blocked in 2018.
The pair - who murdered a woman who intended to report their child abuse to the authorities - claimed the ban breached their human rights and launched a court bid to overturn it.
O'Neill, 59, who is serving at least 30 years, and Lauchlan, 45, who was given a minimum 26-year term after the murder of Allison McGarrigle, wanted the court to declare them as "near relatives", allowing the calls to continue.
After the pair exhausted all legal avenues in Scotland, they applied directly to the Supreme Court in London to have a full hearing heard there. However, three of the country's most senior judges have now refused their permission to appeal application.
Supreme Court justices Lord Hodge, Lord Burrows and Lord Richards ruled earlier this month that it did not "raise an arguable point of law".
The killers maintained that refusing to allow the calls breached Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to private and family life.
The pair claimed they had been allowed phone calls to each other because the Scottish Prison Service treated them as "near relatives".
But Scottish ministers disputed that and said the earlier calls were to help with legal preparations for another case they were involved in. They maintained the calls continued after the end of litigation in 2015 "by mistake".
Edinburgh's Court of Session threw the initial claim out because a judge ruled they had failed to raise the action in time. A previous judicial review brought by the killers seeking inter-prison visits was rejected in 2015.
O'Neill and Lauchlan were found guilty of murdering 39-year-old Mrs McGarrigle in Largs, Ayrshire, in 1997, and disposing of her body at sea. Her remains have never been found. They were also later sentenced for sex abuse offences following two trials.
Sentencing them, judge Lord Pentland said: "It is clear that you are both dangerous and determined predatory paedophiles, and that you represent a high risk to the safety of the public."
The judge said that when the couple became aware that Mrs McGarrigle intended to report them for sexually abusing a boy, they "conceived a callous and depraved plan" to kill her.
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