Lynette White killer Jeffrey Gafoor twice refused parole

Jeffrey Gafoor led into Cardiff Crown Court for sentencing in July 2003

The killer of Lynette White has twice been refused parole, the BBC has learned.

Jeffrey Gafoor was given a life sentence in 2003 and ordered to serve a minimum of 13 years for the 1988 murder.

He was first considered for parole in 2016 and again in March this year, but was refused on both occasions.

Gafoor was tracked down using new DNA techniques, 11 years after three men had murder convictions quashed.

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Tony Paris, Yusef Abdullahi and Stephen Miller - who became known as the Cardiff Three - were wrongly jailed for life in 1990 for Ms White's murder and freed in 1992.

Ms White, 20, who worked as a prostitute, was stabbed more than 50 times by Gafoor in a flat in the docklands area of Cardiff in 1988.

A spokesman for the Parole Board said: "We can confirm that a panel of the Parole Board did not direct the release of Mr Jeffrey Gafoor following an oral hearing in March 2018.

Lynette White was found murdered on St Valentine's Day in 1988

"Under current legislation Mr Gafoor will be eligible for a further review within two years."

His first parole refusal came at a paper hearing in October 2015.

All parole reviews are first reviewed at a paper hearing by a single Parole Board member, in which it is decided whether the review should progress to an oral hearing, if parole should be refused, or, in some types of cases, if the prisoner can be released.

Gafoor confessed to stabbing Ms White in a row over £30 after new DNA technology led South Wales Police to him in 2003.

In sentencing Gafoor, the judge said he had "allowed innocent men to go to prison" for a crime he knew he had committed.

Earlier this year, there were calls for a law change so criminals who knowingly allow innocent people to be convicted of their crimes can be sentenced more severely.

It also emerged that an independent review into the collapse of a case against eight former police officers who investigated the murder cost more than £900,000.

Clockwise top left: Tony Paris, Yusef Abdullahi and Stephen Miller were convicted in 1989, Ronnie and John Actie were acquitted