A retired US doctor has failed in his High Court appeal to overturn his conviction for murdering Brisbane socialite Maureen Boyce.
Thomas Chris Lang was convicted twice of murdering Boyce, 68, whose bloodied body was found in her Kangaroo Point apartment with a kitchen knife protruding from her abdomen in 2015.
Lang's first conviction in 2017 over his lover's death was quashed on appeal, but he was found guilty again in November 2020 and sentenced to life behind bars.
The High Court on Wednesday dismissed his latest appeal on two grounds: that the jury verdict was unreasonable and the evidence of forensic pathologist Beng Beng Ong was outside his expert knowledge.
Boyce was stabbed five times while lying in her bed.
Only she and Lang were in the apartment when she died.
Queensland's Supreme Court and Court of Appeal were told she was either murdered by Lang or died by suicide.
The High Court judges said Ong's evidence supported the prosecution's murder case and, taken as a whole, the evidence admitted at trial was sufficient for the jury to exclude as a reasonable hypothesis that Boyce died by suicide.
The judges were unanimous in finding the verdict was not unreasonable.
Three out of the five judges also found Ong's opinion – that the wounds were more likely inflicted by another person than self-inflicted – was substantially founded on his specialised forensic pathology knowledge.
Lang and Boyce had known each other for 30 years and had rekindled an earlier relationship.
The jury in the second murder trial had found Lang had stabbed Boyce in a jealous rage after he read text messages between her and another man.
However, lawyers for Lang argued Boyce took her own life after going to her bedroom in a depressed state.
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© AAP 2023
