EVIL killer Kevin Crump has begged to be released from prison, saying he has served his time for the sadistic slaying of mum Virginia Morse.

Crump, 66, told the Court of Criminal Appeal hearing yesterday he should never have received a life sentence.

He told the board his crimes were “not in the worst category of murder cases”.

media_camera Virginia Morse was abducted and tortured before being killed and dumped in a dam. Now her killer wants to be set free.

Crump and Allan Baker shot dead Ian Lamb at Narrabri in November, 1973, before abducting mother-of-three Ms Morse, 35, from the family’s sprawling homestead, “Banarway” near Collarenebri after her husband and children had left.

She was driven near the Queensland border where the pair bound her, raped her repeatedly and tortured her in two separate spots before one of the men shot her in the head and rolled her body into the Weir River.

The assaults against her were so sickening the details were never heard in court. Their murders, particularly the “atrocities” committed to Mrs Morse, haunted experienced investigators for decades.

In their 1974 court trial, sentencing judge Robert Taylor said: “If ever there was a case where life imprisonment should mean what it says, imprisonment for the whole of your lives, this is it.”

“I believe that you should spend the rest of your lives in jail and there you should die.”

The pair were sentenced to life imprisonment plus 55 years.

media_camera The Collarenebri property from which Virginia Morse was abducted by Crump and later raped and murdered.

In 1997, Crump appealed to the NSW Supreme Court to redetermine his life sentence under new laws which allowed a court to impose a minimum sentence or non-parole period.

Crump was then sentenced to 30 years’ jail by Justice Peter McInerney, making him eligible for release on parole in November 2003.

However after that ruling, NSW parole laws were changed in 2001 to say a prisoner who was marked “never to be released” could be granted parole only if their death was imminent or they posed no risk to the community because of incapacitation.

media_camera Kevin Crump is led away after his arrest for abduction, rape and killing of Virginia Morse in 1973.

Virginia’s husband Brian Morse - whose children Adrian, Eloise and Robert were 13, nine and five when their mother was killed - lobbied, with the backing of radio heavyweights Alan Jones and Ray Hadley, for new laws.

Crump launched a High Court challenge against those parole law changes in 2012 but lost.

Mr Morse sold Banarway shortly after the murder, unable to live in what was once his home, and moved to Sydney where he tried to get on with life. He married second wife Pam in 1981.

But the lobbying and appeals made it very hard to put the horrific crime behind him.

media_camera Kevin Crump tortured and raped Virginia Morse before killing her.

“What hurts are the constant references to what happened to her, the details. I want to remember Ginny as she was, rather than the way she ended her life. She was generous and caring - she involved herself in everything in the district,” Mr Morse said in 2011.

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In July, Crump was reclassified from an A to B, allowing extra freedom and downgraded security. He also has access to work and rehabilitation programs.

media_camera Police investigate the disappearance and murder of Virginia Morse.

At the time Howard Brown, vice-president of the Victims of Crime Assistance League, said: “I can’t see any value at all from people like this going on any kind of rehabilitation program. The only way they are leaving prison is in a pine box.

“We have limited resources so we are far better off putting those slots to prisoners who are being released into the community. We need to give them every opportunity not to reoffend.”

The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal is expected to hand down their decision early next month.