Charles Severance, convicted in 2015 of murder in the killings of three people in Alexandria, Va., has lost an appeal in state court.

Lawyers for Severance had argued that there were flaws in both his trial and sentencing in the slayings of Nancy Dunning in 2003, Ronald Kirby in 2013 and Ruthanne Lodato in 2014. A three-judge panel of the Virginia Court of Appeals disagreed.

Dunning was killed a decade before the other two victims, and no eyewitness connected Severance to the scene of her death. Severance’s lawyers say that case should have been tried separately from the other two.

However, the three judges ruled that “the crimes were sufficiently similar and idiosyncratic to establish an inference that the same person committed all three murders.”

The gun and bullets used were unusual, and all three crimes happened in safe neighborhoods in the middle of the day. All three victims were killed in their homes, and nothing was stolen.

Overall, the judges found there was enough evidence to convict Severance in all three murders. Along with eyewitnesses from the two later slayings, two revolvers had gone missing from Severance’s girlfriend’s apartment, and he had fled to the Russian Embassy the day police announced a link between the deaths. In journals, he repeatedly expressed a desire to kill the local “elite.”

Finally, the judges concluded that it was constitutional to sentence Severance to capital murder in both Kirby’s and Lodato’s killings. A murder can be capital in Virginia when it comes within three years of another. Defense attorneys argued that the same two murders could not be used for two such elevated sentences under the Constitution, which protects against multiple punishments for the same offense.

The judges concluded that the crimes and the punishments were separate, and the enhanced sentence is valid for both.

Severance is serving a life sentence in prison.