ALBANY — The Christopher Porco murder case will attract attention in 2013 — just not the way his lawyers had hoped.

The convicted ax murderer from Delmar lost his final appeals for a new trial this year, but gained the interest of Lifetime television network. It will air a made-for-TV movie inspired by the former college student who killed his father, Peter, and maimed his mother, Joan, as they slept at their 36 Brockley Drive home on Nov. 15, 2004.

It is arguably the most notorious crime in the Capital Region's history. The rejection of his appeal by the top court in America was chosen by readers who voted it on timesunion.com as one of the Capital Region's top 10 stories for 2012.

Porco, now 29, was convicted at a 2006 trial that was moved to Orange County because of heavy pretrial publicity. His father was court clerk to Anthony V. Cardona, presiding justice of the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court for the Third Department.

Christopher Porco, convicted of second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder, is serving a prison sentence of 46 years to life at Clinton Correctional Facility.

His lawyer, Terence L. Kindlon, who with his wife, Laurie Shanks, represented Porco during the trial, hoped that the U.S. Supreme Court would hear the appeal. Kindlon said Porco's rights were violated when Orange County Judge Jeffrey Berry, who presided over the trial, allowed Albany County prosecutors to elicit testimony that a gravely injured Joan Porco identified her son as her attacker.

When asked by Bethlehem Detective Christopher Bowdish if her younger son had tried to kill her with an ax, Joan Porco, a speech therapist, nodded "yes." She later said she lost her memory of the near-death exchange with the detective who questioned her as paramedics worked to save her life.

Kindlon argued that since Joan Porco could not recall Bowdish's questioning, the defense couldn't effectively cross-examine her. He said Porco had a constitutional right to confront the witness who made the accusation and without having that opportunity, the judge should not have allowed the testimony.

In early April, the Supreme Court denied Kindlon's petition, which asked it to re-examine the actions of a trial court. Kindlon filed a second writ of habeas corpus appeal with the high court asking it to consider whether the conviction was a violation of federal law and, as a result, should be overturned.

Once again, he was rejected. That came after the state Court of Appeals, the top court in New York, unanimously found the evidence against Porco to be "overwhelming" — and that any error by Berry in allowing testimony about the exchange between Joan Porco and the detective was "harmless" to the jury's decision making.

With the Supreme Court's decision, Porco had exhausted his avenues of appeal.

Prosecutors said Porco, in debt and flunking out of college, lied to his parents and used his father's name to secretly obtain loans for school and a Jeep. They said Porco drove home from college in the middle of the night and staged a burglary by slicing a screen, then cut a phone line and smashed the panel of an alarm that he disabled with a code known only by his family.

The prosecutors suggested Porco wore protective medical clothing from a veterinarian's office where he worked — then attacked his parents. The final prosecution witness was a neighbor who testified seeing Porco's yellow Jeep in his parents' driveway the night of the attack. On Aug. 10, 2006, jurors convicted Porco in six hours.

Lifetime says it plans to show "Romeo Killer: The Chris Porco Story" sometime in 2013.

"This event, this tragedy, in one sense it's Shakespearian. It really is a fascinating story, so it's easy to understand why someone would want to make a movie," Kindlon told the Times Union. "My fear is it is going to open a lot of old wounds. That's just unfortunate. Obviously the story is in the public domain, and there's nothing we can do about it."

rgavin@timesunion.com • 518-434-2403 • @RobertGavinTU