DEVASTATED mum Carole Gould was left feeling betrayed by the legal system today when she was told her campaign to get a longer sentence for the murderer of her daughter had been turned down.

Mrs Gould had asked the Attorney General to send the case against Thomas Griffiths, who stabbed her daughter Ellie, 17, to death in her own home in Calne, to the Court of Appeal. But this morning she received an email and letter saying this was not being allowed.

She said: "I have done everything I could to get this reheard. I feel let down but I want to thank Gazette readers and others who have supported us."

Griffiths was given a life sentence and told he would serve twelve and a half years by a judge last month. But Mrs Gould asked the Attorney General to decide this sentence was unduly lenient.

A statement from the Attorney General's office today said: "After careful consideration the Attorney General has concluded that he could not refer this case to the Court of Appeal.

"A referral under the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme to the Court of Appeal can only be made if a sentence is not just lenient but unduly so, such that the sentencing judge made a gross error or imposed a sentence outside the range of sentences reasonably available in the circumstances of the offence. The threshold is a high one, and the test was not met in this case.”

Griffiths, who was a fellow pupil at Hardenhuish School, Chippenham, had been Ellie's boyfriend but she had ended their relationship the day before her death in May at her home in Calne.