Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe lost a challenge today against an order that he can never be released.

A High Court judge ruled last year that the serial killer of 13 women must serve a "whole life" tariff.

The former Bradford lorry driver, who is now known as Peter Coonan, had his appeal against that order rejected today by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, Mr Justice Calvert-Smith and Mr Justice Griffith Williams at the Court of Appeal.

Sutcliffe, now 64, received 20 life terms for the murder of 13 women and the attempted murder of others in Yorkshire and Greater Manchester wehen he was convicted at the Old Bailey in 1981.

Lord Judge said the "passage of time does not make the appellant's account at trial of how he came to commit these offences any more likely to be credible now than it was then".

He said: "We are not, of course, suggesting that the man who perpetrated these crimes was in any ordinary sense of the words 'normal' or 'average'."

The "sheer abnormality of his actions themselves suggest some element of mental disorder".

But he added: "There is, however, no reason to conclude that the appellant's claim that he genuinely believed that he was acting under divine instruction to fulfil God's will carries any greater conviction now than it did when it was rejected by the jury."

An examination of the "entire catalogue of the offences as a whole demonstrates that this was criminal conduct at the extreme end of horror".

The three judges ruled that the interests of justice required "nothing less" than a whole life order.

Lord Judge said: "Each of the attempted murders, as well as each of the murder offences, taken on its own was a dreadful crime of utmost brutality: taking all the offences together, we have been considering an accumulation of criminality of exceptional magnitude which went far beyond the legislative criteria for a whole-life order.

"Even accepting that an element of mental disturbance was intrinsic to the commission of these crimes, the interests of justice require nothing less than a whole-life order.

"That is the only available punishment proportionate to these crimes."