Thomas Chris Lang was convicted twice of murdering socialite Maureen Boyce whose bloodied body was found in her Kangaroo Point apartment with a kitchen knife protruding from her abdomen on October 22, 2015.

Lang’s first conviction in 2017 over his lover’s death was quashed on appeal, but he was found guilty again in November 2020 and sentenced to life behind bars.

The pair had known each other for more than 30 years and had indulged in an extramarital affair in the United States in the 1970s, before rekindling their relationship years later.

The former fashion model and mother of two was stabbed five times with such force that the blade pierced the blood-stained bedding beneath her three times.

Lang was the only other person in the apartment on the night she died and the jury rejected his claims at trial that Ms Boyce took her life.

Instead, it found Lang stabbed Ms Boyce in a jealous rage after she threatened to “hook up” with an ex-boyfriend.

Even after the verdict, Lang continued to protest his innocence, telling the court when asked if he had anything to say: “Yes, because I didn’t do it.”

The case against Lang was circumstantial, with two possibilities as to who caused Mrs Boyce’s death: either Lang stabbed Mrs Boyce, or she stabbed herself, Justice Debra Mullins said in a Queensland Appeal Court judgment published on Tuesday.

Lang argued there was a miscarriage of justice because a forensic pathologist said his observations of Mrs Boyce’s body at the scene and during an autopsy suggested it was more likely the stab wound was caused by another person, but he could not exclude that it was self-inflicted.

Lang told police several times Mrs Boyce had thrown her phone from a balcony about 9.30pm on the evening before she died.

He claimed that was when he last saw her alive, waking about 5.30am to find her dead on her bed.

But prosecutors proved the phone had been unlocked for a few minutes about midnight and text messages between Mrs Boyce and another man read.

The phone was also used, perhaps unintentionally, to make an unanswered call to the recorded number of another man.

“It was open to the jury to infer that he lied to police about the phone because he was wanting them to believe that the phone was thrown away well prior to the phone being searched and the killing of Mrs Boyce,” Justice Philip McMurdo said in the judgment.

There was no explanation for the lies, leaving the jury entitled to think it was a lie that an innocent person would not tell, he added.

Justice Mullins said a review of all evidence does not reveal a significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted.

“The number of stab wounds, the rotation of the knife, the appellant’s motive and the significant lie he told from which his guilt could be inferred supported the verdict of guilty of murder,” she added.