FRUIT machine king Vince Landa says he doubts whether the convictions for the notorious "one arm bandit" murder, which inspired the movie Get Carter, will ever be overturned.

Mr Landa is the brother of Michael Luvaglio, who together with Dennis Stafford was jailed for the murder of Angus Sibbett 34 years ago.

Sibbett was a fruit machine collector whose bullet ridden body was found in the back of his Jaguar car underneath a railway bridge in South Hetton, County Durham.

The murder later inspired the classic British thriller Get Carter, starring Michael Caine.

Mr Landa, whose company Sibbett worked for, has been approached by a BBC film crew, led by veteran broadcaster Frank Wappat, with a view to re-opening the case.

And although he says he is willing to cooperate - for a fee - he believes the convictions of both men will stand despite a number of apparent flaws in the evidence.

Both Luvaglio and Stafford worked in partnership with Landa to supply clubs on Tyneside with one-armed bandits.

They have served their sentences for the murder, but have always maintained their innocence, claiming they were in Newcastle, 21 miles away at the time the crime was committed.

Speaking to The Northern Echo from Florida Mr Landa, who is understood to have received a lucrative book offer for his memoirs, said: "I don't think there is any chance of the convictions being reversed.

"Eighty per cent of the people who were running about at the time of the murder are now dead.

"The two men were wrongly convicted though, and the evidence was incorrect. My brother should never have gone to prison.

"If they were tried today they would never have been found guilty. It was a political trial.

"The Home Office had suffered at the hands of gangs like the Krays and the Richardsons and they stepped in to smash what they thought was an organised crime ring."

Mr Landa, now 70, built up a huge fruit machine empire in the North-East and claimed he was "more important than the Prime Minister" during his heyday.

He has denied rumours that he was on the run from Dennis Stafford, a business associate and a well-known former underworld figure, who he fell out with over a property dispute.

Said Mr Landa: "I am not a recluse and I have nothing to hide from anyone over in England."