Olathe ? A Kansas judge has rejected a bid for a third trial for a former high school janitor serving a life sentence for the 1974 killing of a 13-year-old Prairie Village girl.

Lawyers for John Henry Horton argued that evidence was improperly kept from a Johnson County jury at Horton’s second trial in 2008.

The Kansas City Star reports that District Judge James Franklin Davis ruled Wednesday the evidence would not have changed the verdict.

Horton was convicted in 2004 and again in 2008 of killing Lizabeth Wilson, who was last seen near Shawnee Mission East High School.

Horton’s first conviction was overturned on appeal. At the 2008 trial, two prison inmates testified that Horton told them he killed the girl accidentally.