IT was while watching the Six O'Clock News that Michael Luvaglio found out the man he looked on "as a brother" had been killed. It was a shattering blow. "I was so distressed that I had to be sedated and I went to bed," he says. But a few hours later he was to be awakened.

"Ten o'clock at night the bedroom door opened and it was a policeman and he came in and said, 'We would like to interview you as regards the death of Angus'. I wanted to help them catch the people who did it, so I went voluntarily to the police station. I didn't realise they were going to arrest me."

Even when he was on trial for murder, this softly-spoken Londoner, whose voice still carries evidence of both his home city and his Italian roots, found it hard to believe what was happening. It seemed so unreal, he even managed to share jokes with his fellow accused, Dennis Stafford - a fact seized upon by newspapers at the time as a sign of cold-blooded callousness. Then the verdict came in.

"I had already signed for my clothes, as the prison officers said I wouldn't be coming back, then someone came in and said the jury was coming in so I went back to the cells. Five minutes later they were saying 'guilty'.

"I couldn't believe it. I couldn't talk. I didn't speak for three months. It never crossed my mind they would find me guilty. When you haven't done something, and there is no evidence against you... ," he tails off, but he doesn't need to finish the sentence.

He is a gentle-looking man, what some would call bear-like. He is wearing a black, leather jacket, and around his neck is a silver chain bearing three medallions, one of which looks to be a St Christopher. Each hand bears two gold rings and his slicked-back hair still shows signs of black, although going grey at the temples. He looks like a favourite uncle.

But Michael Luvaglio, along with Dennis Stafford, was jailed for life for the murder of Angus Sibbet. Sibbet had been shot and his body left in the back of his Jaguar, near Pesspool Bridge in South Hetton, a few miles north of Peterlee in County Durham, where it was discovered just after 5am on Thursday, January 5, 1967.

The trial, at Newcastle Crown Court two months later, was one of the biggest the North-East had ever seen. At a time when the Kray twins still held sway in London, this was said to be the first time gang warfare had come North.

Sibbet had been a money collector for a firm run by Luvaglio's brother, Vince Landa, which supplied workingmen's clubs with everything from fruit machines to glasses. He was said to have been killed because he was skimming the profits, giving the case its moniker of the One-Armed Bandit Murder. Luvaglio's Italian origins encouraged headline writers to warn that 'The Mafia is coming', while the killing inspired the Michael Caine gangster film Get Carter.

Luvaglio, who was released from prison in 1979 after serving 12 years, has always maintained his innocence. While he was imprisoned, he was the subject of several television documentaries, and his case was taken up by Sir David Napley, one of the country's foremost solicitors.

Prison was hard for Luvaglio. When he was first jailed, he would hit the walls in frustration, breaking his knuckles, but he never lost hope. "Twelve years is a long time, but to me it was a daily thing," he says, sitting in the study of the house run by a Catholic order just behind Kensington High Street, which is now his home. "It was a day plus a day. Every day I thought tomorrow is going to be the day."

But prison also gave him a chance to look at himself, and even though he didn't see a killer, he saw someone who profited from others' misery, exploiting their weakness for gambling, and whose life was lived for pleasure. When he was released, he returned to London and spent the next 23 years working for a charity helping severely disabled people.

"I used to tell them about me. I know what it's like to want to put razor blades to your wrists. I know what it's like when you get so depressed a minute is like a month, because I have reached the depths of despair on many occasions," he says.

During this time, he says he was reluctant to continue the campaign to clear his name, for fear the publicity would reflect badly on the charity. Now, aged 66 and with his health failing, he has retired, but has one more task.

"I have had a major heart attack and I have got severe diabetes. My cardiologist said I was living on borrowed time. I think I owe it to myself and all my friends and relatives, that if I die tomorrow I don't think it should be in any newspaper that convicted murderer Michael Luvaglio died. I don't think I deserve that, but that is what it will be because legally that is what I am."

His aim now is to secure a public inquiry into the killing - only that way can his innocence be shown. An Appeal Court decision that his conviction was unsafe is no good to him, so this week he relaunched his campaign, sending letters and videos to all 659 MPs. He cites the 164 witness statements never disclosed to the defence at his trial, many of which raise serious concerns over the prosecution case.

Some of these statements cast doubt on the time of death, putting it at a time when Luvaglio had a solid alibi. Some question where the killing took place, again putting Luvaglio in the clear. What forensic evidence there is, not only fails to incriminate Luvaglio, but suggests someone else entirely was involved.

It's his belief that he was framed for the murder because of a desire to jail Stafford, who had defrauded the police in the past. In his initial questioning, Luvaglio refused to say Stafford had left him the night of the killing, and so as Stafford's companion that night, he too was charged. He has no explanation for what really happened - his best guess is it was set up by the Krays so they could muscle in on the North-East club circuit - but he knows what it's done to his life.

"I would have liked to have got married, even have children, but how would you feel saying to someone, 'I'm a convicted murderer'? I just couldn't do it," he says.

He did have a fianc when he went into prison, at 29, but talk of that is still painful, and as he tells the story the level tone disappears from his voice.

"I was about to get married. She became very ill: she was going to take her own life because she knew I hadn't committed the murder. I was advised by my parents and her family to tell her that I didn't really care for her to give her a life. I had to do it for her sake.

"I started saying I didn't really care for her, just to free her. Later on I heard from her and she had got married and she had a son and she called him Michael," he says before adding, "I still feel it now."

He still finds it hard to believe what happened, even after all this time, but he says he has no bitterness. There was anger for a while, but he says he has managed to rid himself of such negative feelings. "In the end, all you are doing is destroying your own soul," he says.

What he does have is hope. He still hopes that one day, before he dies, he will be declared an innocent man. "Maybe I'm kidding myself, but I have got through life with hope and I still live in hope. Isn't that what we all want in life?", he says, adding softly, "I have got to try. I have got to try."