A woman who killed her father and torched his home in the deluded belief that he had caused her mother's death, has failed to have her life sentence overturned.

Ann-Marie Pyle battered 77-year-old William Pyle with a poker and repeatedly stabbed him in revenge for her mother's death 16 years earlier.

Pyle - said to have been tormented by acute psychosis due to cannabis abuse - scrawled "Bin Laden did this" in pen above her father's fireplace, before setting fire to his house in Stanley Street, Close House, near Bishop Auckland, County Durham.

The 42-year-old then stripped off her clothes and ran naked from the burning house to where police and firefighters had gathered.

Pyle, of Brooke Street, Eldon Lane, near Bishop Auckland, received a life sentence after admitting man-slaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, at Teesside Crown Court, in July last year.

A count of arson was left to rest on the file, while the judge also ordered that she serve at least three years behind bars before being considered for parole.

Pyle's lawyers launched a bid to have the sentence overturned, saying she was no longer a risk to the public.

But the case was dismissed by judge Lord Justice Kay, sitting at London's Criminal Appeal Court.

The judge said the case had an "unusual and tragic history", originating in Pyle's childhood when she first showed signs of her unstable and erratic temperament.

Her family ran a prosperous Scarborough hotel for many years, but were struck by tragedy in 1984 when Pyle's mother committed suicide.

In subsequent years, the family encountered financial problems as the hotel business foundered.

After her mother's death, Pyle went to live in the US, but had a series of failed relationships, her behaviour becoming increasingly unpredictable.

Lord Justice Kay said Pyle had formed the deeply held perception that her father was responsible for the death of her mother.

In 1996, she even told one of her brothers' partners that her father had murdered her mother and that she would kill him.

In the days before the killing, she had travelled to Scarborough, but was taken in by police after being seen wandering along a road on the outskirts of town.

Her father picked her up from Scarborough, driving her back to County Durham, where the events unfolded.

Mr Pyle - a well-respected member of the local community - received 86 wounds during his daughter's onslaught.

Pyle's counsel, Malcolm Swift QC, said she was no longer using cannabis and had come to terms with her earlier dependence on the drug.

Given that cannabis was the catalyst for her explosion of violence, she could no longer be considered a risk, he argued.

Lord Justice Kay, sitting with Mr Justice Goldring and Mrs Justice Cox, said the sentencing judge had given the matter careful consideration, also taking account of the fact that she was no longer considered mentally ill.

He said: "His main concern was that although she may have stopped using cannabis for the time being, if she started again, there was every reason to think her disturbed behaviour might repeat itself."