ALBANY – On Thursday, the Chenango County District Attorney’s Office was informed that the latest – and last – appeal from three-time convicted murderer Peter Wlasiuk was denied, and that the 2012 conviction was affirmed.

Wlasiuk, 47, formerly of Oxford, is currently serving 25 years to life in the Attica Correctional Facility for a second-degree murder charge after three jury trials stretching more than a decade.

In the early morning hours of April 3, 2002, the Chenango County Sheriff's Office responded to a reported motor vehicle accident at Guilford Lake, where Wlasiuk was found waiting for emergency personnel.

At the scene, Wlasiuk told first responders that his wife had been driving [his] pickup truck and had swerved to avoid a deer on County Road 35. Wlasiuk indicated that his wife accidentally drove the vehicle into the lake.

Wlasiuk later changed the story to indicate his wife had intentionally driven into the lake, but police would begin to question Wlasiuk's credibility after a pathology report found no evidence of water in Patricia Wlasiuk's lungs, which led investigators to probe Peter Wlasiuk for even more detail. That set a series of changing stories and the discovery of incriminating physical evidence into motion.

In the end, the investigation would reveal a completely different scenario, and Wlasiuk was eventually charged with murder after a lengthy and careful investigation concluded that [he] smothered Patricia in the backyard of the couple’s home on New Virginia Road in the Town of Oxford, placed the victim in the bed of the pickup truck and pushed the pickup into the water of Guilford Lake to stage the accident.

Thursday's affirmation handed down from N.Y. Third Division Appellate Court closes the door to any future overturning in the People v. Peter Wlasiuk case, after two earlier dismissals on appeal.