Three top judges have rejected a nurse’s bid to clear his name after he was jailed for slashing his former girlfriend’s horse to the bone with a knife in St Albans.

The nurse, 45-year-old Sebastiano Mauro, had been sentenced to five years’ jail after taking revenge on his ex-girlfriend Nathalie Kelderman by attacking her horse.

After Miss Kelderman ended their relationship, the father-of-two went to the Bricket Wood stables in July 2011 where her 10-year-old bay Jessie was being kept.

The horse was later found bleeding heavily, having been cut to the bone with a blade.

In 2012 Mauro, of Chatteris, Cambridgeshire, was convicted after a jury found him guilty of taking revenge on Miss Kelderman by attacking her horse, and going equipped for burglary intending to inflict grievous bodily harm on her.

Mauro launched a challenge to his conviction at London’s Court of Appeal.

But last Thursday, a panel of judges ruled against his bid for an adjournment of his case and rejected the appeal. Judge Clement Goldstone said Mauro’s complaints were “without merit”. The Sicilian met Miss Kelderman through a dating website and the pair had a stormy relationship, prosecutors said at his trial.

In his appeal, Mauro made a series of complaints about the way that his trial was conducted.

And he said he needed an adjournment so that a potentially key witness could be found and interviewed.

But, giving judgement, Judge Goldstone, sitting with Lady Justice Sharp and Mr Justice Irwin, rejected the arguments, adding: “This case requires finality and finality it will now get.”

He said the judges had “read and re-read a very substantial bundle of documentation” but there was no merit in Mauro’s application. His convictions were upheld.

During Mauro’s trial two years ago, the court was told that he had slashed a deep cut on the inside of the horse’s right hind leg, that left the bone visible and blood pouring from its wound at stables at Little Munden Farm in School Lane, Bricket Wood. He was later seen on CCTV going into the stable.

Two months after the attack, while released on bail, he was discovered by two police officers yards from Miss Kelderman’s flat armed with a carving knife, screwdrivers, tourniquet and syringes containing his own blood. At his trial Mauro was made the subject of a prohibition order, forbidding him from going anywhere near Miss Kelderman, or her horse.