Colin Abbott

An appeals court ruled Thursday that convicted killer Colin Abbott cannot back out of his plea arrangement to two counts of murder and instead have a trial.

However, the 43-year-old New Jersey man has not exhausted his appeal options. And one of his lawyers said there will be another appeal in the near future.

Abbott pleaded no contest to two third-degree murder charges in the shooting deaths of his wealthy father and stepmother in June 2011.

Prosecutors believe Abbott killed Kenneth Abbott, 65, and Celeste Abbott, 55, as part of a plan to erase $2 million in debt to his father and to inherit the couple's $4 million estate. Investigators found the couple's remains burned and scattered on their 25-acre Brady Township estate July 13, 2011.

In exchange for Abbott's plea, prosecutors dropped their intent to seek the death penalty and instead recommended his current sentence: 35 to 80 years in state prison.

But days after being sentenced, Abbott wrote a letter to Butler County Judge William Shaffer asking that the plea deal be undone and he be given a trial.

In addition to claiming he was under duress, Abbott alleged that a deteriorating relationship with one of his defense attorneys and unanswered questions about the evidence against him amounted to a “manifest injustice,” the standard to back out of a plea arrangement after sentencing.

Shaffer denied Abbott's request, asserting that the defendant's “demeanor and lucidity” during the plea hearings belied his claim that he was under extreme duress. Further, Shaffer wrote that even if all of Abbott's claims were true, they still wouldn't hit manifest injustice.

Abbott appealed to the state's Superior Court.

A three-judge panel affirmed Shaffer's decision, issuing an 8-page ruling Thursday.

“We agree with (Shaffer's) assessment and discern no abuse of discretion in denying (Abbott's) postsentence request to withdraw his plea,” Judge Judith Ference Olson wrote on behalf of the panel, which also included President Judge John T. Bender and Judge Susan Peikes Gantman.

The opinion goes on to note that prosecutors in the Butler County District Attorney's Office had presented as evidence a compact disc containing nine recorded telephone calls made of Abbott from prison during which the defendant “and his mother discussed ways to garner publicity and to create judicial chaos by filing the motion to withdraw his plea. These additional statements further belie (Abbott's) assertion on manifest injustice.”

Public Defender Joseph Smith, one of several attorneys who has or had represented Abbott during criminal proceedings, said he will now take his appeal argument to the state's Supreme Court.

Abbott, at this point, could also ask the whole Superior Court to revisit the issue or he could file a motion under the Post Conviction Relief Act, which would raise other issues from the court process and often includes a complaint that a lawyer represented the defendant in an ineffective manner.

Abbott is serving his sentence in a state prison in Somerset.