Robin Garbutt, 57, was found guilty of bludgeoning his wife Diana to death, and was said to have opened his post office and called 999 in a fake armed robbery in 2010
A postmaster claims he has a substantial dossier of new evidence in his appeal against his conviction for murdering his wife. Robin Garbutt, 57, was found guilty of bludgeoning his wife Diana to death in the early hours of March 23, 2010. He was said to have opened his post office and called 999 having faked an armed robbery in a bid to cover up his crime. His legal team has a new application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) backed by new submissions. They involve not only the post office Horizon computer scandal but also new forensic analysis of evidence.
Garbutt claims there is now enough doubt about the conviction to make it ‘unsafe’ and justify a retrial. The prosecution relied on evidence about Diana’s time of death based on her last meal of fish and chips.
The contents of her stomach put her time of death hours before Garbutt said the robbery took place. Friends have labelled his fourth application to the CCRC a “final roll of the dice”.
Diana’s family has accused him of ‘jumping on the Horizon bandwagon’. His legal team says that the evidence must be considered ‘as a whole’.
Garbutt, who has now been moved to a Cat C prison, says the couple’s ‘money troubles’ were based on flawed evidence from the post office computer at their business in the village of Melsonby, North Yorkshire. It played a central role in his 2011 trial at Teesside crown court.
He said: “I’m simply asking the CCRC to look at my case with all the Post Office evidence removed. It has been proved that their evidence in hundreds of other convictions was false. That should be a consideration.”
Mrs Garbutt, 40, was found in her bed in the flat above the post office and village shop they ran together. The prosecution said there were problems in their relationship and he spent thousands taking her on holidays in a bid to save the marriage. But there was no physical evidence linking him to the killing.
The trial also heard expert evidence from the Post Office’s now-discredited investigation department and drew on data from Horizon, the IT system implicated in the wrongful conviction of hundreds of postmasters for crimes including fraud and theft.
The Post Office’s internal investigator described suspicious cash declarations by Garbutt as a pattern, and said: “I have seen this replicated across many Post Office Limited fraud cases in the past.”
Garbutt said that he woke at 4am on the day that his wife was murdered and served 70 customers from 4.30am to 8.30am, the time when the royal mail automatically opened safes in local branches nationwide. He said armed robbers stormed the shop at 8.35 am, shouting: “Don’t be stupid, we have your wife upstairs.”
He made the 999 call just 73 seconds later. The prosecution said it was impossible for the robbers to order him to close the shop, empty the safe and escape in that time.
Garbutt said that he ran upstairs after the alleged ‘robbers’ left and found his wife’s body. The jury did not believe him. Vera Baird, just appointed as the interim chair of the CCRC, said: “We are going to look at people who think they have not had their miscarriages of justice properly referred.”
A CCRC spokesperson said: “An application has been received in relation to this case and a review is underway. It would be inappropriate to comment any further while the review is ongoing.”