by Robin Garbutt is a cold-blooded murderer, rightfully languishing in prison for beating his wife to death and fabricating a robbery at the Post Office to cover it up.
Or he is the victim of the biggest miscarriage of justice yet caused by Horizon’s faulty Post Office IT system.
Garbutt, 57, has spent the past 12 years in prison after being convicted in 2011 of murdering his wife Diana, 40, at their home above the Post Office they ran together in the pretty North Yorkshire village of Melsonby.
He protests his innocence and claims the Post Office produced evidence against him – drawing on Horizon’s IT system – to show he was stealing money to fund an extravagant lifestyle.
Without the Post Office’s analysis of Horizon’s evidence, Garbutt’s supporters have argued, much of the reason for the murder – and the way it was staged – also disappears.
Garbutt took his case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) three times in an attempt to force a retrial.
Three times they started it, in November last year when the CCRC concluded that “figures from the Horizon system were not necessary for his conviction of murder”.
But the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office has lit a new fire under the Horizon scandal and Garbutt, his lawyers and supporters have renewed hope that his conviction may yet be overturned.
The Crown’s case (Sir Keir Starmer was director of public prosecutions at the time, and the village sat in the Rishi Sunak constituency) was that Garbutt killed his postmistress wife in March 2010 because suspicion that she had an affair and fear. that thousands of pounds of Post Office money were about to be discovered.
Post Office investigators, who are understood to have been involved in the unsealed convictions of the sub-postmasters for fraud and theft, testified against Garbutt.
Summing up the jury at the time, the Honorable Judge Openshaw said: “It is the case of the prosecution that money was stolen from the Post Office and that the theft was concealed by a series of false declarations as to the amount. money in the saw.”
Appeal documents, seen by The Telegraph, show Horizon’s data was used to show a “pattern of fraud”.
A 10-2 jury rejected Garbutt’s claim that he was robbed at gunpoint and that a second assailant beat his wife to death.
‘The evidence that led to the conviction is no longer reliable’
But Dr Michael Naughton, a legal academic at the University of Bristol who runs the CCRC Watch campaign website and has studied the case, said: “The prosecution used Horizon’s evidence to support its claim that the reason for the murder was that Robin Garbutt was stealing money. from the Post Office side of the business and had to kill his wife to cover it up.
“Horizon was used to show that he was defrauding the Post Office. I don’t know if Robin Garbutt killed his wife or not, but I do know that the evidence that led to his conviction is no longer reliable and all aspects are discredited.”
Mark Stilborn, Garbutt’s brother-in-law, said on Friday: “The prosecution said there was an omission that motivated him to carry out the robbery. They said Diana was doing the accounts and she found out and that’s why he killed her.
But in light of the Horizon scandal, he said the evidence given by Post Office investigators may never have been put to the jury – or at least strongly challenged – that would have removed the main motive for the murder.
“I am 100 per cent sure Robin is innocent,” Mr Stilborn said. “Everyone who knows Robin knows that he is innocent. Robin is the nicest person you will ever meet.”
Edward Abel Smith, an author who wrote a book about the case, said: “They used the Horizon data to create a picture that showed that Robin had been stealing from the Post Office for some time and was now using the robbery to to cover the missing money. “
Campaigners point out that there is no forensic evidence linking Garbutt to the murder weapon – an iron bar found by police on a nearby wall two days after the killing. There is also great controversy regarding evidence beyond the time of death.
The prosecution alleged that Diana was killed in the middle of the night – rather than at 8.30am at the time of the robbery – and that her husband then opened the Post Office as usual and served the many customers. But the forensic report which gives the time of death is now controversial even though one customer who attended that morning did not notice anything strange about their behaviour.
To this day, Garbutt remains in prison, still protesting his innocence. He was sentenced to life and ordered to serve at least 20 years in prison. “He struck three savage blows, crushing her head and causing her immediate death as he intended,” said the trial judge, adding: “This was a brutal and premeditated murder of his wife as she slept in the bed. “
Outside court, Agnes Gaylor, Diana’s mother, refused to discuss her son-in-law. “I’m not thinking about Robin right now. I’m not going to let Robin get into my head after today,” she said at the time.
A statement from the CCRC issued in November 2022 regarding its refusal to refer the case said: “Much of Mr Garbutt’s application to the CCRC focused on the Horizon Office Post scandal, which resulted in the overturning of a number of fraud convictions and theft among former Post Office workers, many after being referred by the CCRC. The CCRC found that this argument could not assist Mr Garbutt, as figures from the Horizon system were not essential to his conviction of murder.”
But the CCRC itself is on fire. It has been slow to process appeals against the convictions of hundreds of wrongly prosecuted postmasters at the Post Office, and the case of Andy Malkinson, who was wrongly convicted and jailed for rape, prompted the Government to launch an inquiry into the handling his case. by the police, the CPS and the CCRC.
In the summer, Garbutt wrote an open letter to the CCRC chairman from his current home in HM Prison Wealstun. “The sight of horror” when his wife’s bloodied body is found “will live with me forever”, he wrote, adding: “By failing to take my case to the Court of Appeal you are failing me , on my poor wife and the safety of others because there is a murderer in general. And, as long as I am detained in prison, that will not change.”
He may or may not be a victim of the Horizon scandal, but campaigners say the truth will only get another trial.
