Postmaster jailed for wife's murder seeks to appeal conviction, claiming new evidence from Horizon IT scandal
3 October 2024, 11:24
A former sub-postmaster serving life in prison for murdering his wife is seeking to appeal his conviction, claiming the Horizon IT scandal and Post Office Inquiry have shed new light on his case.
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Diana Garbutt was in 2010 found bludgeoned to death in her bed at her North Yorkshire home after what her husband Robin Garbutt claimed was an armed robbery.
After officers found inconsistencies in Garbutt's story, he was accused of staging the robbery and later convicted of his wife's murder. Garbutt has always maintained his innocence.
He now claims that evidence from the Horizon IT system and the Post Office helped convict him of the murder after prosecutors alleged that he had also been stealing money from his branch.
Diana's mother, however, has maintained her belief that her son-in-law is guilty and accused him of "jumping on the Horizon bandwagon".
Hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly convicted for stealing due to faults in the Horizon computer system between 1999 and 2015.
The sub-postmasters were sacked or prosecuted after money appeared to vanish from accounts at their branches. The problems were caused by the Horizon computer system in Post Office branches which turned out to be flawed.
Garbutt's lawyers have now applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission to have his case sent back to the Court of Appeal, claiming that the outcome of the Post Office Inquiry sheds new light on his conviction.
Former Post Office Minister Kevin Hollinrake said he was backing the fresh review.
Diana was found dead in the couple's flat in 2010 which was above the Post Office they ran together in the North Yorkshire village of Melsonby. She was found attacked in her bed, inflicted by a metal bar.
Garbutt has maintained that they were the victims of an armed robbery after a man held him up at gunpoint, forcing him to open the branch and hand over £16,000. He then ran upstairs and discovered Diana's body, he claimed.
The prosecution accused him of staging the robber and stealing the money from his branch before killing Diana to cover it up.
They alleged that he was in financial difficulty and that he and his wife were in the midst of relationship problems.
The court was told Diana had been unfaithful and up until the night she died she had been logging on to an internet dating site.
While there was no physical evidence linking Garbutt to his wife's murder, a jury found him guilty.
Throughout the case, the prosecution relied on data from the Horizon system and how it was interpreted by the Post Office.
They claimed Garbutt was concealing his theft by making false declarations on the amount of cash he was holding in his Post Office safe and that there was never £16,000 to hand over to armed robbers.
Two Post Office witnesses testified against him, with one suggesting the cash amount stolen was suspicious and indicative of fraud.
Unlike other Horizon IT cases, this did not detail issues with shortfalls in branch accounts.
Following the public inquiry into the Post Office, Garbutt's prosecutors said: "We believe that fresh evidence and other important developments that have come to light since the original trial, now mean that Mr Garbutt’s conviction is not safe.
Writing a letter of support to Garbutt, Conservative MP Kevin Hollinrake - who went to school with the convicted murderer but outlined that was not why he was backing the review - told the BBC: "I can’t speculate whether Robin Garbutt is guilty or innocent, but I think we all want to make sure that people when they go through the justice system get a fair hearing."
Garbutt has failed to appeal his conviction three times.
