Horizon used to convict worker for murder

Husband claims evidence that sent him to jail for life for killing his wife was tainted by same IT system

ROBIN GARBUTT is either a coldblooded murderer, rightly languishing in jail for battering his wife to death and then inventing a robbery at their Post Office to cover it up.

Or else he is the victim of the greatest miscarriage of justice yet perpetrated by the Post Office’s Horizon IT system.

Garbutt, 57, has spent the last 12 years in jail after being convicted in 2011 of the murder of his wife Diana, 40, at their home above the Post Office they ran in Melsonby, North Yorks.

Garbutt protests his innocence and claims the Post Office produced evidence against him – drawing on the Horizon IT system – to show that he was stealing money to fund an extravagant lifestyle. Without the Post Office’s own analysis of the Horizon evidence, claim Garbutt’s supporters, then a huge chunk of the motive for the murder – and the manner in which it was staged – disappears too.

Garbutt has taken his case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) three times in an attempt to force a retrial. Three times they have kicked it into touch, most recently in November last year when the CCRC concluded that “figures from the Horizon system were not essential to his conviction for murder”.

But the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post

Office has lit a fresh fire under the Horizon scandal and given Mr Garbutt, his lawyers and supporters renewed hope that his conviction could yet be overturned.

The Crown’s case (Sir Keir Starmer was director of public prosecutions at the time, while the village sits in Rishi Sunak’s constituency) was that Garbutt had killed his wife, who was the postmistress, over suspicions she was having an affair and fears that his theft of thousands of pounds of Post Office money was about to be discovered.

Post Office investigators, who it is understood had been involved in the unsafe convictions of sub-postmasters for fraud and theft, gave evidence against Garbutt.

Appeal documents, seen by The Daily

Telegraph, show that Horizon data was used to show a “pattern of fraud”.

Garbutt’s own claim that he had been robbed at gunpoint and that his wife had been battered to death by a second assailant was rejected by a jury.

But Dr Michael Naughton, a law academic at Bristol University who runs the campaign website CCRC Watch and has studied the case, said: “Horizon was used to show he was defrauding the Post Office. I don’t know if Robin Garbutt did or did not kill his wife, but I do know that the evidence that led to his conviction is no longer reliable and every aspect has been discredited.”

Mark Stilborn, Garbutt’s brother-inlaw, said: “The prosecution said there was a shortfall which gave him a motive to stage the robbery. They said Diana was doing the accounts and she found out and that is why he killed her.”

But in the 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 would have been vigorously challenged – removing a key motive for the murder. “I am 100 per cent sure Robin is innocent,” said Mr Stilborn, “Everybody who knows Robin knows he is innocent.”

Edward Abel Smith, who is writing a book about the case, said: “They used Horizon data to build a picture which showed Robin had been stealing from the Post Office for some time and was now using the robbery to cover up the missing money.”

Campaigners point out that no forensic evidence links Garbutt to the murder weapon – an iron bar that was found by police on a wall nearby two days after the killing. Evidence over the time of her death is also hotly disputed.

The prosecution alleged Mrs Garbutt 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 normal. But the forensics report giving the time of death is now hotly disputed while not a single customer served noticed anything strange about Mr Garbutt’s demeanour. ‘I am 100 per cent sure that Robin is innocent. Everyone who knows him knows that he is innocent’

For now Garbutt remains in jail, still protesting his innocence. He was sentenced to life and ordered to serve a minimum of 20 years in jail. “He struck three savage blows, smashing her skull and causing her immediate death as clearly he intended,” said the trial judge.

In a statement issued in November 2022, the CCRC in refusing to refer the case said: “Much of Mr Garbutt’s application to the CCRC focused on the Post Office Horizon scandal, which has led to a number of fraud and theft convictions of former Post Office workers being overturned, many after referral by the CCRC. The CCRC decided that this argument could not assist Mr Garbutt, as figures ‘The evidence that led to Robin Garbutt’s conviction is no longer reliable and every aspect has been discredited’ from the Horizon system were not essential to his conviction.”

In the summer, Garbutt wrote an open letter to the chairman of the CCRC from HM Prison Wealstun.

“The horror scene” on finding his wife’s bloodied body, “will live with me forever,” he wrote, adding:

“By failing to progress my case to the Court of Appeal you are failing myself, my poor wife and the safety of others as there is a murderer at large. And, whilst I am detained in prison, that will not change.”

He may or may not be a victim of the Horizon scandal but campaigners say only a retrial will get to the truth.

Robin Garbutt with his late wife Diana, above, and in his police mugshot, below