The 2010 murder in the sleepy North Yorkshire village of Melsonby shocked and terrified the close-knit community who used to gather at the post office to catch up.
Diana Garbutt, 40, who ran the business with her husband Robin, was bludgeoned to death in her bed on March 23, 2010, and a year later he was found guilty of her murder.
Yet still today, 14 years on, locals, friends and experts are unconvinced that Robin – a man described by Diana’s cousin as ‘a nice, quiet fella’ – could have committed such a heinous crime.
The couple were well-known and well-liked in the village after moving there in 2003. Joining the Post Office so they could work together, Robin was known for his sense of humour and Diana was sociable, staying up late in the local pub chatting to regulars. So when she was violently killed in 2010, children were left terrified that a murderer was on the loose and the locals started locking their doors.
On 23 March, Robin opened the shop as normal and served around 60 customers before dialling 999, crying hysterically over the phone that he’d been robbed and his wife attacked. A harrowing scream from the recorded call seems to capture him discovering his wife motionless in bed.
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By the time paramedics arrived, Diana was already dead.
Police vehicles, crime scene investigation ambulance, police cars swarmed the tiny village and, with his home a crime scene, Robin went to his sister Sallie Wood’s home in Kirby Misperton, 60 miles away.
Speaking on the new Sky documentary Murder at the Post Office, she says: ‘It was just unbelievable. I was so shocked. I couldn’t take it in. He was broken. He’d lost her. And knowing he’d lost her, was so much for him.’
Describing him as absolutely devoted to his wife, Sallie goes on: ‘Robin is a calm, quiet, caring person. As soon as he met Di he fell in love straight away. She was his number one priority. As long as Di was happy. Robin was happy. She was his world. I can’t imagine what he saw and how it affected him.’
However, on 14 April, Robin was arrested at his sister’s house, handcuffed and taken into police custody. 48 hours later he was charged with murder. It was a blow to the villagers, many of whom didn’t believe Robin could be guilty of such a crime.
Diana’s cousin Trevor Roberts tells the documentary: ‘You can’t imagine that someone’s killed their wife when there’s been no conflict. She didn’t seem to be vulnerable living with Robin. He was just a nice quiet fella, friendly with everybody.’
At trial, the prosecution argued that Robin had been stealing from the Post Office to pay credit card debts, and that when he found out his wife was cheating on him, he killed her in a fit of rage.
In 2011, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to twenty years behind bars.
Robin has always maintained his innocence and is now going through his fourth application to the Criminal Case Review Commission, supported by Dr Michael Naughton, founder of the Bristol University Innocence Project and reader in sociology and law.
Dr Naughton says Robin was convicted with discredited evidence, poor investigation and other problematic issues – not least the disastrous Horizon software system.
More than 700 sub postmasters who were prosecuted for theft, fraud or false accounting due to errors with the IT system have been exonerated in one of the most shocking miscarriages of justice in modern British history.
The prosecution in Robin’s case heavily relied on Horizon-derived evidence to establish a motive, arguing that he experienced severe financial pressure and had been stealing post office cash to repay credit card debts,eventually killing Diana to cover up this theft.
In January 2024, Robin spoke to Metro after watching the ITV drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, about the Horizon scandal.
Speaking from HMP Wealstun, he said: ‘‘Those poor people. I also know what it is like to be falsely accused and the hurt it causes for loved ones and friends.
‘My conviction was not brought solely on the Post Office evidence but that was needed to slight my good name and provide the prosecution with a motive of theft.’
Dr Naughton adds: ‘There is evidence that [Robin and Diana] made complaints about Horizon readings, that they got new Horizon software installed in their post office, that there were ongoing problems with Horizon.’
He also calls into question the way Diana’s character was smeared in court to build a motive for Robin’s crime. The prosecution argued that she was trapped in a loveless marriage, that she was active on a dating site the night before she was killed and that Diana had cheated on Robin more than once.
But Dr Naughton tells Metro: ‘I’ve never known a case where the victim has had her character assassinated in the way that Diana’s was. I contrast it with the Yorkshire Ripper case of Peter Sutcliffe whose victims were sex workers.
‘None of those women were ever written about in newspapers as women who sold sex, because these women were victims of a murderer, with children, and families.
‘I think it’s outrageous to try to strengthen the case against Robin Garbutt in that way. Every day of every week, people have affairs – there are around 120,000 divorces each year in England and Wales. They’re not all going to murder each other. I think it is despicable that she was treated in that way.’
Dr Naughton also points to a slew of errors in the investigation that could have exonerated Robin or incriminated another individual. He asks what happened to a clump of hair found on Diana’s pillow – lighter than her husband’s – that has since been lost by North Yorkshire Police, and why the metal pole, with Diana’s and another individual’s DNA on it, found on a wall near the post office, didn’t have Robin’s genetic material on it.
‘It is extraordinary, to have something which is thought to be the murder weapon, and for the person who’s accused and then charged and convicted to not be on the murder weapon,’ he says.
There were also two bloodied lamps in crime scene photographs that have never been tested, alongside a BB gun and a balaclava found near the crime scene. And the discovery of a pair of soiled underpants found with blood on them in the bin outside the post office.
‘When people burgle people’s houses, sometimes they poo in their houses. It’s such an awful thing to do, but when people get frightened, their fight or flight kicks in and their bowel evacuates. It’s just a spontaneous thing. Yet [the underpants] have never been examined.’
‘There are so many things that the police did with this case – incompetence, evading, putting things away that can’t be tested, and then the benefit of the doubt always seems to be with the police, Dr Naughton says.
A spokesperson for North Yorkshire Police told Metro: ‘The facts surrounding this case have been set out during court proceedings, which resulted in Robin Garbutt being sentenced in 2011.’
In 2022, the Criminal Cases Review Commission found no grounds to take the trial to the Court of Appeal. And last year, Diana Garbutt’s mother, Agnes Gaylor, said she believed the conviction was safe, and that Robin was exploiting the Post Office scandal to his own ends.
Even so, Dr Naughton argues that there is a public interest to reinvestigate this murder, not least because an innocent man could have spent 14 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, but because the actual killer or killers are still roaming free.
‘If the post office scandal is the greatest miscarriage of justice in British legal history, well Robin Garbutt, if he’s innocent, is the most egregious victim,’ he adds.
Murder at the Post Office will air on Sky and streaming service NOW on 29 December
