Postmistress murderer Robin Garbutt loses appeal

Robin Garbutt was handed a 20-year minimum term for the murder of his wife

A shopkeeper who bludgeoned his postmistress wife to death has lost a challenge against his murder conviction at the Court of Appeal.

Robin Garbutt, 46, was jailed for life in April 2011 and ordered to serve a minimum of 20 years in prison.

His trial heard he beat his 40-year-old wife Diana to death in their home above the village store in Melsonby, North Yorkshire, in March 2010.

Three Court of Appeal judges in London said his conviction was safe.

A jury at Teesside Crown Court heard he battered his wife to death in their bedroom before opening their post office and shop.

During the trial, Garbutt claimed an intruder with a gun told him "don't do anything stupid, we've got your wife" before robbing him as he worked, and that moments later he discovered his wife's body in bed in their living quarters.

The fresh material relied on in the appeal related to Post Office records going back to 2004.

Garbutt's trial had been told that part of the reason he killed his wife was that he feared his theft of thousands of pounds from the post office they ran was about to be discovered.

'We are clear'

It was submitted on Garbutt's behalf that the pattern shown by the records "cannot be relied upon as demonstrating thefts of Post Office cash".

Announcing the court's decision to reject the challenge, Lord Justice Hughes accepted that if the jury had had the full records, "it would have supported the defendant in something that he said, namely that he had always held large sums in the safe, and the jury would have been likely to take a different view of his credibility generally".

But he added: "The premise on which this appeal has so well been argued is that the jury may have proceeded from theft to murder.

"We have asked ourselves anxiously whether that might be so. We are clear that it cannot be."

He said the court was "quite satisfied that the possibility of there having been the robbery which the defendant described must have been rejected quite independently of the financial evidence".

Lord Justice Hughes concluded: "We are quite satisfied that this conviction is not unsafe and that the late disclosure of the additional Post Office records does not render it so.

"The appeal must accordingly be dismissed."