Cheating wife ‘died in sham post office robbery’

Villagers in Melsonby, near Richmond, thought that Robin and Diana Garbutt had a “rosy and loving relationship” but it was far from the full picture, David Hatton QC prosecuting told Teesside Crown Court yesterday.

“Behind the facade of a happy and financially comfortable couple there were problems and all was not as it might have appeared on the surface or to the public eye,” he said.

Diana Garbutt had been increasingly unfaithful to her husband and would regularly go on dating sites on the internet late at night while he was £30,000 in debt and probably using post office funds to fund their lifestyle.

Mr Hatton told the jury Mrs Garbutt had a “Badoo” homepage which advertised “I want to meet with a guy age 35-50” and either she or her husband, or both had accessed that on the evening before she was found dead last March.

Mrs Garbutt had also formed a relationship with a local man in North Yorkshire in 2009 and they chatted about sexual matters together on Facebook.

Using her maiden name of Keiffer, she had confided in that man that she was not happy in her marriage, asked him questions about divorce and spoke of moving out. She said her husband was not into sex and they were going to see a sex therapist.

“Their conversations on Facebook would have a sexual tone, telling each other what they would like to do to each other if they were alone together,” said Mr Hatton.

At 8.37am on March 23 last year Garbutt made a 999 call claiming the Post Office in Melsonby had been robbed for the second time in a year and reporting “my wife’s been attacked.”

He said “she’s gone a funny colour... and there’s blood on the pillow”.

He subsequently told officers a robber had come into the shop in the post office just after the safe alarm was de-activated, telling him not to do anything stupid “we’ve got your wife.”

He put money from the safe into a black holdall as directed before the robber left but then discovered his wife’s body upstairs in bed.

Mr Hatton told the jury it was the Crown’s case that: “There were no intruders in that village post office at that very busy time that spring morning. It was all in short a sham.”

That morning according to Garbutt there should have been £16,150 in the safe. “Whether such a sum, in fact and in reality, was in the safe on the night of 22 March is another matter.”

Garbutt and his wife were due to go on holiday to America the following week and any shortfall in accounts would have been revealed.

Mr Hatton suggested that post office cash was being used to service debts and keep up a lifestyle which they could not afford and that the sums declared as being in the safe were not in fact there.

“The prosecution contend that there was a welling of tension and pressure and ill-feeling.”

He told the jury Garbutt was allegedly seen by a villager crossing The Green shortly after 10pm the night before, which he later denied, having earlier that evening had his wife’s credit card rejected at a cash and carry.

On his return Mr Hatton claimed “the pressure, tension and ill-feeling erupted in extreme violence in which he killed his wife”.

Mrs Garbutt was struck three blows with a “rod” like object, one of which fractured her skull and would have caused rapid death.

Mr Hatton said a pathologist believed that she was likely to have died several hours before she was allegedly found.

Garbutt, 45, denies the murder of his wife on March 23 last year.

The jury heard the couple met in 1999 through a mutual friend and she moved in to Garbutt’s then home in Huby, York, in 2001. She was a court worker while he was a manager at Yortech but in 2003 they bought the Melsonby shop and post office, marrying the following month. Mrs Garbutt was trained to be the salaried postmistress but her interest waned and her husband ran the business.

The trial continues.