Infidelity and debt blighted ‘perfect couple’

But kind smiles and public displays of affection masked cracks in a dysfunctional marriage blighted by debt and infidelity and which ended in murder.

The couple met in 1999 after a friend and work colleague of Garbutt’s took Mrs Garbutt in as a lodger at his house in York.

Garbutt, who grew up with two sisters in a village near Alne, North Yorkshire, was living in Huntington, York, at the time and working for Yortech, a family-run car parts business.

His friend described his new lodger as a “lass from Blackburn”, but she too had Yorkshire roots.

She grew up in Eggborough from the age of six before attending Brayton High School and Selby College. Her mother, Agnes Gaylor, runs the Boot and Shoe pub in Gowdall, near Selby.

Mrs Garbutt, whose maiden name was Keiffer, worked as a senior custody manager at courts in Leeds and Harrogate. She and Garbutt saw more and more of each other, and eventually decided to live together in Huby.

They bought the shop in Melsonby in March 2003, putting down a deposit of between £50,000 and £60,000 from the sale of his house, and married the following month.

They worked together to renovate the living quarters and, after training as a postmistress, Mrs Garbutt made sandwiches, buns and cards to sell in the shop.

But profits were low. Despite earning less than £20,000 in the financial year 2009-10, the couple went on expensive holidays and had been due to leave for a three-week trip to the US only a few days after Mrs Garbutt was killed.

Mrs Garbutt was fond of the US, having lived there when she was very young while her father served in the US Air Force.

The couple enjoyed seven breaks in 2009, including two stays costing more than £2,000 in total at the Devonshire Arms country house hotel and spa in Bolton Abbey, and visits to Amsterdam, Paris, York, and Embleton in Northumberland.

But the holidays were booked in an attempt to spice up a marriage lacking intimacy. Garbutt would work in the shop from 4am and would retire to bed early at night, leaving his wife increasingly frustrated by his low sex drive.

Garbutt admitted to police that his wife wanted more sex but he felt uncomfortable doing it in the living quarters above the shop.

The couple received marriage counselling and even discussed the idea of Mrs Garbutt renting a place elsewhere in the village to give her “more space”, but their relationship only deteriorated and she sought comfort from other men.

The holidays also added to Garbutt’s money problems. He had six credit cards with a total debt of £30,000, an HSBC current account with a £2,000 overdraft which he said had “probably been near the limit” since he was 18, and a business account into which he had to move “about a grand” each week to avoid exceeding its £10,000 overdraft limit.

Garbutt’s mother Joyce Brook, who spoke to Mrs Garbutt almost every day on the telephone, said she knew the couple had problems but they sorted them because they always talked things through together.

Mrs Brook said her daughter-in-law had been in two violent relationships in the past and had told her that Garbutt was the “only man she had ever trusted” and a “top guy”.

Former Melsonby resident Marie Banks, who runs an ironing service and knew the couple well, said she never saw them argue: “Robin used to say he didn’t know why couples fought.”

Roslyn Shedden, who helped celebrate Mrs Garbutt’s 40th birthday by joining her at the Glastonbury music festival, said the couple would exchange playful banter and were good company, adding: “I felt their personalities really suited each other.”

However, as prosecutor David Hatton QC told the court, “Only two people knew what their relationship was really like, and one of them is dead.”