Murder accused husband denies ‘acting’ over post office 999 call

Robin Garbutt told a jury at Teesside Crown Court in re-examination by his own barrister Jamie Hill QC that he could not remember what he said to the emergency operator because of his state after finding his wife Diana on their bed.

Mr Hill said it was being suggested by the prosecution that after hitting his wife three times over the head with an iron bar he was pretending not to know where she was bleeding from.

“I have done no pretending, I didn’t hurt my wife,” insisted Garbutt.

He told the jury that when he was being questioned by police as a witness on the day of his wife’s death, “I’d never felt so lost” and said reliving it recently was disturbing. “It’s just difficult to cope with.”

Garbutt, 45, denies murdering his wife Diana, 40, above the post office and shop they ran in Melsonby, near Richmond, North Yorkshire, on March 23 last year and has told the jury he found her body after a gunman robbed the post office.

The prosecution claims the robbery was a sham and he killed his wife, driven by pressure of debts and her infidelity.

Garbutt’s mother Joyce Brook told the jury yesterday she spoke to her daughter-in-law Diana nearly every day having grown closer and closer to her over the years.

She said Diana described being abused before in two violent relationships and had told her Robin was “the only man she had ever trusted in her life”.

Mrs Brook said she had also been told by Diana earlier in their marriage that she and Robin had once seen a marriage guidance counsellor but that they could always sort their problems out by talking with each other.

She had seen them for her birthday and Mother’s Day the weekend before their last together and “they were their usual selves, very happy, joking, sitting side by side having a meal.”

She told the jury as far as she was concerned: “They were happy, looking forward to the future. Diana had lots of plans for the future, they were looking forward to going on together.

“Diana’s description, and she used it often about him, certainly in the last two weeks before she died was that he was a top guy.”

The trial continues.