- 6 hours ago
Murder At The Post Office - Season 1 Episode 3 - Another Side To The Story
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Short filmTranscript
00:00I'll tell you a little story I don't know whether you'll want to include this but I'll tell you a
00:13little story so only three weeks ago I was in the pub and somebody who hasn't lived in the village
00:20that long was leaving and somebody said to him oh are you going he says oh I'm just going to take
00:27the wife home I'm just going to walk her home she wants to go kind of thing he says he's got to be
00:31careful you know you can get murdered in this village and they kept joking about it these two
00:37people and I just looked around and I went enough and he went what what I'm only saying the facts
00:44and I went enough and he apologized and he said I'm so sorry I said she was one of my best friends you
00:55know it didn't leave our our lives it was all consuming that was all anybody was talking about
01:05it's such a central part to the village isn't it wherever you come from that's where you end up
01:12you know there was as I find here a substantial degree of pre-meditation
01:24having armed himself with the bar the defendant must have waited until Diana Garbutt was asleep
01:31and in the early hours of the morning crept silently into her bedroom
01:36he struck her head three savage blows with the bar smashing her skull and causing her immediate death
01:45as he plainly intended
01:47he told the same ludicrous story from beginning to end
01:52by their verdict the jury have exposed this to be pure humbug
01:58this was a brutal planned and cold-blooded murder of his wife she lay fast asleep in her own bed
02:08it was just how how have you come to this decision what have you based this decision on
02:17because it isn't evidence
02:19I order that the defendant serves a minimum term of 20 years before he is considered for release by the parole board
02:29the jury were told to be sure that he was guilty and I wasn't sure
02:36guilty Robin Garbutt is sent to prison for a minimum of 20 years for murdering his postmistress wife
02:43he never stopped did he no he was going to prove that there was somebody out there that done this to die
02:51lawyers for a former sub postmaster from North Yorkshire are seeking a fresh appeal
02:55after arguing that the inquiry into the post office IT scandal shed new light on his case
03:00in my opinion there's another side to this story
03:04I looked at the statements from the post's officials and immediately I said
03:08well hang on a minute the jury haven't been given all the facts here
03:11this case may be the most egregious miscarriage of justice stemming from the post office scandal
03:41from my memory the verdict came in the afternoon
03:54by the time we left the court probably later than it normally would have been I was exhausted
04:04and then I started heading for home and never felt so far away from home
04:11it just makes you realize that if you know you're lucky that you can go home
04:25didn't feel as if there's closure now
04:29which is what you'd hope for or you might expect
04:31you do hear families talking about justice what does justice taste like
04:41I don't know
04:47I want to know what happened you know I don't think we have heard what happened
04:52we haven't heard the truth
04:58convicted
05:01feel lost
05:0320 years
05:05how could they have ignored my evidence
05:08no dna on murder weapon relating to me
05:14unknown dna on pillow
05:15clump of light brown hair on pillow photographed then lost by police
05:23no evidence connecting me with the murder
05:28we would have conversations with robin when we when we went in into prison and he would also write
05:35so you know robin could give us an idea of you know what he thought we could help with
05:40he's an optimistic person but i'm sure underneath robin felt let down by the system
05:50does it surprise me that he's still protesting his innocence it doesn't really
05:55the only thing you can do is make a judgment on what's known and what's in the public domain really
06:00if there's something completely extraordinary which hasn't emerged which proves him to be innocent then
06:07you know that would that of course would would explain his stance and it would be most horrendous
06:13miscarriage of justice if that were the case
06:19my phd is on miscarriages of justice and then i started to write specifically about
06:25prisoners maintaining innocence
06:28and then i just was inundated with requests from people who were saying you're writing about me
06:34please can you help me you know how does the appeal system actually help the innocent who
06:39are caught up in this because our system actually doesn't care if you're innocent or guilty it's
06:44about process the work i do now for 12 years i set up the innocence projects in britain trying to
06:51overturn these wrongful convictions when they happen but i heard about robin's case through friend of
06:56robin's and that's how i started to look into it
06:59and as things stand there is no credible forensic evidence that suggests that robin murdered diana
07:08it's just circumstantial evidence
07:12so i haven't seen anything that says he did it but i don't know but i'd like to know
07:22it's now more than two years since diana garbutt's body was found in the bedroom of the post office they
07:27ran together in melsonby in north yorkshire he's always maintained his innocence claiming his wife
07:33was murdered by a masked intruder at trial the prosecution didn't believe the robbery took place
07:39they said that robin was stealing money it all blew up in the middle of the night he killed her for it
07:45it wasn't just that you found out she'd been sleeping with somebody or she'd been kissing someone
07:50it was also to do with finances
07:55i joined the post office in 1978 and then in 1988 my wife and i bought our own post office and
08:04we ran that branch for 38 years and all throughout that time i played a role helping and representing
08:12some postmasters when they got into disputes with the post office
08:15at trial experts from the post office working with the police and the prosecution they said
08:23that he was stealing money which undermined his version that we were robbed and that money was stolen
08:33in 2011 the jury would have had complete faith and trust in the post office it was a british
08:39institution so when an official from that organization turns out and gives evidence under oath you
08:46listen you know and you tend not to disbelieve what you're being told the prosecution in robin garbert's
08:52trial claimed data from the horizon system showed he was stealing from the couple's post office in
08:57melsonby in north yorkshire and killed diana to cover it up everyone likes to know there's a motive
09:05that they can understand and the potential of a motive through the misuse of cash seems to have
09:11been quite impacting on the jury at the end of the day each branch entered into the horizon system
09:20a cash declaration and that assisted then this algorithm to look back at the ins and the outs of
09:27customer transactions to see what cash you held in branch if they thought you had too much cash on the
09:34premises you'd get an automated request from horizon telling you how much money it thinks you should
09:40send back but a lot of postmasters simply ignored that because it was wrong and it was quite common
09:50behavior for a postmaster to do that robin knew how his post office ran and he actually stated that if
09:58you get the graph of our previous years overnight cash holdings and follow the graphs of rise and peaks
10:04and falls it'll follow what i'm declaring in my post office but the post office at trial said oh
10:13not available that information haven't we found out after trial it was available when they finally got
10:21the records i looked at the statements from the postal's officials and i could see no evidence of
10:27any fraud taking place that's would going to benefit mr garber it showed that actually this is
10:33consistent with the way that branch conducted the cash management
10:42it wasn't until after trial we'd looked into it more after drowning we'd got of previous seven
10:47years overnight cash holders that proved the records were correct that enabled us then to go forward to
10:53the appeal card today robin garford's legal team came back to court to claim fresh evidence could clear
11:09his name post office accounting records which they argued supported his side of the story
11:16when it comes to an appeal the court of appeal only receives cases if there's fresh evidence or there's
11:25an exceptional reason why the evidence that was available wasn't used that evidence judges said here
11:32today should have been made available to robin garbert during his trial but for jurors to acquit him they
11:39said they would have to believe that his wife was killed instantly that she raised no alarm and that
11:44garbert who was downstairs at the time heard nothing at all
11:51that they said was highly improbable
11:5824th of may not back day we are stuck with circumstantial evidence i feel so bad
12:07i have let die down again those killers are still out there
12:10there is always hope but how strong i am will be the test and time will tell
12:19the reason the appeal failed is that regardless of what happened with horizon regardless of what
12:25his financial situation was his version of events of a robber coming in and killing her it just wasn't
12:30plausible not a single witness was found who corroborated this notion of a robber getting in and
12:37getting out without being seen it just it just didn't add up tonight's north yorkshire police has
12:42said it hopes today's decision will mean diana garbutt's family can begin to rebuild their lives
12:49despite some in the village still supportive of the man convicted of her killing robin garbert will
12:54tonight continue his 20-year jail sentence
13:10in court they said that nobody could have got in and out of the post office on that morning
13:17what people didn't realize is you can access through the back of the garages
13:25it's a small little snicket down some steps and if robin was bringing in the stock he would have had
13:33the back door wedged open and the door into the shop would have been open
13:41so if robin's gone in through the shop and into the little stock room there
13:51quite easy for somebody to come down them steps who's been waiting in the back of the garages
13:58the staircase is immediately through that door and upstairs
14:03somebody could have got in there and gone upstairs easy access
14:11so they've got in unbeknown to him got upstairs murdered up why why would you murder her what's
14:17a kind of benefit from the robber's perspective there why why is the robber doing it why would
14:20you murder the postmaster's wife before you get access to the safe so rather than being a robber
14:25you're a murderer hey listen i'm not saying there's a logic to what robbers do but i can't i'm kind of
14:31struggling to see why you would do that in that context really it is unfortunately a common occurrence for
14:40robberies to take place through quite sophisticated means sometimes i have heard of branches being
14:47broken into where perpetrators have waited for the family to come down in the morning and then they
14:53pounce on them make them open the safe and get out before the public are letting i've heard of that on
15:00many occasions invariably there was evidence of of planning and the ones that would hide in the building
15:07if they could they were the ones in my opinion that would have taken the trouble to plan their attack
15:15the way postmas alarms would work is that their time lock safes didn't take sherlock combs to work
15:22out that i've got to wait until the time locks release otherwise i'm going to set all the alarms off
15:29and as soon as it stopped they'd know that they can open the safe and that's the moment a
15:33bandit would choose to appear and carry out the robbery after the appeal and lost the appeal the
15:47work started with robin in prison you know letters going backwards and forwards asking for wanting stuff
15:55and looking at stuff and the work was absolutely relentless
16:01trying to you know put things together find things out as best we could
16:05we plugged away and sort of helped him the best he could and he'd do all the work from his his cell
16:13realistically the work he did didn't he he just didn't give in i copied and copied and copied and
16:20copied didn't i for hours copying yeah and sending to him so he could look at it and then he could write
16:25to his people couldn't he wrote to specialists he he never stopped did he no he was going to prove
16:32that there was somebody out there that had done this to die and if he could prove he hadn't done it
16:38then that person would be found
16:40i've struggled with robin getting attention he's always maintained his innocence
17:03of course i understand if he is innocent then it's terrible if he's wrongly convicted of a crime he
17:13didn't do and is serving a lengthy time in prison
17:19but at the same time it's about getting the truth about what happened to diana that's the
17:27most important thing is diana
17:34she was a real person and she was special
17:43i just think there can be too much attention and limelight given to the wrong thing
17:54the only body that can refer your case back to the court of appeal
18:08is the ccrc the criminal case review commission
18:12and the thing about the ccrc
18:14is it can only refer a case back to the court of appeal if there's fresh evidence that wasn't
18:21available at the time of the original trial and so it goes what is fresh what is new
18:27you since you were convicted
18:33i got involved in the diana garbot murder case at the request of solicitors acting for the defendant
18:43the original trial the really key evidence against him was about the fact that the pathologist had
18:49said that she died in the early hours of the morning
18:51it was kind of between 2 30 and 4 30 was said to the jury and obviously they were saying that they
18:57had evidence which suggested that that wasn't quite as clear cut that it could have been later which
19:02would have you know tallied with his version of events of a robber coming in and killing that sort of
19:06thing in terms of estimation of the time of death i think all the pathologists involved almost all
19:13agreed on nearly everything so we know when she was last seen alive we know when she was found so
19:20that's the first thing and then we then start to look at the ragel mortis does that really assist not
19:27really the hypostasis the settling of blood that doesn't really assist the body temperature was
19:34measured but even that is variable and when you actually look at the sort of plots and the graphs
19:39it doesn't really take us any further than the two parameters when she was last seen when she was found
19:45dead so then we come into the stomach contents which is the one area where i thought there was problems
19:56this is the uh statement from jennifer miller this time of death ladies and gentlemen dr miller
20:05a botanist who also specializes in digestion as far as the time of death goes when it came to trial
20:12the food science lady said that the digestion rate of the food showed that dana died in the
20:16allowance of the morning because of the remaining undigested food in the stomach she concluded that
20:23the most likely time of death was within the window of 2 30 until 4 30 a.m during the trial i believe the
20:31time frames were said to be between half past two and half past four which really shouldn't be that
20:38specific because you don't know the variability in the meal size that started off precisely when she
20:45ate that meal did she eat all of the meal i mean there's just so many variables that to be so specific
20:52just didn't stand up when an expert gives a time slot of death it doesn't make for powerful evidence
21:00especially when the jurors are used to films and television where the thought just comes along and
21:07says i at the time of death was ten past eight these days on a much more sort of scientific
21:13basis that pathology works on we don't do that at all having reviewed all of the material i just felt
21:20that the timing of death wasn't as specific as was suggested and then in fact we had a much broader
21:28time frame over which to operate including timings that would fit in with the account provided by the
21:35defendant so the time of death has been discredited as far as we're concerned it was submitted to the
21:53ccrc that this was problematic to say the very very least it was unreliable and the ccrc dismissed it
22:05party phone number seven percent second moment quickly andME how can there be the evidence that there is
22:23the people that have given statements have spoken you know the professionals
22:28how can they disregard it it does not make sense i can't make sense of it
22:35I've been a private investigator for about two years and then out of the blue I received a
22:50telephone call from the defense of Robin Garber and I was instructed to look out the evidence
23:02about the murder weapon at the trial it was alleged that Robin Garber in the early hours of
23:14the morning following the murder had crept across the road in the middle of the night and placed the
23:21metal bar on this position just here where the little marker is where the tag is as taken from
23:28the scenes of crimes photographs of that is extremely specific as to where the bar was
23:34actually found three days later by police search teams the murder weapon had been found sitting on
23:42top of the wall hanging over the end of the wall by about four inches on either side and therefore
23:49clearly visible from the opposite side so the witness that we spoke to at the the garage that
23:56used to be there he was very specific and he remembers standing on the morning of the murder
24:02just behind the wall on the garage side looking down on the emergency services and he clearly remembers
24:11that had there been a metal bar on the top of the wall he would have removed it because it would have
24:20been in danger of being knocked off and falling onto somebody's head a key part of the prosecution case
24:31was that Robin had murdered his wife and then put the bar on that wall but the photographs taken on the
24:40day that she was murdered appears to show it's not there but a couple of days later it appears on that wall
24:48Robin could not have put that there Robin was taken to the police station and then he went with his
24:56sister and his brother-in-law back to their home which is about seventy miles away and they were with
25:02him from then on
25:06from robin leaving melston b even to this day obviously in prison but he's never stepped foot in melston b since then
25:13the next question is to do with the dna which is on the rust that was found on diana's pillow
25:32diana has been hit over the head with an iron bar and murdered it was a rusty iron bar some of that rust
25:41has fallen onto the pillow just to put this in context doctor there is evidence of dna on the
25:48pillow and the dna does not match mr garbert yes and the reality is that this could be dna from a
25:59murderer potentially yes it's been tested for dna this has been independently looked at by an expert on
26:10on behalf of robin garber and they can't exclude the police officer who wasn't on duty on that day
26:15and the police officers asked where were you on this day because you were off work that day and he
26:22says i can't remember
26:24but yet when he comes back to work he somehow manages to be one of the police officers who
26:37discovers the iron bar on the wall because we know that there was no dna of robin garber found on the
26:48metal bar it's another factor in this murder of diana garber that really does not make sense
26:55the reason we're having this discussion now the reason there is doubt about this case is because of
27:02mistakes that were made earlier in the inquiry really and that's very difficult for his family but it's
27:07even more difficult for her family as we learn of the errors made the confusion around things questions
27:22around the dna and a weapon that was used to kill diana it made me feel really angry you know it's a
27:31disservice to diana there's just so many question marks around a lot of the evidence and i think there
27:39were a lot of errors made by the police which just made it really hard to say with confidence what
27:47happened and whether he was guilty because of all of the question marks around everything my dad and i
27:58are going to go and visit him in the near future to try and find something out or that might help make
28:06sense of things so my dad and i are going to go together as a support for one another really going
28:16to see him if i had to think of a question for him it would be you've done the three quarters of your
28:2220-year sentence why not put all your cards on the table and tell us what happened
28:29in robin's case i have never known a case where you've got a murder weapon with dna on it and it's
28:42not the guy who was sitting in prison for the murder but the ccrc rejected that as well
28:49it's just rejecting every single thing that's been submitted and whether it's time of death
29:11whether it's the murder weapon the ccrc is just like computer says no computer says no computer
29:17says no yes we could find that out we're not prepared to do it we don't think if we do that this
29:22it just shows its reluctance and its lack of commitment to trying to find out the truth
29:29i don't understand why it keeps getting knocked back i don't think the justice system is fair
29:36i don't know if he did it but i've not seen any evidence that indicates that robin did it all the
29:45evidence that led to the conviction it's been discredited to my mind
29:50in general conversation in the village in the pub it's not spoken about it's spoken about in our
30:07close circle of friends but no further than that
30:11i suppose you know melstonby has become sort of synonymous with it hasn't it it's certainly what
30:21i think of when i hear the name of the village somebody once said to us he shouldn't know about
30:28what you're doing because it'll upset him he won't be able to carry on with life in prison
30:33so you separate it for him don't tell him all the details of what you're doing because it
30:38he can't do it that hasn't been right he needs the people in melston bay he needs that commitment
30:45from everybody and they're just there for him and that keeps him so strong and everyone keeps
30:51him going but knowing about them and their lives keeps him with us in our world
30:57we can't stop fighting for him but as time goes on i do feel die gets lost
31:06she'll only be remembered as the postmistress she won't be remembered as die
31:12we've lost two friends we've lost die who's obviously not with us anymore and then you've
31:20lost robin who's sort of uh convicted of die's murder so it's uh it's it's a loss all around to be fair
31:29the post office today issued an unreserved apology but for 14 years it prosecuted hundreds
31:53of sub post masters and sub post mistresses for stealing money accusing them of fraud on the basis
32:00of a computer system it knew was defective and was wrongly reporting cash shortfalls
32:04i've never trusted horizon it was introduced into my branch about 2001 it was shortly after its
32:15introduction started to hear of these complaints from members that things weren't going right with
32:21their accounts whereas before everything works swimmingly it was a slow build-up of information
32:30from thereafter that horizon was not working as it should do
32:34why horizon seems to be significant for robin is because we see the horizon evidence as being
32:45one of the main if not the main piece of evidence because it's claimed to support the motive for why
32:50he murdered his wife and it discredits the reliabilities of the entries which were relied upon
32:58in the original trial and i've said this case may be the most egregious miscarriage of justice
33:05stemming from the post office scandal
33:08highly emotional sense of relief was almost palpable when hundreds of post office branch managers
33:19wrongly convicted of embezzling money learned today they will be exonerated and compensated
33:25the public don't like their institutions that they hold dear to get involved in any form of controversy
33:36and for a controversy as vast as what the post office became embroiled in i think the loss of trust in
33:43the post office with the public in the post office with the public in a word it's been devastating
33:58wife killer or a victim of post office lies perhaps robin's seen all this and thought
34:05like it's all these christmases have come at once
34:18the body which reviews potential miscarriages of justice is being asked to look again the case of a
34:24sub postmaster who's serving life in prison for murdering his wife
34:26god is embarking on a fourth attempt to have his conviction overturned evidence from the horizon
34:34it system helped convict him but now his lawyers say new evidence has emerged about the faulty computer
34:40system along with information from the post office inquiry friends have labeled it a final roll of the
34:46dice diana's mother has accused garbet of jumping on the horizon bandwagon but his supporters say he never had a
34:55fair trial and it's time for a wider look at his case various people have said that robin's using
35:02this to jump on the bandwagon which is not the case at all this isn't a recent thing back in the trial
35:10our initial appeal was on the post office before any horizon situations came to light anything like that
35:17this is just added weight and this has added power to what we've been fighting against all along
35:27even if one accepts that the horizon scandal has impacted upon this case you know as it has done with
35:32it with so many other post offices across the country how does that directly contradict the
35:38version of events that was given in terms of the events of that night
35:42i've seen the appeal this fourth application i think there's definitely fresh evidence that the
35:50horizon experts should not have been relied upon and if the jury heard what they would know now
35:57they might say that robin's case was unsafe he wants the ccic to send him back to the appeal
36:03court and he wants to prove that he wasn't he's not guilty of this and that's the only way he can do it
36:09and he wants to go back doesn't he yeah he doesn't want the easy way out he doesn't want to just
36:14come out and walk out and come home he wants to do the car and prove that he has not done this
36:20he wants a retrial yeah then that proves well any doubt we've not had closure and we still can't move
36:29on from what happened to diana because it still doesn't make any sense you okay
36:39i sense probably that the horizon evidence will not be sufficient to bring about another trail
36:49that's my sense of it but i could be wrong
37:03we want to know should we have sympathy for this man should we have empathy for him being trapped in
37:07prison or should we not care that this man has the audacity to say he didn't kill his wife and he's
37:13just trying it on
37:18because if people can do these kind of murders they can certainly tell lies to somebody like me
37:24it's about 15 years since i spoke to robin i think it was the day of my 40th birthday
37:30it's been quite a while there are two possibilities aren't there one is that there is a terrible
37:38miscarriage of justice here i will contend the opposite actually i think that there's a failure
37:42on his behalf to just acknowledge what he's done really and that must be a subject of some kind of
37:49contention and controversy for the people who just want to want to draw a line under it
37:53i don't expect to come from here today being like totally convinced one way or the other
38:00but you know we spent a lot of time thinking well if robin didn't do it
38:05what did happen and it's like it just drains your energy so you know getting to the bottom of it is the
38:11the absolute task and robin needs to know that we'll never give up
38:27there's no reward you know we can't bring diana back
38:32but you know somebody's got to speak up and you know tell um you know tell everybody that we we
38:44missed diana you have this thing don't you where people convince themselves that you know they haven't
38:54done it in order to somehow deal with it i think oh okay it's so hard to judge isn't it in these cases
39:11let's be honest there's only really robin goblin knows isn't there what happened down that night
39:15did feel a bit like an audience with robin he's got his um story and it's not going to change
39:28he said well i'm doing the right thing maintaining his innocence it's like the right thing for die
39:38you know sticking to the story stroke telling the truth but i guess he almost has to do that
39:44like he was never gonna sort of you know it's not gonna buckle it's not gonna buckle uh anytime
39:53soon you know but he's not being able to persuade you that he's an innocent man no he's tried to
40:01he's definitely tried but i'm um an underweiser
40:08yeah i'd say if he's done it that's one definite thing from today if he's done it
40:14he's not gonna um change his tune like he'll take it to the grave
40:23there isn't any closure there can only be closure when somebody says i'm guilty
40:30oh i was responsible this is what happened if robin's appeal goes well
40:35he's gonna move on and we're not going to be any other way is it
40:52diana isn't able to say what happened and so you won't be evidence to speak on her behalf
40:58you know the police have got a job to do and when they don't do it properly like the the outcome's
41:06devastating for the family is left not knowing what truly happened
41:10and where there isn't justice for diana
41:24so
41:33so
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