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Telly addicts

Murder at the Post Office (on sky)

12 replies

Mumsknot · 30/12/2025 17:33

Has anyone watched this? It’s quite extraordinary

Murder weapon wasn’t found till AFTER the bloke was arrested so he was either in the police station or 70 miles away with his family

None of his DNA on the murder weapon but a policeman’s on there who couldn’t account for his whereabouts

a clump of hair that wasn’t his or his wife’s on the pillow that the police ‘lost’

I just can’t see how the poor bloke was convicted in the first place. And he’s been in prison for over a decade.

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tinyspiny · 30/12/2025 17:37

I agree about the anomalys that you’ve pointed out but you have to weigh that against the time of death ( stomach contents) and the fact that the paramedic on scene said she had rigorous mortis .

Mumsknot · 30/12/2025 17:39

They also said that rigor mortis and the stomach evidence had wide timelines

I find it extraordinary that in the modern day we can convict someone with zero evidence - everything was circumstantial

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TeaRoseTallulah · 30/12/2025 17:41

I've downloaded this, just marking my place.

Slimtoddy · 02/01/2026 16:31

Yes. Agree no tangible evidence to convict. The time of death assessment is not reliable. It's possible he did do it but to my mind there is doubt

TeaRoseTallulah · 03/01/2026 00:00

How on earth did the jury convict him there was so much reasonable doubt?!

Mumsknot · 03/01/2026 11:03

It’s odd isn’t it. I mean you can make a story up but when I was in a trial the judge made sure to tell us it wasn’t the jury’s job to prove someone was innocent but prove they were guilty and to make sure the jury was sure of that. I just can’t see how they could be sure! And the problem is there’s so little evidence, they can’t find new evidence to bring it back to court.

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FallenChristmasTree · 03/01/2026 11:37

This is a. Dry old case and Robin Garbutt has a number of (generally female) ardent supporters. Like a lot of these programmes tge ‘concerns’ about his convictions are mainly smoke and mirrors. On a very basic level, and it’s never really address in tge programme, why would a group of robbers kill a sleeping woman in bed? Surely they’d just go in, threaten tge post master and steal tge money? No need to go upstairs and hit a sleeping woman over tge head. Even if she did wake up what real threat would she be if they threatened her with a weapon?

Secondly going back to the smoke and mirrors there was tge stomach contents and tge fact rigor morris had set in by tge time tge paramedics had a river. Whilst not an exact science rigor morris doesn’t start until at least 2 to 4 hours after death and according to his timeline she must have been seen within the hour. Also tge stomach contents. The ‘expert’ they wheeled in to criticise the stomach contents expert started going on about all the factors that need to be taken in to account to estimate time of death such as meal size, components of meal etc. Pretty basic things that any expert would consider as if the court expert hadn’t. It was confirmed at the end that she had and estimated according to accepted standards.

FallenChristmasTree · 03/01/2026 11:37

A very old case

FallenChristmasTree · 03/01/2026 11:43

Sorry my autocorrect keeps changing ‘the’ to ‘tge’!

TangledUp679 · 10/01/2026 22:39

I'm usually very much on the fence when it comes to cases like this, but having watched the documentary and read a couple of articles, I'm convinced he's guilty.

One question - when the forensic investigator said there was nothing in the safe (rather than £16,000 as claimed), has this ever been disputed by the defence?

And when he'd been the victim of an armed robbery the year before, was this proven? I know it must be a very stressful situation, but if I'd been held up at gunpoint before, I'd acquaint myself very well with the security measures in place. But he didn't think to press the panic button and said, even if he had thought of it, he didn't know the alarm was inaudible. Two engineers at the trial disputed this and said that Garbutt knew it was a silent alarm.

There was a lot made of the stomach contents evidence, but it was agreed upon at trial by two other pathologists that time of death could have been as early as one hour before the robbery, but more like several hours (due to the rigor mortis).

If the customer who claims to have heard a woman's voice at 6.45am was correct (which would apparently rule out Garbutt as the murderer) then it's strange that Garbutt never told police that he'd spoken to Diana at this time. It wasn't until a year later when he went to court and had seen the witness statements that he claims to have spoken to her at 6.15am and 6.45am.

Horizon seems like a bit of a smokescreen here. Unless I'm mistaken, the only relevance is that one of the hypothetical motives put forward for the murder was that Garbutt was stealing from the Post Office. But you don't need to establish a motive to find someone guilty of murder. However, I appreciate than he was only found guilty on a 10-2 majority. So perhaps the now contested evidence that he was stealing money was what pushed one jury member into voting guilty. Without it, maybe it would have ended in a retrial.

I don't really understand why such a big deal was made of the iron bar. It wasn't put there by Garbutt, but surely a passer by just found it and put it on the wall?

The reason I'm so convinced of his guilt is that the alternative scenario is extremely implausible. The robber gets in unnoticed by Garbutt as he's unloading his car between 4.30am and 6.30am. He then hides upstairs until some time between 6.45am to 7.30am when he brutally murders Diana as she sleeps. Why? Garbutt doesn't hear a thing. The robber then waits upstairs for at least an hour until the safe is due to open at around 8.30am. He holds Garbutt at gun point, empties the safe and makes his escape without being seen by anyone in the village (there were a couple of reports of a blue car being driven erratically that morning, but the Post Office had been busy that morning and not a single customer nor the woman hanging the washing out in her yard saw the robber). Within the space of less than two minutes the safe is opened, the contents emptied, Garbutt goes upstairs, goes to his wife's bedroom, tries to wake her, finds that she's been attacked and dials 999.

If that's not far fetched enough, then the prime suspect (according to Garbutt's supporters) is a police officer who set Garbutt up for the murder.

I also saw this from a news article during the trial: 'Records kept by the security company which monitored the alarm indicated that the safe could not have been open at the time Garbutt called for an ambulance.' I don't remember that being mentioned in the documentary, I wonder how definite the security company were about that?

Sorry for the far too long post. It's an interesting case. Could he still potentially be released in five years time if he continues to maintain his innocence?

FallenChristmasTree · 11/01/2026 11:18

@TangledUp679Totally agree with everything you said. I thought the same re the iron bar. The simple explanation is someone innocently found it and put it there at a later point. They may not admit to it after it was found when they realised the significance of it being the murder weapon and didn’t want to get involved.

Despite the defence and Garbutt’s supporters trying to point the finger at a Police Officer I can’t see what motive he had unless he was the post office robber. But I come back to the original issue with all of this. If your motive was robbery, why kill a sleeping woman who was upstairs in bed and no threat to you.

To me it seems much more likely he saw her on the dating site on her computer in the early hours of the morning. There’s been a huge argument or he’s kept quiet silently fuming, then killed her when she’s gone to bed. He’s then come up with the robbery scenario after he’s killed her.

tinyspiny · 11/01/2026 11:35

@FallenChristmasTree I totally agree with you

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