Post office owner says Horizon system used to frame him for wife’s murder

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A Post Office owner has claimed the Horizon IT system used to wrongly jail postmasters was used to frame him for his wife’s murder.

The Horizon scandal noticed greater than 700 subpostmasters and subpostmistresses handed prison convictions after defective Fujitsu accounting software program made it seem as if cash was lacking at their branches.

Now Robin Garbutt, who’s at the moment serving a life sentence for murdering his spouse, is making an attempt to attraction his conviction saying proof relied on through the trial is defective.

His spouse, Diana, was bludgeoned to demise within the couple’s flat above the put up office in North Yorkshire on 23 March 2010. Garbutt has all the time maintained his innocence, insisting {that a} man sporting a balaclava and holding a gun compelled him to hand over £16,000 in money saying that he “had” his spouse.

Garbutt claimed that he handed over the money and ran upstairs to discover his spouse useless. The prosecution claimed that he could have staged the theft to cowl up losses reported on the Horizon accounting system.

They claimed that Garbutt had killed his spouse within the early hours of the morning, went on to open up the put up office as common after which name 999 concerning the theft. The trial heard {that a} comparable armed theft had occurred to the enterprise a yr beforehand.

A gun and balaclava have been additionally discovered behind a pub, half-hour away from Garbutt’s put up office, however this was thought not to be related by police.

According to The Guardian, the couple have been having marriage troubles, with Diana having relationships with different males. There was additionally proof of economic pressure that was separate from the put up office losses, with the couple in 1000’s of kilos of debt.

Garbutt spoke to The Guardian from jail, saying that he had watched the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office that has sparked nationwide outrage on the remedy of the subpostmasters.

He stated that whereas his case was totally different “the way the Post Office dealt with me was the same way that they dealt with the other people”.

He claimed that information from the Horizon IT system “was used in court to make me look bad” and that the system had “lots of problems”.

Applications to attraction his conviction have beforehand been rejected however Garbutt claims to have new monetary data that dispute proof introduced by Post Office consultants to the trial.

However Diana’s mom, Agnes Gaylor, stated that Garbutt was simply “taking advantage” of the Horizon scandal to “gain publicity.”