In the heart of one of North Yorkshire’s most tranquil villages, a horrific crime unfolded that would shatter the community’s peace. Diana Garbutt, a sub-postmistress, was discovered brutally beaten to death in her bed above the rural Post Office she managed with her husband. This violent act sent ripples of shock through the quiet village.

According to her husband, Robin Garbutt, the tragedy occurred when a masked and armed intruder broke into their home in the early morning hours. The assailant allegedly crept upstairs and attacked Diana, who was just 40 years old, as she slept. After the brutal assault, the intruder reportedly demanded £16,000 in cash from a time-locked safe before fleeing the scene.

It was only after the robber’s escape that Robin, then 45, went upstairs to discover the horrific scene—his wife, Diana, lying lifeless in a pool of blood.

The murder took place in March 2010 and left the small, tightly-knit hamlet of Melsonby in a state of devastation. The Post Office was a central hub of village life, and Diana’s death struck at the core of a community where everyone was familiar with one another.

However, the unfolding horror was far from over. Merely three weeks after the incident, Robin Garbutt, who was known among neighbors as a kind and gentle man, was arrested for his wife’s murder, adding another layer of shock and disbelief to the village.

Just three weeks later, Robin Garbutt – a man neighbours described as kind, gentle and devoted – was arrested for his wife’s murder.

In 2011, following a trial built entirely on circumstantial evidence, he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 20 years.

Fifteen years on, Robin remains behind bars, still denying he killed Diana – and with a fourth appeal now lodged, those closest to him believe the case may yet come to be seen as one of the gravest miscarriages of justice to emerge from the Post Office Horizon scandal.

Barry Conachy, now 57, currently lives in nearby Richmond, North Yorkshire.

He was Robin’s close friend, neighbour and confidant – and still visits him in prison three or four times a year.

‘I had a Christmas card from him just yesterday,’ Barry tells the Mail in an exclusive interview. ‘He always asks how we are, how the family are, how the kids are. It’s always everybody else first.

‘He’s coping far better than I ever would because the whole time he’s focused on trying to find out who killed Di. That’s his driver. That’s the thing that’s kept him going all these years behind bars.’

Over the past 15 years, Barry and his long-term partner, Sharron Carvey, have watched Robin move through the prison system.

They both appear in an upcoming three-part Sky documentary series, called Murder at the Post Office, which traces Diana’s murder and Robin’s fight for justice.

For around a decade, Robin was incarcerated at Category A Frankland prison in County Durham – notoriously dubbed ‘Monster Mansion’ for housing some of Britain’s most dangerous criminals over the years, including Charles Bronson, Harold Shipman, Peter Sutcliffe, Levi Bellfield and Wayne Couzens.

Robin is now held at Wealstun Prison in West Yorkshire, a Category C men’s prison, while Diana’s mother Agnes has since bought and lives in the former Post Office building.

‘He’s very switched on,’ Barry says. ‘He just keeps his head down . He doesn’t want to borrow money, doesn’t want to get involved in anything.

‘He helps other prisoners with inductions, helps them write letters, helps them read. He works on reception. He’s been going to the gym since the start of his sentence.

‘He’s not a threat to anybody. He’s well regarded. He’s become one of the most trusted prisoners there.’

Barry, Sharron and their three children lived next door but one to the Post Office at the time of Diana’s murder. Barry would often spend evenings there after work.

‘They were just like any other married couple really,’ the health and safety manager says. ‘You’re living together, breathing together, working together.

‘It’s probably a relationship I couldn’t have, because you’re with each other all the time.’

He smiles faintly at the memory.

‘Di was feisty,’ he admits. ‘She was straight-talking. If she had something to say, she’d say it. Some people in the village didn’t take to her straight away, but actually, once they got to know her, they really liked her.

‘Robin’s just an easy-going chap,’ Barry says. ‘Really kind. Never aggressive. Never raised his voice. He would never have been capable of murder.’

Diana was known for her cooking.

‘She was an amazing chef,’ Barry recalls. ‘Around Christmas she’d have us over for a proper three-course meal. Everyone looked forward to it.

‘We were a little circle of friends. We’d go to the pub together, go to each other’s houses. It was that sort of village.’

Barry would often be there as Robin and Diana counted the day’s takings.

‘I was often there at the time they were counting up,’ he says. ‘I’d pop over most nights after work. One of them would be behind the counter, and I’d just sit chatting.

‘It was always the usual stuff – football, what was happening in the village, the kids, family.’

Shortly before Diana was found dead, Barry received what he describes as a completely normal message from his friend.

‘It was about 6.20 in the morning,’ he recalls. ‘I’d just got up and got a text off Robin saying, ‘Morning campers, how’s it going?’

‘That was a totally normal text from Robin. Exactly what we’d get if we were away on holiday.’

Later that morning, Barry’s world collapsed.

‘I’d just started a new job the day before and was away on a work induction week. I was on a mid-morning break in the work canteen,’ he says. ‘I looked up at the television screen and saw the picture of Di and the Post Office and that she was dead.

‘After that my phone just went crazy.

‘I felt physically sick knowing I’d lost a friend and that I was 120 miles away when all this was going on right on my doorstep and I couldn’t be there.’

The village was quickly overrun with police and forensic investigators.

‘It was like a circus,’ Barry says. ‘There were around 800 people in the village and it was all anyone was talking about.’

Robin dialled 999 shortly after discovering Diana’s body.

In a chilling recording of the call later played to the jury at Robin’s trial, he can be heard telling the emergency operator: ‘My wife’s been attacked… He’s gone. He had a gun and he said to me, ‘Don’t be stupid, we’ve got your wife.’ He’s gone. I’ve come upstairs. She’s dead, she’s not moving at all… There’s blood everywhere. Her face is terrible.’

Paramedics arrived to find Diana lifeless in bed, having suffered catastrophic head injuries.

The pathologist later estimated she had died between 2.30am and 4.30am, based on stomach contents from a fish and chip meal the couple had eaten the night before.

Robin told police he had got up around 4am to open the shop and bring in the newspapers, waiting for the time-locked safe to open at 8.30am – around the time he said the armed robber appeared.

A paramedic told Robin that Diana had rigor mortis and must have been dead for some time.

Barry says the 999 recording still haunts him.

‘It’s chilling,’ he says. ‘Quite horrific. You can hear the distress in Robin’s voice. I can tell he was being completely genuine.

‘I’ve seen him after a robbery a few years before. He was sat on his settee, a quivering wreck. He’s always very genuine.’

As the investigation unfolded, revelations emerged that villagers struggled to believe.

Police discovered Diana had signed up to an internet dating website.

In court, prosecutors alleged the marriage was loveless and that Diana was being unfaithful with several men.

Robin acknowledged difficulties.

‘In 2009, we had a bit of a rough patch,’ he said. ‘It happens sometimes with couples. Diana said she might need some space. But I thought we were a loving couple. I miss her terribly.’

On the website, Diana described herself as 41 and said she wanted to meet a man aged between 35 and 50. Despite receiving messages, there was no evidence she replied to any.

Barry dismisses the rumours.

‘The police tried to make something out of nothing,’ he says. ‘There was even a rumour at one point that we were part of a swingers’ club.

‘That was absolute, total nonsense.’

A central plank of the prosecution’s case was money.

Jurors were told Robin had debts of around £30,000 and had been helping himself to cash from the till – a motive for murder if Diana discovered it.

Evidence from the Post Office’s Horizon accounting system was used to support that claim.

Yet in the years since, Horizon has been exposed as catastrophically flawed, leading to the wrongful prosecution of 736 sub-postmasters and mistresses.

Law academic Dr Mike Naughton says Horizon was pivotal.

‘Horizon evidence was one of the main, if not the main pieces of evidence used to support the motive,’ he says. ‘It discredits the reliability of the entries relied on at trial.

‘This case may be the most egregious miscarriage of justice stemming from the Post Office scandal.’

Barry says he never witnessed financial desperation.

‘It was no different to anybody else running a business,’ he says. ‘There was never any sign of hardship.’

There was no forensic evidence linking Robin to the murder.

Three days after Diana’s murder, a bloodied metal pole believed to be the weapon was found on a wall near a local garage. Robin’s DNA was not on it.

Another man’s DNA was though – that of the police officer who handled it.

A hair found on the bed that matched neither Robin nor Diana was never examined after the evidence lock went missing.

‘All they were interested in was Robin and money,’ Barry says. ‘And whether Di had had an affair.’

Barry was in court in 2011 when the guilty verdict was delivered.

‘Robin’s sister Sallie was sat behind me,’ he recalls. ‘She just broke down. She was in tatters. I just couldn’t really make sense of it. That’s the first time I’ve ever been to a Crown Court. Even just sat in the public gallery you’re affected by it. You feel involved. It’s just a horrible, horrible feeling. I was feeling for Robin and Sallie, really.

‘I think the jury got it wrong. That Robin was found guilty was just sickening and felt unreal.’

Three appeals have failed.

The fourth application, citing faulty Horizon software, was submitted to the CCRC last year and Robin and his team are awaiting a decision to see if the case will finally be sent back to the Court of Appeal.

‘Even after 20 years he’ll have to stand up at a Parole Board hearing and say, ‘I’m sorry, I did it, I’m a changed man but I really don’t know that he’ll ever do that. Why would he? He’s lost his wife. There’s not much left outside prison for him so I don’t know what the future holds.

‘You never, ever would expect anything like this to happen,’ Barry says. ‘You see people being murdered on TV, but you never think you’ll be touched by it and you were always brought up to trust the police and you know, but I mean, you only have to look at some of the recent cases where there’s been injustice to see things can go wrong – like that of wrongly convicted Andrew Malkinson [who served 17 years in prison for a rape he didn’t commit].

‘This has to be one for the biggest miscarriages of justice to come off another huge scandal with Horizon.

‘The Horizon scandal has affected a whole lot of people with injustice in lots of ways, mainly financially, through the post office. But this is a is a double impact, isn’t it?’.

For Barry, one truth remains.

‘I don’t think Di’s had justice,’ he says. ‘Police haven’t caught the killer.

‘And maybe that’s what’s been forgotten – we all lost our friend Di in this.’

‘Murder at the Post Office’ airs on Sky and streams on Now from December 29