This is the moment a horse whisperer, who has been arrested for the murder of her husband after she allegedly stabbed him in the back, tearfully tells police: “He was such a cruel bastard.”
Christine Rawle, 70, from north Devon, plunged a 10cm knife into her husband’s back and then called a friend before removing the blade, prosecutors told the jury.
She asked her husband, Ian Rawle, 72, to help her with the horses before stabbing him between the shoulder blades as he walked past her, the court heard.
Rawle, who had taken the knife to cut a cord to tie the doors, was on the phone with his daughter when she allegedly attacked him in August 2022.
The ongoing trial at Exeter Crown Court had previously compared the couple to Roald Dahl’s The Twits due to their constant bickering. Rawle denies murder.
In police body camera footage, released by Devon and Cornwall Police after being shown to the jury, Rawle is detained and fights back tears as she tells police: ‘How can someone be so cruel ? He is narcissistic.
Christine Rawle, 70, from north Devon, plunged a 10cm knife into her husband’s back and then called a friend before removing the blade, prosecutors told the jury.
The ongoing trial at Exeter Crown Court had previously compared the couple to Roald Dahl’s The Twits due to their constant bickering. Rawle denies murder
Christine Rawle, 70, had been speaking to her daughter on the phone before plunging a knife into her husband’s back, a court heard.
‘Oh please God, she’s such a cruel bitch. How can you love someone and she is so calculatingly unpleasant to you?
“He will come for me, he will kill me.”
When told she was being arrested for her murder, Rawle was heard on camera saying: ‘Oh God, why couldn’t someone stop him from doing this to me?
“I’ve tried many times; the other day I tried to call the police and they take forever to answer.”
‘You can’t make a 999 call and say he’s just shouting at me, can you?’
The court previously heard claims from a neighbor that Rawle put Viagra in her tea, chilli powder in her underpants and wiped her bottom with his ties.
The jury heard she told her daughter over the phone on August 21, 2022: “I stabbed him.”
The court heard Rawles’ daughter, who lives in Milton Keynes, hung up and called Thames Valley Police and the ambulance service.
But instead of asking for help, the defendant made a 28-second call to one of her best friends, in which she asked her to “order her dogs.”
After allegedly stabbing her husband of 29 years, Rawle is said to have walked from the barn to the door of their secluded bungalow.
Prosecutor Sean Brunton KC told the jury she ran away shouting “help me, help me” as her husband followed her and asked her to take the knife from him.
He said: ‘Her husband tells her to lock the doors, she says she can’t find the scissors, so he tells her to use the knife.
“Then he says something about children and as he walks past her with the wheelbarrow, she stabs him in the back. He puts the wheelbarrow down.
In police footage, released by Devon and Cornwall Police after being shown to the jury, Rawle is detained and fights back tears as she tells police: ‘How can someone be so cruel? He is narcissistic
Prosecutor Sean Brunton KC told the jury that Mrs Rawle (pictured with a horse) had taken the knife to cut a cord to tie the doors as her husband had asked.
Police officers at the scene in Devon on the day Mr Rawley was found dead.
He asks her (not without reason, one might think) to take the knife out of his back.
“She runs away screaming ‘help me, help me’ and he walks after her, no doubt very angry or distraught, with the knife still in his back.
“At some point he collapses in the garden and she doesn’t pull out the knife immediately.
“She puts the dogs away, calls her friend, then takes out the knife and puts it under the barn door.”
Brunton told the court that Rawle’s adult daughter had heard the couple arguing during a 10-minute phone call before the incident.
She said her daughter called the police and ambulance service, who tried to call Rawle but she initially did not answer their calls.
And he added: ‘At 2:40 p.m., the ambulance service called her. But Christine Rawle calls her friend to fix her dog instead of asking for help for her husband.
“As her husband lay dying and as the ambulance operator tried to get her into action, she was heard saying ‘Damn, damn, I killed him, bitch.'” ‘.
‘She stabbed her husband between his shoulder blades, pierced him between his ribs and he bled into his chest cavity, causing him to go into cardiac arrest.
“The knife stuck 10cm into his back, causing his lung to collapse.”
When police arrived at the scene, she told officers: “I took his life because he was horrible to me.” He terrified. It was continuous. He wanted out.’
She also told officers: “He wasn’t sexually capable, he had a prostate problem, he used to blame me and tell me I’m not attractive.”
“He didn’t want to have children, he had me sterilized.”
Brunton added: “We say these allegations were because the accused was trying to justify to the police, and perhaps to herself, what she had done.”
Mrs Rawle, who described herself on social media as “the horse whisperer”, ran away from the barn shouting “help me, help me” as her husband followed her and asked her to remove the knife, a court heard .
Body footage shows Rawle calling her husband ‘cruel bitch’
The Rawles home, photographed on the day of the stabbing in August 2022.
‘We also say that she was 42 years old when they got together, she already had three children from a previous relationship.
‘Did she seem like she wanted to have children with him? Could she have had her spayed?
Brunton said that when she was taken to the police station and questioned for more than six hours, she told police she was “talking nonsense.”
And she claimed she “couldn’t remember” whether she stabbed her husband or threw the knife at him.
When police asked her if she had stabbed her husband, she said: “I guess I must have, but I don’t remember.”
‘He approached me and asked me to ‘take the knife out of my back’, at first I said no.
‘I thought I had cut his shirt, I thought I had thrown the knife at him, I didn’t realize (I had stabbed him). He was my world.’
Court artist’s sketch of Christine Rawle, 69, at Exeter Crown Court charged with the murder of her husband Ian Rawle
Mr Brunton said: “We say he changed his story because he knew it didn’t look good.” He also told the court that the couple had previously called police to the home.
She said that in 1993, Rawle had gotten into trouble with the police over annoying phone calls made to one of her husband’s ex-partners.
A few years later, police were called to the home again when she stabbed her husband in the chest, Brunton said.
She also told jurors they would hear testimony from a neighbor who would tell them how Rawle would treat her husband.
The neighbor claimed Rawle put Viagra in his tea, chili powder in his boxers and wiped his butt with his ties.
The neighbor, who was introduced to the couple by her partner, was told that “this was normal” for the couple.
And in messages sent to her daughter just hours before she stabbed her husband, Rawle called him a ‘damn’ and a ‘b****’.
Brunton said: “We fully accept that Ian Rawle was not very kind to his wife, but it may have been for a reason.”
Rawle denies murder. The case continues.