This is the moment a husband argues with his horse trainer wife about drinking and dinner before she allegedly stabbed him to death. Prosecutors claim that Christine Rawle, 70, plunged a knife between the shoulders of her husband when he walked past after they talked about mucking out the horses....CONTINUE READING
Ian Rawle, 72, then followed his wife into a field with the knife still stuck in his back ‘imploring her to pull it out’ before collapsing, the court heard previously.
The couple were living on separate parts of their land in Devon at the time of his death in August 2022 and Exeter Crown Court heard the pair would be constantly arguing.
Rawle, who denies murder, was seen on police bodyworn footage in tears as she was arrested – telling cops her husband was ‘such a cruel b****d.’
The mother-of-three, who described herself on social media as a ‘registered horse trainer’ and is known as ‘the horse whisperer’, says she is a victim of her husband’s cruel and controlling behaviour.
Their unhappy 30-year marriage was likened to the bickering couple depicted in the
Roald Dahl
book The Twits, who ‘delighted in making each other’s lives as miserable as possible.’
A series of fresh videos giving an insight into the couple’s relationship have now been released which were recorded by Rawle herself – threatening to call the police on her husband and telling him to ‘shut up’ as he says ‘I have to work while you sit there getting fat’.
Videos giving an insight into the couple’s relationship have now been released – which were recorded by Rawle herself. Pictured is Ian Rawle
Mr Rawle is seen drinking ‘ginger beer’ as his wife accused him of being an alcoholic
Prosecutors claim that Christine Rawle, 70, plunged a knife between the shoulders of her husband when he walked past after they talked about mucking out the horses
Ian Rawle, 72, then followed his wife into a field with the knife still stuck in his back ‘imploring her to pull it out’ before collapsing, the court heard
Their unhappy 30-year marriage was likened to the bickering couple depicted in the Roald Dahl book The Twits, who ‘delighted in making each other’s lives as miserable as possible’
The footage records the squabbles the pair had at home over a range of issues – from selling some of their land to her ‘playing with the horses’ and not making dinner for him.
In one video, Rawle issues a warning to her husband and tells him: ‘I lived here, I found it, I provided a service here,’ before stating: ‘You’ve got one hell of a shock coming to you.’
She adds in one clip: ‘I am entitled, I’ve lived here all these years. You are not deciding what goes on in my life.’
In another clip, Rawle tells her husband: ‘Leave me alone, I am led here on the sofa you are watching tv.’
They continue to bicker, before he tells her: ‘What did you prepare? (for dinner)- nothing – what did you prepare for lunch? – nothing.
‘What did you prepare yesterday? – nothing. You didn’t do anything.’
After Rawle tells him she has an ‘entitlement’ to the land, she adds: ‘I’m ill, I need help and we haven’t got any spare money.
‘It’s the end of my life and I am not suffering with it.’
In another clip, Mr Rawle claims: ‘Day after day there is something new. You are the one showing nutty behaviour.’
She responds: ‘You are a liar and a narcissist and I’ll tell you one more time, leave me alone.’
The mother-of-three, who described herself on social media as a ‘registered horse trainer’ and is known as ‘the horse whisperer’, says she is a victim of her husband’s controlling behaviour.
The couple were living on separate parts of their land in Devon at the time of his death in August 2022 and Exeter Crown Court heard the pair would be constantly arguing
She also tells him: ‘You’ve got a record of harassing me’ and then talks about guns previously being taken from him and being threatened.
You cause f***ing mayhem. why did you have a fit?’ he adds.
‘Why have I got to put up with this s**t every day?’
She is also accused by him of ‘playing with horses for five hours’ and responds: ‘I don’t belong to you. This is the narcissist in you.’
The trial previously heard Rawle, who had picked the knife up to cut some cord to tie up the gates as her husband had asked, was on the phone to her daughter when she attacked him.
In police bodyworn footage, released by Devon and Cornwall Police after being shown to the jury, Rawle is taken in custody and fights back tears as she tells cops: ‘How can someone be so cruel? He is narcissistic.
‘How could you love someone and they are so calculatingly nasty to you.
‘Even my dog and my horses. He will come and get me, he will kill me.’
When told she was being arrested for his murder, Rawle was heard on camera saying: ‘Oh god, why couldn’t have someone stopped him keep doing this to me.
‘I’ve tried that many times – I tried the other day to phone the police and it takes forever for them to pick up.
‘You can’t do a 999 call and say he’s just shouting at me can you?’
Giving evidence, Mrs Rawle’s granddaughter, Georgina Bufton described Ian as a ‘very dismissive man.’
She added: ‘He would attack her femininity and try to disempower her. Any woman would react to that.
‘It would end with an ‘F you’ on that side, and an ‘F you’ on this side, and then it would dissipate until the next day.’
This is the moment Rawle sobs, telling cops her husband was ‘such a cruel b****d’
Pictured are police officers at the scene in August 2022 as Rawle was arrested
Ms Bufton told the jury she once saw her gran ‘slap him’ during a row but added: ‘I think it was very well deserved.’
She said he made nasty comments on her about her weight and physical appearance.
‘Some things stopped being jokes,’ she added.
‘He had a view that my nan could not do anything right. He was a very cold man.’
Exeter Crown Court also heard Rawle claims from a neighbour that Rawle would put viagra in his tea, chilli powder in his underpants and would wipe her backside with his ties.
And the jury heard she told her daughter on the phone on August 21, 2022: ‘I’ve stabbed him.’
The court heard Rawles’ adult daughter, who lives in Milton Keynes, hung up the call and called Thames Valley Police and the ambulance service.
But instead of calling for help, Rawle made a 28 second call to Mrs Gilbert, in which she asked her to ‘sort her dogs out’.
After knifing her husband of 27 years, Rawle is said to have walked off from the barn on their land to the door of their isolated bungalow near Braunton in north Devon.
Prosecutor Sean Brunton KC told the jury she ran away shouting ‘help me, help me’ as her husband followed her asking her to remove the knife.
He said: ‘Her husband tells her to tie the gates back, she says she can’t find the scissors, so he tells her to use the knife.
‘He then says something about the children and when he walks past her with the wheelbarrow, she stabs him in the back. He puts the wheelbarrow down.
‘He asks her – not unreasonably you might think – to take the knife out of his back.
‘She runs away, shouting ‘help me, help me’ and he walks after her, no doubt very angry or distressed, with the knife still in his back.
‘At some point, he collapses in the garden, she doesn’t take the knife out straight away.
‘She puts the dogs away, calls her friend, then takes the knife out and puts it under the stable door.’
Mr Brunton told the court that Rawle’s adult daughter had heard the couple arguing during a 10 minute phone call leading up to the incident.
He said that her daughter called police and the ambulance service, who tried to call Rawle but she initially didn’t answer their calls.
Christine Rawle is filmed on police bodycam moments after being arrested for the suspected murder of her husband Ian Rawle
And the jury heard she told her daughter on the phone on August 21, 2022: ‘I’ve stabbed him’
He added: ‘At 14.40, the ambulance service calls her back. But Christine Rawle calls her friend to sort her dogs out rather than call for help for her husband.’
‘While her husband was dying and while the ambulance operator was trying to get her to spring into action, she was heard saying ‘d**k, d**k, I’ve killed him the b****d’.
‘She stabbed her husband between the shoulder blades, it punctured between the ribs and he bled into his chest cavity, which caused cardiac arrest.
‘The knife was 10cm into his back which caused a collapsed lung.’
When police arrived at the scene, she told officers: ‘I took his life because he was horrible to me. He terrorised. It was continuous. I wanted out.’
She also told officers: ‘He wasn’t sexually capable, he had a prostate issue, he used to blame me and tell me I’m not attractive.
‘He didn’t want children, he made me get sterilised.’
Mr Brunton added: ‘We say these claims were this defendant trying to justify to the police – and maybe to herself – what she had done.
‘We also say she was 42 when they got together, she already had three children from a previous relationship.
‘Did she sound like she wanted to have children with him? Could he have made her get sterilised?’
Mr Brunton said when she was taken to the police station and questioned for more than six hours, she told police she ‘was talking rubbish’.
And she claimed she ‘couldn’t remember’ if she stabbed her husband or threw the knife.
When asked by police if she stabbed her husband, she said: ‘I suppose I must have done, but I can’t remember.
‘He came to me and asked me to ‘take the knife out of my back’, I said no at first.
‘I thought I’d cut his shirt, I thought I’d thrown the knife, I didn’t realise [I’d stabbed him]. He was my world.’
Mr Brunton said: ‘We say she changed her story because she knew it didn’t look good.’
He also told the court the couple had previously called police to the house.
He said in 1993, Rawle had got into trouble with the police over nuisance phone calls made to one of her husband’s ex-partners.
A few years later, police were called to the house again when she stabbed her husband in the chest, Mr Brunton said.
Mr Brunton said: ‘We fully accept Ian Rawle was not very nice to his wife, but that may have been for a reason.’
Rawle denies murder. The case continues.
