This is the moment a horse whisperer, arrested for her husband’s murder after allegedly stabbing him in the back, tearfully tells police: ‘He was such a cruel son of a bitch.’
Christine Rawle, 70, from north Devon, stabbed a four-inch knife into her husband’s back and then called a friend before removing the knife, prosecutors told the jury.
She asked her husband, Ian Rawle, 72, to help her with the horses before hitting him between the shoulder blades as he walked past her, the court heard.
Rawle, who had picked up the knife to cut a cord to secure the fences, was on the phone with her daughter when she allegedly attacked him in August 2022.
During the ongoing trial at Exeter Crown Court, the couple have previously been compared to Roald Dahl’s The Twits for their constant bickering. Rawle denies murder.
In police bodycam footage released by Devon and Cornwall Police after being shown to the jury, Rawle is taken into custody and fights back tears as she tells police: ‘How can anyone be so cruel? He is narcissistic.
Christine Rawle, 70, from north Devon, plunged a knife four inches into her husband’s back and then called a friend before removing the knife, prosecutors told the jury
During the ongoing trial at Exeter Crown Court, the couple have previously been compared to Roald Dahl’s The Twits for their constant bickering. Rawle denies murder
Christine Rawle, 70, had spoken to her daughter on the phone before stabbing her husband in the back, court heard
“Oh please God, he’s such a cruel bastard. How can you love someone when he/she is so calculatingly mean to you?
“He’ll come for me, he’ll kill me.”
When told she was being arrested for his murder, Rawle was heard saying on camera, “Oh God, why couldn’t someone stop him from doing this to me?”
‘I’ve tried that many times. I recently tried calling the police but they take forever to answer.
“You can’t call 911 and say he’s just yelling at me, can you?”
The court previously heard claims from a neighbor that Rawle would put Viagra in his tea, chilli powder in his underpants and wipe her bottom with his ties.
The jury heard that on August 21, 2022, she told her daughter on the phone: ‘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 calling for help, the defendant called one of her best friends for 28 seconds, asking her to “pick out her dogs.”
After allegedly stabbing her husband of 29 years, Rawle is said to have walked from the shed to the door of their remote 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 remove the knife.
He said: ‘Her husband tells her to close the gates again. She says she can’t find the scissors, so he tells her to use the knife.
‘He then says something about the children and as he walks past her with the wheelbarrow, she stabs him in the back. He puts the wheelbarrow down.
In police body-worn footage released by Devon and Cornwall Police after being shown to the jury, Rawle is taken into custody and fights back tears as she tells police: ‘How can anyone be so cruel? He’s narcissistic
Prosecutor Sean Brunton KC told the jury that Mrs Rawle (pictured with a horse) had picked up the knife to cut a cord to tie down the gates as her husband had requested.
Police officers at the scene in Devon on the day Mr Rawley was found dead
‘He asks her – not unreasonably you would think – to take the knife out of his back.
‘She runs away shouting ‘help me, help me’ and he runs after her, no doubt very angry or sad, with the knife still in his back.
‘At one point he collapses in the garden, she doesn’t immediately take the knife out.
“She puts the dogs away, calls her friend, then takes out the knife 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 conversation before the incident.
He said her daughter called the police and ambulance service, who tried to call Rawle, but she initially did not answer their calls.
He continues: ‘At 2.40 pm the ambulance service called her back. But Christine Rawle calls her friend to sort out her dogs, instead of getting help for her husband.”
‘While her husband was dying and as the paramedic tried to get her into action, she heard her say, ‘d***, d***, I fucking killed him’.
‘She stabbed her husband between the shoulder blades, puncturing the ribs and he bled into his chest cavity, causing cardiac arrest.
‘The knife was 10 cm into his back, causing a collapsed lung.’
When police arrived on the scene, she told officers, “I took his life because he was horrible to me. He terrorized. It was continuous. I wanted to leave.’
She also told officers: ‘He was sexually incapable, he had a prostate problem, he blamed me and told me I wasn’t attractive.
“He didn’t want children, he had me sterilized.”
Mr Brunton added: ‘We say these allegations concerned this defendant 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 from the shed shouting ‘help me, help me’ as her husband followed her and asked her to remove the knife, a court heard.
The bodyworn footage shows Rawle calling her husband a “cruel son of a bitch.”
The Rawles’ home, pictured on the day of the stabbing in August 2022
‘We also say she was 42 when they got together, she already had three children from a previous relationship.
“Does it sound like she wants to have kids with him? Could he have had her sterilized?’
Mr 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.
When asked by police whether she had stabbed her husband, she said: ‘I think I did, 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 cut his shirt, I thought I threw the knife, I didn’t know (I 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 she changed her story because she knew it didn’t look good.’ He also told the court that the couple had previously called police to the house.
He said Rawle had gotten into trouble with police in 1993 over nuisance phone calls 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, Brunton said.
He also told jurors they would hear evidence from a neighbor who would talk about how Rawle would treat her husband.
The neighbor alleged Rawle put Viagra in his tea, chili powder in his underwear and wiped her backside with his ties.
The neighbor, who was introduced to the couple by her partner, was told “this was normal” for the couple.
And in messages sent to her daughter just hours before she stabbed her husband, Rawle called him ‘d***’ and ‘b******’.
Mr Brunton said: ‘We are completely convinced that Ian Rawle was not very nice to his wife, but there may be a reason for that.’
Rawle denies murder. The case continues.