'Horse Whisperer's' first 4 words to daughter after 'murdering husband at home'

27 February 2024 , 16:47

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Christine Rawle, a keen horse rider, denies murdering her husband (Image: Facebook)

A keen horse rider plunged a knife 10cm into her husband's back - and then told their daughter "I have stabbed him," her murder trial heard today.

Christine Rawle, 70, then rang one of her best friends to ask her to "sort her dogs out" before she finally removed the blade from Ian Rawle's back, it is said. A court heard Rawle had asked her 72-year-old husband to help her muck the horses out before knifing him between the shoulder blades as he walked past her.

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 with her daughter when she allegedly attacked him. Exeter Crown Court heard Rawle told her daughter on the phone on August 21, 2022: "I have stabbed him." Jurors were told Rawles' adult daughter, who lives in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, hung up the call and called Thames Valley Police and the ambulance service.

The prosecution said that instead of calling for help, Rawle made a 28-second call to one of her best friends, 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.

Rawle plunged a knife 10cm into her husband's back, it is alleged (Facebook)

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.

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"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 put 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 the police and the ambulance service, who tried to call Rawle but she initially didn't answer their calls. 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*ck, d*ck, I've killed him the b******'. 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."

The jury was told that 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.

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"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 - who he previously likened to Roald Dahl's The Twits due to their constant bickering - 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. He also told jurors they would hear evidence from a neighbour who would tell how Rawle would treat her husband.

The neighbour claims Rawle would put Viagra in his tea, and chilli powder in his underpants and would wipe her backside with his ties. The neighbour, who was introduced to the couple by her partner, was told "this was normal" for the pair.

And in messages sent to her daughter just hours before she stabbed her husband, Rawle called him "d*ck" and "b*****". 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.

Tom Bevan