Christine Rawle is accused of murdering her husband (Picture: Apex/Facebook)
A woman accused of stabbing her husband in the back were like the bickering couple in Roald Dahl’s The Twits, a court has heard.
Christine Rawle, 70, attacked her 72-year-old husband Ian after an argument at their bungalow in Devon in August 2022.
Ian followed his wife into a field with the knife still in his back, ‘imploring her to pull it out’ before he collapsed, the trial was told.
Rawle, a mum of three from a previous marriage, described herself as a ‘registered horse trainer’ and claims she is known as ‘the horse whisperer’.
She denies murdering Ian and claims she’s a victim of her husband’s cruel and controlling behaviour throughout their 30-year marriage – but the prosecution say Rawle exaggerated her husband’s faults and killed him during a ‘fit of temper’.
Their unhappy 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.’
Christine Rawle is accused of murdering her husband (Picture: Facebook)
Police rushed to the scene but Ian was declared dead (Picture: PAULA DAVIES/APEX)
Rawle called herself ‘the horse whisperer’ (Picture: Facebook)
On at least two occasions before Ian’s death Christine Rawle stabbed her husband, once with a fork and once with a knife, said the prosecutor.
The final violent outburst happened because Christine Rawle wanted to sell a piece of land at their rural home at Kittywell Wood in Knowle to fund a cataract operation, the court heard.
When her husband said she should use the NHS, she stabbed him.
Police and paramedics were called to their home on August 21, 2022. Earlier that day Rawle had sent messages to her adult daughter in which she referred to Ianwith the nickname ‘D**k’ or ‘D******d’.
She said he was unsympathetic to her ailments and talked of divorce, adding ‘I hope the c*** dies.’
During the ‘chaotic’ emergency phone call to 999 she said: ‘He was such a b*****d to me. He was on and on at me. I’m watching him die in front of me.
‘I’m going to be in trouble for this. I’ve stabbed him. It isn’t fair he always does this.’
The prosecution said she was ‘far more interested in putting the dogs away’ than saving her husband’s life, and that she wasted a vital period of 11 to 12 minutes in which she could have tried to revive him.
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The pair met in the early 1990s and Ian Rawle, a car salesman, had left his previous wife to be with Christine.
Both could be violent and petty and were known to police due to their volatile relationship, the court heard.
Rawle could be ‘manipulative and extreme’ in her own behaviour, the court heard, especially spending money she did not have, and she once filled her husband’s car with water from a hose pipe.
The trial continues.
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