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A couple likened to Roald Dahl’s The Twits due to their constant bickering were recorded arguing about dinner and their land before the wife is accused of stabbing her husband in the back.
Christine Rawle is accused of knifing her husband Ian between his shoulder blades after the couple argued about mucking out the horses.
Ian, 72, followed his wife into a field with the knife still stuck in his back, imploring her to pull it out before he collapsed.
The couple were living on separate parts of their land in Devon when Ian died in August 2022 – and they were constantly arguing, with Christine telling police he was ‘such a cruel b******’.
Rawle, 70, said she was a victim of her husband’s cruel and controlling behaviour – and the couple were likened to The Twits, a couple who ‘delighted in making each other’s lives as miserable as possible’.
Jurors at Exeter crown court were today shown videos recorded by Rawle herself which showed the sorts of arguments the couple were having on a regular basis.
Rawle recorded videos of her bickering with her husband (Picture: Devon and Cornwall Police/SWNS)
Rawle cried as she was arrested on suspicion of her husband’s murder (Picture: Devon and Cornwall Police/SWNS)
During the clips she threatened to call the police on her husband, and told him to ‘shut up’ as he says ‘I have to work while you sit there getting fat’.
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 issued a warning to her husband and told 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 added 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 told her husband: ‘Leave me alone, I am laid here on the sofa you are watching TV.’
They continue to bicker, before he told 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 told him she has an ‘entitlement’ to the land, she added: ‘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, Ian claimed: ‘Day after day there is something new. You are the one showing nutty behaviour.’
She responded: ‘You are a liar and a narcissist and I’ll tell you one more time, leave me alone.’
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?’
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.
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.
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.’
The video clips were shown to the jury today (Picture: Devon and Cornwall Police/SWNS)
Rawle described herself on social media as the ‘horse whisperer’ (Picture: Facebook)
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.
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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.
‘We fully accept Ian Rawle was not very nice to his wife, but that may have been for a reason.’
Rawle denies murder. The trial continues.
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