Horse trainer who killed husband ‘had stabbed him before’
A HORSE trainer who plunged a knife four inches into her husband’s back had stabbed him before, a murder trial heard yesterday.
Christine Rawle, 70, asked Ian, 72, her husband of 27 years, to help her muck out the horses before knifing him while on the phone to her daughter, the jury was told.
The court heard that police had previously been called to the couple’s home in the 1990s after she stabbed Ian in the chest,
Sean Brunton KC, prosecuting, said after the fatal attack in August 2022 Rawle told her daughter: “I’ve stabbed him.” The daughter hung up and called emergency services, meanwhile Rawle phoned a friend, asking her to “sort her dogs out”, Exeter Crown Court heard.
Collapses
She had run off shouting “Help me! Help me!” as Ian followed, asking her to remove the knife, Mr Brunton said.
He said: “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.
“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’.”
The lawyer said the knife wound between Ian’s shoulder blades punctured between his ribs. It sparked a bleed into his chest cavity, which caused cardiac arrest.
The court heard when police arrived at the couple’s isolated bungalow near Braunton, Devon, Rawle told them: “I took his life because he was horrible to me.
“He terrorised. It was continuous. I wanted out.”
She later said she “couldn’t remember” if she stabbed Ian or threw the knife, saying: “I didn’t realise [I’d stabbed him]. He was my world.”
But Mr Brunton said Rawle had told officers an “opportunistic and fabricated story”. He said: “She is not an unintelligent woman, she is a highly complicated woman, and we would suggest a manipulative one.” He said Rawle had got into trouble with police in 1993 over nuisance calls to one of Ian’s ex-partners. A few years later, officers were called when she stabbed Ian in the chest. Mr Brunton likened the Rawles to Roald Dahl’s The Twits, because of their constant arguments. Jurors heard friends and family would describe Mr Rawle as a “grumpy old man” who could be rude. Mr Brunton said: “He would frequently wind his wife up... but he was not a monster.
“Likewise, this defendant was no victim, she was no shrinking violet.”
The court heard that the partner of Rawle’s youngest son would recall going to the couple’s home and seeing Rawle holding a knife to Ian’s throat.
Mr Brunton said: “She remembers later on this defendant would confide in her that she didn’t really like Ian and loved to torment him.
“That sometimes she put Viagra in his tea or chilli powder in his underpants or occasionally wipe her backside with his ties out of some kind of spite or joke.”
Rawle has denied murder and the trial continues.