A JUDGE has approved the continued detention of a woman who is accused of murdering her husband at a smallholding in North Devon.

Christine Rawle, aged 69, is due to stand trial at Exeter Crown Court in September accused of murdering her 72-year-old husband with a single stab wound on the afternoon of Sunday August 21, 2022.

She was not present at a short procedural hearing at which Judge Christophe Parker, KC, agreed to extend the custody time limit until September 29. Rawle did not appear at the administrative hearing but her defence counsel Miss Clare Wade, KC, did not object to the extension.

Judge Parker said he was satisfied there were good and sufficient reasons for the continued detention and that the prosecution had acted with due expedition.

The judge set a date of August 13 for a preliminary hearing at Southampton Crown Court to settle any outstanding legal issues.

Rawle and her husband had been married for 35 years before his death and lived together on a smallholding off a country lane near Braunton.