Katherine Knight

On November 9, 2001 Katherine Mary Knight was given the harshest sentence possible in Australian Law. Knight was the first woman ever in Australia's history to be sentenced to life in prison with her file marked "never to be released". Her crime was the vicious murder and defilement of the body of her de facto husband John Price. The murderous plan was decided when John Price called the police on the Sunday before his death, following an argument with Knight and taking out an apprehended violence order against her.

Knight was a not a woman to cross, ex-lovers and family members came forward at the murder trial to explain the violence that the woman was capable of. Knight's ex-husband told the packed court that Knight had one cut the throat of his eight-week-old puppy. Another time, she sent film of a stolen first aid kit to John Price's boss at work. Price's boss fired him for the theft immediately after seeing the footage.

Knight was portrayed as a vindictive and cruel woman, who harmed everyone who crossed her. Yet to look at her sitting in the dock during the trial many commented that she looked like anyone's mother. A meek and mild looking woman who hid the facade of a monster.

Once Price had rung the police Knight began planning his demise. She went out and bought a sexy black nightie for the evening, as well putting a butcher's knife in the bedroom. She also made sure she had the right pots for his head and that her knives were sharp enough for the event. Even planning the murder and mutilation were a pleasurable feeling for the woman.

On Tuesday February 29, 2000 Knight murdered 44-year-old John Charles Thomas Price. The couple had "pleasurable sex"  in the bedroom of Mr Price's home in the outer Newcastle suburb of Aberdeen. After copulation, Knight inflicted the first of 37 stab wounds. She grabbed the butcher's knife that she had previously placed near the bed for this reason and stabbed the unsuspecting man.

Price saw the horror in Knight's eyes and attempted to flee the house. He managed to get outside of the home only to be dragged in by the maniacally deranged Knight. Once John was back inside the house his de fact wife then proceeded to stab him a further 36 times. Knight enjoyed the killing. As the judge, Justice O'Keefe, presiding over her trial claimed,

"The last minutes of his (John Price) life must have been a time of abject terror for him as they were a time of utter enjoyment for her...she has not expressed any contrition or remorse and if released she poses a serious threat to the security of society."

Once John was dead, Knight then methodically proceeded to skin the corpse, taking off the entire skin, including the face, ears, scalp and neck like a macabre suit. Knight only left a small inch square of skin on the body. The square had the scar from where she had stabbed him previously. The suit of skin, something harking back to the thriller Silence of the Lambs was then hung up in the entrance way of the house.

The skin was removed so expertly, Knight had worked in the abattoirs as a meat slicer for many years and had planned to use her skills to remove the skin of John the way she did.

Once the skin had been removed, Knight then continued to defile the body of her lover by chopping of the skinned head and cooking it in a big pot on the cook top. Knight then peeled and chopped up vegetables and  along with slices she removed from the man's buttocks served them up as steak and vegetables for the man's son and daughter along with spiteful notes.

Knight took time and painstakingly defiled the body of her lover. Her pure enjoyment of killing and torturing the dead body put her down as one of the cruelest in the annals of Australia's criminal history .

During the trial one of Australia's foremost criminal psychologists, Dr Milton was asked to discuss his findings after interviewing Knight. Dr Milton said that Knight suffered from borderline personality disorder, but knew exactly what she was doing on the evening of February, 2000.

Concluding the Newcastle Supreme court trial Justice O"Keefe stated

"Katherine Mary Knight, you have pleaded guilty and been convicted of the murder of John Charles Price at Aberdeen on or about February 29, 2000, in respect of your crime, I sentence you to imprisonment for life."

 

Looking back over Ms Knight's life, there was so many indications that she would one day commit murder, however over the years people had gotten used to the woman's erratic behaviour and just put it down as being how she was. 

The woman known to Aberdeen residents as the "Black Knight" was born on October 24, 1955. She was one of two twin girls born to her parents, along with 6 brothers. Katherine did not stay at school very long and left it as soon as she could almost illiterate. Most people from Aberdeen remember Katherine Knight as a young girl who was happy and friendly when she was in a good mood, but a person most others stayed away from when she was in one of her dark moods. 

In 1974 at the tender age of 18 Katherine began working at the local slaughterhouse, where her role was to decapitate the pigs. Katherine took great interest in her job and would often wander over to start of the production line and watch the pigs actually having their throats cut. Other employees found her macabre interest a little strange but just assumed she was just looking at other areas of the job. 

Around the same time the young woman married David Kellett however from the very beginning of the marriage it was a violent and unhappy marriage. On the young couple's wedding night, Katherine attempted to strangle her new husband to death after he failed to perform up to her sexual expectations. From that point on David always was weary of his bride. One day after coming home a little late, Katherine met him at the house's front door. As David opened the door, Katherine swung the hot edge of the iron at him, scalding the side of the man's face and leaving the iron's pattern across his cheek. 

At work the next day, David had to secretly seek medical assistance. Had he done so the night of the attack, Katherine would have known he would have told the doctors and the police may have been called. Had the police been called, Katherine may have been perturbed then to prevent further attacks. But it was only to be the beginning of a life of attacking people who got in her way.

In 1976 the couple had a baby daughter, but Katherine held little regard for the girl. A story going around Aberdeen is that one day when Katherine was in one of her moods, she began attacking others in the neighbourhood, even grabbing an axe from a woodpile in one resident's yard and swinging it at anyone who came near her. 

Later the same day her newborn baby daughter was found on the train-tracks awaiting a train. Ted Abrahams, one of the elderly residents of Aberdeen found the baby only minutes before a train was due to arrive. Katherine seemed impassive to the demise of her child. Though no-one could ever prove it, they knew she had put the baby on the tracks. Yet again, strangely the woman was not reported to the authorities.

Another case of her unprovoked violence is the attack on then 16 year old Margaret Macbeth. Margaret became embroiled in an argument with Katherine and was cut severely across her face. Margaret required hospitalisation and stitches. 

Finally, Katherine was interviewed by police following the attack and sent to Morriset psychiatric hospital for assessment. She told tales of woe to anyone who would listen. She told them how she was physically abused by her husband. Yet David remembers the situation as the other way around. She was the one who would attack him at whim. David Kellett recalls at her murder trial that she was "unpredictably violent" a phrase that would come up again and again when people described Katherine.

Once she was out of hospital again she attacked. This time the victim was a police officer who was stabbed by the woman. Yet Katherine was let off any charges because people knew that that was how she was.

David Kellett remembers another scene, one that came horrifyingly true for another man. One morning he woke to find Katherine sitting astride his chest. A knife in her hand, grazing David's throat. Katherine just laughed at him saying how easy it could have been for her to kill him. Yet many years later she proved herself right when she killed her lover John Price in the same way.

In 1980, the couple had another daughter.

Katherine was always worried that her truck driving husband had a girlfriend in "every port" and in one of her jealous rages burned all the clothes he owned. To try and appease his wife, he suggested the two of them move to Queensland, leaving the girls with their maternal grandmother. The couple lived in Beaudesert for a short-while. Katherine found work easily at an abattoir in the region, but soon the marriage completely failed and she returned home to her girls and her parent's house in Aberdeen.

Once she got herself organised, Katherine bought herself a home in near-by McQueen Street and did it up to her taste. Yet it terrified many of the children in the area with farming equipment and plush toys in unusual places. She even had a scythe hanging from a rope above the lounge suite.

In 1987 Katherine had found herself another lover. This time it was divorcee David Saunders. According to his ex-wife and others, David Saunders was a nice and polite man, a man who was not prone to violence. Yet according to Katherine, he did abuse her. She recalls he once punched her in the stomach while she was supposedly pregnant with his child. It was after this incident that she slit his puppy's throat. But David claims that she was just prone to violent attacks and killed the puppy to upset him, not as a retaliation as Katherine claimed. 

Just before Katherine broke off the relationship she vandalised David's car and then took an overdose of sleeping pills. She was then admitted to a psychiatric hospital for observations once more.

In May 1990 when Katherine returned to society she found herself in the arms of a new man. John Chillingworth was a recovering alcoholic and soon the couple had a baby together. John does admit to hitting her once, it was after she had pushed him too far after smacking his glasses off his face and breaking his false teeth in his mouth. The relationship did not last long.

In 1994 Katherine Knight met John Price, "Pricey" to those who knew him. John was an average aussie who worked hard and enjoyed the occasional Toohey's New. It was on March 1, 2001 when he failed to arrive at work that the alarm bells started to ring for those who knew him. He never missed work and so his boss began to ring around to make sure he was ok.

However by this time, Katherine had murdered and de-skinned the man's body and served it up to his children.

Bibliography:

TV News from time of court case

Newspaper reports October - November 2001 

Sydney Morning Herald

Daily Telegraph

Newcastle Herald

ABC.net.au

 

By Jacqui Bendeich
Copyright © 2001  by [The Crime Web].

Except as provided by the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system  or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the author.
Original Written: November 10, 2001

Revised: 24 Feb 2002 18:18:44 -0800