Katherine Knight was the first woman in Australia to be given life imprisonment without parole after she stabbed her lover 37 times, skinned him and served his flesh to his children
One woman, infamously known as Australia’s “Hannibal Lecter” was a “horror movie in the making” after displaying chilling signs of violence before she brutally stabbed her husband 37 times, decapitated him, and cooked his body parts with potatoes.
Katherine Knight became notorious as the first woman to receive life imprisonment without parole in Australia for her heinous acts. In a blood-curdling incident that rocked the small town of Aberdeen, New South Wales, the mother-of-four carried out a barbaric crime.
She savagely attacked her partner John Price, stabbing him 37 times, severing his head, boiling it, and suspending his carcass from a meat hook.
On the fateful day of February 29, 2000, Knight concocted a macabre meal using Price’s cooked remains, which she plated up with cabbage, and gravy, intending to feed it to his children as they came home from school.
The atrocity didn’t come without prelude. Ex-detective Luke Taylor spoke to news.com.au about her penchant for “violent” actions, rooted in “an abusive childhood”, reports the Mirror US.
“There were so many warning signs yet none were heeded,” said Taylor. “She was a horror movie in the making,” he added.
Knight’s terrifying narrative wasn’t unforeseen. She had a violent past, having once stabbed Price during a dispute, leading him to seek a restraining order against her.
Despite a rocky relationship, the couple made up before the day that ended in horror. Knight has spoken out about suffering horrendous sexual abuse during her childhood at the hands of various men.
She alleged enduring abuse from different family members as a child, which paved the way for her volatile relationships with men in adulthood.
In the book ‘Blood Stains’ by Peter Lalor, Knight’s formative years are laid bare. Notorious for being a schoolyard bully, she once assaulted a classmate.
Knight’s violent streak continued into her adult life; she attempted to strangle her first husband, David Kellett, on their wedding night and reportedly cracked his skull with a frying pan. She also killed a subsequent partner’s dog and attacked him with scissors.
Frighteningly, Knight, who had worked in an abattoir, was known by local Rick Banyard as “a very proficient meatworker.”
The final argument before Price’s death left the father fearing for his life. Following a particularly intense dispute, Price is said to have warned his workmates that if he failed to turn up for his shift, they should inform the police and come looking for him.
Subsequently, bloodstains were discovered on Knight’s front door. On the morning of 1 March 2000, neighbours alerted the authorities after spotting the chilling evidence of brutality.
Knight was apprehended after being found unconscious by Price’s remains, with her conviction secured in 2001 and her appeal rejected in 2006, as reported by the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC).
“By the time I got to the scene, Katherine was leaving in an ambulance. She had taken some pills. Not enough to kill her, but they made her sleepy,” former Sergeant Robert Wells disclosed to ABC.
Upon entering the home, Wells was confronted with a horrifying sight: “I walked inside and saw the human skin pelt hanging up, completely intact in one piece. John Price’s decapitated and skinned body was lying on the floor in the lounge room. We found his head, it had been boiled and cooked in a pot on the stove. There were a number of slices of rump, taken off his human rump, baked in the oven with some vegetables and put on plates, with the name of two of his children on them.”
During Knight’s sentencing, Supreme Court Justice Barry O’Keefe reflected on the chilling nature of the crime: “The last minutes of [Price’s] life must have been a time of abject terror for him, as they were a time of utter enjoyment for her,”.
Yet, to those acquainted with the ill-fated pair, there were no signs of such extreme brutality.
“I think, basically, nobody sort of expected any significant drama at all, let alone the crime that became recorded as one of the worst pieces of history in Australia,” he expressed.