It’s 1995, and you’ve met an amazing woman. You know she has a violent temper, but when the two of you are together, things feel magical. You ask her to move in with you, and she agrees. What’s better, is that she gets along wonderfully with your two sons. She asks you to marry her, but you refuse. Not because you don’t love her, but because you’ve been married before, and so has she. It’s never worked out, so why put that sort of pressure on things. You tell her you still love her, but it’s not enough.
She takes her revenge by getting you fired from your job – the one you’ve held for 17 years, and you, in turn, kick her out of your home.
A few months later, the two of you get back together. You refuse to let her move in with you, but you still love her. You fight a lot, and your friends tell you they can’t support your relationship. The fights get more and more heated, and you’ve finally had enough. You go to the court and take out a restraining order against her – to keep her away from both you and your children.
When you return from work, you find that she has been there, and has sent your children away for a sleepover with friends. When you go to bed, you never expected that she would show up, shower, and get into bed with you. A pleasant evening of sex followed by disturbing sleep, where she stabs you repeatedly until you die.
As if dying wasn’t bad enough, she proceeds to skin you and cut off your head. She cooks up various other pieces of you, and sets a meal out for your children when they return home.
Unfortunately, it’s a true story.
Katherine Knight was born into a dysfunctional family. Her mother, Barbara, was married to Jack Roughan and had four sons. But she began having an affair with Ken Knight, a friend and co-worker of her husband Jack. It was such a scandal in their town of Aberdeen, New South Wales, where both men were known as upstanding people, Barbara and Ken were forced to leave and move to Moree, New South Wales.
Barbara left her four sons behind, two stayed with Jack, and the other two went to live with an aunt in Sydney. Barbara and Ken proceeded to bear four more children, including a pair of twin girls. Katherine was the younger of the twin girls.
When Katherine was only four, Barbara’s husband, Jack, died. The two sons that Barbara had left behind with him, came to live with her new family.
Ken was an alcoholic, who openly used violence and intimidation to rape Barbara up to ten times a day. Barbara would tell her daughters all the details of their sex life, and how much she hated sex and men – no doubt leaving an imprint on the girls.
In 1969, following the death of her uncle, Oscar Knight, Katherine and her family moved back to Aberdeen. There, Katherine attended Muswellbrook High School. She was a loner and a bully. She assaulted at least one boy at school with a weapon, and was injured by a teacher, who only acted in self defense.
Katherine left school at the age of 15, not knowing how to read or write. She got a job as a cutter in a clothing factory. One year later, she left for her dream job – cutting up offal at the local slaughterhouse. She was promoted quickly to boning, and was even given her own set of butcher knives. At home, she hung her knives over her bed so that they “would always be handy if I needed them,” a habig she continued everywhere she lived.
In 1973, Katherine met David Stanford Kellett, and they were married in 1974, at her request. As soon as they arrived to be married, Katherine’s mother, Barbara gave Kellett some advice: “The old girl said to me to watch out. ‘You better watch this one or she’ll fucking kill you. Stir her up the wrong way or do the wrong thing and you’re fucked, don’t ever think of playing on her, she’ll fuckin’ kill you.’ and that was her mother talking! She told me she’s got something loose, she’s got a screw loose somewhere.”
On their wedding night, Katherine tried to strangle Kellett, because he fell asleep on her after only having intercourse three times.
One night, a very pregnant Katherine burned all of Kellett’s clothing and shoes. He arrived home late from a darts competition, after making it into the finals, but she didn’t care. She hit him across the back of the head with a frying pan and he ran for his life. Kellett collapsed in a neighbor’s house and was later treated for a badly fractured skull. Kellett dropped all charges.
Kellett finally left her in May, 1976, shortly after their first child, Melissa Ann, was born. He moved to Queensland, unable to cope with Katherine’s violent and possessive behavior. The next day, Katherine was seen pushing her new baby in a stroller down the main street, violently throwing the stroller from side to side. It was then that she was admitted to St. Elmo’s Hospital in Tamworth, where she was diagnosed with postnatal depression, and spent several weeks recovering.
After her release, Katherine took two month old Melissa and placed her on the train tracks, shortly before the train was due. She stole an axe and went into town, threatening to kill several people. Luckily, a man known as “Old Ted,” found and rescued Melissa, just minutes before the train came through.
Katherine was arrested and taken back to St. Elmo’s Hospital, but signed herself out the next day.
A few days later, Katherine took one of her knives and slashed the face of a woman. She demanded the woman drive her to Queensland to find Kellett, but the woman escaped when they stopped at a service station. By the time police arrived, Katherine had taken a little boy hostage and was threatening him with the knife.
Police attacked her with brooms, and she was disarmed. She was admitted to the Morisset Psychiatric Hospital, where she told the nurses she had intended to kill the mechanic at the service station because he had repaired Kellett’s car, which allowed him to leave. She then wanted to kill Kellett and his mother when she got to Queensland.
When police informed Kellett of the incident, he left his girlfriend and, along with his mother, moved back to Aberdeen to support her. Katherine was released on August 9, 1976 into the care of her mother-in-law and along with Kellett, they moved to Woodbridge. Katherine got a job at Dinmore meatworks in Ipswich, and on March 6, 1980, she and Kellett had another daughter, Natasha Maree.
Katherine left Kellett in 1984 and moved in with her parents in Aberdeen, then rented a house in Muswellbrook. She returned to the slaughterhouse for work but injured her back the following year and went on disability. The government gave her a Housing Commission house in Aberdeen.
In 1986, Katherine met David Saunders, a miner. Within a few months, he moved in with her and her two daughters, although he kept his old apartment in Scone. She was jealous and fought with him often about what he did when she wasn’t around. She would throw him out, and then beg him to come back.
In May 1987, she cut the throat of his two month old dingo pup, as an example of what would happen if he ever had an affair. Then she knocked him unconscious with a frying pan.
In June 1988, Katherine gave birth to her third daughter, Sarah. Saunders put a deposit on a house, which Katherine paid off when she received her workers’ compensation in 1989. She decorated the house with animal skins, skulls, horns, rusty animal traps, leather jackets, old boots, machetes, rakes and pitchforks. No space was left uncovered.
One night, she and Saunders had an argument, and Katherine hit him in the face with an iron, then stabbed him in the stomach with a pair of scissors. He left and moved back to Scone, but when he returned to the house, he found she had cut up all his clothes.
Saunders took a long service leave and went into hiding. Katherine tried to find him, but no one would admit to knowing where he was. When he returned to visit his daughter several months later, he found that Katherine had gone to the police and claimed she was afraid of him. She was issued with an Apprehended Violence Order against him.
In 1990, Katherine became pregnant yet again, this time by a 43 year old former slaughterhouse worker, John Chillingworth. She gave birth the following year to a son named Eric. Their relationship lasted three years, before she left him for a man she had been having an affair with, John Price.
Price had three children, and when his own marriage ended, his daughter stayed with his ex, and his two sons moved in with him. The boys like Katherine, and in 1995, she moved in with them.
In 1998, Katherine and Price got into a fight over his refusal to marry her. As a means of retaliation, Katherine videotaped items he had stolen from work – out of date medical kits he had scavenged from the company trash. She sent the tape to his boss, and he was subsequently fired from the job he had held for 17 years. That day, he kicked her out of his home.
A few months later, Price went back to her, rekindling the relationship. He refused to let her move back in. He lost friends, who felt she was abusive and wanted nothing to do with him while he was with her.
In February 2000, Katherine stabbed Price in the chest. He made her leave his house and on February 29, on the way to work, he stopped at the Scone Magistrate’s Court and took out a restraining order to keep her away from him and his children. That afternoon, he told his co-workers that if he didn’t come into work the next day, it would be because Katherine had killed him.
When he arrived home, he found that Katherine had been there. She had sent his children away for a sleepover at a friends house. Scared, he spent the evening at his neighbors before finally going home and going to bed at 11pm. She let herself back into the house and climbed into bed with him. She enticed him into sex, after which he fell asleep.
While he slept, Katherine stabbed him with a butcher’s knife. He awoke and turned on the light, trying to escape. Katherine chased him through the house, but he made it outside. But not for long as he either stumbled back or was dragged back into the hallway where he bled out and died. He had been stabbed 37 times.
Several hours after he died, Katherine skinned him and hung his skin from a meat hook in the doorway to the lounge room. She then decapitated him and cooked parts of his body, serving up the meat with baked potato, pumpkin, zucchini, cabbage, yellow squash and gravy in two settings at the dinner table. Each place setting had a name on a note beside it, each belonging to one of his children; she was preparing to serve his body parts to his children. Prince’s head was found in a pot with vegetables. The pot was still warm.
Sometime later, Katherine arranged what was left of his body with his left arm draped over an empty soft drink bottle and with his legs crossed. She left a handwritten note on top of a photograph of Prince. The note was blood stained and covered with small pieces of flesh. It read:
Time got you back Johathon for rapping my douter. You to Beck [Price’s daughter] for Ross – for Little John [his son]. Now play with little Johns Dick John Price.
On November 8, 2001, Katherine Knight was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Her papers were marked “never to be released.” This was the first time this sentencing had ever been imposed on a woman in Australian history.
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View Comments (1)
such a evil women. She should have been sentenced to death.