Kathrine Mary Knight was born October 24, 1955, in Tenterfield, Australia. Knight was a bastard child between her mother, Barbara Roughan, and a man Barbara met through her husband, Ken Knight. Kathrine Knight’s childhood was quite chaotic. Her father was an alcoholic that raped her mother multiple times a day. Barbara would often share intimate details of her sex life with her children. Knight claimed that she was sexually assaulted until the age of 11 by several family members, but not her father.
Knight was a bully in school, she never learned to read or write and left at 15. She worked at a clothing factory for a year before landing her “Dream Job” at a slaughterhouse. Apparently, she loved her job so much that she hung her first set of butcher’s knives over her bed.
Kathrine Knight
While working at the slaughterhouse, Knight met David Kellett. Kellett was a raging alcoholic just like her father. They often got into fistfights, but Kathrine dominated Kellett. In 1974, Knight convinced Kellett to marry her. Kellett was drunk the entire time and was warned by Knight’s mother that Knight had “a screw loose somewhere.”
On their wedding night, they had intercourse 3 times before Kellett fell asleep. Knight wanted another round and was angered by her new husband’s exhaustion. Knight started to strangle Kellett, who woke up and managed to fight her off. Even with the rocky start, their marriage lasted 10 years.
Kellett was often unfaithful, and once even left his wife and their two daughters in the middle of the night. After discovering one of Kellett’s affairs, Knight placed their two-month-old infant on the local train tracks shortly before a train was due (the train didn’t come, and the infant was spared) and she threatened several people with a stolen ax.
Knight was diagnosed with postnatal depression, and spent a few months in a psychiatric hospital, where she told nurses that she intended to kill a mechanic who had fixed Kellett’s car because that made it possible for him to leave her. Despite this threat, Kellett took Knight back when she was released from the hospital. Their reunion didn’t last long, and Knight went through a period of deep distress after Kellett finally did leave her.
In 1986 Knight entered a whirlwind romance with David Saunders. After a few months, Saunders moved in with Knight and her daughters but kept his apartment. Knight was incredibly jealous and suspicious of what Sanders did when she wasn’t around. Their relationship quickly became toxic. Knight slit the throat of Saunders’ 2-month-old puppy just to show him what she was capable of. They were together for another year, having a daughter together before Saunders left when Knight tried to kill him with a pair of scissors.
Her next relationship was with a man named John Chillingworth. They were together for 3 years and had a son together. Chillingworth left when he learned that Knight was having an affair with a man named John Charles Thomas Price.
Their relationship started without complications. Price had 2 older children that lived with him that seemed to like Knight. He also made enough money as a miner to keep them comfortable. Knight moved in with Price in 1995 and things were going smoothly. She turned violent when she suggested that they marry, and he declined.
Knight framed Price for stealing things from his company and got him fired. Though he initially kicked her out, a few months later they started seeing each other again. This time Price didn’t let Knight move back in. This caused her violence to escalate.
In February of 2000, an argument between John Charles Thomas Price and Katherine Knight culminated with her attempting to stab him in the chest. He took out a restraining order against her to keep his children safe. Toward the end of the month, Price let on that he was concerned for his safety and told his coworkers that if he ever went missing, it was because Knight killed him.
John Price and Katherine Knight
On February 29, John Price came home from work and followed his usual routine of checking in with the neighbors before going to bed at 11 p.m. Knight came home shortly after, made herself dinner, watched TV, showered, and then went upstairs. She woke Price, the two had sex, and he went back to bed.
Then, Katherine Knight took a butcher knife from next to her bed — where she had always kept them — and stabbed Price 37 times. According to evidence, he woke up during the attack but could not fight her off. He succumbed to his wounds and Knight dragged his body downstairs, skinned him, and hung his body from a meat hook in the living room. Then, she decapitated him and cut up pieces of his body to cook in a dish with potato, pumpkin, beets, zucchini, cabbage, squash, and gravy.
Knight made herself a dish, but evidence showed that she couldn’t finish the meal. She then lay down next to the headless, mutilated corpse of Price, took many pills, and passed out.
Price’s coworkers heeded his warning the next morning and called the police after he didn’t show up for his shift. The police arrived to find Katherine Knight’s gruesome crime scene and immediately detained the comatose Knight. Once she woke up, she claimed to have no memory of the night before. In the kitchen, police found Price’s head, boiling in a pot of vegetables on the stove. On the table, they found two full plates, each labeled with a name. In horror, the police realized that Knight had planned to serve John Price’s body parts to his children.
In October of 2001, her trial commenced but it didn’t get very far. For reasons that remain unclear, Knight changed her plea to guilty and the judge adjourned the case without testimony.
She was escorted to prison that day and the judge ordered that her papers be marked “never to be released.” For the first time in history, a woman in Australia was given a life sentence without parole. To this day, Knight nevertheless maintains her innocence and refuses to accept responsibility for her actions. Katherine Knight has appealed her sentence before and was denied almost immediately. She is still serving her life sentence at Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre. Apparently, everyone there calls her Nana and she's a model inmate.
Knight now (65)
Sources
Comments