Originally from Aberdeen, Australia, Katherine Knight is the first Australian woman to have been sentenced to life imprisonment. And for good reason, the crime she committed, on the night of February 29 to March 1, 2000, is beyond comprehension…
Katherine Knight’s name may mean nothing to you. However, in the early 2000s, this forties Australian committed one of the most barbaric crimes in the history of the country of Oz. It is in Aberdeen, a few hundred kilometers north of Sydney, that this affair takes root. 1is March 2000, the disappearance of John Price, a 45-year-old minor, is reported to the police. His colleagues say they are worried not to see him at work, especially since the day before, Price had told them a strange secret. The father of the family had warned his colleagues, pointing out that if he did not show up for work the next day, it was because his partner, Katherine Knight, would probably have killed him…
Without waiting, the Aberdeen police are dispatched to the scene. Clearly visible traces of blood on the front door prompt the authorities to break down the door, and it is a scene of horror that they discover inside. Dn the entrance hallway, the lifeless body of John Price lies in a pool of blood. The severed head, the skin torn off, the 45-year-old man was probably flayed alive by his companionwho left a bloody note on him: “About time you paid Jonathon for raping (raping) my daughter (daughter). You for Beck (Price’s daughter) for Ross – for little John (his son). Now play with your little dick John Price”, read the policemen on the piece of paper. Katherine Knight lies unconscious a few feet from him, an almost empty medicine bottle knocked over next to her.
She serves her children their father’s ass
A little further on, the investigators discover with horror that Knight, a butcher by profession, has hung the skin of her spouse on a hook hanging from an architrave. Price’s head was boiled in a pot over the fire, and some pieces of his posterior were cooked. On the living room table, two cutlery have been installed, each bearing the name of one of the victim’s children. In the plates, the police identify the cooked flesh of the father of the family, accompanied by potatoes, pumpkin, beets, zucchini, cabbage, yellow squash and meat juice. Everything suggests that Katherine Knight intended to serve as her spouse to Beck and Ross, Price’s children who lived with them but whose father had sent to spend the night at a friend’s house.
Alive, Katherine Knight is hospitalized. The state of the crime scene and the confessions of the forties then allow the investigators to retrace the evening of February 29. After 11 p.m., when Price was already asleep, Knight broke into his house, watched TV for a few minutes, and took a shower. She then joined Price in his bed, woke him up, and had sex with him. A few hours later, the 45-year-old man was awakened by his wife’s stab wounds, 37 in total, several of which affected vital organs. Despite the violence of the attack, Price managed to get out of bed and out of the house, but ended up falling dead, drained of blood. Knight then dragged him inside his home, before engaging in his butchering activities on the body of his spouse.
A life of violence and dementia
The investigation reveals that Katherine Knight grew up in a violent family, her mother allowing her companions to rape her until she was 11 years old. As a teenager, Katherine begins to exhibit strange behaviors. She gets her first job in a slaughterhouse and decides to hang her knives above her bed, “in case she needs it“. In 1974, she married David Kellett, an alcoholic ex-train conductor with whom she had a very violent marriage. Knight physically attacks Kellett on several occasions and endangers their first daughter, Melissa, by intentionally leaving her stroller on the tracks of a train before going to threaten complete strangers with an axe. With each incident, the Australian manages to bullshit the police and doctors and is released without further action into the wild.
This is what she will try to do until the end. On October 15, 2001, his trial for the murder of John Price opened in Australia. Knight pleads guilty but refuses to take responsibility for his actions. She was sentenced to incompressible life imprisonment on November 8, 2001. She is the first Australian woman in history to receive this sentence.