Katherine Knight butchers husband, John Price, then boils his head and plates him up

Duncan McNab
Warning: Distressing and graphic content

No training or experience could prepare police for the vision from hell they walked into at John Price’s home in
the peaceful Hunter Valley hamlet of Aberdeen on March 1, 2000.On the kitchen stove was a human head
sitting in a pot amid vegetables - a ghastly braise. Plated on the kitchen table were what appeared to be steaks,
presented with vegetables. The steaks were from a human. In the lounge room was a human body – skinned by
someone with expertise.

The victim’s skin was on display, dangling from a meat hook on the architrave. The victim had been stabbed at
least 37 times – the ferocity of the attack made it difficult to count the number of wounds. Many were deep.
Vitals like the lungs, liver, kidneys and aorta were hit. The blood loss was massive.

It was a crime so dark, evil and depraved but, as they later found, the work of someone sane. Someone who’d
planned the killing and knew exactly what they were doing.

John Price

Police identified the human remains as that of the homeowner, 44-year-old

John Price. Price was known locally as a friendly, good-natured bloke, and he
was well-liked. His former wife said he wasn’t a violent man and was a
"good provider".

He was murdered deep into the night of February 29, 2000. The appalling
indignities wrought on him came after death. The murderer attack while
Price was in bed.

Crime scene

When the usually reliable John Price hadn’t turned up for work on the morning of March 1, a colleague went to
see if he was OK. After noticing blood on the door, the workmate called police. They arrived at the house
around 8am and were confronted with a pool of blood around 1m by 2m in the hallway of the house. Blood
spatter and smears were found throughout the house. From crime scene evidence, investigators deduced the
first blows were struck in the master bedroom.

He tried to escape, heading down the hallway toward the front door. His assailant chased him, stabbing him
repeatedly in the back. From bloodstains found on the outside doorknob, Price, though terribly wounded, had
managed to get out of the house. His glimpse of hope was brief, and he was dragged back into the hallway
where he finally expired.

Grisly methodology

In the lounge room, police found Price’s headless body. Forensic evidence
suggested he was dragged there after his death. The murder weapon - a
butcher’s knife – was beside him. Then he’d been skinned. Then decapitated.
Both were done skillfully and without signs of hesitation.

NSW Supreme Court Justice O’Keefe commented it "was carried out with
considerable expertise and an obviously steady hand so that his skin, including
that of the head, face, nose, ears, neck, torso, genital organs and legs, was
removed so as to form one pelt. "So expertly was it done that, after the post mortem examination, the skin was
able to be re-sown onto Price’s body in a way which indicated a clear and appropriate, albeit grisly,
methodology. ”It was the start of a journey into hell as police worked their way through the scene.

Sickening stew
In the kitchen, they found Price’s head. What the judge described as a
"sickening stew" was still at 40-50C when they arrived, leading them to
conclude this indignity happened in the early hours of the morning. On
the kitchen table were "gruesome steaks", carved from Price’s buttocks,
that had been roasted in the oven with vegetables. Accompanying this
horrendous table setting were notes from the killer, addressed to Price’s
son and daughter.

It was a scene that will haunt the attending police for the rest of their
lives. Some took stress leave to help cope.

My lover, my killer

There was only one killer – abattoir worker Katherine Knight, now 63 years old. Police found her in the house,
allegedly stupefied by a cocktail of medications. The two had been in a de-facto relationship for around 4 years.
At the time of the murder the relationship was in tatters. The murder displayed her utter contempt for John
Price.

Katherine Knight

Knight was one of eight children. Her first marriage to truck driver David Kellett lasted a decade and the couple
had two children. He said she was "unpredictably violent" but “I never raised a finger against her, not even in
self defence. I would just walk away.” Her attacks on him included choking him on their wedding night when
she judged his consummation of the marriage not to be up to her expectations. One morning he woke to find
her sitting on his chest and holding a knife to his throat. She said to him, “You see how easy it is” and asked “Is
it true that truck drivers have different women in every town?” His denials were swift and decisive.

After the failure of the marriage, Knight began a brief de-facto relationship
with David Saunders in 1987. The couple had one child – a daughter. Knight
took out a few apprehended violence orders against Saunders, but he told
police investigating the Price murder that he was the one attacked, including
being stabbed with scissors. In act of pure malice, Knight had cut the throat of
their eight-week-old dingo puppy. In 1990, she began a three-year
relationship with John Chillingworth, and they had a son the next year.

Price was her next partner. It was a relationship marred by Knight’s malice
and by domestic violence. As the end loomed, Knight demanded a share of
Price’s house and said in front of witnesses, “You’ll never get me out of this
house. I’ll do you in first.”

Prelude to murder

On Sunday 27 February, just two days before her fatal attack, the couple had a violent dispute. Price fled,
taking refuge with a friend who lived nearby. He alleged Knight had menaced him with butcher’s knife – one of
the tools of her trade as an abattoir worker. Police interviewed both Knight and Price, but conflicting stories left
the case unresolved. It was one of many incidents.

Sixteen months before the murder, Knight told her daughter, “I told him if he took me back this time it was to
the death” and “If I kill Pricey, I’ll kill myself after it.”

She made a similar claim to her brother five months before the murder, but this time suicide wasn’t an option.
She said, “I am going to kill Pricey and I am going to get away with it I’ll get away with it cause I’ll make out I’m
mad”.
She would be half right.

On the morning of his last day alive, Price sought an AVO against Knight at the Scone Court Chamber
Magistrate. It was too little, too late. On the day of the murder, she left her two younger children with her adult
daughter. The slaughter of John Price was pre-meditated and planned.

Sane or insane?

Knight was arrested the day after the murder. Interviewed on March 4, she said she didn’t remember murder.
She told police, ‘“The last time I recall was, I don’t know about your dates, but I went inside and watched a bit
of TV.” The psychiatrists who assessed her didn’t believe it.

Their challenge, in this most confronting case, was to decide if she was legally fit to be sent to trial – and she
was. One reported, “The problem is not that she did not know it was wrong to do such thing, but that she did
not care about doing them. "Callousness is not an absence of knowledge of what is right or wrong.”

Trial

Knight pleaded not guilty. Her trial began in October 2001. Because of the high probability the graphic evidence
would cause serious distress to jurors and result in them being discharged, the judge drafted in reserves. Then
Knight changed her plea to guilty.

What the judge said

In sentencing, Justice O’Keefe noted there was nothing to mitigate the enormity of her crime. Of Price, the
judge said, “The last minutes of his life must have been a time of abject terror for him, as they were a time of
utter enjoyment for her.” The judge observed Knight was an ongoing risk to the community. He found the “only
appropriate penalty for the prisoner is life imprisonment and that parole should never be considered for her.

"The prisoner should never be released.”