WARNING DISTRESSING CONTENT: A mother stabbed her partner 37 times before skinning his body and boiling his head in a pot
The deeply disturbing story of a killer who has been described as “the female Hannibal Lecter” has been examined in detail in a recent podcast. Katherine Knight became the first Australian woman to be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole after she was sentenced for her abhorrent crimes.
Samuel Ayling, whose Lazy Masquerade YouTube channel has covered some of the darkest and most disturbing stories in the world of true crime, has described Knight’s case as being one of the most distressing he’s ever seen.
“Katherine Knight’s life was an unconventional one,” he says, explaining that her mother Barbara’s marriage had imploded when her affair with Katherine’s father Ken Knight was exposed. But Katherine’s home life was chaotic and stressful, court papers later revealed.
Ken was a violent alcoholic who subjected Barbara to horrifying sexual abuse, while Barbara would regularly intimate details of her dysfunctional sex life with her young daughters. Knight was herself sexually abused, she said, and developed a somewhat unstable personality.
She was described in a school report as “a mild-mannered and pleasant girl who experienced uncontrollable murderous rages in response to minor upsets”.
Knight left school at 15, with no qualifications and apparently illiterate. However she soon found herself a job at an abattoir, where she impressed with her ability to swiftly butcher freshly-killed livestock.
As a reward, Samuel says: “Katherine’s boss rewarded her with a set of butcher’s knives a trophy which she proudly hung above her bed. Wherever she lived, those same knives would adorn her bedroom walls so that, in her words, ‘They’d always be close at hand if she ever needed them’.”
At the age of 18, Katherine began a relationship with David Kellett, who also worked at the slaughterhouse. Kellett was a heavy drinker, as was demonstrated on their wedding day, when he arrived at the church, quite clearly drunk, on a motorcycle with his bride-to-be on the pillion.
David’s new mother-in-law warned him at the reception that he should be wary of Knight’s violent temper, and indeed Knight attempted to strangle David on their wedding night, later explaining that she had been angry because he fell asleep after they had sex only three times.
That bizarre beginning set the tone for what was to be a violent marriage, with Knight regularly assaulting her husband. Two months after she gave birth to their daughter, Melissa, David left his wife. Knight responded by leaving the infant on railway tracks. Melissa would almost certainly have died if she hadn’t been found by a passer-by shortly before a train was due..
Knight was admitted to hospital and diagnosed with post-natal depression but discharged herself the following day. In a murderous rage, Knight slashed the face of a woman with one of her knives and forced her terrified victim to drive her to Queensland, where she believed David was now living.
The woman managed to make her escape after they stopped at a service station; however, by the time police arrived, Knight had taken a young boy hostage and was threatening him with the knife. Police used brooms to attack and subdue Knight, and she was was admitted to a mental hospital. However, she was released within months and somehow managed to win David back.
After she gave birth to their second child in 1980, David left Knight for good. She formed other relationships, all of which were marked by her extreme violence and domestic abuse. In one case she warned one of he boyfriends what would happen if he ever cheated on he ray slitting his dog’s throat in front of him.
Eventually, though, Knight ended up yet another turbulent relationship with a man named John Price. The violence escalated and in February 2000, Knight stabbed John in the chest. Unsurprisingly, that proved be the final straw and on February 28, he took out a restraining order against her.
On that same day, John went to work and told colleagues that if he did not come to work the next day, it would be because Knight had murdered him. His words proved to be prophetic.
“When John didn’t arrive for work the following morning,” Samuel says, “his colleagues remembered what he had told them and one of his co-workers went to his house to check on him.
“They noticed that his truck was still parked in the driveway and there was a red splatter on the front door. The co-worker called the police. Detectives arrived and kicked down the back door to John’s home at 8am that morning when they stepped into was nothing short of a human abattoir.”
Blood spatter analysis revealed that Knight had stabbed John while he was sleeping, but he had managed to get as far as his front door, with her repeatedly slashing at him with one of her butcher knives, before succumbing to blood loss.
Then, Samuel says, the most disturbing aspect of the crime began. He explained: “Katherine proceeded to skin his entire body, including his face, ears, scalp, and neck, and hung his pelt from a meat hook above one of the doors..”
Knight then decapitated John’s flayed body and cooked his head with some vegetables in a large pot.
“As well as this pot of human head soup Katherine also prepared two other dishes which were found laid out on the dining room table,” Samuel says. “Both plates consisted of human flesh alongside baked potato, pumpkin, beetroot, courgette, cabbage, yellow squash and gravy.”
Horrifyingly, he adds: “A place-card was found beside each plate bearing the names of John’s children.”
A third plate of the grisly “stew” was discovered in the back garden and it appears that Knight had sampled some of it before throwing the whole plate out.
Knight was arrested almost immediately, and at her trial several prospective jurors stepped down rather than view the harrowing photographic evidence. Ignoring the advice of her legal team, Knight suddenly changed her plea from not guilty to guilty.
With the lengthy planned trial reduced to a sentencing hearing, Knight became hysterical and had to be sedated as some of the more gruesome evidence was read out. She is now imprisoned, without prospect of release, at Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre where she is reportedly a model prisoner, mediating in several disputes between other inmates.
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