Imagining a real-life female Hannibal Lecter is highly unlikely until you know who Katherine Knight is. The first woman in Australian history to be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.
The day before his murder, John Price had explicitly told his boss if he didn’t report for work, it would be because his ex-partner Katherine Knight had killed him.
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However, his boss thought nothing of it until that morning came. John Price failed to show up for work, and his co-workers were worried for good reason.
His boss sent an employee to John’s house who alerted the cops when he saw blood on his door. They never imagined in their wildest of dreams that John didn’t show up because he ended up on Katherine’s plate
Little did the two cops know what horror crime they were going to witness when they showed up at John Price’s address for a welfare check as they stumble across one of the most gruesome crimes ever committed in Australian history.
Early life of Katherine Knight
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To understand what made Katherine Knight so twisted, we need to revisit her anything but a normal childhood. A very troubled childhood indeed.
Before Katherine Knight was born, her mother Barbara was married to Jack Ruffin and the couple had four sons. The family lived together in the small town of Aberdeen.
During their relationship, Barbara was having an affair with Jack’s co-worker Ken Knight which caused massive backlash within the community.
Ken and Barbara were forced to free Aberdeen and move to Murray. A few months later they moved to Tenterfield. Katherine Knight was born in Tenterfield on the 24th of October 1955. Barbara gave birth to twins when Katherine was four.
Jack Ruffin died which forced two of his boys to move in with Barbara and Ken. Sadly her childhood wasn’t a happy one. Ken was a violent alcoholic who beat, intimidated, and assaulted her many times a day.
Katherine was even abused by many others in the family. As a preteen, Katherine was seen as a nice and quiet girl but was known to go into crazy fits of rage over minor upsets.
By the time she went to high school, she was a loner. None of the other children liked her and she was remembered as a bully who would often intimidate and purposely beat the children. She assaulted other classmates and even teachers.
Married life
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Without learning to read or write she left school at 15 to work in a clothing Factory. Around a year later when she was 16, she landed what she claimed was a dream job.
The job involved cutting animals at the local slaughterhouse. It was working in this slaughterhouse that Katherine met her future husband David Kellett. David was much like her father.
A violent alcoholic but this time Katherine was old enough to fight back and she did. She dominated David and took advantage of the fact that he was an alcoholic.
It was how she got him to marry her in 1974. On their wedding night, David fell asleep and Katherine attempted to strangle him. The reason she wanted to make love with him for the fourth time that night but he was too tired.
The marriage was anything but happy. Katherine was abusive and violent to David, often beating him with anything around, including shoes, lamps, and frying pans.
Two years after they got married Katherine gave birth to her first daughter Melissa Anne. David saw this as an opportunity to get out of the marriage and ran off to Queensland with another woman.
To say she didn’t take this well would be somewhat of an understatement, she went into the local town swinging an axe around claiming that she was going to murder everybody.
The beginning of insanity
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She was then put into a psychiatric ward but upon her release, Katherine took a two-month-old baby and placed it on a live railway track before wandering away. Luckily a man spotted the baby and saved her.
A few minutes before the train came Katherine was arrested but released the next day. After she was released she then forced an unknown woman to drive her to Queensland to find David threatening her with a knife.
The terrified woman managed to escape at a gas station where Katherine then took another person, hostage, before being arrested by police. She claimed that a plan was to kill David and his mother and also the mechanic who fixed his car.
Katherine was then put into another Psychiatric Hospital. Katherine went on to have a few more rocky and violent relationships over the years before meeting John Price in 1994.
Meeting with John Price
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John was a well-behaved man who earned good money and was well-liked within the community. Although he knew about Katherine’s violent past, he really got on with her and in the beginning, life was good for the two.
John was a father to four children two lived with him and two lived with his former wife. His ex-wife describes him as a good man.
In the beginning, the children liked Katherine and a year after they met she moved into his house. Of course, the happy times didn’t last long. Three years after moving in with John, Katherine asked him to get married.
John loved Katherine but he didn’t want to get married. He already had been married once and wanted his house to go to his children rather than his partner which you’d think would be fair enough.
Rocky relationship
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Katherine was furious and she couldn’t wrap her head around why John didn’t want to marry her. In 1998 Katherine got John fired from his job of 17 years after she informed them he was stealing items.
In retaliation, she was kicked out of his house and the two split up however they always ended up back together probably due to Katherine’s manipulative nature.
It was now the year 2000 and although the two were still together John didn’t allow her to stay at his home. In February of 2000 after a huge fight, Katherine stabbed John in the chest.
John was at his breaking point and had finally had enough he was sick of Katherine’s abusive ways and kicked her out for good.
On the 29th of February, he filed a restraining order against Katherine which prohibited him from going near him or his children. This should have been the end of the story unfortunately the worst is yet to come.
The ultimate crime of Katherine Knight
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That same day John told his co-workers that he believed Katherine would try and kill him and the kids. John went home and was relieved to find Katherine wasn’t there but neither were his kids.
Shortly after John fell asleep Katherine let herself into his house. She proceeded to watch TV and shower before going up to the bedroom. According to Katherine, she woke John up and the two made love.
It was here when Katherine grabbed one of her butcher’s knives and began to viciously stab John. He managed to make it to the front door before he was stabbed again and fell back into his house. Katherine stabbed John 37 times.
He eventually bled out in the hallway but Katherine was far from finished. She planned to feed John to his kids so Katherine put her skills to use. Katherine proceeded to skin John, hanging his removed skin in the hallway.
The female Hannibal Lecter
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She cut the few parts and then hung his skin on a hook. She proceeded to cook the meaty parts with vegetables and gravy. Yes, Hannibal Lecter would be proud.
The head was placed on the stove and left to boil. The other parts were cooked and served with vegetables and potatoes. After eating John she went to the bedroom and attempted to overdose on pills.
After not showing up for work the next day the cops were sent to John’s house for a welfare check. When opening the front door the cop stated:
“As we went in I saw straight ahead what I thought was a curtain. Something was hanging, blocking my entry into the house. I soon realized it was human skin minus the head, skin just hanging from the top of the door frame…
There was blood everywhere and as soon as they saw the pot on the stove bubbling away they knew where John’s head was. On the table neatly prepared were the cooked human flesh and vegetables.”
WHAT A SIGHT!!!
Arrest and trial of Katherine Knight
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The police found Katherine Knight unconscious but alive in the bedroom. She was transported to the hospital where she made a full recovery and was sent to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation.
There she was deemed sane although she confessed to the murder. She claimed to not have any memory of what happened. Katherine was arrested. The case garnered massive media attention and she was dubbed the Australian Hannibal Lecter.
She stood trial on the 18th of October 2001 where she was found guilty of murder. Luckily John’s family was spared hearing the details in court.
On November 8th Justice Barrio Keefe sentenced Katherine Knight to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. She was the first woman in Australian history to be given this sentence.
The judge said that she lacked any kind of remorse and should never be released. Today she is serving her time at Silver Water Women’s Prison and is currently 68 years old.
According to prison officers she’s seen as a leader and is known as the grandma to the other inmates. Her friends and family don’t visit her anymore and she has no contact with the outside world. To this day this remains one of Australia’s most horrific and infamous crimes.
