A grisly murder dubbed the "most diabolical, sick and twisted" killing in Australia was the savage murder of John Price which saw his girlfriend butcher and skin him, before nearly feeding a dish made with his body parts to their children.
Slaughterhouse worker Katherine Knight stabbed her boyfriend to death at least 37 times with a butchers knife in February 2000, a month after an altercation in which she tried to stab him in the chest. He later filed a restraining order and warned those close to him she might kill him.
Just weeks later, she did. 44-year-old Knight's twisted plot included skinning and decapitating John before hanging what was left of his body from a meat hook in her family's living room. She even cooked pieces of his body in a dish with vegetables and gravy and planned to feed it their children.
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John's co-workers raised the alarm the next day, calling the police when he failed to show up for his shift. They had been previously warned that if for some reason he'd disappear under mysterious circumstances, it was because Knight, who worked butchering animals since she was a teenager, had killed him.
When police arrived, beside each full plate of food were notes which read her children's names. On her back lawn, half-discarded food remnants were thought to be a result of Knight not being able to stomach the 'meal' for herself.
In his book, Blood Stain that Knight, journalist Peter Lalor said that Knight "loved" gutting animals as part of her job. She is also thought to have hung her beloved first set of butcher's knives over her bed because she was such a fan, so they were easy to access should she need them.
Officers are understandably said to still be traumatised over the case details decades on and five of the 60 jury had to be excused before the trial had even commenced. The photographic evidence was that disturbing.
So gruesome, the convicted murderer became known as 'Cannibal Kathy' and 'Australia's Hannibal Lector'. She was also the first Australian woman to be sentenced to life without parole, her record marked with the words "never to be released".
Having initially pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder, Knight changed her plea to guilty, while continuing to refuse responsibility for her actions. To this day, Knight maintains her innocence and claims no recollection of that night's events.
Her appeal of the life sentence in June 2006 was dismissed by the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal, with Justice McClellan writing in his judgement: "This was an appalling crime, almost beyond contemplation in a civilised society."
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