Real Crime Stories/Paranormal Hauntings

Katherine Knight

Katherine Mary Knight (born 24 October 1955) is the first Australian woman to be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. She was convicted for the murder of her partner, John Charles Thomas Price, in October 2001, and is currently imprisoned at the Silverwater Women's Correctional Centre in New South Wales. Knight stabbed Price to death, skinned him, then put his skin on a meat hook and cooked his head and parts of his body with the intention of feeding them to his children.

Early life and family

Katherine Knight was born and raised in an unconventional and dysfunctional family environment. Her mother, Barbara Roughan (nee Thorley), had been married to Jack Roughan and lived with him in the small town of Aberdeen in New South Wales' Hunter Valley. Barbara and Jack had four sons before Barbara began an adulterous relationship with Ken Knight, a friend and co-worker of her husband. The Roughan and Knight families were well-known in the conservative rural town, and the affair caused a major scandal.

Local backlash forced Barbara and Ken to leave Aberdeen and move to Moree. None of her four sons went with her; the two older boys continued to reside with their father, while the two younger sons were sent to be raised by an aunt in Sydney. Barbara had four additional children with Ken, including a pair of twin girls born in 1955 in Tenterfield. Katherine Knight was the younger of these twin daughters. In 1959, when Knight was four, Jack Roughan died and his two boys, who had been living with him, moved in with Barbara (their mother) and Ken.

Knight's father was an alcoholic who openly used violence and intimidation to rape his wife Barbara up to ten times a day. Barbara, in turn, often told her daughters intimate details of her sex life and how much she hated sex and men. Later, when Knight complained to her mother that one of her partners wanted her to take part in a sex act she did not want to perform, Barbara told her to "put up with it and stop complaining." Knight claims she was frequently sexually assaulted by several members of her family (though not by her father), which continued until she was 11. Although they have minor doubts about the details, psychiatrists accept her claim as all her family members confirmed the events did happen.

Barbara's great-grandmother was apparently an Indigenous Australian from the Moree area who had married an Irishman. Barbara was proud of this fact and liked to think of her own family as Aboriginal. This was kept a family secret, as there was considerable racism in the area at the time, and this was a source of tension for the children. Apart from her twin sister, the only person whom Knight was close to was her uncle, Oscar Knight, who was a champion horseman. She was devastated when he committed suicide in 1969, and continues to maintain that his ghost visits her. The family moved back to Aberdeen the same year.

When she attended Muswellbrook high school, Knight became a loner and is remembered by classmates as a bully who stood over smaller children. She assaulted at least one boy at school with a weapon and was once injured by a teacher – who was subsequently found to have acted in self-defense. By contrast, when not in a rage, Knight was a model student and often earned awards for her good behaviour. Upon leaving school at 15, without having learned to read or write, she gained employment as a cutter in a clothing factory. Twelve months later, she left to start what she referred to as her "dream job", cutting up offal at the local abattoir. There, she was quickly promoted to boning and was given her own set of butchers' knives. At home, the knives were hung over her bed so that they "would always be handy if I needed them", a habit she continued – until her incarceration – everywhere she lived.

Marriage to David Kellett

Knight first met hard drinking co-worker David Stanford Kellett in 1973. Kellett had previously worked for the railways at Coffs Harbour. His best friend was killed in front of him in a shunting accident, and he was later present when a train hit a school bus in Kempsey, killing six children, in 1968. He helped rescue the injured and remove the bodies. His heavy drinking has been attributed to these incidents. He was transferred to Muswellbrook after causing several derailments due to falling asleep while shunting. His behaviour deteriorated and he eventually lost the job, but he soon got work at the nearby Aberdeen abattoir where he became close friends with Knight's brother. After he began dating Knight, he also occasionally partnered her twin. Often, if Kellett got into a fight, Knight would step in and back him up with her fists. In Aberdeen, she was well known for physically threatening anyone who upset her. Knight married Kellett in 1974, at her request, with the couple arriving at the service on her motorcycle with a very intoxicated Kellett on the pillion. As soon as they arrived, Knight's mother Barbara gave Kellett some advice: