Katherine Knight

Katherine Mary Knight (born October 24, 1955 in Tenterfield , Australia ) is an Australian murderer . She is the first Australian woman to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release .

Life

Childhood and youth

Katherine Knight was the younger of twins born from the partnership of Barbara Roughan (née Thorley) and Ken Knight, a work colleague of her husband Jack Roughan's. After Jack Roughan's death, the children lived with the Knight family. Ken Knight was an alcoholic who openly threatened and raped Barbara Roughan . According to Katherine Knight and other family members, she was also frequently sexually abused by various family members up to the age of 11 , but not by her father. The family moved to Aberdeen in 1969 .

In her childhood, Katherine was known to have uncontrolled outbursts of anger after minor irritations. She attacked at least one schoolboy with a gun and was injured by a teacher whose behavior was attributed to self-defense . Most of the time, Knight was an easygoing student who received awards for good behavior. She left school in Muswellbrook at the age of 15 and started working at a local slaughterhouse a year later , where she was soon responsible for boning and was given her own range of butcher knives - a job she herself described as a "dream job". At home, Knight hung the knives over her bed so that they would be "ready to hand when I need them." She continued this habit until she was arrested.

Marriage to David Kellett

Katherine Knight met her work colleague David Stanford Kellett, a drinker, in 1973. The couple married the following year at the request of the Knight. At the wedding, Barbara Roughan warned Kellett that her daughter was mentally unstable and capable of murder. On their wedding night, Knight tried to strangle Kellett. She justified this act by saying that her husband fell asleep after having sex three times. The marriage remained violent. One time when Kellett came home late, she burned all of his clothes and hit him on the back of the head with a frying pan. Kellett broke his skull, but was persuaded by her to withdraw the complaint. Shortly after the birth of their first daughter in May 1976, Kellett left his wife. Knight was then seen in public as she tossed the stroller violently back and forth. After she was diagnosed with postpartum depression , she was admitted to St. Elmo's Hospital in Tamworth . After she was released, she laid her two-month-old daughter on a railroad track, stole an ax, and threatened murder in the city. Re-admitted, she was released the same day. The child was saved by a local resident. Several days later, Knight injured a woman's face with one of her knives and forced her to drive her to Queensland to find Kellett. The woman was able to escape at a gas station. There Knight took a boy hostage and threatened him with the knife before the police could disarm her. She was admitted to the mental hospital in Morisset , where she told the nurses that she wanted to kill the mechanic at the gas station for repairing the car that Kellett used to escape.

Knight was released on August 9, 1976 and given into the care of Kellett and his mother, who had already supported her after the briefing and moved with her to Woodridge . In 1980 a second daughter was born. In 1984 she left Kellett. In nearby Ipswich City she resumed a job as a butcher, but after a year she was unable to work and moved into a government-funded house in Aberdeen.

Relationship with David Saunders

In 1986, Knight met 38-year-old miner David Saunders, who moved in with her and her daughters. Knight often threw Saunders out of the house with jealousy, only to persuade him to return. In May 1987, she cut Saunders' two-month-old dog's throat to show what would happen if Saunders cheated, and then knocked him unconscious with a frying pan. In 1988 a third daughter was born. Knight completely decorated the house with animal skins, skulls, and horns, rusty animal traps, leather jackets, old rubber boots, machetes, rakes, and pitchforks. Saunders fled after Knight hit him in the face with an iron and cut his clothes. When he returned a few months later to see his daughter, he found that Knight had gone to the police and obtained an injunction against him for alleged violence.

Relationship with John Chillingworth and the murder of John Price

Extract from the note found on John Price's remains

Knight became pregnant in 1990 by former work colleague John Chillingworth and gave birth to a son. She left Chillingworth after three years and moved to Aberdeen in 1995 to live with John Price, a divorced father of three. Price was well aware of Knight's violent reputation. The relationship was initially satisfactory. After an argument over Price's refusal to marry Knight, he threw her out of the house. Price resumed the relationship a few months later, but refused to let her move into his house and often had violent arguments with her again.

After she stabbed Price's chest with a knife in February 2000, he obtained an injunction to keep her away from his home and the children. That afternoon Price told his work colleagues that if he didn't show up for work the next day, he'd been murdered. Despite concerns from his colleagues, he returned to his home. Once there, he found that Knight, who was absent, had brought his children to acquaintances overnight. At 11 o'clock he went to bed. When Knight got home, she woke Price. They both had sex one last time, after which he fell asleep again. After the reconstruction, Knight stabbed the sleeping Price, who then fled from her and collapsed in the house. The autopsy revealed that he had been stabbed at least 37 times and several stitches had struck vital organs. Then Knight withdrew $ 1,000 from Price's bank account. A few hours after Price's death, Knight skinned him, hung the skin on a meat hook, cut off his head, and cooked parts of his body with vegetables. She arranged the meal on plates for Price's children, each with a name tag. Another dish was thrown in the garden for an unknown reason. Price's head was found in a saucepan of vegetables and one arm was placed over an empty beverage bottle. Knight left a handwritten note covered in blood and meat on a photograph of Price, accusing Price of raping her daughter. This accusation turned out to be untenable. A neighbor and a colleague who found blood on the front door alerted the police the following morning. Knight, who had taken an overdose of pills, was found unconscious in the house.

Trial and Conviction

Knight was arrested on February 2, 2001 on suspicion of murder. The trial took place on October 15th. The following morning, Knight pleaded guilty but denied responsibility for the crime. Knight's defense planned to allege memory loss and dissociation , a claim supported by psychiatrists.

On November 8th, Judge Barry O'Keefe Knight found guilty of murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of early release. In June 2006, Knight appealed the verdict on the grounds that the sentence was too severe for the crime. The appeal was rejected by the appeals court in September. Knight is serving the sentence at the Silverwater Women's Correctional Center.

literature

• Peter Lalor: Blood Stain. Allen and Unwin 2002, ISBN 1-86508-878-1

Web links

• Paul B. Kidd: Katherine Mary Knight: Australia's Hanna Lecter (truTV crimelibrary)