WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT John Price was brutally murdered, dismembered and cannibalised by Katherine Knight, who boiled his head, ate his flesh and plated his remains for his children before they were found
Jude Jones and Jane Lavender Associate Editor
05:00, 03 Mar 2026
Katherine Mary Knight worked at an abattoir in New South Wales
The night before John Price, 44, was brutally murdered, dismembered and cannibalised, he had told his colleagues, “if I don’t come in tomorrow, Katherine Knight killed me.”
When Price, described by friends as a “terrific bloke”, subsequently failed to turn up for his early-morning shift, a colleague rushed to his house and discovered blood splattered across the front door.
Police were quickly called and, upon entering the New South Wales home in Australia, officers were confronted with a truly horrific sight.
The floors and walls were covered in blood. Hanging from a meathook suspended from the kitchen doorframe was a “pelt” of human skin, recalled former Sergeant Robert Wells.
Inside the kitchen sat a pot on the hob. Inside that they found Price’s head, stewed with potato, carrot and cabbage, reports the Mirror.
John Price was stabbed 37 times before he died(Image: NSW Police)
Portions of his flesh had also been plated up, still warm, on the kitchen table with a side of vegetables. Each plate was accompanied by a note bearing the names of Price’s children, who were staying at a friend’s house.
Finally, on the living room sofa, beside Price’s decapitated torso, was Katherine Knight, soundly asleep. Following her brutal butchering of her partner, Knight is alleged to have eaten chunks of his flesh before washing them down with a large helping of sleeping pills.
Knight was hospitalised and arrested. So graphic were the crime scene photos that the judge on her case gave the jury the option to be excused.
It was determined she had stabbed Price 37 times. Justice Barry O’Keefe was so troubled by the seriousness of the offence and by Knight’s absence of remorse that he sentenced her to life without parole, marking the first occasion in Australian history a woman received such a sentence.
Knight was denied parole in 2006
He firmly recommended she “never be released” and said she “did not qualify for mercy”.
Throughout the trial, disturbing details about Knight’s life came to light. Knight’s father, Ken, had been a violent alcoholic who would rape her mother, Barbara, up to 10 times a day.
Ken would also repeatedly rape Katherine until the age of 11. If she complained to her mother, she would tell her to put up with it and stop complaining.
She left school at 15 unable to read or write and was described by former classmates as a bully. Shortly afterwards, she found her “dream job” in an abattoir and began a relationship with her co-worker, David Kellett.
Kellett recalled Knight as extremely abusive and sadistic. She tried to strangle him on their wedding night because they’d only had sex three times.
She once burnt all of his clothes and fractured his skull with a frying pan.
Horrified cops were confronted by the chilling scene in the Hunter Valley home
After giving birth to her first daughter, Melissa Ann, in May 1976, Knight descended into severe postpartum depression and was discovered violently swinging the newborn around in a pram. A few weeks later, she abandoned the child on a railway line.
She was only saved when a homeless man known as “Old Ted” found her on the tracks, minutes before a train was due to pass through. Knight, in the meantime, had gone into town with a stolen axe, threatening to kill passers-by.
A few days later, she attacked a woman with a butcher’s knife and held a young boy hostage at a service station, threatening to kill him.
This abuse continued when she met John Price in 1998, who was in the process of filing a restraining order against Knight when he was murdered.
Luke Taylor, an ex-detective, said, “There were so many warning signs, yet none were headed.”
He suspects Knight was motivated by her hatred of men, which stemmed from the abuse she suffered as a child.
“Knight had endured appalling sexual abuse throughout her youth at the hands of multiple men,” he said. “This led to a series of troubled relationships with men in her adult life.”