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Katherine Knight: Australia's Most Notorious Female Killer and the Murder of John "Pricey" Price.

  • 14 hours ago
  • 13 min read

Published by Hitched 2 Homicide | True Crime Podcast

"These were blokes who were pulling their shirt across after they'd been stabbed by her. Blokes who'd had their heads caved in with a frying pan. And it's even harder to imagine when blokes like these––hard Aussie blokes––lived in fear of their lives." — Sergeant Graham Furlonger, NSW Police

⚠️ Content Warning: This blog and its companion podcast contain detailed accounts of extreme domestic violence, child endangerment, animal cruelty, and graphic post-mortem mutilation, including references to dismemberment, and cannibalism. Content is presented with journalistic intent and deep respect for all victims and their families. Viewer and listener discretion is advised.


There are crimes that are remembered because they are brutal. And then there are crimes that are remembered because they feel almost impossible to believe.

The murder of John Charles Thomas Price by Katherine Knight in Aberdeen, New South Wales, is one of those cases. It has been called one of Australia’s most disturbing murders, not simply because of how John died, but because of what Knight did afterward. She stabbed him repeatedly, mutilated his body, and staged a scene so horrifying that even veteran investigators struggled to process it.

But if this case is only told as “the woman who skinned and cooked her partner,” the real story gets buried beneath the shock.

Because before John Price was murdered, there were warnings. Years of them.

There were husbands, partners, children, police calls, restraining orders, violence, threats, animal cruelty, and men who tried to survive loving Katherine Knight. Your existing draft rightly frames this case through the victims and the long pattern of domestic abuse that came before the murder.

This is the case of Katherine Knight, the Australian woman sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for the murder of John Price — and the men who tried to escape her before it was too late. ABC reported that Knight was the first woman in Australia to receive a life sentence without parole.


Early Life of Katherine Knight: Violence Before the Abattoir

Katherine Mary Knight was born in Australia in 1955 and grew up in a home marked by violence, instability, and trauma. In later accounts of her life, Knight described a childhood filled with abuse, including violence in the home and alleged sexual abuse by family members.

She struggled in school and left young. By her mid-teens, she was working in an abattoir.

That detail matters.

At the slaughterhouse, Knight learned how to kill, skin, and bone animals with speed and precision. She became skilled with knives and reportedly took pride in her work. The abattoir was not simply a job in her history; it became part of the language of the crime scene years later.

When people discuss the Katherine Knight case, her work as an abattoir worker is often treated like a grisly footnote. It is not. It explains how she possessed the practical knowledge to do what she later did to John Price.


David Kellett: The First Husband Who Escaped

Katherine Knight’s first major relationship was with David Kellett, another abattoir worker. Their relationship was intense, volatile, and violent almost from the beginning.

They married in the 1970s. According to multiple accounts, even on their wedding day, there were warnings about Knight’s temper. Those warnings did not take long to prove true.

Kellett later described a marriage filled with physical violence. Knight allegedly tried to strangle him on their wedding night. She attacked him with household objects. She threatened him. She hit him with such force that he suffered serious injuries.

The violence escalated after the birth of their child. One of the most disturbing incidents in Knight’s history involved her infant daughter being placed on railway tracks shortly before a train was due. The baby was rescued, but the incident became one of the earliest signs that Knight’s violence was not limited to adult partners.

Kellett eventually left. That may sound simple, but in domestic violence cases, escape is rarely simple. It often comes after years of fear, manipulation, apologies, and survival calculations.

David Kellett was not just “the first husband.” He was one of Katherine Knight’s first known adult victims.


David Saunders: Control, Terror, and the Killing of a Puppy

In the 1980s, Katherine Knight began a relationship with David Saunders, a miner. At first, the relationship may have appeared passionate. But soon, the familiar pattern returned: jealousy, control, rage, and violence.

Saunders kept his own flat for a time, and Knight reportedly viewed that independence as a threat. She became possessive and suspicious. She wanted control over where he went, who he saw, and what he did.

One of the most infamous incidents in this relationship involved Saunders’ young dingo puppy.

Knight reportedly slit the puppy’s throat in front of him as a warning — a brutal demonstration of what could happen if he betrayed her. It was not just animal cruelty. It was psychological terrorism.

Then came more violence. Saunders was allegedly knocked unconscious with a frying pan. Later, Knight struck him in the face with an iron and stabbed him with scissors.

He eventually fled.

But as often happens in abusive relationships, the aftermath was complicated by children, fear, and manipulation. Saunders had a daughter with Knight, and any attempt to remain connected to his child meant he remained connected to danger.

His story is an important part of the Katherine Knight timeline because it shows escalation. The violence was not spontaneous. It was patterned. It was intimate. It was targeted.


John Chillingworth: The Overlooked Partner

John Chillingworth is often treated as a footnote in the Katherine Knight case, but he should not be erased.

He was another partner in Knight’s life, another man pulled into her instability. Knight and Chillingworth had a son together, Eric. Their relationship may not be remembered for the same level of violence as the others, but it was part of the same chaotic pattern: intense relationships, children, betrayal, and disruption.

Knight eventually began an affair with John Price while still connected to Chillingworth. She left Chillingworth and their young son for Price.

That transition matters because it shows how people around Knight were not merely romantic partners. They were part of a widening circle of collateral damage — men, children, families, and communities forced to live with the consequences of her volatility.


John Price: The Man Everyone Should Have Believed

John Charles Thomas Price, known as “Pricey,” was a father, a widower, and a respected miner in Aberdeen, New South Wales. He was well-liked in the community and described by many as generous, friendly, and hardworking.

He began a relationship with Katherine Knight in the 1990s.

At first, things may have looked manageable from the outside. Knight could be charming. She could be affectionate. She could present herself as devoted.

But the relationship became increasingly violent and unstable.

One of the central conflicts was marriage. Knight wanted to marry Price. Price refused. That refusal became a recurring source of tension.

Price’s children also became part of the emotional battlefield. They had already lost their mother. Now their father was involved with a woman whose behavior was becoming more frightening by the year.


Economic Sabotage: How Knight Helped Cost John Price His Job

Domestic abuse is not always physical. Sometimes it is financial. Sometimes it is reputational. Sometimes it is designed to dismantle a person’s life piece by piece.

In John Price’s case, one of the most damaging incidents involved his job.

Price had worked for many years at a mine. At one point, he had taken an outdated first aid kit that was reportedly going to be discarded. Knight filmed items around the home and used the footage to accuse him of stealing from work.

The accusation had serious consequences. Price lost his job after 17 years.

That matters because abusers often work to isolate their victims. Losing employment can mean losing income, identity, routine, and support. For Price, it was another blow in a relationship already spiraling toward violence.


The Restraining Order and the Warning No One Could Ignore

By early 2000, John Price knew he was in danger.

In February, Knight stabbed him in the chest during an argument. Price showed the wound to others. He removed her from the home and sought legal protection.

On February 28, 2000, Price obtained a restraining order against Knight. That same day, he reportedly told coworkers that if he did not show up for work the next day, it would be because Katherine Knight had killed him. Accounts of the case often note that Price feared Knight might harm his children if he did not return home.

That sentence is haunting because it was not paranoia. It was prophecy.

John Price understood the danger. He named it. He warned people.

And still, he went home.


The Murder of John "Pricey" Price in Aberdeen, New South Wales

On the night of February 29, 2000, John Price was killed inside his home in Aberdeen.

Knight attacked him while he was in bed. Evidence showed that Price woke and tried to escape. Blood was found throughout the home, indicating he fought and moved through the house before collapsing. Knight stabbed him at least 37 times. ABC reported that she received life without parole for the murder and noted the repeated stabbing of Price.

The killing itself was vicious. But what happened afterward turned the case into one of the most infamous murders in Australian history.

Knight mutilated John Price’s body. She skinned him, decapitated him, and cooked parts of his remains. Plates were prepared with meat, vegetables, and gravy. Place cards with the names of Price’s children were reportedly found at the table. Australian media accounts have reported that investigators believed Knight intended to serve the meal to Price’s children before she was stopped.

This detail is why the case is often labeled with phrases like “Australian cannibal killer” or “the Katherine Knight cannibal case.” But those labels, while searchable, can flatten the truth.

John Price was not a horror-movie prop. He was a father. And the table setting was not just mutilation. It was an act of emotional violence aimed at his children.


The Children: The Silent Victims of the Katherine Knight Case

The Katherine Knight case did not have one victim. John Price was the murder victim, but the circle of harm was much larger.

Knight’s own children grew up surrounded by violence, instability, and fear. Her infant daughter was nearly killed in the railway-track incident. Her children were exposed to police involvement, psychiatric crises, abusive relationships, and public notoriety.

John Price’s children suffered a uniquely cruel trauma. They lost their father in a brutal homicide, then learned that their names had been placed beside plates of their father’s remains.

That is not a detail to throw around for shock value. That is lifelong trauma.

Responsible true crime storytelling has to remember that the children did not choose this story. They inherited it.


Arrest, Trial, and Sentencing

Police found Knight at the scene after she had taken pills. She survived and was charged with murder. Knight ultimately pleaded guilty.

In 2001, she was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. ABC and other Australian media have described her as the first woman in Australia to be sentenced to life without parole.

The sentencing reflected not only the murder, but the extreme postmortem mutilation and the apparent staging involving Price’s children.

Knight appealed her sentence, but the life-without-parole order remained. A legal analysis of the case notes that Knight pleaded guilty to murder and unsuccessfully appealed her sentence in 2006.

In Australia, the phrase often associated with Knight’s sentence is “never to be released.” And in this case, that phrase carries weight.

Because John Price had tried to get free. David Kellett had tried to get free. David Saunders had tried to get free.

And by the time the legal system permanently contained Katherine Knight, one man was dead, several others had been terrorized, and multiple children had been scarred.


Katherine Knight Today

Katherine Knight remains one of Australia’s most notorious prisoners. She is serving her life sentence in New South Wales. Over the years, media coverage has described her prison persona in strangely domestic terms — an older woman, sometimes viewed as grandmotherly by others inside.

That contrast is part of why the case continues to fascinate people. But fascination can be dangerous when it turns the killer into the main character.

Knight is not infamous because she is mysterious. She is infamous because she terrorized intimate partners for years and ultimately murdered John Price in one of Australia’s most disturbing domestic violence homicides.


Why This Case Still Matters

The Katherine Knight case is often treated as a grotesque one-off — a crime so extreme it seems disconnected from ordinary domestic violence.

But that is the wrong lesson.

This case matters because it shows what can happen when escalating intimate partner violence is minimized, misunderstood, or misidentified.

It also challenges assumptions about gender and abuse. Male victims of domestic violence are often dismissed, mocked, or not believed. In Knight’s history, men were beaten, threatened, stabbed, controlled, and terrorized. Some fled. John Price did everything people tell victims to do: he ended the relationship, warned others, sought a restraining order, and tried to protect his children.

Still, he was killed.

The Katherine Knight case is not just a story about mutilation. It is a story about coercive control, domestic violence, missed warning signs, and the devastating consequences of underestimating a dangerous partner.

John Price deserved to grow old with his children. David Kellett deserved safety. David Saunders deserved protection. John Chillingworth deserved peace. The children deserved homes that were not ruled by fear.

That is the heart of this story. Not the gore. The warning.

Katherine Knight’s name became infamous because of what she did after John Price died. But John Price’s name deserves to be remembered for who he was before she took his life: a father, a friend, a worker, and a man who saw the danger coming.

And still couldn’t outrun it.


If you're listening to the podcast, thank you for being here for the hard ones. Leave a review if this episode resonates with you. Share it with someone who you think should know this history. These cases matter because the victims matter. This man was a real person who enjoyed his life and wanted to live it. Say his name. John "Pricey" Price.



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