38th Murderer, Katherine Knight – Victim: then husband, John Price
One of the few women prisoners to ever be classified “never to be released”, Katherine Knight, born 24 October 1955, is serving her life sentence after an horrific murder. After having sex with her husband John Price, she stabbed him to death in Feb. 2000.
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Several hours after Price had died, Knight skinned him and hung the skin from a meat hook on the architrave of a door to the lounge room. She then decapitated Price and cooked parts of his body, serving up the meat with baked potato, pumpkin, beetroot, zucchini, cabbage, yellow squash and gravy in two settings at the dinner table, along with notes beside each plate, each having the name of one of Price's children on it; she was preparing to serve his body parts to his children. A third meal was thrown on the back lawn for unknown reasons and it is speculated Knight had attempted to eat it but could not; this has been put forward in support of her claim that she has no memory of the crime.
Price's head was found in a pot with vegetables. The pot was still warm, estimated to be at between 40 and 50 °C (104 and 122 °F), indicating that the cooking had taken place in the early morning. Sometime later, Knight arranged the body with the left arm draped over an empty 1.25-litre soft drink bottle with the legs crossed. This was claimed in court to be an act of defilement demonstrating Knight's contempt for Price. Knight had left a handwritten note on top of a photograph of Price. Bloodstained and covered with small pieces of flesh.
Knight was dubbed Australia’s “Hannibal Lecter” because after she skinned him, she hung his remains from a meat hook in the living room. She also cut off his head and boiled it in a pot and baked pieces of his buttocks to serve with vegetables and gravy to his adult children. She is serving her time at Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre.
Knight , now 41, is highly unlikely to ever be released from jail. She has already be in custody for nearly 20 years. Based on the average annual cost of Maximum Security Incarceration in 2020, should Knight live another 37 years to 78, her jail incarceration of 57 years will have cost the NSW taxpayer $9.975 million circa ($175,000 p.a. X 57 years).