'Horror movie in the making' before cannibal wife killed and cooked husband

Dubbed Australia's very own "Hannibal Lecter" one woman became the embodiment of a "horror movie in the making" after she exhibited chilling signs of violence, culminating in the brutal murder of her husband. She stabbed him 37 times, decapitated him, and cooked his body parts with potatoes.

Katherine Knight etched her name into the annals of crime as the first Australian woman to receive life imprisonment without parole for her heinous actions. In a macabre saga that sent shockwaves through the sleepy town of Aberdeen, New South Wales, the mother-of-four carried out a ghastly crime against her partner John Price.

She butchered him, boiled his head, and suspended his body from a meat hook.

On the fateful day of February 29, 2000, Knight concocted a gruesome meal using Price's cooked remains, which she plated with cabbage and gravy, intending to feed it to his children as they came home from school.

The atrocity was not an isolated incident. Ex-detective Luke Taylor spoke to news.com.au about Knight's propensity for "violent" acts, rooted in "an abusive childhood", reports <a href="https://www.themirror.com/news/world-news/cannibal-killer-wife-horror-movie-1240397" rel="Follow" target="_self">the Mirror US</a>.

"There were so many warning signs yet none were heeded," remarked Taylor. "She was a horror movie in the making," he added.

Knight's violent streak was well-documented. She had previously wounded Price in a dispute, leading him to seek a restraining order against her.

Despite this, the pair made up before the tragic day that would end in horror. Knight maintains she endured horrific sexual abuse during her childhood at the hands of various men.

She alleged she suffered sexual abuse from different family members throughout her youth, which laid the groundwork for her volatile relationships with men in adulthood.

Peter Lalor's book Blood Stains exposes Knight's formative years. She was recognised amongst her classmates as a bully who once launched an attack on a schoolboy.

Knight even attempted to strangle her first husband, David Kellett, on their wedding night and reportedly cracked his skull with a frying pan. She also slaughtered another partner's dog and attacked him with scissors.

Alarmingly, Knight, a former slaughterhouse worker, was acknowledged by neighbour Rick Banyard as "a very proficient meatworker."

It was their final argument before Price's death and led the father to suspect he might face genuine peril. Following a particularly fierce row, Price supposedly informed his workmates that if he failed to turn up for work the following day, they should contact the police and search for him.

Subsequently, blood stains were discovered on Knight's front door. On the morning of March 1, 2000, neighbours contacted police after spotting the chilling evidence of violence.

Detained after officers discovered her unconscious beside Price's body, her conviction arrived in 2001, and her appeal was rejected in 2006, according to the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC). "By the time I got to the scene, Katherine was leaving in an ambulance. She had taken some pills. Not enough to kill her, but they made her sleepy," former Sergeant Robert Wells revealed to ABC.

"I walked inside and saw the human skin pelt hanging up, completely intact in one piece. John Price's decapitated and skinned body was lying on the floor in the lounge room. We found his head, it had been boiled and cooked in a pot on the stove. There were a number of slices of rump, taken off his human rump, baked in the oven with some vegetables and put on plates, with the name of two of his children on them.

"The last minutes of [Price's] life must have been a time of abject terror for him, as they were a time of utter enjoyment for her," Supreme Court Justice Barry O'Keefe declared during Knight's sentencing.

However, to those acquainted with the couple, their relationship seemed entirely normal. "I think, basically, nobody sort of expected any significant drama at all, let alone the crime that became recorded as one of the worst pieces of history in Australia," he said.