Katherine Knight: Australia's Most Disturbing Killer Pt. 2

On the night of February 29, 2000, Katherine Knight murdered her partner John Price at his home in Aberdeen, New South Wales... then committed acts so disturbing they had no precedent in Australian criminal history. Despite a lifetime of escalating violence and repeated threats against John's life, almost no one believed she would follow through. If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Serial Killers & Murderous Minds to never miss a case! Want all 2 parts of every case all at once? Join Crime House+ and get both parts of each case dropped together on Monday ad-free. Join at crimehouseplus.com http://crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Serial Killers & Murderous Minds is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. 🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of Reddit, Murder True Crime Stories, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse https://www.instagram.com/crimehouse/TikTok: @Crimehouse https://www.tiktok.com/@crimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudios https://www.facebook.com/crimehousestudiosYouTube: @crimehousestudios https://www.youtube.com/@crimehousestudios

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Vanessa Richardson?

  Hi, everyone. Before today's episode, there's another show I want to tell you about. It's called What the Fact with Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum and Carter Roy. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from history and tell you the full story behind them. Plus Connor's infectious energy that'll make you realize history is the most fascinating thing on earth. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  This is Crime House.

• 0:41Vanessa Richardson?

  Breaking a pattern can be a lot harder than starting one, especially when it comes to how we respond to the people around us. Some of us consistently avoid conflict. Others are always ready to confront it head on. Over time, these reactions can become habits that we don't even think about anymore. By the time Katherine Knight's relationship with John Price started falling apart, she'd spent decades responding to rejection in the same destructive way. Each relationship had ended more violently than the last. What began as veiled threats and raised voices had repeatedly escalated into screaming matches, beatings, and acts of revenge.

• 1:22Vanessa Richardson?

  And with John, the violence would reach new and horrifying heights. But this time, the consequences would be unlike anything that had come before.

• 1:48Vanessa Richardson?

  The human mind is powerful. It shapes how we think, feel, love, and hate. But sometimes it drives people to commit the unthinkable. This is Serial Killers and Murderous Minds, a Crime House original. I'm Vanessa Richardson.

• 2:04Tristin Engels?

  And I'm forensic psychologist Dr. Tristin Engels. Every Monday and Thursday, we uncover the darkest minds in history, analyzing what makes a killer.

• 2:13Vanessa Richardson?

  Crime House exists because of listeners like you. Want even more? Join Crime House Plus and get both parts of every story dropped on the same Monday, completely ad-free. No waiting three days for part two, plus Crime House bonus episodes every month. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com. Or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap Try Free at the top of the Serial Killers and Murderous Minds page. Before we get started, be advised, this episode contains descriptions of graphic violence, murder and mutilation, and references to suicide. So please, listen with care. Today, we conclude our deep dive into Katherine Knight, one of Australia's most infamous murderers.

• 2:57Vanessa Richardson?

  Catherine's life was marked by violence from an early age. As she grew older, childhood trauma, unstable relationships, and an intense fear of abandonment turned into a pattern she couldn't break.

• 3:09Tristin Engels?

  As Vanessa goes through the story, I'll be talking about things like why some offenders continue seeing themselves as the victim even after committing acts of violence, what separates mental illness or personality disorders from legal criminal responsibility, and why understanding how someone becoming violent is never the same as excusing the choices they made.

• 3:31Vanessa Richardson?

  And as always, we'll be asking the question, what makes a killer?

• 3:40Vanessa Richardson?

  Over the course of her life, Katherine Knight had watched relationship after relationship fall apart. As a child, she'd grown up surrounded by violence and instability. And as an adult, she'd brought a lot of those destructive behaviors into her own relationships. Her first husband survived years of physical attacks and threats involving butcher knives. Another partner eventually went into hiding because he believed disappearing was the only way he could safely escape her. And by February of 2000, Catherine was convinced she was about to lose her latest partner, fellow 44-year-old John Prince. John had been quietly telling some of his friends and family that he was scared of what Catherine might be capable of.

• 4:23Vanessa Richardson?

  And at this point, he feared for his life. On February 27, 2000, the police showed up at John's home after another violent fight with Catherine. When officers returned the next night, John pulled them aside to privately ask for help. He told them he wanted Catherine out of his house for good. So the next morning, February 29, John went to work early and told his bosses everything. He opened his shirt and showed them a scar on his chest where Catherine had stabbed him months earlier. He'd never shown it to anyone before. Then he took the afternoon off and drove to the courthouse. But the clerk told him there was nothing anyone could do until the existing order came before a magistrate in three weeks' time.

• 5:10Vanessa Richardson?

  John left knowing he'd been turned away. He told his boss it had been a waste of time. And he told the clerk he'd probably be dead before that court date came. Because Catherine knew what was coming. And late on February 29, after spending her day visiting friends and family, police, and her attorney, she returned to John's house on St. Andrews Street in Aberdeen, New South Wales. John wasn't expecting her. He'd spent the evening across the road at a neighbor's place, drinking a couple of beers and showing them the court papers. When they offered him a bed for the night, he turned it down. "If a man couldn't sleep in his own house," he said, "what was the point?" He went home alone and got into bed.

• 5:53Vanessa Richardson?

  Catherine let herself in just after 11 o'clock. She showered, changed into the black nightgown she'd bought that day, and woke him. They were intimate one last time.

• 6:05Vanessa Richardson?

  She waited for John to come back from the bathroom with one of her butcher knives in her hand. Before John had a chance to react, Catherine lunged toward him. John scrambled past her, and the struggle spilled from the bedroom into the hallway. He tried desperately to reach another part of the house as Catherine came after him. And he nearly made it. John reached the front door and pulled it open. But as he was about to step outside, Catherine caught him and dragged him back in. Still, John didn't give up. As Catherine drove her knife into him again and again, he fought to stay on his feet. She struck his chest, abdomen, and back. Eventually, his body couldn't take it anymore,

• 6:50Vanessa Richardson?

  and John collapsed in the hallway. By the time Catherine finally stopped, she'd stabbed him 37 times. And the pathologist could only be sure of that many because the decapitation may have hidden more. His wounds had penetrated his lungs and other organs. And the home John had hoped to make safe from Catherine became the place where she took his life. For years, Catherine had threatened violence whenever one of her relationships appeared to be slipping away. She tried to strangle her first husband, David, and had held a knife against his throat. When her boyfriend, Dave, grew distant, she'd killed his dingo pup in a fit of rage. But until that night, every man Catherine attacked

• 7:35Vanessa Richardson?

  had survived. And even though John was now dead, Catherine wasn't done yet.

• 7:42Tristin Engels?

  37 times is more than necessary to cause death. But it's also the circumstances that played a role in that as well. John was trying to get away, and the majority of his wounds were on his back and his legs. That was partly to prevent him from escaping her or abandoning her again, but also to express likely anger and rage because of the excess to it. I also think there's something else happening here besides rage. John is about to effectively end this relationship with court intervention. The power dynamic will shift if that happens. And we talked about what law enforcement's involvement would do to her feeling of power and control in episode one, which is why I think she initiated intimacy with John.

• 8:26Tristin Engels?

  It allowed her to regain the power and reverse the position she's been in. John is no longer rejecting her anymore. She now gets to reject him, and permanently. So he can never reject her again. By killing him, in a very distorted sense, it's almost the ultimate version of "You can't reject me if I reject you first."

• 8:50Vanessa Richardson?

  Whatever emotions had fueled Catherine through her attack, she'd gotten what she wanted. John was dead. Now, he couldn't force her from his home or choose a future without her. The place was hers to do with as she pleased. She showered and changed out of the nightgown she'd been wearing. Then she took John's ATM card, and since there wasn't an ATM in Aberdeen, she drove to the next town over and withdrew $1,000 Australian dollars from his account, worth around $600 US dollars at the time. She took it out in two goes, three minutes apart, because the machine capped her at $500 at a time. After that, she drove back to Aberdeen. Catherine tucked her van behind her own home and walked back to John's house.

• 9:35Vanessa Richardson?

  At about 3:30 in the morning, a neighbor let her dog out and saw a woman coming up the street. She recognized Catherine, thought nothing of it, and went back to bed. Once Catherine was inside, she turned her attention to John's body. For much of her adult life, she'd worked in slaughterhouses. She could expertly remove skin and separate flesh from bone. Now, she planned to use those same skills on John. So she moved his body into the living room to give herself space to work. And there, she skinned him. Then she hung the skin from a hook in the doorway between the living room and kitchen. Finally, she decapitated him. Afterwards, Catherine went into the kitchen

• 10:20Vanessa Richardson?

  and started making food. She cooked vegetables and gravy and John's flesh. Through it all, she was likely seething at John and at his older kids, who told their dad the house belonged to their family and not to Catherine. She'd spent years resenting them, convinced they were the ones standing between her and the home she wanted. Catherine shattered their family photos and put John's watch on the broken glass, seemingly leaving it for his kids to fight over. Then, she set the table for John's son and daughter. In front of each place, a plate of their father's flesh and beside it, a note in her own handwriting. Once she was finished,

• 11:05Vanessa Richardson?

  she made herself a coffee and smoked a cigarette. Her rage had been aimed at John, but she'd made sure his children were part of it, too.

• 11:15Tristin Engels?

  I can't just jump into analyzing this psychologically without acknowledging just how horrific this is. John was completely dehumanized here. Catherine treated his body almost as if it were one of the animals in the slaughterhouses she worked in. But the mutilation, decapitation, and the involvement of his children, take this somewhere else entirely. His children had become part of Catherine's grievance. She believed they were standing between her and the house she wanted and felt entitled to. And now they're being incorporated into what she's done to their father, which is particularly heinous. Why do any of that? Why not just leave after killing him?

• 11:59Tristin Engels?

  To me, that suggests she wanted an audience. She's creating something that is meant to be found. And I wonder if this is one final demonstration of power and control. John rejected her. He had decided the relationship was over. His children were going to inherit the house she wanted. His children were important to him. Those were decisions Catherine couldn't control, decisions that threatened her. And now she wants to control the ending. She controls what happens to John, what happens to his body, and even what his children are going to encounter afterward. And now she gets to punish them, too.

• 12:37Vanessa Richardson?

  Is there a distinction between violence committed in a burst of rage like this and actions that appear designed to degrade someone or to send a message?

• 12:46Tristin Engels?

  Yeah, and I think that's what we're seeing here. This was a highly emotionally charged crime with overkill, followed by a series of organized decisions about his body and the scene around him. That's less emotionally charged and more about communication, degradation, and punishment, the latter being a central part of her offending behavior. Someone can absolutely commit an act of violence out of rage and then follow it with very purposeful behavior after.

• 13:16Vanessa Richardson?

  By the time Catherine was finished, the rage that had fueled the attack had given way to something much more deliberate. And as morning approached, she took a collection of pills from around the house, climbed into John's bed, and fell asleep. As she slept, John's absence was starting to draw attention. He was known for getting to work early, so when repeated calls went unanswered, his coworkers got worried. One neighbor couldn't understand why John's car was still in the driveway so late on a workday. He walked over and knocked on the door, again and again. There was no answer. But he noticed blood on the handle and John's work boots still sitting outside. Soon, several friends and coworkers gathered around the house,

• 14:00Vanessa Richardson?

  trying the doors, looking through windows, and calling John's name. Eventually, someone phoned the police. When officers arrived, the doors were locked and no one answered. With help from one of John's coworkers, police forced open the rear laundry door. It was immediately clear that this was the scene of a horrific crime. Blood covered the hallway and the walls. Then they saw John's body, skinned and decapitated. His skin was hanging from a hook in a nearby doorway. In the kitchen, the meal Catherine had prepared was still sitting where she'd left it. Then the officers heard another sound coming from the bedroom. Someone was snoring. Police moved carefully through the house

• 14:44Vanessa Richardson?

  and found Catherine lying unconscious on the bed. She'd taken a large quantity of pills, but she was still breathing. Officers lifted Catherine from the bed and carried her outside, where emergency crews started treating her. For the first time since Catherine had lunged at John the night before, she was no longer the one in control.

• 15:07Tristin Engels?

  This is interesting. She's taken enough pills that all of this knocking isn't waking her up. Police eventually have to enter the house. They still can't rouse her, and they have to physically carry her out and have emergency medical crews work on her. By what you shared, she took a large quantity of pills, unknown pills, voluntarily or intentionally. So if this was a suicide attempt, and we don't know for sure, but it certainly appears that it could have been, I think we have to ask what that means in the context of everything that she did before taking those pills, everything we just talked about. Because she didn't kill John and then immediately attempt suicide.

• 15:49Tristin Engels?

  There are hours of behavior between those two things. She mutilates and decapitates his body. She prepares and cooks portions of his remains. She stages the table for his children. She writes notes. She smashes photographs. She showers, changes her clothes, takes John's ATM card, drives to another town, tries to figure out how to withdraw the money, even when the machine limits how much she can take at once. Not all necessarily in this order, but that is quite a bit of sustained, goal-directed behavior. And only after she's staged the scene does she take these pills. So I wonder what happened emotionally when there was nothing left for her to do after doing all of that. Maybe it's despair.

• 16:32Tristin Engels?

  Maybe it's an attempt to escape what she knows is coming. Maybe it was the plan all along. Maybe there's shame, grief, or even suicidality that existed alongside the rage. I mean, we can't really know without knowing if this was her intent with the pills. But if she did intend to die after constructing this whole scene and leaving this for his children, then she created something specifically for them to find and then potentially attempted to make sure she wasn't going to be there when they found it, which means she didn't want to be there to face their reactions. And so I have to wonder if maybe on some level, she can identify with them in that now they are experiencing an abandonment of their own with John.

• 17:16Tristin Engels?

  That doesn't mean there's remorse. That just means that she can relate to the experience that they might have when they learn he's dead. Because abandonment is such a powerful experience to her.

• 17:29Vanessa Richardson?

  Well, whatever Catherine intended when she swallowed those pills and climbed into his bed, she survived it. And as she was taken from John's house for medical treatment, investigators began the painstaking work of documenting the scene she'd left behind. The physical evidence would eventually help them reconstruct nearly every stage of John's final hours. But one question remained much harder to answer. What had been happening inside Catherine's mind?

• 18:05Speaker 03

  Why have so many crop circles appeared around Britain? How did thousands of people demonstrate powers of telepathy? Can the dead suck the life from the living? Join me, Tim Harford, for a trip into the paranormal throughout Halloween month on Cautionary Tales. Listen to Cautionary Tales on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 18:35Vanessa Richardson?

  By the morning of March 1st, 2000, 44-year-old Katherine Knight had finally done what she'd threatened to do for months: kill John Price. Now the home she'd fought so hard to make her own was the site of one of the most disturbing murders in Australian history. After being found unconscious in bed, Catherine had been taken to the hospital. Meanwhile, detectives remained inside John's home, carefully documenting everything she'd left behind. The handwritten notes, the untouched meal waiting in the kitchen, and the extraordinary condition of John's body all pointed toward a homicide unlike any the investigators had encountered before. And the evidence connecting Catherine to the crime was overwhelming.

• 19:20Vanessa Richardson?

  While the authorities still needed to build an official case, the bigger question was her state of mind. Three days later, on March 4th, after doctors determined Catherine was well enough to be questioned, two detectives sat down across from her. They were struck by how normal Catherine looked. She could have been your local librarian: tall, glasses, graying red hair. After the usual introductory questions, the detectives asked Catherine what she knew about the death of John Price. She said she knew nothing, and almost immediately started fidgeting. Catherine told them the last thing she remembered was hanging out with her family and then going home. The detectives got Catherine to walk them through her day before John's death.

• 20:04Vanessa Richardson?

  Then they turned to her relationship with John. As she answered the detectives' questions, the same themes that had surfaced throughout her adult life quickly reappeared. She talked about arguments, rejection, and the ways she believed John had mistreated her. As detectives listened, they recognized a lot of what they'd already heard from John's family and friends. Catherine described feeling excluded by John's children, resentful of his friendly relationship with his ex-wife, and convinced she deserved a permanent place in his house. Even now, she spoke as though the central injustice wasn't John's death, it was his decision to leave her. Ultimately, that first interview didn't give the detectives much to go on.

• 20:49Vanessa Richardson?

  They'd asked hundreds of questions, and Catherine had talked about the relationship, denied any wrongdoing, and blamed everything else on memory lapses. But the detectives knew this was only the first of many interrogations. In the meantime, investigators kept interviewing relatives, neighbors, and former partners. Soon, a consistent pattern started to emerge. One witness after another described Catherine making threats against John, refusing to accept that the relationship was over, and warning that if she couldn't have him, nobody else would. On their own, those statements might have sounded like nothing more than the angry words of someone going through a painful breakup, but viewed together after John's

• 21:32Vanessa Richardson?

  death, they painted a very different picture. Investigators also learned that Catherine had repeatedly told people she intended to kill John. Some witnesses remembered brushing those threats off at the time as just another blow up from a volatile couple. Others admitted they'd been frightened by how certain Catherine sounded. And looking back, many of them wondered whether the warning signs had been clearer than they'd wanted to believe.

• 21:58Tristin Engels?

  The fact that John wasn't taken seriously or believed can be explained by, I think, a few reasons. One is normalization. Catherine and John had been volatile for years. People had heard Catherine make these statements before, they'd seen them separate and reconcile more than once, and John didn't have any overt observable signs of abuse. Even when he said he'd been stabbed, he wouldn't show the wound to anyone. After a while, that can unfortunately just become a situation of, "Oh, that's just Catherine", or "There they go again." And that becomes the explanation of their relationship as a whole. And I think this is also where something we talked about in episode one becomes relevant.

• 22:43Tristin Engels?

  Violence perpetrated by women can sometimes be underestimated because it doesn't always fit our expectation of who poses a serious physical threat. That doesn't mean people never take violent women seriously, and it certainly doesn't erase the fact that women are disproportionately victims of severe intimate partner violence. But these are some reasons why people heard about these threats, witnessed them, and may not have recognized how concerning they really were at the time or dismissed them.

• 23:16Vanessa Richardson?

  From a psychological perspective, how should we think about threats like Catherine's before the violence actually occurs?

• 23:23Tristin Engels?

  Threats should be taken seriously. And I'm not talking about the "I'm going to kill you after you play a prank on your little brother," or "You eat the last piece of cake in the fridge and that's the reaction you get from a loved one or roommate," or something like that. I'm talking about threats that are very clearly not said in jest. And if you're not sure, then pay attention to what I'm going to say next. Unfortunately, a threat isn't a prediction. We can't conclude if or when someone would follow through on a threat. But how it fits into everything else you know about that person, their behavior, their history, how you've seen them react in different environments, different situations towards different people, and the situation is what is important.

• 24:06Tristin Engels?

  Is this something said once during an argument, or are they saying it repeatedly? Is it said to control you? Is the threat becoming more specific? Do they have access to weapons? Is there a history of violence? Have they acted on threats before? Is the relationship ending? Is their behavior escalating? And are their behaviors suggesting preparation? Catherine was very concerning when you look back on it. She had a history of violence. She attacked people before she even ever met John and while she was separated. She attacked a woman on the street. She's acted on threats, especially when there was a threat of the relationship ending.

• 24:46Tristin Engels?

  She showed signs of preparedness, even when the relationship was in relatively good standing by her conditions. And she was hiding knives and hanging them above her bed. Her behavior escalated. These are all high-risk markers for violence and should not be ignored. And there can be a tendency to become less concerned when someone repeatedly makes a threat, direct or indirect, and nothing happens from it. And that's, again, called habituation. But that's risky because it doesn't make the next threat meaningless. Intimate partner violence is especially tricky because, as we've outlined, her last partners had to plan their escape in order to leave safely. They left without telling her. They left in the night.

• 25:31Tristin Engels?

  Planning is necessary, and it's how it should be done for safety reasons, because separation is one of the highest-risk periods for intimate partner homicide, as we talked about in episode one. Unfortunately, when it came to John, Catherine was aware he was planning to end the relationship. She saw him talking to law enforcement and knew he was planning to file his own legal work. Catherine knowing this is what elevated his risk exponentially.

• 25:57Vanessa Richardson?

  As the people of Aberdeen reeled from John's murder, Catherine underwent psychiatric testing. Prosecutors anticipated that when the case went to trial, her defense would likely focus on her mental state, and so they commissioned a full assessment from a forensic psychiatrist. In June of 2000, about three months after the murder, Dr. Robert Delaforce interviewed Catherine over the course of two days. He'd been tasked with determining whether years of trauma, emotional instability, and violent behavior had impaired Catherine's ability to understand what she'd done. In those sessions, many of the same experiences she described throughout her life resurfaced.

• 26:39Vanessa Richardson?

  She spoke about the violence she'd witnessed as a child, the sexual abuse she'd endured, her mother's death, and the repeated breakdown of her relationships. Through it all, she showed no emotion about John's death. Sometimes she said she thought he might still be alive. Dr. Delaforce ultimately concluded that Catherine met the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder. He said Catherine's PTSD stemmed from years of repeated childhood trauma, including witnessing violence against her mother and enduring sexual abuse herself. He believed those experiences had left her with symptoms that persisted into adulthood, including hypervigilance, intense anger, and emotional distress whenever she was confronted

• 27:23Vanessa Richardson?

  with reminders of her past. Dr. Delaforce also concluded that Catherine exhibited eight of the nine diagnostic criteria for borderline personality disorder. BPD is marked by longstanding instability in relationships, emotions, and sense of self. In Catherine, he saw frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment, impulsive behavior, chronic feelings of emptiness, and severe difficulty controlling her anger.

• 27:54Vanessa Richardson?

  He also rejected the idea that during the murder, Catherine had been suffering from dissociative amnesia or a psychotic disorder, anything that would have prevented her from understanding the nature of her actions. In his view, even though Catherine had had her fair share of mental health struggles, she knew exactly what she was doing. The evidence didn't support a mental health impairment defense. Catherine's defense team commissioned its own psychiatrist to answer him. More than a year later, that doctor reached the opposite conclusion, arguing her memory loss was genuine, that a dissociative state remained possible, and that a defense of automatism was open to her, which is doing actions without conscious thought, will, or intention.

• 28:39Vanessa Richardson?

  As the case moved toward trial, the question was no longer just what Catherine had done. It was a battle between experts over what had been happening inside her mind the night John Price died.

• 28:52Tristin Engels?

  There is a common misconception that if someone was capable of carrying out such a depraved act like this, that they must be insane. And it sounds logically true, but the reality is that it simply is not true. For starters, insanity is a legal and forensic term. It's not a clinical one. And if you've been listening to us long enough, you know that we have covered a lot of cases with a lot of depraved and horrific acts and a lot of serial offenders, many of whom were not insane, to include Jeffrey Dahmer. And Dahmer was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder as well. Having a diagnosable mental illness like borderline personality disorder

• 29:35Tristin Engels?

  or PTSD does not automatically mean that they are incapable of understanding their surroundings, make decisions, behave purposefully, and know what they're doing. We talked about Catherine's behavior after she killed John. What we want to know is what effect did her mental illness have on her functioning at the time of the offense? Someone can have PTSD, borderline personality disorder, depression, or any other significant psychiatric condition and still understand their surroundings, make decisions, behave purposefully, and know what they're doing. And that's also why psychiatrists can evaluate Catherine and reach very different conclusions. They're interpreting symptoms, history, behavior, records,

• 30:19Tristin Engels?

  collateral information, and what Catherine tells them. With Catherine, they're also trying to reconstruct her mental state during an event that she says she cannot remember. That's going to make it difficult for some of them, not impossible to determine. And disagreements unfortunately aren't uncommon, especially on opposing sides.

• 30:43Vanessa Richardson?

  Over the months that followed, prosecutors and defense attorneys continued preparing for trial, assembling witnesses, reviewing psychiatric evaluations, and digging into Catherine and John's relationship. By then, there was little disagreement about the facts themselves. Catherine had killed John Price. The physical evidence inside the house, her own statements, and the testimony of dozens of witnesses all pointed to the same conclusion. But the real fight would be over her state of mind. Catherine's attorneys argued that years of trauma had profoundly affected her thinking, while prosecutors maintained she'd understood exactly what she was doing and should be held fully responsible.

• 31:26Vanessa Richardson?

  The court would ultimately hear from several mental health experts. They didn't agree with each other, not about what Catherine's history meant legally and not even about what was wrong with her. One prosecution psychiatrist rejected the PTSD diagnosis outright and wasn't convinced by the borderline personality disorder either. In his view, her problems weren't an illness at all. They were her nature. As the trial approached, Catherine's story stayed remarkably consistent to detectives, psychiatrists, and those closest to her. John had rejected and humiliated her. He'd destroyed the future she believed they were supposed to have. And for the first time, that story would be challenged in open court.

• 32:11Tristin Engels?

  This behavior is something I would expect from someone that has such a strong sense of grievance. She's still focused on how she was wronged by John, even now. She doesn't just stop feeling betrayed by him. He rejected her. He wouldn't marry her. She believed she'd invested years into a house she wasn't going to get. His children were going to inherit it. Instead, he was ending the relationship. None of that remotely justifies what she did, not even close, obviously. But psychologically, if Catherine continues to make the story about what John did to her, then she can remain the victim in her own narrative. And that can be protective for her. She can morally disengage from the wrongfulness of her behavior,

• 32:55Tristin Engels?

  not legally speaking, but psychologically speaking. That does not mean she doesn't know right from wrong. It's about her way of manipulating her own moral reasoning so the rules don't apply to what she did retrospectively in this case. She has a very strong sense of victimhood.

• 33:14Vanessa Richardson?

  Throughout Catherine's life, we repeatedly saw her explain the breakdown of relationships by focusing on what others had done to her. Psychologically, why is it so difficult for some people to recognize their own role in recurring conflicts?

• 33:27Tristin Engels?

  I think part of it is simply that recognizing your own role can be just, it's difficult. And I want to be careful here because people sometimes say, if you keep losing relationships, you're the common denominator, as though that automatically means you're the problem. And I don't like that phrase because it doesn't always account for individuals that repeatedly end relationships because they're setting healthy boundaries or recognizing unhealthy dynamics or deciding that those relationships aren't good for him. So when we talk about this, we're looking for a repeated pattern in your own behavior that contributes to similar problems across different relationships. And with Catherine, we have that. The partners change, the circumstances change,

• 34:09Tristin Engels?

  but we repeatedly see jealousy controlling behavior, threats, violence, retaliation, and extreme, very extreme reactions to rejection or separation. Recognizing that pattern, your own problematic behaviors would require Catherine to consider that she may be creating what she fears the most. And that's difficult for some people because externalizing the problem protects the way they see themselves. And sometimes the grievance itself is legitimate. Like, sometimes people really did betray you or treat you badly. The problem comes when that becomes an explanation for your own behavior instead.

• 34:50Vanessa Richardson?

  Until now, Catherine's violence had largely remained behind closed doors. That was about to change, and soon, her story would become national news.

• 35:05Speaker 04

  Did you know that if your spouse goes missing and you don't tell anyone, that's not necessarily a crime? That surprising fact is at the heart of the brand-new season of Bear Brook, the critically acclaimed true crime podcast from New Hampshire Public Radio. I'm your host, Jason Moon. In this season, Bear Brook investigates another New Hampshire mystery. A Christmas tree farmer with dementia vanishes. His wife never reports him missing. Can he still be found? Don't miss it. Follow Bear Brook wherever you get your podcasts.

• 35:36Vanessa Richardson?

  On October 16, 2001, 19 months after John Price's murder, 45-year-old Katherine Knight arrived at the Maitland Courthouse in New South Wales. By then, the case had become one of the most closely-watched murder prosecutions in Australia. Journalists crowded the courthouse alongside members of John's family while dozens of prospective jurors waited to learn whether they would be selected for one of the country's most disturbing criminal trials. Before the proceedings even began, the judge on the case, Justice Barry O'Keefe, addressed the courtroom with an unusual warning. He explained that the evidence they were about to see would be exceptionally graphic.

• 36:18Vanessa Richardson?

  The photographs, testimony, and forensic details would be hard to sit through, and anyone who didn't think they could handle it was free to say so before the trial started. Several prospective jurors immediately asked to be excused. Others were dismissed after revealing they knew witnesses who would later testify. Only after a full day of questioning was a jury finally selected. When court resumed the following morning, Catherine stood before Justice O'Keefe and changed her plea to guilty. Even O'Keefe seemed taken aback, asking Catherine to repeat herself. So she said it again: guilty. Few people in the courtroom knew that the night before,

• 37:00Vanessa Richardson?

  Catherine's lawyers had told Justice O'Keefe she wanted to change her plea. Rather than accepting it on the spot, the judge ordered an overnight psychiatric assessment to make sure Catherine understood the decision she was making. By morning, the examining psychiatrist concluded that she did. The guilty plea brought an abrupt end to the murder trial many had expected. The jurors were surprised, and after spending a full day answering questions, they were dismissed before hearing a single witness. But it didn't end the legal proceedings. Instead, the courtroom turned to a different question, not whether Catherine had killed John Price, but what punishment that crime deserved.

• 37:43Tristin Engels?

  Catherine had been evaluated and determined to understand the decision she was making when she pleaded guilty. And understanding a guilty plea and entering one doesn't necessarily mean she suddenly accepts responsibility for her own behavior. She can acknowledge, yes, I did this, without necessarily experiencing remorse, accepting her role in everything that led to it, or admitting she was not the person who had been wronged, and John is the true victim. Those are separate things. Catherine repeatedly framed the conflicts in her relationships around what other people had done to her. She held grievances. Plaining guilty doesn't necessarily require her to give up those grievances. She could acknowledge that she killed John and continue to believe she is the victim.

• 38:28Tristin Engels?

  A guilty plea by itself can also just be a legal decision. If she proceeded with the trial, it wouldn't have been limited to her account of what John had done to her. Her entire history, her psychiatric hospitalizations, her behavior in previous relationships, and the testimony of people who had experienced her violence would potentially have placed Catherine herself under scrutiny in a way that challenged her victimhood, where she had no control over that narrative in a courtroom and she felt repeatedly rejected in a room full of people. That would have been exposure for her. So a guilty plea could have prevented her from having to hear from those witnesses and experiencing that too.

• 39:13Vanessa Richardson?

  Although Catherine had admitted to killing John Price, the sentencing hearing remained fiercely contested. The issue at hand was the same: how the court should understand the woman who had committed this crime. Her defense attorneys made the same argument they'd planned to present at trial. They pointed to Catherine's traumatic childhood, her long history of abuse, and the psychiatric evidence presented over the previous months. They said that those experiences had profoundly shaped her emotional development and the way she perceived rejection throughout her adult life. They also asked the court to treat Catherine's guilty plea as a sign she'd accepted responsibility. The prosecution saw it very differently. They looked past Catherine's history and zeroed in on the decisions she made before,

• 39:58Vanessa Richardson?

  during, and after the murder. She'd threatened John repeatedly in the months leading up to the attack. She'd armed herself with the knives she'd prized her entire adult life. And she'd spent hours inside the house carrying out deliberate, horrific acts after John was already dead. For most of the hearing, Catherine sat expressionless. But when a crime scene officer testified about how she'd carried John's head through the archway, she began to moan and rock, kicking the partition of the dock, and screaming until the judge adjourned. She was carried out, still screaming. One detective thought she was crying out John's name. And as the sentencing hearing continued,

• 40:40Vanessa Richardson?

  the psychiatrists returned to debate Catherine's mental state. At one point, Justice O'Keefe shared something he'd noticed from the bench. Throughout the proceedings, Catherine had refused to watch the video footage of John Price's murder scene. Yet, she appeared intensely focused whenever the psychiatrists discussed her, listening closely as they described her personality, her childhood, and her state of mind. Dr. Delafor suggested the contrast was revealing. In his view, Catherine cared deeply about how others saw her, and she didn't need to watch the footage to remember what had happened. He believed she already carried vivid mental images of the violence and returned to them again and again.

• 41:24Tristin Engels?

  If Catherine does, in fact, have borderline personality disorder, one of the characteristics of this condition is an unstable sense of self. So her preoccupation with how other people perceive her makes a lot of sense. And when your internal sense of who you are isn't particularly stable, other people's perceptions of you can become extremely important. So I wonder whether Catherine isn't just interested in what these psychiatrists think of her. She's listening to other people construct an explanation for who Katherine Knight is. Is she traumatized? Is she mentally ill? Is she affected by her childhood? Is she dangerous? Is she a victim? Is she a monster?

• 42:06Tristin Engels?

  Those descriptions might be able to help her understand who she is. And that self-focus doesn't necessarily produce remorse, especially when, while it's happening, you're disinterested in the merits of the case and the life you took. She's not invested in learning or understanding the impact of her behavior. That means directly confronting the consequences of what she did, and that threatens her self-focused grievance narrative. That said, again, if she does have borderline personality disorder, she would have a very severe case of this condition, and it would likely not be in isolation. This condition affects approximately 1 in 50 people.

• 42:49Tristin Engels?

  The overwhelming majority are not committing violent crimes, let alone a murder of this magnitude. This condition is not what caused her to do this. As we've been outlining from the very beginning of Catherine's life, there's a convergence of a lot of different factors that all come together to have created the perfect storm. It is not one causal factor, and it certainly isn't bipolar disorder on its own.

• 43:19Vanessa Richardson?

  Over the following days, Justice O'Keefe carefully considered the psychiatric evidence alongside the circumstances of John Price's murder. Ultimately, he found that the murder hadn't been a spontaneous loss of control. Instead, he pointed to Catherine's repeated threats against John before the attack, the deliberate actions she carried out after his death, and the extraordinary level of violence involved. Together, they convinced him that Catherine was fully responsible. The judge also rejected the argument that Catherine's guilty plea reflected genuine remorse. In his view, the plea had come only after the prosecution had assembled an overwhelming case, and it did little to lessen the gravity

• 44:02Vanessa Richardson?

  of what had happened inside John's home. On November 8, 2001, Justice O'Keefe delivered his decision. Katherine Knight was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, the harshest sentence available in New South Wales. It was the first time in the country's history a woman had received it. Catherine showed no emotion as the sentence was read. Then she turned, took the first step down toward the cells, and smiled.

• 44:35Tristin Engels?

  That smile may have just confirmed what Justice O'Keefe had concluded, that her guilty plea was not evidence of remorse. He focused on her threats, her deliberate actions, and responsibility and insight into her behavior. Insight and remorse are related, but they're not the same thing. Insight is about recognition. So, for example, can she understand what she did and appreciate her role in what happened? Remorse goes further because it involves an emotional and moral response to the harm she caused someone else. So someone can develop an understanding of themselves without necessarily feeling remorse. They can understand why they behave the way they do, recognize that their behavior was destructive, and even understand how other people might perceive them

• 45:19Tristin Engels?

  without ever experiencing any genuine sympathy or sorrow for the person that they harmed. And Catherine was particularly interested in learning about this in court when the psychiatrists were testifying. Obviously, I can't know for certain what her smile meant, but it could represent emotional masking, defiance, self-soothing, or even genuine satisfaction with something about that particular moment. I do find it interesting, though, that she only did it when her back was turned to the judge, though.

• 45:54Vanessa Richardson?

  Why do courts often consider remorse when deciding an appropriate sentence?

• 45:58Tristin Engels?

  Because sentencing isn't just about the crime itself. Courts may also consider things relevant to their rehabilitation, their future risk, their deterrence, and prior history. Genuine remorse can be relevant because it may suggest that the person recognizes the harm they caused, they accept responsibility rather than continuing to justify what they did, and they have the willingness and ability to change their behavior. This obviously varies by jurisdiction, and I can't speak for New South Wales. But here in California, there is a Rules of Court code that expressly lists whether the defendant is remorseful as a factor in determining suitability for probation. But context is important.

• 46:41Tristin Engels?

  It's more nuanced than, oh, they said they were sorry. It's dependent on a number of things, like the nature of the crime they committed, the vulnerability of the victim, and so much more.

• 46:55Vanessa Richardson?

  Well, Catherine carried the scars of the abuse and trauma she experienced throughout her childhood. Those experiences shaped the way she saw the world, and they help explain how she became the woman who murdered John Price. But the justice system concluded that her past didn't erase her choices. John Price lost his life. His children lost their father. And more than 25 years later, Katherine Knight remains behind bars in New South Wales, where she'll spend the rest of her life.

• 47:39Tristin Engels?

  Before we get out of here, it's time for the Angle's Angle, where I'll tell you three pieces of advice I'd give our subject if they were my patient. This is for educational and entertainment purposes only. This is general psychological commentary, not therapy, treatment, diagnosis, or individualized mental health advice. And it does not establish a psychological-patient relationship. With those ethical disclaimers out of the way, here's what I'd tell Katherine Knight if she came into my office. Number one: learn to tolerate rejection without retaliating against someone. Someone breaking up with you, disappointing you, choosing someone over you, even cheating on you. It sucks. It hurts.

• 48:24Tristin Engels?

  And it can absolutely affect trust and your sense of security, even your sense of self-worth. And I think everyone's been through this. And given Catherine's history, I wouldn't minimize how intensely she may have experienced those things, so I'm not trying to do that. But the reality is, you cannot control what other people will do. You cannot predict the future. You can only control what you do. You trust until given a reason not to. You leave if you feel you can't trust. It is never okay to prevent someone from leaving, frighten them into staying, destroy something they care about, or punish them because they hurt you.

• 49:05Tristin Engels?

  The work for Catherine would be learning that rejection is something you can survive without having to reverse the power dynamic. You don't have to make the other person hurt because you're hurting. You don't have to get the last word. You don't have to regain control because you didn't get the ending you wanted. If they don't choose you, choose yourself and move on. Number two, stop asking only what other people did to you and start asking what you brought into the relationship. This doesn't mean every grievance Catherine had was unfounded. Some people genuinely did hurt and betray her, and in some cases, her suspicions were correct.

• 49:46Tristin Engels?

  But somebody else's wrongdoing doesn't erase your own, and two wrongs don't make a right. If the same problems keep appearing across different relationships, that's something that needs to be explored. You can be someone who has repeatedly been hurt or betrayed and have hurt and betrayed. Accountability doesn't require pretending that nobody ever hurt you, but you are still responsible for your choices. Number three, learn the difference between understanding yourself and making excuses for yourself. Catherine seemed very interested in explanations for who she was and why she behaved the way she did, as we saw throughout the trial.

• 50:27Tristin Engels?

  And understanding the effects of your childhood, your trauma, your attachment patterns, or your personality is valuable and important. We talk about this in therapy. But an explanation should give you more responsibility for what you do next. It is not an excuse for your behavior. At some point, insight has to become action. Otherwise, "this is why I am this way" can very easily become "this is why I'm allowed to stay this way." And if I could leave Catherine with one thing, it would probably be, you can understand how you become who you are without allowing your past to keep you there. Use it to grow and use it to evolve.

• 51:11Tristin Engels?

  So, thank you for joining me on this episode of Engels Angle, and I'll see you in the comments.

• 51:29Vanessa Richardson?

  Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next time for a deep dive into the mind of another murderer.

• 51:35Tristin Engels?

  Serial Killers and Murderous Minds is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on all social media at Crime House. Don't forget to rate, review, and follow Serial Killers and Murderous Minds wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference.

• 51:58Vanessa Richardson?

  And to enhance your listening experience, join Crime House Plus and get both parts of every story dropped on the same Monday, completely ad-free. No waiting three days for part two, plus Crime House bonus episodes every month. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com, or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap "Try Free" at the top of the Serial Killers and Murderous Minds page. Serial Killers and Murderous Minds is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson, and forensic psychologist Dr. Tristin Engels, and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Serial Killers and Murderous Minds team: Max Cutler,

• 52:39Vanessa Richardson?

  Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Lori Marinelli, Natalie Pritzowski, Sarah Camp, Alyssa Fox, Mara De La Rosa, Claire Swartzlander, Sarah Batchelor, and Carrie Murphy. Thank you for listening.

• 52:58Vanessa Richardson?

  If you're looking for your next podcast, check out What the Fact with Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum and Carter Roy. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from history and tell you the full story behind them. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen, or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.