Katherine Knight: The life of Australia's most shocking female killer | Roje Augustin Pt. 1

What Katherine Knight did to her partner John Price wasn't just murder, it was something far more twisted. Katherine was a woman consumed by two things: a crippling fear of abandonment, and an insatiable need for control, enforced through violence, manipulation, and sexual exploitation. Most Australians know the horror of how John Price died. What they don't know is the decades-long history of abuse Katherine inflicted on the men in her life, and anyone else she deemed an obstacle. Which raises an uncomfortable question, if a man had done to women what Katherine did to men, would he have been stopped years earlier? In this episode of I Catch Killers, Gary Jubelin is joined by Rojé Augustin, whose new book The Butcher of Aberdeen, delves into Katherine’s chilling past shaped by childhood trauma, violent relationships, and a relentless descent into madness. Rojé Augustin is the author ofhttps://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Neil-Mercer-Falsely-Convicted-9781761472978The Butcher of Aberdeen: An Australian Story of Sex, Madness, and Murder. https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/The-Butcher-of-Aberdeen/Roje-Augustin/9798895658420 You can watch I Catch Killers on Youtube here. https://www.youtube.com/@ICatchKillers-Podcast Follow I Catch Killers: Instagram:@icatchkillers https://www.instagram.com/icatchkillers/?hl=enTiktok:@icatchkillerspodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@icatchkillerspodcastFacebook:@icatchkillers https://www.facebook.com/icatchkillers/ Email the show at [email protected] See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  The public has had a long-held fascination with detectives. Detectives see a side of life the average person is never exposed to. I spent 34 years as a cop. For 25 of those years, I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  Today, we explore the dark, twisted world of notorious killer Katherine Knight. This is a shocking story, and I think a content warning is necessary. We're going to talk about domestic violence where male partners are the victims, about sexual exploitation, violence, and a woman tormented by a fear of abandonment and the need for control. There is no happy ending in this story, and I think you'll be shocked when I sit down with journalist Rojai Augustine, author of the book The Butcher of Aberdeen, an Australian story of sex, madness, and murder. Take a listen.

• 1:26Speaker 00

  Rojai Augustine, welcome to I Catch Killers.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thanks for having me.

• 1:30Speaker 00

  Well, looking forward to having this conversation, kind of, because the subject matter is pretty heavy what we're going to talk about. And that's the crime of Kathleen Knight committed.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  Murder.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  Murder in the most...

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Slaughter, butcher.

• 1:46Speaker 00

  Butcher, murder. It was, as a sort of career homicide detective, I saw a lot of crime. But I gotta say, reading your book, The Butcher of Aberdeen, I felt this sense of overwhelming dread, knowing what's coming. Like, it's not a spoiler alert, I knew how this matter ended. But your book really covered how the crime built up

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Mm.

• 2:11Speaker 00

  and the background to a lady like that that commits such a horrendous murder.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17Speaker 00

  Is that how you felt writing the book? Could you see it, all these red flags? You saw what was going to happen, or you knew what was going to happen?

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Well, I did know what was going to happen. What I didn't, I guess, anticipate was laying out the story and realising, as you stood back and looked at it, that there was this long pattern, you know, a years-long pattern of serial abuse. And when I first discovered the case, there wasn't much that was really written about her kind of serial abuse of her partners. It wasn't until I started to piece the story together that I realised, God, this has been going on for a long time. So many red flags that no one really, just, you know, really paid attention to.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  So I think that's where you get that sense of build-up and dread.

• 3:12Speaker 00

  Well, it's interesting because obviously I was aware of the case. I was working homicide at the time. I didn't work that particular matter. I knew the detective that was running the investigation. And such a dramatic, horrible murder scene, I think that took everyone's attention. And so perhaps our attention was directed to the actual crime, but not the build-up to the crime.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  And that's what your book covered in great detail.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And I like to say that it's essentially a story about domestic violence, really. But the perpetrator in this case is a woman, which we don't necessarily talk a lot about. And I think that's why the headlines focused on, you know, Australia's Hannibal Lecter, rather than this lifelong abuser who, you know, culminates in this act of terrible violence.

• 4:05Speaker 00

  I want to talk more about that than the gender-specific nature of this crime. It is domestic violence at the extreme.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:13Speaker 00

  Just as a throwaway line, if the roles were reversed, the genders were reversed, and a man was carrying on the way that she was carrying on, people would be screaming from the rooftops.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 4:26Speaker 00

  This person needs to be stopped before he injures, hurts someone.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  That's right. And it may not have happened if he was a man. You know, that end of the butchering and the slaughtering of the partner.

• 4:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  But even from the very first sort of big, big red flag with her first husband, David Kellett, as you know, on their wedding night, she tries to strangle him. Now imagine if that was, that the gender was flipped.

• 4:51Speaker 00

  And, yeah, my interpretation of it, reading through it, was because he, yeah...

• 4:56Speaker 01

  He wouldn't perform.

• 4:57Speaker 00

  He wouldn't perform in bed, like he was meant to perform in bed on her wedding night, and she had this sense of entitlement.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:03Speaker 00

  You know, if you flip that and the man attacked the bride

• 5:07Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 5:08Speaker 00

  on a wedding night, there'd be all hell to pay.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Mm.

• 5:11Speaker 00

  Just again, not a spoiler alert, but just so people know what we're talking about. Because I want it to build up so people understand, yeah, all these red flags, all these indicators leading up to the actual crime. But I'll talk about the crime here. So in 2001, Katherine Knight was sentenced to life imprisonment, never to be released, for the murder of John Price. As far as I know, she's the only, we were talking the other day, she's the only woman that's ever been sentenced to life imprisonment, never to be released.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 5:42Speaker 00

  Papers marked, never to be released.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  The sentencing judge, Justice O'Keefe, stated in his findings, so this is its sentencing. "I'm satisfied beyond any doubt that such a murder was premeditated. I'm further satisfied that not only did she plan the murder, but she took pleasure in the horrific acts that followed, acts which formed a ritual of death and defilement." Strong comments from a judge.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  Do you, so people, the few people that haven't heard about this crime, do you want to just actually tell us what she was convicted of?

• 6:16Speaker 01

  So she was convicted of murdering, slaughtering, butchering her partner of six years. And the manner of the assault and the murder were so, so gruesome that it's not surprising the judge came to that conclusion. Because who spends that much time, after stabbing someone 37 times, to then defile the corpse the way that she did? And to go further, cook pieces of his flesh that she plates up, intending for his children to find? So it's understandable that somebody like Justice O'Keefe

• 7:01Speaker 01

  or even the forensic psychiatrist would come to the conclusion that this is a woman who actually had a vindictive, revengeful streak about her? Because you've already killed him. So the act of defiling him is sort of a vindictive, sort of final stroke. You know, so, yeah.

• 7:23Speaker 00

  And for the judge to be that strong that she took pleasure in the horrific acts?

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:30Speaker 00

  We're talking, this is, and, yeah, a content warning upfront for this one. It's heavy discussion. But we're talking about a person who was skinned.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  She basically skinned him. There's no other way of describing it. And hung his skin up in the doorway.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Very skillfully skinned. That was the other thing. I think that really struck me as well, that it wasn't a hack job.

• 7:54Speaker 00

  Mm.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  This is a very, very skilled person, having learned her skills from, you know, years working at the abattoir. And the time that it took for her to sit down and carefully remove his entire skin in one piece is really telling.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  Well, I think the judge identified that, talking about the precision in the act that she did to, you know, skin this person. So it's quite...

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Apparently, the hair, the ears, the genitals, all of it was intact.

• 8:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. And that takes control.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:31Speaker 00

  And skill. And she got the skill from her...

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Real focus.

• 8:34Speaker 00

  ...her previous work. And then what we're talking about with cutting off pieces of the flesh, that was pieces of his buttocks.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:41Speaker 00

  And she was boiling vegetables with his head.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 8:45Speaker 00

  And also frying, cooking up the chunks of meat cut off him.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  That's right. And she made homemade gravy.

• 8:52Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it was all, I mean, the psychology behind that. How do you even come around to categorising someone like that? The time to make homemade gravy that you're going to serve with pieces of your partner's flesh?

• 9:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  It's just, I like, I have no words.

• 9:13Speaker 00

  Well, I should have words because I was former homicide detective, but I'm shocked by it too. It's, I put it in that category, and I choose not to use the word evil often. But there's some times when I just gotta go, I just see that there's an act of evil. It's whatever's going through a person's mind that does that. But... There's a whole series, and we will talk about it. Evil acts that she's done in the lead up to that with other partners. There was multiple partners. And again, the judge summed up that, that the fact that she didn't have a criminal record. That he didn't place much weight on that at sentencing because of all the, you know, calculated acts of violence against multiple former, former partners.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, over years, years.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  You can see why reading, reading the book was, book was pretty heavy. Before we, we talk about this, I, I think it's important that we acknowledge John Price.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:09Speaker 00

  And his family. Um, we're, we're talking, talking about a murder, horrific murder. But the impact it had not on, just on, on John, he lost his life, but also his family members and friends. Tell us a little bit, a little bit about who John Price was.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  So from everything that I read about him, he was a really likeable, well, um, well respected, well loved person in his community. Everyone who knew him had nothing but good things to say about him. He was a guy who worked hard, played hard. He loved to go to the pub with his mates, hang out, have a few, um, twoys and have a laugh. And he loved to dance, you know, he was this kind of, they described him as sort of this, this kind of cheeky larrikin, you know, um, every man who just was a charming guy, you know, a lot of fun. And also loved women. That was his weakness.

• 11:03Speaker 00

  That was his weakness as well. Yeah. When he came up against Kathleen, that was her, the way that she manipulated and traded with a sexual prowess, didn't she?

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what they all said, that she was very uninhibited.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Would do it. In fact, John Price's, um, close mate said that she was the sort of person who would do it anywhere, anytime with anyone and do anything.

• 11:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  So I feel that that was, um, very much a part of her arsenal, one of her tools.

• 11:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Um, in catching the men and keeping them.

• 11:34Speaker 00

  And even after the acts of violence that will, will break down and all the horrendous things that she did to them. She would always win them back with sexual favors.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  That's right, yeah.

• 11:45Speaker 00

  The poor old simple blokes come, come back and go, oh, okay.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 11:48Speaker 00

  All, all forgotten. But yeah, with, with John Price, that's the sense that I, I got of, of him. He was a decent human being. Uh, he loved his kids. He'd separated from his fir- first wife, but they were still on, on good speaking terms. And was just one of those people that fitted into a community in which he was living and didn't cause anyone, anyone harm.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:10Speaker 00

  And, uh, yeah, it's sad that he's, uh, he came to such a horrific demise.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, very sad.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  Before we get into it, uh, just tell us a little bit about yourself.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Well, I'm originally from New York.

• 12:22Speaker 00

  I wouldn't have picked that.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  If you can tell by the accent. Um, although I'm told I don't have much of a New York accent, but definitely an American accent.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  So born and raised in New York City, uh, met my partner who's Australian about 30 years ago.

• 12:37Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Um, and, uh, he stayed in America for me for a number of years. And then we moved to London and then eventually came here. Have two daughters, have always been a writer and a producer. Um, have loved stories and telling stories and reading since I can remember. Um, and have always known that that's what I want to do.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  Right.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Um, and have worked, um, either as a writer or a producer, um, in television, across news documentaries, um, current affairs, scripted television, just everything. I just love telling stories and I love telling them in different formats. So I've, I've written a collection of poetry, I've written, um, a fiction book. There's this, what I like to call a nonfiction novel, um, podcasts and, um, lots and lots of, um, television scripts and new stuff.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  Well, in the changing, in the changing world of media, it's good to have a lot of different, uh, different, uh, skill sets. So it sounds like you've covered it, uh, covered it broadly.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  This book, what, what got you interested in this case in the first place?

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Well, I like to say I'm a self-confessed gore queen.

• 13:45Speaker 00

  Okay, well, uh, look, a, a lot of people are gonna have to put their hands up to it. We'll, we'll talk about that later, but what is it that attracts people to, uh, to?

• 13:53Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  True crime?

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Well, you know, with true crime, the stats, um, lean towards female, you know, they're the largest consumers of true crime. And for me, they kind of act like a survival guide in a way when I watch true crime. There's always this thing in the back of my mind of, if I were in that situation, this is what I would do to get out of it, you know? Or if I encountered somebody who behaved in this way, I, I would, you know, make this choice. There's something about, uh, true crime that just, it fits with what women often have to think about. There's an extra level of thought that goes into, if we're traveling alone, where are we going to stay? How close is it to our transportation?

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Will we have to catch a cab? Do we want to get in a cab with a, with a male driver this late at night? You know, this, just this extra layer of thought that goes into a lot of things that we do.

• 14:50Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  And I think that's where this, um, this consumption of true crime comes from.

• 14:55Speaker 00

  That's an interesting take, cause I, I've spoken to a lot of people and I know you're right. The female population, the big consumers are all the ones with the interest in, in the true crime. But I haven't seen it from that perspective, so it's almost like it's an education.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 15:09Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 15:10Speaker 00

  This happened to that person, how could we prevent that?

• 15:12Speaker 01

  That's right, yeah. I, I watched a true crime documentary recently, um, this, um, I think it was called Survivors or something. And, um, this young woman started driving an Uber to supplement her income. And, um, she was just finishing up her one last ride and a gentleman came up and said, um, can I get a lift to, you know, so and so? And she's, oh, I, I, I finished my, my, my shift.

• 15:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  And he offers her $300 off the books if he could get to, uh, the, another city. So it was a long trip, it was a two hour trip because he had to pick up his truck. And so she's thinking $300 off the books, meaning turn off your Uber app thing. So she agrees to it, she drives him there, everything goes fine. He says, look, I have to be here for a couple of days, but I'm gonna need to go back. Can we have the same arrangement? And she says, sure, you know, she's got the $300. And of course, on the way back.

• 16:13Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  He attacks her.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  Right.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, she ends up jumping out of the car.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  As they're speeding down the, the roadway because it was her only chance and she really banged herself up. But she survived. And I'm thinking to myself, Uber driver, turn off your app? No. Because all of these things, you know, they keep you safer.

• 16:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Um, in other words, the, the few ways that he manipulated her to, um, to allow him to sort of manipulate her, those little moments she didn't think of at the time, do you know? And, and those are the things that strike me when I consume true crime.

• 16:52Speaker 00

  Okay, little, little life hacks to, to keep yourself safe. But yeah, if, uh, quite often in situations without, um, you know, blaming victims on those situations, but if something seems too good to be true.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:05Speaker 00

  Sometimes you, you gotta take, take a step back.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 17:09Speaker 00

  Offenders, predatory type offenders are very manipulative in the way that they, uh, they find their victims and, uh, calculated. Um, when did you first find out about, uh, the Kathleen Knight?

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Right, so to answer your question, so I was actually, um, in between jobs. This was, um, just around the time of COVID, so maybe a year or two into COVID. And, um, and I just started researching, um, infamous Australian crime stories. And it wasn't long before I discovered Katherine Knight's story. Um, and one female, that was the first thing that, on the list, because it was, uh, maybe four or five men before I got to her. And then when I saw the headlines, what she did, the skinning, the butchering, the cooking, I just had to find out more.

• 17:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  And, and then, you know, that consumed the next three, three and a half years of my life.

• 18:05Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 00

  Well, I can see the amount of research and, uh, effort that's gone into, into the book and the detail that you've got in the book. The way you've written it is, is quite interesting. It's a factual account, it's a factual account of what's happened and you've got documents that you've referenced to and, and your research. But you've also told it in a story form.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:25Speaker 00

  But, uh, it makes it, I, I thought it was compelling reading. Like I, I read a lot of true crime books and sometimes they become a little bit, um, too much like a fact sheet or the court, the court report. This really took me into the world and that's why I, I think it was freaking me out a little bit as I'm reading.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  You're not the first to say that.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  This is, this is scary.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:45Speaker 00

  This is, and it makes you reflect on relationships and all, all sorts of things. So what was the, what was the way you decided to set out to write the book and how did you write the book?

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Um, that's a great question, uh, because for me, um, telling a story, if you're gonna sit down and tell a story, I find that structuring it is the first thing you have to do. And over the years, I've learned the importance of structure and how you build tension in a story. There's particular ways to do that. So I approached most of my long form writing with a structure in mind and with the intent of building tension um, and making the clear sort of plot points, you know, these beats in the story very clear at a certain point in the story. So that's how I structured the story.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  When I first discovered it, I started to gather research, I just read everything I could find about her. Um, and then eventually went into court documents and watched, um, little sort of documentaries on YouTube and just pieced together the pivotal moments of her journey and those around her and how she came to be the person who did what she did. So I like to flesh things out into scenes. I think it's from my, um, work in scripted television. And that's what I wanted for myself, um, in fleshing out the story. I kind of told the story the way I wanted to see it.

• 20:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  You know, and the way it kind of visualized and how I visualized it in my mind and.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  You know, that's, that's, if I was going to pick up a true crime book, I'd want to read something that was like a novel, you know?

• 20:36Speaker 00

  And it, it felt that, it felt that way.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  And it certainly, it gave me a greater understanding than the lead up to the crimes. And I think part of my concern, the frustrations, I'm seeing the warning signs. I'm seeing red flags everywhere and, you know, make it stop. Like when she's killing someone's pet and smashing dentures, which, which we'll talk about.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 20:58Speaker 00

  Like, this is an act of a scary person. This is an act of a person that needs to be reined in. And a cell, sense of entitlement and rolling out the fear of abandonment. And all that, you could see it building up like a pressure cooker.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  Definitely, yeah. And the psychology behind that really interested me. It really fascinated me. And I think really at the core of my love of true crime is trying to understand the psychology of a person who would do something like that, you know? It just boggles the mind and it's a way to try to, try to fathom the unfathomable. I can never say that word, but that's part of the reason as well that I wanted to flesh it out into these scenes because I really wanted to understand the human being behind this evil act.

• 21:47Speaker 00

  Let's talk about her then. Let's talk about who, who she was growing up. Where did she, she grow up, family and the environment?

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the environment, Hunter Valley, um, working class environment, um, working to sort of lower middle class, I would say. The, the, her family were a well-known and pretty respected family in, in that area. Most of them worked at the abattoir. That was the big industry, that mining in that area, particularly back then in the seventies. She was born in nineteen fifty-five. And by all accounts, her, her family life was a bit dysfunctional.

• 22:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  They moved around a bit, um, because they went where the jobs were. Her mother had been married to a man named Jack Rogan, Ro? I don't know how to pronounce it because it spells strangely, but, um, they had four sons and, um, she at some point began an affair with her husband's friend who worked with him at the abattoir. That was Ken Knight.

• 22:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  And the scandal of that, um, sort of forced them to flee. So she left her four sons with Jack, um, and moved with Ken Knight to, I believe it was Tangerfield or Maury, one of those towns.

• 22:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  And proceeded to have four more children.

• 23:01Speaker 00

  Right.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Um, and Catherine came, uh, with her twin sister Joy and there were two boys. Now, Ken apparently was quite violent. He was a big drinker and from what I've read, uh, demanded sex from Barbara.

• 23:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Um, up to 10 times a day is what a lot of the, um,

• 23:25Speaker 00

  Right.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  sources say.

• 23:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Um, and would take it by force. So Catherine, her siblings, they were exposed to a violent household.

• 23:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Um, a lot of dysfunction and apparently Barbara shared a lot of inappropriate details with her daughters.

• 23:44Speaker 00

  Well, a part of the, the motherly advice that I understood or took from the book was that she was telling, uh, you've just got to put out for men. That's what they do.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  Stop complaining, just if, if they want sex, give them sex.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 23:58Speaker 00

  And that, that, that sort of, uh, um, life advice from a, a parent is not very helpful for a, a young child.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Absolutely not.

• 24:06Speaker 00

  The environment, so you can see where things start to go off, off track there.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  It would fracture a young mind, I think. You know, her, her attachment styles, how do you trust people? How do you, um, learn to attach properly? And so, and her mother was, um, just as kind of volatile.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Had a mouth like a sailor, you know, was always one cuss word after another. And Catherine was the same. And I just get the sense that, um, from such a young age, there's going to be, uh, some damage done, you know, emotionally and psychologically. Not to mention physically, Catherine also claimed to have been sexually abused by members of her family. She was clear to say that was not her father, but there were other family members. So you put all of that together, the dysfunction, the moving around, the scandal of, of infidelity, the sexual violence, the, and you know, the boundarylessness between mom and, and it's, it's no wonder that something cracked.

• 25:05Speaker 00

  Something, something's gone wrong there. In, uh, school, how was she at, at school? Did, was there anything that, uh, yeah, indicated?

• 25:12Speaker 01

  That stood out, yeah. Well, there were cases of, there were stories of her having a volatile, um, you know, sort of, uh, reputation. People knew that she could, um, explode and would get violent. And she was, um, apparently, uh, sort of midway, I think middle school. I don't know, we don't have middle school here.

• 25:32Speaker 00

  No, we don't.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. So sort of high school, kind of, it's combined here.

• 25:36Speaker 00

  Early, high school.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Early, high school, yeah. Apparently she was suspended because she assaulted a teacher. But there were also, you know, a little anecdotes about her being a good student. You know, there were times where she was well behaved and did have some capacity for, you know, being in class and sort of paying attention and focusing. So there was this very contradictory nature about Catherine.

• 26:03Speaker 00

  She got, uh, she had no trouble getting men and, uh, she was very free with, uh, sexual favors, but she kept men for a little bit too. Like she must have had the skills to present as a reasonable person. There must have been a good side to her.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  That's right, yeah.

• 26:17Speaker 00

  She could, uh, put on display when it.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Well, all of her partners say that, you know, the first year or so was fantastic. Model partner, couldn't have asked for a better wife. I mean, David Kellett said she was just gold and they had the best time.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  Those first two years, there seems to be this period of, um, this honeymoon period that's about two years.

• 26:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  And you know, psychologically, I remember reading that for, um, most relationships, there is that, you know, the new relationship energy, yeah. And your body, your mind is flooded with dopamine and all this stuff because you're in love, everything's exciting. And that chemically actually lasts for about two years.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  And then comes the, the reality that sets in, you know?

• 27:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, all that, though, all the stars have disappeared at that stage.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  That's right, yeah. And if there's a real connection, you can build on that, you know, and healthy relationships, healthy people. So it's interesting to me that all of her partners say, you know, in the beginning, she was fantastic, you know, just great fun. We had great sex, went out all the time. She was just a lovely person, a homemaker, and then things turn. Yeah, yeah.

• 27:27Speaker 00

  She left school early and started working in an abattoir. Now, I'm not casting aspersions on anyone that works in an abattoir, but, and, you know, out of necessity, people work there and not, but it is a place that, uh, to me, uh, it, it wouldn't be a nice environment, I'll put it that way, to work in. You did a bit, bit of research about that because, uh, yeah, that was a skill set that, uh, Catherine carried through to the demise and, and the murder.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  But she was attracted to that environment and in fact enjoyed it.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Very much.

• 27:59Speaker 00

  Tell us what you found out about that, uh, period of her life.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  That side of her life, well, she dropped out at 15 and initially she went to go, um, apply for a job at the abattoir where her father had worked. And they told her, you're too young, come back. So she got a job somewhere else, working in clothing retail or something or, or clothing shop. And then the following year she went back and applied and got the job.

• 28:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  So this was part of the family history, you know? And we know that she had kind of lessons and training from, from her father who routinely, I think once a year they, they would, you know, take a steer and, and butcher it and sort of distribute pieces out to the family, you know? So she would have learned from an early age that this is something.

• 28:39Speaker 00

  How you carve up an animal.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  So when she was working at the abattoir, she took to it very quickly, you know? And her skills, um, they, she rose up, um, quite quickly from the awful room and sort of cleaning up, up to, um, the, the being a slicer in the boning room. And so I, I researched what's, what's life like in an abattoir? What, what's the, you know, a day look like? And found, um, a number of, uh, videos on, on YouTube and, and read some books about it. And it's just watching the, um, process of slaughtering these animals. I, there was a period, oh, a period after that, and to this day where I just couldn't eat meat anymore.

• 29:24Speaker 00

  I'm a vegetarian.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did because particularly the pigs.

• 29:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  They, they really seemed to, to be aware of what was happening in a way that the cows and the sheep didn't. So I know that Catherine, on her breaks, she loved to go to the kill room, right? That was her favorite thing to do because she loved to watch the pigs get zapped and slaughtered. So I thought, I want to see what this looks like. What was it that she loved so much? And it was probably one of the most violent periods of, or violent, um, uh, sections of the abattoir. Because you have the people who clean up, you have the ones who collect the scrap to make sausages, and then you have the ones who cut the pieces of meat, you know, and grade them for different, for distribution. The kill room is where the violence really happens.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  And to watch the men, the slaughtermen, put down a, a cow or sheep or, but the pigs were the one that really stuck with me. It was so incredibly violent and the way they did it just seemed so. Desensitized.

• 30:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  It was like, oh, my God, you've done this so many times.

• 30:29Speaker 00

  Thousands.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Thousands of times that it was, it's nothing to just take a knife and just, you know, and sometimes the pigs would break loose.

• 30:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  And they'd squirm and squeal and the noise of fear, the sheer terror that you could hear even from the video, the blood everywhere and they would just wrestle it back on onto the bleed trough and.

• 30:48Speaker 00

  Slip there.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then just not even bother with the stunning um prods and just right in the throat, just.

• 30:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  You know, twenty stabs in there, just really quickly. And I saw this is what she enjoyed watching.

• 31:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, she seemed to uh have a fascination with death and uh killing implements and knives.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, her cottage was filled with instruments of death.

• 31:11Speaker 00

  And I think that's one of the things that scared me, one of the relationships, and we'll break down the relationships, but where she wanted her boning knife mounted above the bed.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:20Speaker 00

  Easy reach on her side of the bed.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:22Speaker 00

  I don't know. I'm thinking morning, morning.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  I know, and he did it. He did it for her.

• 31:28Speaker 00

  Okay, that's her, her upbringing. We talk the Hunter Valley. You mentioned it's a mining town and, and I, for people that are not familiar with it, it's a mining town that socio and economically fairly low, semi-rural, that, that type, a simple, a simple life for people.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Very.

• 31:46Speaker 00

  Living in, in towns like that.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  Her first uh relationship, well, not, not her first relationship, but with uh David Kellett.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 31:54Speaker 00

  Who she married. Now, it sounded like it was a shotgun wedding, but uh on, on her behalf, she had the shotgun and threw him on, got him drunk.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 32:02Speaker 00

  On the back of a motorbike and got him married.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  He got himself drunk.

• 32:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think he was trying to cope with what was happening. Yeah.

• 32:08Speaker 00

  Okay, that, that describe that to us, what, how they got together and what was that about?

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Well, it seems that she pursued him. So she was introduced to him um by her brother.

• 32:19Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  He was working at the abattoir. They, they were both there. So her brother Charles and Catherine were there. He came on board at some point because he was kind of uh doing a probationary period in this area. So he had to find work. He couldn't leave the area because he was on probation for some legal, you know, I think he was, he stole something or whatever. He was a bit of a, a ruffian.

• 32:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Um, and so she, you know, she was introduced to him by her brother. And I think she just thought, oh, I like the look of this guy. He, I want him. And that, that was sort of her M O. She, she pursued the men. And here you've got this eighteen year old, nineteen year old guy working at the abattoir, this tall, redheaded, very saucy woman.

• 33:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Approaches him and says, you know, let's get together, you know? And of course offers herself up. I mean, what teenage boy doesn't?

• 33:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's gone, he's taken the, taken the bait.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. So, and at that point, they had a lot of fun together.

• 33:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  And she asked him to marry her.

• 33:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  And he sort of just kind of got swept up in her, in her dream.

• 33:31Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Do you know what I mean?

• 33:32Speaker 00

  She sounded like she had a strong personality with the, with the.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Like her mother.

• 33:36Speaker 00

  Relationships, like a dominant personality.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Very much so. And I think that's probably by design as well. I mean, I think she chose men that she felt.

• 33:44Speaker 00

  She could dominate.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Either consciously or unconsciously that she could manipulate.

• 33:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  You know, that she'd have the, the upper hand. And so it sounds to me, from what I've read, that she very much pursued him. She's the one who asked him to marry her. And he kind of went along with it. And, you know, one day, they're just, you know, she wakes up, she's like, all right, today's the day, let's go to the courthouse. And.

• 34:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  He starts drinking that day. I, I'm thinking in my mind, he's just trying to cope.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  With this whirlwind that he's gotten himself into. And um, yeah, they go off, she's driving the, the motorbike, he's on the back and, you know, they get to the courthouse and he's married suddenly, you know? The whole day, he's, he's pretty much, he's sauced. I mean, he's not even aware of what's happening. She doesn't care. She's got her husband. This is a beginning for her.

• 34:34Speaker 00

  And I, I, the way you describe, and I think you understand the psychology of uh men too, that sometimes it's in a situation like that, I can imagine that at that age, you're thinking, I, I don't want the conflict. I'm just gonna roll along with it.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, if, if you're not someone that's comfortable standing up for yourself, you can see how a person can be coerced into that sort of relationship and then just go along with it for the sake, sake of peace. And, oh, this, this is all right. This'll do.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, and particularly because there's, you know, free flowing sex.

• 35:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  You know, for, for a young man, I imagine, you know, that's pretty easy to say, okay.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, it's.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  I'll overlook this.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  Sign, sign off on that and say, well, I'm gonna be happy in that uh part of my life.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 35:15Speaker 00

  But um it, it went sour on the wedding night?

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, immediately it went sour because she compared her um, her relationship and her marriage.

• 35:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  To her parents.

• 35:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  And of course, we know that Barbara was very forthcoming with a lot of details

• 35:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  That, you know, were probably very, were, were inappropriate for kids. So Catherine knew that her parents, or she was told that her parents had sex on their wedding night five times, I think it was. Yeah. Um, so she thought, well.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  That's the standard?

• 35:48Speaker 01

  That's the standard. It's gotta be the same with me.

• 35:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  And so poor David, you know, he's drunk and, you know, nursing probably with the beginnings of a hangover. Um, and she seduces him. He manages to, to, to get, to get on there. And she seduces him again and he rallies up again. And then by the third time, he's just out of it, you know, he's spent and she just won't accept it. So she, I think that felt like a rejection to her.

• 36:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  And we know that that's one of the triggers.

• 36:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  So that was an early sign, you know, the rejection and the saying, no, we're not getting what she wants. And so she wraps her hands around his throat and starts to tr- strangle him to get him to wake up and do what she wants.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  And he wakes up, you know, um, cause he must have passed out.

• 36:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  So he wakes up with her, her um, her hands around his neck, you know, choking him.

• 36:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  And they had an altercation and, you know.

• 36:49Speaker 00

  And she, she was physically strong too, wasn't she?

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:52Speaker 00

  She was, you know, she could.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  She was very strong.

• 36:53Speaker 00

  Look after herself and she had some uh, had some strength.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 36:57Speaker 00

  Well, we put that down as a warning sign. You can see the books leathered with uh tags. I'm going through all the warning sign, warning sign. They're, they're the red flags.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:08Speaker 00

  Okay, how did that relationship play out? Like, uh, cause I know after reading the book and the way that I, I see that she deals with these relationships, she'll have the big blow up, it'll be all dramatic, um, assaults him, God knows what, what else she did. But the next day, she can be like, it's water off a duck's back and let's get on with it. And if there's a little bit, bit of resistance from the male partner, she'll just offer herself up sexually and.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  We're back on board and away to go.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Yep, yep. She'll act like nothing's happened.

• 37:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  You know, the next day, it's like, oh, you want some breakfast, you know?

• 37:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  And so for, for a young guy like Dave Kellett, it's, he's thinking, oh, that was a one off. She's fine now. This isn't gonna happen again. All right, sure. Yeah, I'll have some breakfast. Yeah. Um, let's go have some fun. Let's have a beer.

• 37:56Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  And then it just rolls along, you know, um, denial until the next um incident.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  So they started happening more frequently as time went on, until he felt, ah, I can't take this anymore. This is too much. She's very controlling. She wanted him home by a certain time. You're going to the pub again? No. And then it would be like, okay, why don't you go to the pub? You, you deserve it, you know? A testing sort of thing, you know, very manipulative.

• 38:24Speaker 00

  Give him enough rope to hang himself.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  That's right. But if he, if he stays out a little too long, I think he was like ten minutes late or something and comes in the door, whack with a frying pan.

• 38:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  You know, so really, really um manipulative.

• 38:37Speaker 00

  And, and when we're talking, that was not just a tap on the, tap on the head with a frying pan. That was a full on psychotic attack.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Sent him to hospital.

• 38:44Speaker 00

  Frying pan and, and, and knock him down.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah. So he got to a point where he just had to get out of there.

• 38:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  Didn't really know how. Then he began an affair with.

• 38:56Speaker 00

  That would have gone over well.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, God. Little did he know.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  Um, and they sort of escaped to Queensland and that's where, I think that's where a real um break in her, in her kind of um facade.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Really happened. I think that's the beginning of this escalation because before David Kellett, there wasn't really any relationship. She really didn't have. He was pretty much her first. I mean, maybe she'd had sexual encounters.

• 39:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  With other young men, but he was her first relationship. And when he took off to Queensland with um this woman, that sense of abandonment really destroyed her.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  It really, really triggered a, quite a psychotic break. And that's the first major psychotic break that you see.

• 39:51Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  In her life. She had volatile moments when she was younger. Her mother would say she was, you know, a screw loose.

• 39:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  But nothing like what we saw with the baby in the pram and the baby on the train tracks.

• 40:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, tell, tell us about that. Cause that, that was David's uh baby.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, it was their first.

• 40:08Speaker 00

  He has left Catherine.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 40:12Speaker 00

  And then just tell us the, the story when the baby was left on the train tracks. Cause that's quite chilling. And.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:18Speaker 00

  Again, these are the things that should have been addressed.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is what, I, I look at this and think this shouldn't, should not have happened. So.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  No, absolutely.

• 40:27Speaker 00

  Tell, tell us what happened there.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  So she um learns that he's left and has gone up to Queensland with this woman. Um, and in her desperate attempt to get him back, she, because he left for a couple of months, you know, and she had the baby without him there. She, he'd also gotten this other woman pregnant.

• 40:45Speaker 00

  Oh, he's a.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:47Speaker 00

  He's wa- waving the red flag, isn't he?

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Thinking, definitely. So here she is, alone with a newborn, her husband's gone. He's been gone for a while. Um, and she's, it, it's just all brewing in her mind, you know, it's really building in the, this, the sense of abandonment, the um betrayal.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  All of that for somebody with her sort of makeup, it was just too much to bear, I think. And she, the way I understood it, this was a way to get his attention. If I put my baby on the tracks, something happens, he's gonna come back. And then there was the other idea of, I'm gonna go up to Coffs Harbour and I'm gonna kill his mother. That will get him back. That will get his attention.

• 41:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  So there's that vindictive payback thing, that, that pattern, that MO that's starting to formulate for her. So it worked, you know, when, when she did it first, there was the, um, her walking down the street with the pram, she'd had a, a moment, I think, where it was a, you could characterize as a psychotic kind of break.

• 41:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  And people, um, witnesses say that she was just waving this pram around with the baby and walking into traffic and, you know, everyone was very concerned. And then she tried to attack a neighbor waving an axe around and then she takes the baby, places it on the train tracks and then walks away. Somebody nearby sees that there's, you know, or hears the sound and notices there's a baby on the tracks and rescues the baby. So the baby's fine, but strangely enough, no one took the children from her. No one took, took this baby from her.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  That's where the system has broken down, isn't it? And I, I understand, yeah, if it's a mental health issue, police might be reluctant to charge and it might be dealt with under the Mental Health Act. But the fact that children are still left with her. And where, was it this relationship where she, um, took a neighbor's kid hostage?

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Yes. So it was after the train tracks. She was then taken into custody, but placed in psychiatric.

• 42:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, evaluation. And the first time, I think they kept her for two weeks. So the baby was in place with her mother or something. When she came out, she got the baby back. And then that's when she went, she went to a neighbor and said, oh, I need help going to hospital. Melissa's sick. So the neighbor takes her children, um, and they all get in the car to help her. And that's when Catherine basically kidnaps them and, or, or forces them to, to drive her to Coffs Harbour so that she could attempt to kill David's mother.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  I, I shouldn't be, I shouldn't be laughing, but it's almost incomprehensible, isn't it?

• 43:37Speaker 01

  It is, yeah.

• 43:38Speaker 00

  The chaos that surrounded her.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  So she got quite violent with this woman and her children. And yeah, that was her way of, of, you know, following through on her plan.

• 43:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  So when that happened, they sent her back to psychiatric evaluation. And this time, I think she only stayed a day and discharged herself. David did eventually come, um, back from Queensland when he heard what was going on. And he agreed to take her back in with his mother. So at this point, he felt he had no choice. He was worried about his child and, you know, he didn't expect all of this to happen, you know? And they gave her a course of medication. David and his mother agreed to look after her. And so that, that plan worked. She got her husband back.

• 44:25Speaker 00

  How, how long did that last before?

• 44:27Speaker 01

  It lasted for another two years, I believe. I think total, they were together four years, if I recall. Um, so he managed to put up with her for another couple of years, but it got increasingly volatile. Then they moved up to Queensland to see if they could, you know, uh, repair, you know, some semblance of normality in their relationship. Um, and he got a job as a truck driver, which I think maybe was calculated on his part because it kept him. Yeah, it kept him away, you know, from the home for a week at a time, two weeks at a time. He traveled interstate. And in that period, that's when Catherine decided, I'm out of here. He's never around.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Um, and maybe it's because he wasn't around for her to even manipulate and abuse, you know? So by that point, they'd had two kids and she started seeing Dave Saunders.

• 45:19Speaker 00

  Did she move back down to the Hunter Valley from there? Yeah. And that's where Dave Saunders came into the scene?

• 45:25Speaker 01

  That's right, yeah.

• 45:27Speaker 00

  Now, of the things that she did to Dave Saunders, and I, I love animals, he, she killed his puppy.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Hmm. A puppy that he was gonna give to his daughter by a, a previous marriage.

• 45:38Speaker 00

  And what, what preempted that? What, and, and we, we talk about the rejection and, and the story that, uh, or the way it played out with her husband, uh, David Kellett. You can see how she feels reject, yeah. No one likes rejection, but.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:54Speaker 00

  She takes it very personally.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  Very, yeah.

• 45:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I got the sense with every relationship she was in, there was this jealousy. Like if, if the bloke looked at a woman the wrong way or, or she'd create in her own mind that, uh, the.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  Something's going on, yeah, yeah.

• 46:10Speaker 00

  What, what preempted, or tell us about the relationship with, um, Saunders.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  So that started after she left, um, Dave Kellett. She's the one who decided, I've had enough. He's never around. I'm going back home. She took her kids. Um, and she, she meets Saunders at, at the pub, you know, one night or the RSL club or something. And again, decides, oh, I like the look of you.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  And I can see, and it's not, I understand the environment up there. And there, there's a lot of men that work hard in the mines and their, their relaxation is going to the pub. And there's probably a shortage of, uh, women, available women in, in that environment. So anyone, it would be fairly easy for her to, uh, strike up a relationship with any, any bloke sitting there having a drink at the local pub.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  That's right, yeah. And it's also how she met Chillo, how she met Price. Walks into the pub, gets a, her eyes, you know, her, sets her sights on someone and that's the one for me. So it was very much that with Saunders. Um, and so they got into a relationship and again, at the start, it was brilliant. You know, he had a lot of fun with her, the same pattern played out of great sex, great times. And then, you know, at a certain point, things start to turn sour. He's sort of like, what's happened, you know? It, it takes him by surprise. Um, and.

• 47:35Speaker 00

  Cause she kept up that facade for, for those early periods, didn't she? Because the way it's come out, or my interpretation of it is, it almost came as a shock. It was the, the honeymoon, how lucky am I? I'm the luckiest man in the world. And then bang, the switch, switch happens and they see the dark side.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So, um, I think she had this, I personally think she had this, um, real desire to create that family life for herself and really wanted it, you know? It's why she was always on the hunt for a man. She was always willing to be the homemaker, to have the children. She, she, she knitted. She, she went to the, um, you know, she played bingo with, with her friends. She did all these kind of, what do you call it? Like stay at home mom sort of.

• 48:25Speaker 00

  9950s house, housewife.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I think that's what she wanted. Yeah, for sure. Just didn't know how to go about it. Um, because of, you know, her, her mental health issues. But with Saunders, you know, things like not being home in time for dinner.

• 48:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  That was enough for her, yeah, for her to smack him around with, you know, an iron or, or kill his dog.

• 48:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and with that, were the police called for that when the dog was killed or?

• 48:54Speaker 01

  I don't think so. No, no.

• 48:56Speaker 00

  Cause yeah, if you're looking at warning signs and we keep talking red flag, someone that, uh, out of revenge, slashes the throat of an eight week old puppy and then points out to the owner, there's, there's your dog. What are you gonna do about it type thing?

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:11Speaker 00

  Like scary.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  And we know that a lot of, you know, killers, serial killers, they often start with animals. Like if you can kill an animal, then it's one step further to killing, you know, a person. So big red flag, big red flag.

• 49:25Speaker 00

  So how, what happened with that relationship? Did, uh, Dave just get brave and run away?

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, he, he, he did. He, he was terrified.

• 49:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  And it finally got to the point where the abuse was so bad, he took leave of absence from his work. And left for Newcastle and just kind of hid out, you know?

• 49:47Speaker 00

  Newcastle being the bigger city near the Hunter Valley where he could be anonymous.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  And that's right. And he told, my guess is he, you know, he, he told his mates. Don't tell her where I am because she did go around looking for him. But he really, he fled because he was really afraid for his life. And to this day, he has maintained a very, very low profile. I couldn't find him anywhere. And after he left, she went looking for him, couldn't find him. None of his mates would, would say where he was. And basically she never really saw him again because he was just too scared to be anywhere near.

• 50:29Speaker 00

  And that, that was a smart move, but like that's like any one of these previous partners. I think they could have ended up like John did in, in the right circumstances. I wouldn't like the front or if I was hiding from her.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. But. Which tells you, it must have been even more severe than we even know.

• 50:49Speaker 00

  Well, that, that's the point because on the, the gender side of things with domestic violence, like we quite often laugh and like society has now appreciated the tragedy of domestic violence and the amount of women that are subject to, to be victims of coercive.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  You must have seen that a lot.

• 51:07Speaker 00

  Lots, lots of times. And I think society is wa- waking up, up to it now.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:12Speaker 00

  And we understand that. But something that doesn't get talked about a lot, a lot is where the roles are reversed. Where a woman is the aggressor and the man is the, the victim in it. And I think we as society, we, we sort of half laugh about it. It's almost like, oh, Fatal Attraction, Bunny Boiler, that, that type of thing. And, you know, in a, in an environment, if a man said, I'm, I'm scared to go home to the, the wife, he'd be laughed at. Whereas if a woman said, I'm scared to go home to my husband, people would form around them, protect, protect us.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Especially nowadays, yeah.

• 51:46Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I, I think this is not just a murder story. It's about domestic violence and, and what we miss because if she was a man and did any one of these things that we've talked about, there would be ramifications and the courts would come down hard and there would be judge, judgment. But here it's almost, and I would imagine the talk around the pubs in that Hunter Valley environment would have been, oh, she's a wild one, stay away from her. She'll, but it was real. Like, and we've, we've seen the, the end, end result. Your, your thoughts on that? When you were writing the book and researching it, were you thinking, what happens if this was a man terrorizing people?

• 52:23Speaker 01

  Absolutely. You know, I worked a, a number of years ago for a, was a producer for a panel show.

• 52:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  And every sort of six weeks, you had to kind of come up with an idea that you would do for the panel. And it would be this kind of, you know, question, answer. It was a topic. And one of the topics that I bitched was domestic violence against men.

• 52:46Speaker 00

  Right.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  And in the course of producing the show, you have to obviously, you know, get your case studies and talk to a lot of people. So I spoke to a lot of men.

• 52:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Who called in because we put a kind of call out for, for people. If you have a story you want to share. And there were men on the phone with me who were in tears.

• 53:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  And saying, thank God that somebody is paying attention to this. Thank God somebody's listening to us because we suffer in silence. Now, there's no question that women represent the larger percentage, you know? I don't want to take away from that. That is absolutely a fact. But according to the ABS, 12% of men in this country.

• 53:27Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Experience domestic violence from a spouse. About 2,500, little over that, are hospitalized every year from domestic violence injuries.

• 53:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  And a huge percentage, the perpetrator is a woman.

• 53:45Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Now, that percentage grows when the perpetrator is a man. So in other words, men experience a lot of violence from other men.

• 53:57Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  And also from their partners, from women. Yeah, that, that percentage is smaller. So as I'm writing the story and, and going through the history of her relationships, none of the abuse or violence was ever taken out on her children that I could find. There was no indication that she was abusive towards her children. There were psychotic moments, like the baby on the train tracks. But from what I can tell, she was a pretty good mother, you know? She may have been volatile and maybe not always there mentally.

• 54:28Speaker 00

  At the partner.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  It was always at the partners, yeah. So that's when I started to think, this is really a serial abuser. Because when I found her story, I was looking for cases of serial killers.

• 54:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  I hate to say, you know, such a morbid fascination, but that's what, she came up in the list.

• 54:47Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  She's, and I realized, well, she's not a serial killer.

• 54:50Speaker 00

  But she's a serial offender.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  She's a serial offender, yeah. And all of her victims were men.

• 54:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  So what do you, what do you make of that? You know?

• 55:00Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, that, that's, that's the thing that we, we do need to talk about it. And, yeah, I, I think there's an embarrassment and shame that comes from men being victims of domestic violence where the woman's the perpetrator.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, they don't want to admit it.

• 55:14Speaker 00

  You're not going to put your hand up and you're not going to get everyone rallying around you. You'll get snickers and laughs and go, he should be able to stand up for himself.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  I also think men don't even recognize the signs, the way women do.

• 55:25Speaker 00

  You, you have, have nailed it there because we're pretty simple men and we're just.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  That's what I love about men.

• 55:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, that, that's right. And we just go, go along with the flow. But you, you don't realize until you step away that you've, you have been manipulated or coerced or, or whatever. So, yeah, that's something that comes out. And when we're telling this story, I think it's an important message to, to come out that we're seeing a serial offender and it just happens to be a female who's preying on vulnerable men.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 55:57Speaker 00

  Because with the men, they all seem fairly simple in their needs. They, they were looking for companionship and that and just go, go along with the flow.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:05Speaker 00

  So Dave Saunders ended. Then we got John Chilinsworth.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 56:10Speaker 00

  That came, Chillo, Chillo is he?

• 56:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:13Speaker 00

  Definitely from the.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Effectually known.

• 56:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, from, from the Hunter Valley.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 56:18Speaker 00

  Smashed his dentures.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  Hmm, both, both sets.

• 56:22Speaker 00

  Tell us that story. And again, that's what I've, I've tagged in the book because I think, Jesus, that's spiteful. What, what precipitated that and what did she actually do?

• 56:31Speaker 01

  Well, Chillo, unlike her other partners, he was a bit more willing to fight back.

• 56:37Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  So there's indications that he probably, you know, returned.

• 56:44Speaker 00

  So it was a toxic relationship and the physicality went both ways.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's right. And he also didn't shy away from kind of parenting her children in a way that she felt was inappropriate, you know? So it's like, you're not their father. You have no right to speak to my children that way. And apparently he did because he, he wasn't, it's interesting because he had this, this real, uh, strong relationship with his mother. And he had kind of this old school sort of thing with respect for your elders, respect for your parents. And when he saw Catherine's children not doing the same, it sort of disgusted him.

• 57:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  You know, and so he spoke out about it and Catherine didn't like that, you know? So in retaliation for him treating his children in a way that she didn't like, she got him back and smashed his dentures.

• 57:43Speaker 00

  So just so I picture this, we, we got, he's upset her for the way he's disciplined him.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  Disciplined her, her children, yeah.

• 57:52Speaker 00

  They've gone to bed, he's put his dentures or whatever in a glass beside the bed.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:57Speaker 00

  And he's woken up and what?

• 57:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:59Speaker 00

  He's found these dentures smashed all over the floor.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. So then he goes home, back to his home, because he had a place in Scone, I think it was. He goes home, he had a spare. And he comes back with the spare and he finds the next day that she smashed those up as well.

• 58:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  Vindictive, you know, very, very vindictive. So, yeah, that was one of the, the things that she, you know, showed him who's boss.

• 58:25Speaker 00

  But just so volatile and what, she, she must have been good in the manipulation. I know she had the honeypot of the sexual prowess that she'd offer, offer up to the men, but there were so many things that were, you know, warning signs. But, you know, we, and maybe this is my attitude when, you know, we, we talk about the gender. We give understanding and sympathy to women that can't leave abusive men.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 58:54Speaker 00

  For a whole range of reasons and, and understand that, that, you know, it's not because they're weak, it's just because of the circumstances.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 59:00Speaker 00

  What I see in this is a pat in the same way, like, yeah, stuff that, you hit me over the head with a frying pan, I'm out of here. You do this, I'm, I'm out of here. You smashed my dentures, I'm out of here. But they keep coming back.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, they keep coming back. I can only say it's because they didn't recognize that they were being abused. They were like the, the frog in the boiling pot.

• 59:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a good way, a good way of describing it.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  And I also think sex, the sex is probably also was a big draw for them. You know, they had fun with her.

• 59:33Speaker 00

  And, and that, that's the way she seemed to appease them after the, after the violence or the, the whatever action she's caused them harm. It's, well, I can get them back. I'll, I'll just, we'll have some good sex and they'll forget all about it.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Memory scrubbed clean.

• 59:50Speaker 00

  As I said, men are simple, simple people. Look, we might take a break here.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 59:58Speaker 00

  When we get, we, I think we need a break from Catherine.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Fair enough, yeah.

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  It's, it's, yeah, it's, it's heavy discussions. When we get back, we'll talk about the buildup in the, the next relationship was with John Price.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:11Speaker 00

  And the buildup there, the warning signs and the sheer horror and terror of, of the crime that she committed. Yeah, I'll, I'll give a content.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  We'll unpack that.

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  Unpack that and try and, try to, try to understand it. Like, it's interesting, the, the judge made comments about her mental health and, you know, the type of personality disorder that she had, but kept coming back to the fact that she was in control and he was getting enjoyment from what, what she did.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I'd love to hear your insights too on the psychology of a, a lot of this because you would have seen so much.

• 1:00:46Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  In your 30 years, is it? Yeah, as a detective. So that kind of stuff always fascinates me.

• 1:00:53Speaker 00

  I find, I find the, the interesting side of a crime, trying to understand why, why people have committed these type of offenses.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:01:00Speaker 00

  With her, like, I, I could imagine the, the murder investigation, if it wasn't so obvious who committed the murder, if you looked at her as a suspect, all these things that we've talked about now, it's not evidence that she's committed the murder, but it certainly would be an indicator that we're looking at the person that's capable of committing a murder that way when you look at the, her past behavior. But, yeah, we'll, we'll delve into that more in, more in part two.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  Yes, I really want to know.

• 1:01:27Speaker 00

  We'll just have a bit of a break.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:01:29Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  Sounds good.