Skinned, beheaded & cooked for dinner: Rojé Augustin Pt. 2

In this second part of I Catch Killers, Gary and Rojé delve deep into the chilling psyche of Katherine Knight—the only woman in Australia sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. What drives a person to commit the unthinkable? They explore the gruesome crime scene that shocked even the most veteran homicide detectives, the calculation behind the skinning and butchering of John Price, and the psychological "triggers" that Katherine used to justify her actions. Gary and Rojé break down the terrifying final 24 hours of John Price's life, the warning signs that were missed, and the "nature vs. nurture" debate surrounding Knight’s fraternal twin sister. This is a gritty look into a real-life horror story and the long-term impact such extreme cases have on the detectives and communities left in their wake. 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

  If you listen to part one of my chat with journalist Roji Augustine, you would have got a sense of what Katherine Knight was capable of. It was quite chilling how she treated her partners prior to John Price. And looking back with hindsight, it was almost inevitable someone like Catherine was going to kill someone. She was obsessed with death. She was into violence and angry and manipulative. And she was someone that couldn't control her emotions. But what perhaps we couldn't predict is the manner in which she took John Price's life and what she did with his body. A content warning is appropriate for this episode.

• 1:24Speaker 00

  Roji Augustine, welcome back to part two of I Catch Killers.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:29Speaker 00

  Given the topic that we're talking about, I think the name of the podcast is fairly apt in I Catch Killers. I've had Bob Wells, the detective that led the investigation on the podcast previously.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  I watched it, actually.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  Right, okay, well, I was speaking to the other day about it and I remember sitting down with Bob and he's seen a lot as most police have, but it was just so chilling what the police, I think even on the scale of things that you see as a police officer, even working in homicide, there was something about this crime that shocked everyone. And I think a lot of the police involved, they carried with it the scars from what they saw when they went into Catherine's house that day and found what she'd done to John Price.

• 2:17Speaker 00

  You've covered a lot of things in crime. You've looked at crime. Is this one of the most horrific situations you've heard of?

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah. It really is the nature of what she did. And the kind of exclamation point at the end of this murder or the skinning and the cooking and the boiling, the head and homemade gravy. There are a lot of other vicious crimes that, you know, I encountered in my, you know, sort of looking at true crime stories is obviously Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer was a pretty gruesome one. And you could place her right up there.

• 2:58Speaker 00

  You place her, like Ted Bundy, I say it, that was the frenzied attack. He was violent in the attack. With Dahmer and with Catherine, I think the joy and the judge identified, that's a big call for a Supreme Court judge to say the enjoyment, the sheer enjoyment she got from what she did to the body afterwards. That's where I think it shocks the senses of, you know, what we as humans are capable of understanding, that darkness.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  She said she enjoyed, she relaxed to her horror movies. That's how she found an escape in her horror movies. So she had a library of, you know, bookshelves filled with like Texas Chainsaw Massacre kind of things, Evil Dead. And those are the things that she found calmed her, you know, watching these kind of horrific murder slasher movies.

• 3:53Speaker 00

  Well, she just seemed to have a fascination with death, even the way, and I think her work at the abattoirs came to an end when she injured the back. And she got a payout for that, which allowed her to buy a house.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  That little cottage, yeah.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  Little cottage, but the way that was set up, to me, it looks like creepy town.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Have you seen pictures?

• 4:13Speaker 00

  I haven't seen the pictures of it.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  There's some pictures online of the interior of her cottage and it was just like ceilings, every, every surface of the walls, there were pitchforks and irons, like just instruments of death, the really strong sort of metal, heavy kind of violent things. She had crops and riding boots and all sorts of stuff that she hung up everywhere, knives everywhere. Yeah.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  We talk about the psychology and the mental health side of it. It seemed to me when she committed the crime, there was a plan that she would get away with it, that in her own mind, that she might be able to convince the court she wasn't of sound mind. That was dispelled and I think the assessment that she got from psychiatrists and psychologists was that she had a personality disorder. What's your take on her mental state?

• 5:08Speaker 01

  She definitely had a mental health issue. I don't think you can be fully sane and present and together mentally and do what she did. So there's no question in my mind that there was something. Because she had a twin sister, remember, who didn't turn out like that. You know, her twin sister was fraternal, fraternal twin. So that says something, you know? So definitely there was something, I think, in her chemistry that was just off, for whatever reason, it was off. Maybe it happened in childhood, maybe it was the experiences she had, maybe she was born with it, a combination. This is one of the big questions of the book, nurture versus nature.

• 5:46Speaker 00

  Nature and nurture. It's interesting having the twin sister and when you were talking about the upbringing and you can see some of the things that could have set her off track. Nature and nurture, certainly no expert on it, but I've done a little bit of research in discussions with James Fallon, who's a neuroscientist from LA. And he's interested in some of the worst serial killers they had in the United States and was doing PET scans on their brain to look if there was something in the pattern within the brain that was consistent throughout for psychopaths. And he actually, he found something, a consistency in there, something about, I'm delving into areas that I don't fully understand, but the cortex, the frontal cortex of the brain,

• 6:31Speaker 00

  there was a shadow area or something like that. He also, for more research, had to do PET scans of his own family. And he found that one of the PET scans came up with the same predisposition of the psychopaths that he'd done, but it was his brain.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  No way.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  So it's quite.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Maybe that's what was his attraction.

• 6:55Speaker 00

  Well, it's quite, quite interesting and he, okay, so he's got the same predisposition as a psychopath, but his rationale was that he grew up in a happy environment in those formative years where, yeah, you loved and nurtured, zero to the age of three.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 7:13Speaker 00

  Whereas that probably kept him, kept him on track where if he grew up in a different environment, so it's a sort of combination of nature and nurture. But the fact that she's got a twin sister that's, you know, hasn't gone down the same path, yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?

• 7:29Speaker 01

  So I wonder if you did a PET scan of Joy's brain, but it wouldn't show, maybe, if Catherine showed this pattern, Joy's may not show it.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, I wonder that. In terms of, you asked me in part two, how we'd look at that from the psychological point of view, from a homicide detective's. I work with Dr. Sarah Yule a great deal. She's a psychologist that worked in criminal investigations, not the psychologist to help police get through their post-traumatic stress. It was about helping with criminal investigations. And we'd look at warning signs and she often said to me, like on different investigations, I didn't need to consult with her on gangland killings, I sort of understood that world, but the more creepy ones, the abductions or that, that's where I would seek her advice.

• 8:22Speaker 00

  And I wonder what she would look at, and I'm only speculating here on what she would see in the pattern that Catherine, growing up and her relationships with her other partners. I can only say from like a homicide detective's point of view, and I never try to, you know, play out of my lane and understand the psychology behind it.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  But you'd have seen so much, yeah.

• 8:46Speaker 00

  What I see with that, and I think that's why the book, yeah, I won't say traumatized, really, really, really got me hooked because I'm thinking, ah, this is, we should have stepped in here, we should have stepped in there. You could see it building up and it was like watching murder about to happen in a slow train crash. It was sooner or later, this is going to get bad. So the psychology of that, the manipulative side of it, because I've dealt with people in murder investigations where I'm wondering, yeah, are we dealing, someone that's dealing with a high degree of insanity here? She always had enough control to manipulate situations.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  That's where I see the danger of a person like her. If someone, if she left the baby on the train tracks and then ran around saying, I've left the baby on the train tracks and started singing and dancing, I'd be thinking, okay. But she did that for a reason. She did that to get her husband back. And then she charmed the husband and everything that she did was manipulative. That's what I would be looking at the psychology of her. I wouldn't trust her as far as I could throw her.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 10:01Speaker 00

  If I was involved in just one of those investigations, one of those incidents that we talked about, I'd be looking at her as very dangerous.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  I think that's why you feel like evil is a word that could be applied to her.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, and, you know, in all the people I've dealt with, there's only a few people I've put, you know, put that tag on, say that they're evil because I don't understand what they do. I don't understand what they're capable of and I'm thinking, well, there's no rationale or logic to what their actions are, but what she did. And we'd look at crime scenes too and how the crime scene would tell you a lot about the offender. And a crime scene, you can see the panic crime scene where you see something that's just escalated, a murder's happened or someone, someone's died and the offender or the person involved is panicked and just disappeared.

• 10:53Speaker 00

  You also see the crime scenes where someone's tried to dispose of the body and it can be gruesome, they might cut the body up, but you see that the purpose of it is to hide the body. So they're cutting it up, putting it in a barrel or whatever.

• 11:09Speaker 00

  You walk in and see a crime scene like that, and I've only seen a couple like that. The, yeah, just sort of hit you. That tells you about something about the person that you.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  What does it tell you? So if you had walked in, what would it tell you?

• 11:21Speaker 00

  It would tell me that this shocking crime didn't shock the person who committed it. This shocking crime, still, this person still had the self-control to manipulate and put things the way they wanted to. Entertain themselves with the, uh, with the body. So to me, from a homicide detective, it takes it into a whole other.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:43Speaker 00

  Range.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Cause she didn't clean up. She left it there and then she just went to sleep in the back bedroom.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, she, she wasn't trying to hide it. She was gonna, yeah, look what you're gonna walk in. And it's almost like she wanted to shock people too.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:57Speaker 00

  The, cutting off the pieces of flesh and cooking them and preparing with, and you keep saying gravy. And I take your point there. That's not just, that's thought, oh, I might pinch of salt in here.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  That's right, yeah.

• 12:11Speaker 00

  And all that.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Homemade, homemade, yeah.

• 12:13Speaker 00

  I know, it's horrendous, so.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Hmm, that's interesting because, um, you know, having your experience where you can walk into a crime scene and you can tell what was panic, what was wanting to hide. I, it didn't cross my mind that for detectives who walked in on that scene, they would have, they would have differentiated as you have outlined.

• 12:37Speaker 00

  Straight, straight away, someone's, someone's leaving this here for us to see it. They don't care and it's, that takes it to, you don't see many crime scenes like that.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  No, that adds a lot to the shock, yeah. Because even someone like Dahmer, for example, he did try to hide his, his, um, kills. I mean, he put them in barrels, he put them in his freezer. Uh, Ted Bundy, he left the scene.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  They're a friend to attack. He, he had satisfied whatever need he had and then he, he disappeared.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:09Speaker 00

  This one, she wasn't even satisfied with the murder. There, there was more that she wanted than the murder wasn't gonna cut it for her. She wanted to, you know, just humiliate him perhaps, shock people. And really say, I have been, look what happens if someone wrongs me. Look at if someone does the wrong thing by me, what I'm capable of.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, really, when you think of the term hell hath no fury. Like, I mean, this just takes it up. Cause it, to me, it's sort of like a giant F you.

• 13:42Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  You know, to his family, to his friends, to the community. It's just, it, it, it is a real statement.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  You, you're singing from the rooftop, look what I've done. Who's gonna, who's gonna cheat on me now? Who's gonna leave me now? It's, uh.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:58Speaker 00

  Evil.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:00Speaker 00

  Anyway, we've got straight, straight into the end.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Really interesting.

• 14:04Speaker 00

  But I, I do find it fascinating and, and that particular crime scene is it's making a statement. And the statement is quite scary even in thinking about what the statement is. Look what I've, look what I've done. I'm proud of it.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 14:16Speaker 00

  Um, and you don't see many crime scenes like that.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  No, yeah.

• 14:21Speaker 00

  Where did they meet?

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Okay, John Price.

• 14:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Catherine, they met at the Top Pub. Um, again, she was in there one night on a Friday night with a, a girlfriend. They'd gone out for some drinks. She, I think she was on the prowl, looking for her next, um, conquest.

• 14:39Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Um, and she sees him across the bar, um, having a laugh with his mates. He always had, he was described as someone who always had a group of people around him. Cause he was always, he was, yeah, a raconteur, you know, he would tell the stories and, um, just get people laughing. And she liked the look of him, you know, and she went over and, and as she'd done in, in the past, sort of, approached him and pursued him, um, and offered herself up to him. And so being a man who, whose weakness was women.

• 15:11Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Um, he went for it and they started a relationship, um, that he really enjoyed. In the beginning, he really, really loved her. You know, he had a lot of fun with her to the point where he asked her to move in. Or said, you can come and stay with us. He gave her the key because she looked after him. She did what she, what he wanted, looked after his needs. Again, playing that sort of suburban housewife. And this is where I think there was a part of her that desired that very much.

• 15:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Um, as a, as a counterpoint to the instability that she maybe grew up with. Um, and after a couple of years, um, that pattern repeated itself.

• 15:55Speaker 00

  Where, was there a turning point? Where, where did it go bad? Or what, what sort of triggered her to, uh, show her true colours?

• 16:01Speaker 01

  The major turning point, as far as I could tell, is when she discovered the will that he'd, he'd, he'd, um, he was leaving all of his possessions to his ex-wife and to all of his children.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  And also he refused to marry her.

• 16:19Speaker 00

  Right.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Remember with Dave Kellett, she asked him to marry her.

• 16:22Speaker 00

  This is someone that, that's not, and so he, he's an ex-wife. Um, Catherine's found, found the will where he's leaving his place and, uh, his, his possessions to, uh, to the ex-wife and the children.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. And so.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  And wouldn't marry.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  And wouldn't marry her, yeah. But yes, Colleen in the book was the, the wife. So, um, and they, they maintained a good relationship. Um, she left after 13 years of marriage, um, not because she didn't love him, but because he was just too, um.

• 16:54Speaker 00

  Easygoing.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was always at the pub, you know?

• 16:58Speaker 00

  It's an easygoing guy that didn't, yeah.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  And she just wanted to spend more time with him and he just kinda didn't, you know? He always wanted to be with his mates. He'd have a few drinks and next thing you know, he's home late. And I think she got tired of that.

• 17:09Speaker 00

  Did she have a jealousy for the ex-wife, like not just the will or?

• 17:14Speaker 01

  I think that came after the will.

• 17:15Speaker 00

  Right.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  I think prior to that, um, there wasn't any talk about the ex-wife. It was when she discovered that he was leaving everything to her, that she was left out. Then, yes, she obsessed over it. And so she tried very much to get John to marry her. Um, because I think there was a motivation, a financial motivation for her as well. She wanted to have assets, she wanted to have a home. And this was the way that she was gonna do it because she couldn't work anymore, you know? She'd been let go at the abattoir, she was collecting her little bit of money. Um, and she lived in that tiny little drafty cottage and she wanted something better for herself and her kids. So, um, trying to persuade him, you know, what about me? What about me?

• 17:59Speaker 01

  And he just wouldn't budge and that just grew into a real thorn for her. And then of course the triggers, now she's lit up by this anger. And then it becomes jealousy. You're looking at her, who's, you know, what, what are you doing? You're out late, this and that, you know, and it just piles on to the point where they're fighting a lot and he can't take it and, um, tries to end it. And of course you try to end it with Catherine and.

• 18:28Speaker 00

  That's not good.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  No, no. And as you know, there was the act of, you know, the Hawick Mines incident where she got him fired.

• 18:36Speaker 00

  Tell us about that because that, that again, that just shows how calculating and callous she is in the way that she treats these people and that she, if you've wronged her, there's nothing off limits.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  That's what, that's what tells me, tell us that story because I thought, wow, that's a bitchy horrible thing to do.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Really bitchy, I know, very petty. Um, so she, um, you know, was angry about all of these things and feeling jealous and feeling abandoned and worried that, you know, he's going to. And I think he, by that point, he had tried to break it off a couple of times, um, and certainly cooled it a bit. So, um, in her mind, this is how I'm gonna get him back. And I guess, you know, people like that, they're thinking this is somehow gonna work. You know, that, that the anger and the manipulation is somehow gonna get the person to come around and do what you want. And of course, we know that never works for very long, if at all. And so she decided one day that she was gonna videotape all these items

• 19:38Speaker 01

  that he had lying around in, on his property in his home. And, um, she knew that a lot of them came from his work.

• 19:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Things that he had taken from the storeroom or from the infirmary or what have you.

• 19:51Speaker 00

  Petty little things in, in that environment, yeah.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  And, you know, who knows how they, how he brought them into the house, but she knew that they came from, from the, the mines. So she videotaped all these things. She went around the house with a running commentary. This is this thing that he took from that and here's the, um, here's the, uh, first aid kit, which was a real clincher. And she sent the video to his boss, um, that he watched the next morning. And I'm thinking for the boss.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  You've got this woman, the drama that that brings.

• 20:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Maybe the first aid kit wasn't a huge deal.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  You know, in the grand scheme of things.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  But you're thinking, this woman is trouble.

• 20:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  I don't want this drama.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  No, this, this could blow.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  On my watch, yeah.

• 20:37Speaker 00

  She's bought the home drama into the workplace.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 20:40Speaker 00

  And I can imagine, yeah.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I think. The, the reason they gave was because of the first aid kit, because of insure, health and safety insurance, things like that. He didn't really care about the other stuff, but this is where he had grounds to let John go. Who, mind you, had been there for 20 years, nearly 20 years.

• 20:57Speaker 00

  And he was almost at the point of the pension and the.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he was on a six-figure salary, which back then was really good.

• 21:04Speaker 00

  Significant.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  For a guy who worked in the, in a small town, um, regional, who hadn't gone to college, only had a high school education. He was doing quite well for himself.

• 21:14Speaker 00

  The upshot of her little spiteful, um, video sent to his boss was that he lost his job.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Yes, so he got fired on the spot.

• 21:23Speaker 00

  Okay, I'm thinking it might end the relationship at this stage, but, uh, clearly, clearly not. How, how did she?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  It did for a period of time. He was really furious and he did kick her out.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  He threw all of her things out and said, just get out of here. I've, I've had enough of you. But then she, and, and, and I think there was a cooling off period for a few weeks.

• 21:45Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Um, but then she went around looking for him and, um, eventually got her clutches around him again. And convinced him that he had done her wrong by making her jealous, by not leaving possessions to her, by not marrying her. All these things just triggered her so much that it's your fault. You made me do it. And foolishly, he, he sort of agreed with it.

• 22:15Speaker 00

  But, but, but that is, um, breaking it down, domestic violence, that's coercive control. Yeah, maybe I deserved it. Yeah, I, I could have done this. I could have done that. And it's plain in people's.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Calling another woman's name out while they were in bed together.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  Oh, that would have gone over well with her.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn't who I said. I, the, the name of the person wasn't known. But I thought to, to keep the story tight, that I just, you know.

• 22:45Speaker 00

  Oh, well, I, I think, I think it sort of highlights the type of trigger points that someone like that would, would have. That in the middle of, um, a, a sexual act and, uh, the bloke has said a different name.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 22:58Speaker 00

  That'd take a lot of explaining with someone like her.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you put all of that together. So she basically put it at his feet, like, look, look what you've done to me. You know, all these things, what wouldn't, what woman wouldn't be upset?

• 23:10Speaker 00

  He carries that guilt and, uh, all that.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:13Speaker 00

  She starts to weasel her way back into, uh, into his life.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  And his friends were in shock, his family, they all couldn't understand it. Why would you do this? After what she'd done, why would you let her back in? And I'm thinking to myself, why would he do that? And I had the sense that he was afraid by that point. And I wonder if it wasn't easier for him to just let her back and sort of keep your enemy closer.

• 23:43Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, statistically, the danger period for, uh, domestic violence situations is when, when we're talking the, the man being the perpetrator and the, the woman, the victim is at the time when they.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Try to leave.

• 23:56Speaker 00

  Try, try to leave.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:57Speaker 00

  And that's when the high risk comes. So one would assume the same thing and, and looking at her pattern and, and the dynamics of the relationship, I can understand why he would be scared.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I speculated in the book that that was part of the reason.

• 24:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  That his friends had no idea how really terrified he was by that point, seeing what she was capable of, not knowing what she would do next.

• 24:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  And so I think he felt he needed a cooling off period. Keep her close and work out how, how do I get myself out of this situation? And he also was afraid for his children. So rather than make it a final, you're out of my life, knowing how vindictive she was. I think he felt this is the better strategy.

• 24:42Speaker 00

  I think the way you described it is perfectly understandable. I, I think if I was in that situation, I, I'd have concerns like making the, the cut. And okay, well, how is she going to get back to me this time? If, if she's capable of, yeah, the violence, capable of, uh, yeah, the vindictive stuff, like the, um, the filming and sending it to his boss.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 25:03Speaker 00

  Your kids did, it, it wasn't there a passage in their, their time too, where she told one of his children that he's not the father? Like, I mean, that, uh, yeah, we, we talk evil and, uh, that stems into it. To play with a kid's mind like that, tell, tell us that, that story.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, she was just, um, again, yeah, just playing with, with this child's mind. I think it was part of her campaign of manipulation and, and control and, and just keeping people around her on, on, on eggshells, do you know? And I think that was a way to get attention as well from, from Price. And at that point, they might've had kind of a low period in their, in their relationship. And, and this was a way for, for her to kind of ignite more drama. I think she's also somebody who was so used to having drama that if there was nothing happening, no drama, then something's wrong, you know? It's sort of like when everything's quiet, somebody has to drop a plate.

• 26:04Speaker 00

  That, that's interesting you say that, but I understand what you, you're saying. Like she's saying, she's striving for this 1950s marriage, the, the husband's working and she's looking after the kids, all that. But if she actually, if it, it starts to get that peaceful, she's got to stir things up because she likes, uh, yeah, the.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Because for her, that's what, that's what family life looks like. That's what.

• 26:27Speaker 00

  Okay. Well, now you're getting into the psychology of it. Yeah, yeah, she's creating.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Because that's what she grew up with. So that's the model of family for her, is my guess, you know? And conflict, that was very much the, um, kind of, uh, dynamic between her parents. And she witnessed all of that. So it's normal for her.

• 26:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  And when there wasn't anything, she had to create it. And I think that was one of the ways that she did it, by going after this poor innocent child and saying this thing, when she didn't need to say anything like that, it wasn't even true.

• 26:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  So what's that about, right? It's manipulation, it's keeping drama, keeping control and controlling the interaction between her and John and the family. It was just, it's interesting that you seized on that because to me that was also a really cruel. It's like pinching somebody for no reason, just because you like to pinch.

• 27:18Speaker 00

  And the other thing about her too, looking at all, all the things that we've talked about and she's done, she's never sort of come back and said, I'm sorry. Like it's not, okay, I went too far, you didn't deserve that. She's, no one's checked her. She's just, uh, in her own mind, she's justifying everything that she's doing. So she's become emboldened by it, like, look what I've done.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  And it's always somebody else's fault. You made me do this. You shouldn't have done that. Otherwise I wouldn't have done this.

• 27:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Always, yeah. Which is classic, you know, for people like that. It's one of the markers of that kind of disorder, first of all, and that kind of manipulative, abusive. It's part of the whole package of, you know, blaming the victim.

• 28:04Speaker 00

  We've looked at, uh, situations with her, um, domestic. Did she cause conflict outside her domestic relationships? Was there any other indicators? Or did a little stand, or, or sort of that was her world contained in?

• 28:17Speaker 01

  It was mostly contained to the men. Certainly that's what was mostly, that's what was pointed to in terms of working out. You know, particularly during the, the, the pre-trial hearings, looked at that history.

• 28:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  To determine, well, what, what are we going to do with this woman? Is she culpable? Is she responsible for what she's done? And it was, that was the history that was really examined. There were people who said, you know, if I saw her walking down the street, I would cross.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  And because you don't know what she's gonna do.

• 28:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  You know, and there were women in her circles who would say that, that if you, if you did something she didn't like or, or, you know, said something she, she could flip, you know?

• 29:01Speaker 00

  That makes sense, because I couldn't see how she could control everything because life stems past the, the domestic situation where she, uh, yeah, she'd be volatile there.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 29:11Speaker 00

  What was the situation where she stabbed Pricey?

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Couple of times she stabbed him, yeah.

• 29:17Speaker 00

  Talk us through that, his reaction, his friends' reaction and what actually happened.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  So the first time, so there, yes, there was a time where he confronted her about, um, what she said to his daughter. You know, saying, you know, that he's not her, her father and he was furious about that. And call, you know, his ex-wife was as well and.

• 29:38Speaker 00

  Understandable.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Um, so he confronts her about it and she's been in the kitchen sort of cooking and, and cleaning up and whatnot. And, um, the way she describes it is that she had the knife like this and he sort of fell into it. I mean, honestly, it's just, it's the most ridiculous.

• 29:57Speaker 00

  How many times that happens? I've heard a lot of people, they dive at the knife.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he fell on it. Um, so they got into an altercation. He was really angry about that and confronted her. And of course, you know, you don't confront Catherine, you don't tell her anything. And she stabs him just below the collarbone, um, in his shoulder. He doesn't report it. He doesn't do any, he just gets a Band-Aid, a sort of a patch and puts it on there. And thankfully, it healed, but it was quite an angry wound for a while. You know, friends who saw it say, you know.

• 30:30Speaker 00

  There's a lot of force that needs to penetrate.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  And it was, it was a kitchen knife. So it wasn't.

• 30:37Speaker 00

  In the chest.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  In the chest. So that, yeah, a lot of force. It would have been very painful. And there was one other time, oh no, the other stabbing was with Saunders. She stabbed him with scissors in the stomach. Yeah. Cause I, I was thinking, did she stab Pricey twice? No, but she stabbed him in the shoulder. Certainly battered him quite a lot throughout their relationship. You know, she really liked.

• 30:59Speaker 00

  And, and these are the things that we know of. Yeah.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 31:04Speaker 00

  Domestic violence, quite often you don't get.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  And he didn't talk about it much.

• 31:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  You know, he really didn't.

• 31:09Speaker 00

  The shame. After he'd been stabbed in the chest with a knife, um, his friends, he, he had a circle of friends. People in the town, in a small town would understand, well, yeah, some shit's going down in that, that relationship.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:23Speaker 00

  What was the, the advice from family and friends? Were, cause I, I got the sense that they were concerned.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. They were getting increasingly concerned and they were telling him, stay away from her. Do not go back to that woman. Get the authorities involved. You need to go and get this documented. And time and again, you know, for a, a while, he was sort of like, ah, it'll be fine. No, I don't need, you know. It's like the wound.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  That I think was very symbolic of how he treated the relationship. It was a bad wound.

• 31:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  But he just put a patch on it. Didn't tell, didn't go to the hospital, didn't go to the doctor, didn't make sure that it, it wasn't infected. He just was like, cover it up and carry on. Which is, you know, what he did with their relationship and the abuse that he was suffering. It wasn't until it got to a point, and again, we don't know what happened behind closed doors, but they apparently had a really terrible fight on the Sunday before he died. And there, there, in the record, they'd had a number of fights, you know, they, they battered each other. She really battered him quite a lot and he'd show up with a bruise here and there. And they'd say, oh, the speckled hen, she's gotten to you, you know?

• 32:34Speaker 01

  So he'd show up with bruises. Um, and the, the Sunday before he, he was murdered must have been really bad. Because that morning, he went to his boss and said, if I don't show up for work tomorrow, it's because she's killed me. So she must have said something, done something that the day before that really terrified him. Cause then he went to the police, got an AVO, doctor showed the bruising. He really wanted to collect evidence.

• 33:04Speaker 00

  And this was in, in the, the lead up to the murder?

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Yes. This was 24 hours before the murder.

• 33:09Speaker 00

  So he's gone.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  So the morning he's killed, he's gone to the, to the police to get an AVO against her.

• 33:15Speaker 00

  Okay. So yeah, it must have been escalating.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  And he's told his boss, if I don't show up to work tomorrow, because his boss says, go, go to the police. You need to take care of this. This is bad. Cause he, he shows the bruise. Finally, he says, you know, I'm terrified. They could tell it was weighing on him. So he says, go to the police. He goes, he takes out the AVO. But before he leaves, he says, if I don't show up to work tomorrow, it's because she's killed me. He, he says that to, to the boss.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  Right.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  So then he goes home. I don't know if he goes back to work. I, there wasn't anything written about that. But by the time he gets home, I think he does go back to work because when he gets home that night, it's around nine or so o'clock or something. He's home alone and it was a couple of hours after he's gone to sleep that she then lets herself in. She still has the key. She lets herself in. Of course, we know what happens then. But as you said, we don't know what happened behind closed doors, but it must've been pretty bad by that point.

• 34:16Speaker 00

  Did, did she go to the police?

• 34:18Speaker 01

  She also did. Yeah. So she's working at her.

• 34:21Speaker 00

  Same incident or same buildup to the incident.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  That's right. So around the same time, they're both building up documentation on, because she gets wind that he's taken an AVO.

• 34:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  And she wants to counter that, you know? So she's calculating. She's already, and she's gone around to friends that day to say, look what John's done to me. Look at this.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  That, that's right. And I, I look at that from a homicide detective's point of view too.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Tell me, what do you make of that?

• 34:47Speaker 00

  And that is the planning, that she's setting up her alibi. Look, I'm a victim. The whole thing, that's the scheming and, and clearly the courts have picked up on it and seen, and the judges.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Seen right through it.

• 35:00Speaker 00

  Picked up on it. But tell us about that because that just gives you a sense of, I'm going to do something really bad, but this is my ticket out.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 35:08Speaker 00

  So she, she was going around to people and keep showing bruises and.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  That's why I wonder what happened that Sunday. What did she say to him that terrified him so much that he would go to the point? After all these years of not taking action, he finally takes action. Something happened that day where she knew this is what she's going to do. And he must've been aware of it because as you say, she's now planning her defense already. She's already working out the narrative of her own victimhood, right? Which is how I, I, I see her, her manipulations.

• 35:49Speaker 00

  Most definitely going around and telling people and all that. So whatever plays out, look, I, I told you, I've been telling people that.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. He's been abusing me. Yeah.

• 35:58Speaker 00

  I was, I was defending myself. It, it is speculation and sometimes you, you've got to speculate, but what was said or done to him that scared him enough to, uh, to go to the police 24 hours before.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  And to say that to his boss.

• 36:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  You know, that, that was very telling.

• 36:13Speaker 00

  I would imagine whether it was, you know, a physical threat with a knife at his throat or, or something that she is, cause he was a little bit, he, he must've had a sense of, or, or concern, but he was a little bit naive that he didn't see the warning signs beforehand. But something has tipped it over for him to go, go.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 36:31Speaker 00

  Go to the police.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  And in those last 24 to 48 hours. Yeah, absolutely.

• 36:36Speaker 00

  And the, the scary part is at that point in time, she's made the decision, I'm going to do him.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  She must have.

• 36:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  That's why she was going around planning all of this, these little stories in people. Look what he's done to me. Look at the bruises on, on my chest. And she's videotaped her kids and sort of left it as a mess. Even her daughter.

• 36:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Asked her as she leaves the house. She says, mom, you're not going to do anything, are you? You're not going to do anything to Pricey.

• 37:02Speaker 00

  Right.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  So she had decided by that point that this is, this is going to be her payback.

• 37:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. You, you're bringing things back to me from, from the book that she went and videotaped her playing with her grandchildren and daughters. And just look at the perfect, perfect mother, perfect, uh, yeah, role model.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Yep. Mm hmm.

• 37:24Speaker 00

  Again.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:25Speaker 00

  Setting up, oh, look, I'm a good person.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's right.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  Manipulative.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  And so the courts, you know, the psychiatry, they rightly picked up on that and said, you may have borderline personality disorder, but you were very calculated. You knew what you were doing. You planned this. You wanted to pay him back. And of, and of course, as we said earlier, this statement, how she kills him, it was a giant F you.

• 37:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  You know, didn't flee, didn't try to hide the body, wanted people to find it, wanted to see the carnage that she was capable of.

• 37:57Speaker 00

  You said that he went to bed that night, um, and a couple of hours later, she, she came in. I'm, I'm assuming she still had keys or something.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  She did still have the keys.

• 38:07Speaker 00

  We don't know exactly what's happened there, but crime scene were there and, and saw it. He had been stabbed multiple times in 30, 30.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  37 times.

• 38:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  And no defensive wounds.

• 38:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Not a single one.

• 38:20Speaker 00

  Okay. So she's got him with a good shot first up and he can't even defend himself. The.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Well, cause he's fleeing. He's fleeing the room. Yeah. And he's, she chases him down the hallway.

• 38:31Speaker 00

  That, that was interpretation from the crime, crime scene, uh, officer that's come in with a blood splatter.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. They could tell just from the pattern that this was a man, he ran, he tried to, um, turn on the lights, you know, it was dark.

• 38:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  She had seduced him, had sex with him. Then he comes back in and.

• 38:48Speaker 00

  Oh, so even on that night.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  On that night. Yes.

• 38:52Speaker 00

  So she's back to her old, old ways. I'll, I'll get you, win you back.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  She brings his defenses down.

• 38:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  You know? And I want to know, why did he do it? Why did he have sex with her? Again, I'm thinking he was terrified.

• 39:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  And he felt this was the only way that he could possibly make it out of, because if he, if he sort of rejected her and kicked her out, called the police.

• 39:17Speaker 00

  That wasn't going to end well, was it?

• 39:19Speaker 01

  No, no. So I think that's why he let it happen because she snuck in, got into bed with him.

• 39:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Seduced him.

• 39:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Woke him up basically, uh, and they had sex. Then he got up afterwards, went to the bathroom to wash up, have a, have a wee, what have you. Then he comes back to bed, lays back down, and that's when she attacks and she stabs him in the chest.

• 39:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  I think once or twice at that point. Of course, the adrenaline now kicks in. He leaps out of bed and he, he tries to turn on the light. They could see that there's blood. She goes after him. She stays close behind and he goes fleeing out of the bedroom, down the hallway and the, and I've been to the house. I saw the inside. It isn't a long hallway to manage 37 stab wounds.

• 40:07Speaker 00

  It's a frenzy.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  In that small, um, timeframe, by the time he gets to the door, she's right behind him and she's going at him with such force.

• 40:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  It, it's just, I can imagine it. And it's one of these things you think, my God. Yeah. It gives you chills. So then he makes it to the door. He just gets on the door handle and opens it. He manages to open it. But by then he's lost so much blood, he can't breathe. His lungs have collapsed, his insides are all just, you know, obviously in turmoil. And he collapses at the threshold. She's there. She drags him back in, shuts the door. He's now leaning against the, the wall. They could tell by all the, the sort of blood on the wall there. And then she finishes him off with stab wounds to the front.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  But then he's pretty much gone. Cause there, again, there's no defensive wounds and, um, and he expires there, you know?

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Afterwards, she then gets her knives. Well, we don't know if she then went to the, um, she, she showered and then went to the bank. Cause remember she goes to the bank and takes money out of his account. Yeah, a thousand dollars and then comes back. So it's not clear what she did first.

• 41:25Speaker 00

  What stage?

• 41:25Speaker 01

  But yeah, then gets her knives, sharpens them and then proceeds to butcher his body.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. And with that, I felt that it was her at work. You know, this is her skill. This is her on autopilot. This is what you do with a corpse.

• 41:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  She'd done it hundreds of times before, perhaps thousands. I don't know, because I know that a lot of her work was in the boning room. Yeah. So.

• 41:54Speaker 00

  She's separating the skin from the muscle and the.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah. And she has seen enough of where they dress the animals.

• 42:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  And so part of dressing the animals, meaning removing the skin.

• 42:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  And the organs. Part of the process is once you get most of the skin off, down to around the neck, you have to decapitate the animal because that's easier to then take the, the, the belt off. So, because at first I thought, when you picture it, you think the decapitation happens and then the, the, um, the skinning, but no, it's the skinning that happens first. And to then remove the whole skin, you have to take the head off.

• 42:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  So that's to me, that tells me that she was in work mode.

• 42:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  That this was just a natural process for her.

• 42:41Speaker 00

  Just, and the time that she would have taken, um.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Apparently it took about forty five minutes.

• 42:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, to do that. Just that process of the, the skinning.

• 42:51Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Um, of course, the whole act that night was longer, but.

• 42:57Speaker 00

  The fact she, she comes in, e- even like she could have come in and, and killed him straight off, but it's almost like she got some, um, satisfaction outside, the sexual satisfaction about having sex with him that night. Look, I've, I've still got you, I've got you in, in my control.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 43:15Speaker 00

  He, he's thinking, oh, well, uh, she's back. He, he's walked away, dropped his guard down and then, uh, then she.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Very narcissistic.

• 43:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Then, then she murders him. The comment that the judge made in, uh, in the sentencing, the prisoner showed no mercy whatsoever to Mr. Price. The last minutes of his life must have been absolute terror for him. While for her, they were moments of utter enjoyment.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 43:38Speaker 00

  Like judges don't make those type, type of comments. That's, that's an extreme comment.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  It is.

• 43:43Speaker 00

  Describing the last minutes of his life as, um, utter terror.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Well, an extreme comment for an extreme crime scene.

• 43:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, we, we've talked about it, the, yeah. We don't have to dig in, in any further, but placing his head in a pot with, uh, uh, with the vegetables, cutting off, uh, pieces of, of meat from his buttocks to lay out on a, a table.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 44:08Speaker 00

  To serve.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  To his children. Yeah. And she had little place names for the.

• 44:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. So this is not just speculation. This is what she's set up and it.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  That's right. That's what they found. Yeah.

• 44:19Speaker 00

  Evilness of it.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  The boss, when he didn't turn up for work, contacted police and, uh, uh, police went, uh, went round there, a concern for welfare. And, uh, when they, they walked in, what were they confronted with?

• 44:32Speaker 01

  So first they're looking, you know, they're knocking on the door and trying to, to, to get, um, a sense if somebody's in there, calling out his name. And one of them looks through the kitchen window and, and sees, you know, evidence of, okay, there's keys there, there's a beer, there's a bag on the table and there's a, this funny looking curtain hanging up there. This, um, wet curtain. Then they break in through the back, um, and, uh, proceed through the kitchen. Cause the back is just at the, um, just adjacent to the kitchen. So you have to kind of walk through the architrave there to get further into the house. So the, the, the police officer brushes this curtain when he thinks it's a curtain. He brushes past it and feels something's wet on his arm.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  And he looks down and he realizes it's blood.

• 45:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  And then he looks up at this curtain and realizes it's not a curtain. It's the skin. And she's, he says to himself, oh my God, she skinned him. So imagine you walk into a scene.

• 45:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  And you find somebody's full skin in one piece. What do you do with that?

• 45:42Speaker 00

  Uh, I, it would be hard to process and I, I, I can only imagine what went through the police officer's mind at the time. And going in there concerned for welfare, you come across that, you're still looking for the person that has done that.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 45:55Speaker 00

  Um, yeah.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yes.

• 45:57Speaker 00

  I'm, I'm not sure how any of the, the police that attended the, the scene there really leave that behind them. It's something you'd carry for a long time.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  How do you cope with those things? Cause you would, you'd have seen a lot of, you know, pretty horrific things, I imagine. How, how does, in the, the years, because I get haunted just from imagining something bad happening, let alone seeing something. How does it, how is it that police officers and what with you, that you're able to not?

• 46:25Speaker 00

  You're in, you're in work mode at, at the time. Like that's, that served me well in, uh, in crime scenes. You see some horrific things, but you're looking, okay, what is this telling me? So you, you're focused on, on doing your job. That was, I, I suppose a protection in a lot of ways. That, uh, okay, I'm not going to take in all the emotion of what I'm seeing here or, or the horror. I'm taking in what I need to know as a, a homicide detective. So that, that helped well. It catches up to you sometimes when you've stepped away from it. And then you think, oh shit, that's right. I remember seeing that.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 47:03Speaker 00

  The crime scene that you're describing here, and I think this is what, yeah, uh, has confronted all of us is it's just at the extreme. Yeah. I, I've seen body parts spread around, uh, uh, I've, I've seen the horrors of, of crime scene. But this, and when I had, uh, Bob on and he, he was describing how the officer went in and, uh, brushed up against the curtain. You're in a high level of alert when you get, go into a situation like that, concerned for welfare. You don't know what you're gonna see. And then to have something wet and cold brush on your skin and look down and it's blood and then realize it's skin.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 47:37Speaker 00

  I, I, I would imagine they would have spoken to people after, the psychologists and, and. And process, uh, process through that. But yeah, personally, and I've spoken to a lot of, um, police, uh, the dumb, the nature of this work. And I think it is that we're focused on, on the job. That allows you to, yeah, not get too dragged into it emotionally initially, cause you've got a, a job to do.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  That, that must take some honing over the years, right? Because your first, like, what was your first really shocking scene?

• 48:09Speaker 00

  Oh, I, I, I can, I can, uh, smell the, the, the, one of the early ones where a, a decomposing body in the boot of a car. And, uh, I, I can still access that smell thirty years down, down, down the track.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 48:23Speaker 00

  But it, it's something you do get desensitized. We talked about in the, uh, abattoirs, the, the killing room or whatever. I suppose you, you do become desensitized to it.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 48:33Speaker 00

  You know the smells, you know the sights and, uh, you, you, you understand it. And that's just the, the, the nature of the work. So you can process it, but look, each job, like I've seen people that have been doing it for years and they go to one job and whatever that is, that, that's triggered something in them.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:50Speaker 00

  Or tip them over, the, their cups full. And, uh, they, they hit the wall, uh, hit the wall with that. But yeah, it is a side that, uh, the horror side of the homicide investigations.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  And to be in that line of work, like, um, I have a very good friend who's on the job in New York, you know? And before he joined, because I, we grew up together, he's like a brother. And, uh, you know, as we got older, he joined, joined the force. And before that, I never really thought much of the police, you know, whatever. They're there, they're a force. Thank God they're there. Sometimes you wish they weren't, you know? But, uh, my friend told me, um, he said, you know, with this job, you're dealing with people, right? At their worst, when they are at their worst.

• 49:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  And it really changes you in terms of trying to understand how people can treat each other the way that they do, when they do things to. And I, I know for him, like he, he desensitized himself to it for sure. But there were times I know that he was haunted by some of the things that, that he saw because he couldn't understand, how do people treat each other like this?

• 49:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I, I think every, yeah, career police officer carries something. It, it changes you. People are, ask me, would you recommend joining the police? I'd say, yes, I, I enjoyed my time in the police, but it will change you. Whether it changes you for the better or worse, I, I don't know. But yeah, you, you, you carry those things, lose faith in, in, um, people.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:17Speaker 00

  I think this is a bit of an insight into the way I go about my life. I think I'm a little bit naive on the outside from, from policing because in policing, I'm not trusting anyone. Everyone I'm speaking to, I'm looking, what's this angle, what's that angle? And yeah, that's the nature of the work. Then, uh, then I get out back into the, the world, my world, and I'm sort of naive to, uh, oh no, they're, they're nice people, cause you wanna see some good in people. So I think that's probably why I, I adopt, uh, adopt that approach.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 50:45Speaker 00

  But yeah, uh, uh, attending a job like this would have a, a long-term impact on police officers because it's, it is at, at the extreme.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:54Speaker 00

  I, I wonder, like the neighbors in the area too, the impact that that had on the community. Like it's something that, uh, the community would have, uh, felt, felt, uh.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Well, it was a major stain on the community for a long time, you know? And I, I don't think, it doesn't seem to me to have really recovered, you know? Not that, not, you know, not that Aberdeen is a bad place, you know? I did travel there as part of my research and people there were lovely, you know? I had a drink at the Top Pub and went to the RSL Club and sort of just retraced the steps. Not much to do in that town. Um, so I don't think it's really grown much more. Um, the abattoir isn't there anymore.

• 51:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Um, but, um.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it it did for a long time really stain the the community because they were known for this, you know, Hannibal Lecter.

• 51:47Speaker 00

  Well, they've had a lot of lot of murders up there and there was a period in time in homicide in that Hunter Valley area and and all that, that, you know, if someone had disappeared up there, we'd, yeah, lightheartedly say, oh, well, that that's a murder. We better better head up there for for whatever reason. There there seemed to be a spate of, yeah, killing killings around around those those areas. I know I've spent a lot of time up there investigating investigating crimes.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  Is it, do you think, because alcohol abuse and sort of that kind of thing? What do you?

• 52:21Speaker 00

  I I look and it's not casting aspersions on on that community. You look at, you've got the city and I I find a lot of crime, a lot of work that I found in policing was on just those communities that are just outside the city. So you've got people that have moved outside the city.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 52:38Speaker 00

  It's a little bit different, population's more sparse and there seem seems to be things that happen happen just on, you know, I'm I'm talking a couple of hours' drive from the city.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:49Speaker 00

  We seem to get called to a lot of a lot of things that occur there, so.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  Maybe because there's less people, there's more opportunity.

• 52:55Speaker 00

  Less people, there's a, I, there's a beauty to living in an environment like that, but it's also mundane too. So people are doing the same thing day in, day out. So personalities can sort of be triggered by cer- certain things. But I I do notice that that a lot of work, we have the work that the intensity of the city brings, with the population living on top of each other. But then as you go outside the cities where it's a bit more sparse, um, yeah, the the crime, crime does happen and sometimes strange crimes.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, stranger than in the city, I feel like.

• 53:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the the city, everyone's on top of each other. So probably more crime in the city, but out there.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  Stranger crime.

• 53:40Speaker 00

  Stranger, a stranger type of crime because you can get away with things and, you know, you haven't got police policing as much as they do in the city.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:48Speaker 00

  But, yeah, with this one, she's charged, obviously. There was a lot of media attention at the start, but we were talking off off camera, it probably didn't get the attention perhaps we thought it should have been. And we're trying to work out a reason there. We suggested it was around September 11 on, in 2001. So the world was, well, everyone was distracted with what what happened there.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 54:17Speaker 00

  Um.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  And the Olympics.

• 54:19Speaker 00

  The Olympics, yeah, we're all still on the high from high from that. Also, the fact that she was arrested quickly, like if this, if we were hunting.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 54:30Speaker 00

  Imagine if if that crime scene was found by by police and it would have leaked to the media in some some form and there was a manhunt looking for a person responsible for that type of carnage, that would have been front and center in in the media.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  That's right, yeah. But they found her right away in the back bedroom. Yeah, that's true. So there was no, there wasn't much to kind of feed off of, you know.

• 54:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, the story's been told. Then, once she's been charged, it's a matter before the court, so that limits the amount that can be reported on.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 55:02Speaker 00

  With with the with the court matter, a couple of things that I I found interesting that the judge, before the jury was impaneled, when she pleaded pleaded not guilty or was pleading not guilty, gave the potential jury members an out that if this is too graphic for you, you can, without any criticism or judgment, excuse yourself from this because it's going to be very graphic in what was shown to.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  So that sounds like that's a very rare thing to happen.

• 55:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  Because there are other crime scenes that obviously have some gruesome details, but judges don't do that.

• 55:34Speaker 00

  Judges don't don't don't do that generally. And so this was, shows the extreme, extreme of it. Why do you think she pleaded guilty? What, because she was set for trial and so it was leading up for a trial, but then at the last moment, she's entered a guilty plea. What was that about?

• 55:51Speaker 01

  I think she didn't want to have to go over all of the evidence and make it all public. I think maybe her family had something to do with that.

• 56:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  That they would now be, you know, exposed to rehashing this story. Her children would hear all the gory details. It would live in the papers much longer. I I think that had a lot to do with her, her changing her plea. I also think that on some level, maybe she felt she'd be rid of all the triggers, you know, in her life. It's the relationships that she's had with men. That's all eliminated in prison.

• 56:34Speaker 00

  But how how old was she when she committed this murder?

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Forty four.

• 56:38Speaker 00

  Forty four. Okay. So and and she was seeing John as the last chance dance for the life that she was living to. That was part of it.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  That's right. I think she saw the writing on the wall.

• 56:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  That if I go through with this trial, it's going to be all of the papers, all the details are going to be out. My children are going to be exposed to it, my siblings, my family. I think at that point, she just thought, I'll have more peace in here, you know, at least the triggers will be removed. That's my speculation for trying to work out, well, why go from not guilty to guilty? And I I sort of constructed a scene where she's talking to her twin sister Joy and her brother and they're, and we know that they were absolutely shocked by the case. They just couldn't believe that she would do something like that. And so I sort of imagined a scene where that realization hits

• 57:30Speaker 01

  her that, you know, this is hurting my family, my children, and I'm just going to be dragged through, you know, I mean, it, she needed to take responsibility, you know, and I I think she wanted to do that quietly.

• 57:45Speaker 00

  Even even when she when she did, she was, because, just because someone pleads guilty, there is still hearings as such in the court.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  For the sentencing.

• 57:55Speaker 00

  For sentencing and the evidence has got to be presented so the judge can make his findings. She asked to be excused when the crime scene videos were being played. And I I admire the admire the judge and it would have been an easy out for him to say, yes, you can be excused. But the judge made a decision that, no, she's going to sit here and watch it with the rest of us.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 58:16Speaker 00

  As the a video walkthrough that we do in crime scenes, where showing where the skin was hanging, John's corpse, or what was what was left of it and how the tables were set and all that. So she would have had to sit through that.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And then she had a bit of a, like a theatrical breakdown. Yeah. Was it real? Did it really trigger her? Or was it her just faking it? Don't know. But it happened that as this was playing out, she increasingly got more agitated. So I felt it was maybe part of her manipulations, who knows? But then part of me thought, well, maybe it did trigger some kind of psychotic response. I don't know.

• 59:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, I I'm not sure either.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  She seemed like a very unreliable narrator or witness, so.

• 59:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, I look, I I put her in and not just the nature of the crime, the end crime that she's serving life imprisonment for, but the lead up to it, like, I I've got a reasonable amount of empathy for people in prison and, you know, people through whatever reasons have gone to prison, they've made mistakes and there's people like that. But there's a small percentage of prisoners in there that rot in hell.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's where they belong.

• 59:35Speaker 00

  I mean, yeah, if we just focus on on John Price, like, he was a decent person for all intents and purposes and just got involved in a relationship with the wrong person.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 59:47Speaker 00

  And the pain that she causes, not just for John, he's lost his life, but the family living with this. Like, yeah, I I think that's quite often missed in in homicide, that it's not just one life affected, it's a ripple ripple effect.

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  Many. And it's one thing to lose a loved one, another to have that loved one murdered, but another thing altogether, to have them butchered the way.

• 1:00:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  I just can't imagine if that were me, to think that that's how my father or my brother or, you know, went down like that, to to have been slaughtered and butchered in skin. I just, the pain that that would have caused his family would just be unbearable.

• 1:00:32Speaker 00

  Well, I I can't even, I can't comprehend it, how to how to process that. And, yeah, the other victims in this, I suppose, are her children, yeah.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:43Speaker 00

  Living living with this. Our our mother is, yeah, such a an evil person. She's capable of of crime like that.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:00:52Speaker 00

  Lessons learnt from your research on it. And I I was thinking about it last last night on, okay.

• 1:01:02Speaker 00

  When we're talking about a crime of this nature, the thing I took away from it is about the fact that it's a woman perpetrating these acts of domestic violence and we've got to be just as vigilant, even though it's less frequent, but we've got to be just as vigilant when a female.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  I agree, I agree. I think, well, one of the things that I wanted to say about that panel show that I forgot to mention is that this was, you know, I'd been talking to these men and some in tears and they laid out their history and the story and the things that they were suffering through. And so I brought all of this, you know, these case studies to the executives and said, here's the story and they wouldn't touch it. They just would not touch it because they said, well, women are the ones that really represent the highest number of, you know, the percentages of women is so big that it's so miniscule in, you know,

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  when it comes to men, that it's not even worth touching, you know? And I just thought, oh, well, you know, this is just what we hear of. And just because it's a small number, does it mean that we can't highlight it? Anyway, so I think you're right because it's a, you know, it's not insignificant. 12% is a good, you know, that's not insignificant. Out of all of Australia, 12% is a sizable, you know. But I think what it tells you is that domestic violence isn't really about gender so much as it is about power and control, you know? And that's the, for me, that was the takeaway of this because she killed like a man, you know? She murdered like a man. Her patterns of abuse were more-

• 1:02:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, the physical violence.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  Behaviors associated with men. So it's really power and control. Women, and I'm sure you know this, you know, when they kill, it's a, on the whole, it's a lot quieter. It's less messy. They tend to use methods like poison. They're motivated by money and they, and they often target the most vulnerable children.

• 1:03:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Or, you know, vulnerable adults, elderly people. And that's where the differences between male and female killers generally is. But together, it is about power and control.

• 1:03:26Speaker 00

  It's about the power and, yeah, we've on this podcast and we've been campaigning and talking about coercive control and improving or adding legislation to assist with that. And it works with that. This is something that should not happen. And, you know, sometimes, and I think we're choosing our words carefully because we're going, men can be victims too. And sometimes you get shouted down by people, how dare you say that women are victims in the major, major times, 100%. But we've got to look after everyone. That's not selective. And I feel sorry for these, all of the men in her life. She's caused considerable pain to them.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  They've all gone underground for the most part, yeah.

• 1:04:11Speaker 00

  Well-

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  Their lives were irrevocably changed after their association.

• 1:04:17Speaker 00

  I dare say they all look back and think how lucky, how lucky I was because I'm sure there's situations-

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  They dodged a bullet.

• 1:04:24Speaker 00

  I don't know. If, again, you ask, ask my thoughts from a homicide detective, I'm sure there was moments in all four of those relationships, the three previous relationships, where their life was in the balance.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:04:39Speaker 00

  I think she could have quite easily tipped over the edge.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I think that's very true. I think it's why you see David Kellett left, Dave Saunders, he fled, never to resurface again, and Chillo as well, you know, they all got to a point where, oh, this is really dangerous. I need to get out of here.

• 1:05:00Speaker 00

  This is dangerous.

• 1:05:03Speaker 00

  Well, okay, The Butcher of Aberdeen, an Australian story of sex, madness and murder.

• 1:05:11Speaker 00

  I think that's an aptly titled, titled, titled book. Where can people get it?

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  It's available at Demix, it's available Big W, it's online, Amazon, Simon and Schuster, both Amazon US, Amazon UK, not that, you know, sorry, Australia. And I think you can order it through bookstores, yeah.

• 1:05:33Speaker 00

  Well, you know, our listeners like the true crime stories. This is one that's, you know, from a former homicide detective, you got into my head. And I think any, any book that gets in your head is, is doing, doing its job. So thanks. And I know the effort, you talked about three years of research and I can see the effort that's gone into the book to, to tell the story in a very readable and understandable way. And what it's opened my eyes to is all the steps leading, leading up to this. And they're the things that we're going to look out for when murders happen. And like, if anyone's reading this book, doesn't have to be a police officer, it can be a member of the public or someone in your family is experiencing these type of things.

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  These are the signs to look out for.

• 1:06:16Speaker 00

  These are the signs, the potential and that's the end result. Have you got any other books in, in play?

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  I've got a couple of things I'm thinking of. I won't say what they are yet because they're, one of them is actually quite a big topic that's current at the moment, but it's in the headlines and it fascinates me and I kind of want to give it the same treatment. So I'm seeing how that goes. But yeah, I've got, I've got a couple, yeah.

• 1:06:44Speaker 00

  Well, we might, we might have you, have you back on, back on. I'll prepare myself before I read the book. Okay. Thanks, thanks very much for coming in. I've enjoyed the chat and it's been, been very enlightening.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  Thank you very much for having me.

• 1:06:56Speaker 00

  Cheers.