Katherine Knight Killed Her Boyfriend. Then She Served Him For Dinner

In October 2000, the small Hunter Valley town of Aberdeen, New South Wales, became the scene of one of the most horrific crimes in Australian history. John Price was brutally murdered in his home by his partner, Katherine Knight, an abattoir worker with a long, history of domestic violence against the men in her life but with no criminal record to show for this. What police discovered inside the house shocked even the most seasoned investigators: Knight had skinned, decapitated, and cooked parts of her partner, creating a horrific crime scene that remains etched in true crime history. Katherine Knight was the first, and to this day only, woman in Australian history to be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. In this episode of True Crime Conversations, Gemma Bath sits down with author Roje Augustine, who spent three years researching Knight's life to unpack her upbringing in Aberdeen, her fascination with the abattoir kill rooms, and the escalation of her violent relationships. LINKS Buy Roje's book The Butcher of Aberdeen: An Australian Story of Sex, Madness, and Murder here https://fave.co/4wQ9G2o. If any of the contents in this episode have caused distress, know that there is help available via Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636. Contact Full Stop Australia https://fullstop.org.au/ on 1800 385 578, 7 days, 24 hours. GET IN TOUCH Follow us on Instagram and TikTok @truecrimeconversations https://www.instagram.com/truecrimeconversations/?hl=en Want us to cover a case on the podcast? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] or send us a voice note. https://help.mamamia.com.au/en-US/send-a-podcast-voice-note-467960 MAMAMIA OFFERS: Right now, every Mamamia subscriber is automatically entered to win a $5,000 Dreamworld holiday for four; flights, accommodation, express passes and more included.https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribeSubscribe here to enter. https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe/?utm_source=shownotes&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=tcc&utm_content=dreamworld-giveawayy T&Cs apply https://help.mamamia.com.au/en-US/subcriber-giveaway-x-dreamworld-7904221. Get access to Very Peri, Mamamia's exclusive perimenopause series, for just $59. 25 world-leading experts, over 20 on-demand sessions, available now. We’ve sorted through the noise so you don't have to. Go toveryperi.com.au http://veryperi.com.au/ today. You hot? Same. Make sure to leave us a rating and review on Apple & Spotify to let us know how you're liking the episodes. CREDITS Host & Executive Producer: Gemma Bath Producer: Ella Maitland Video Editor: Julian Rosario Audio Design: Tegan Sadler Mamamia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast. Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:03Gemma Bath?

  It's 8:10 AM on a March morning in 2000, and police are responding to calls for a welfare check at a property in Aberdeen, New South Wales. John Price didn't turn up for work this morning. He's been at the mines at 6 AM sharp for the past 20 years. As officers arrive, they spot his truck parked outside. Peering through the window, they can see a work bag on the dining table and what looks like a crumpled up curtain hanging from the kitchen archway. As they head to the back of the house, they notice a portion of meat has been thrown on the lawn, but they can't see any signs of a dog. Eventually, they gain access via the laundry room door.

• 0:48Gemma Bath?

  The smell hits them immediately: blood. As they get closer to the kitchen, the three officers stop abruptly, shocked by the scene in front of them. That wasn't a curtain they spotted through the window. With horror, they realise: it's human skin.

• 1:13Gemma Bath?

  I'm Gemma Bath and you're listening to True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. And just a warning, this episode includes horrific graphic descriptions of murder. It won't be for everyone. What 44-year-old Katherine Knight did to her partner of six years is hard to comprehend. This is a case that became world famous because of the sheer brutality and shocking nature of the crime. Knight's offending was described by both legal and medical professionals as exceptionally calculated, depraved, and completely devoid of mercy.

• 1:57Gemma Bath?

  She was the first Australian woman to be given a sentence of life with no parole. We've covered her crimes before, back in 2020, but we wanted to reexamine them again in 2026 through a new lens. In her new book, The Butcher of Aberdeen: A Story of Sex, Madness, and Murder, author, producer, and journalist Roger Augustine has delved into Knight's childhood and psychological development. She wanted to try and understand how Katherine Knight became the killer she is. Roger joins us now.

• 2:39Gemma Bath?

  Roger, thank you for joining us on True Crime Conversations. What drew you to the case of Katherine Knight? It's obviously one of those ones that's very famous in our history. Why did you want to revisit it?

• 2:53Speaker 01

  First of all, I love true crime. So I found myself one day just sort of digging into Australian true crime stories, the most infamous, and I came across a list. And about third down on this list was this woman. And the headlines were: skinned, butchered, decapitated, and served pieces of his flesh as dinner for his kids. And immediately, those headlines, I just thought, I've got to read more. And the more I read, the more interested I became in this person. And it just, there began a three-year journey, you know? Just learning about Katherine Knight. I was just so fascinated by her.

• 3:38Gemma Bath?

  She's 70 now. She's still in prison. You reached out to her while writing this book. How did that go?

• 3:44Speaker 01

  She didn't give any interviews. I've tried twice to reach out to her and ended up speaking to one of the, I guess, like correctional people who handle the communications at the prison where she is, at Silverwater. And, and she, you know, candidly said, look, a lot of people write in requesting an interview with her, but she never gives interviews. It just doesn't happen. They're sort of reluctant to allow any interviews with her as well. So I realised that that just wasn't, unfortunately, a road that I could go down. I was really hoping that I could because, of course, you want to hear her side of the story. After so many years, would she have been ready to talk about what she did and why? But yeah, she's never granted any.

• 4:30Gemma Bath?

  Well, she's never explained why.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Never. And she's never apologised. She's never admitted it to her family or the Price family, which I imagine it must be such a scar for them to never even get an acknowledgement of, you know, or an apology for what she'd done.

• 4:51Gemma Bath?

  Katherine Knight, tell us a bit about her childhood. Because she was an Aberdeen local. All of her family was there, weren't they?

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. So she was one of, altogether, well, her mother had six children, I think, six or eight. Four, that's right, she had eight. So four with her first husband, Jack Rogan, and then four with Kenneth Knight, who she had an affair with while she was married to Jack. So she had two boys, and then Catherine and her twin sister Joy. So from the research, I, the picture that emerged was a childhood that was pretty unstable. They moved around where the work took them. Her father worked at various slaughterhouses in the Hunter Valley.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  And he, by all accounts, was quite violent, a big drinker, a gambler. And from what Catherine has said and other people who knew her, he was very demanding, very abusive, demanded sex from Barbara constantly and took it by force. And Catherine was, had alleged abuse, sexual abuse in her childhood from members of her family and also witnessed the abuse between her mother. So there was domestic violence, there was instability, there was a lot of, just a lot of dysfunction.

• 6:22Gemma Bath?

  In this instance, though, Catherine is a twin, Joy. And, you know, we've always heard that when you have a violent childhood, sometimes that can lead to violence as an adult. But as far as I know, Joy is not a violent person.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  No.

• 6:38Gemma Bath?

  And we've got a direct comparison there.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, born in the same household, to the same, exactly, yeah. Which is, which makes you understand why there was a mental health diagnosis with Catherine. They weren't identical twins, so that may have something to do with it. They did fight a lot, she and Joy, but Joy just never took that path that Catherine did. I think there were some intellectual deficiencies with Catherine. So her life was really marked by a lot of early anger issues and instability. She was pretty volatile and her mother, you know, warned her partners about it,

• 7:24Speaker 01

  that she's always kind of had a little something loose in there, unlike Joy or her brothers. So there is a case for, when you're thinking about nature versus nurture, there is a case for nature there with Catherine. I think that there was probably something not quite set in her mind and it made her vulnerable to that kind of behaviour.

• 7:49Gemma Bath?

  She left school at 16 and started working at the abattoir. Would it be safe to say that that was her dream job?

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's what she said. It was her dream job. She wanted to work there. She had tried to get a job there when she was about 14 or 15, and they said she was too young, you know, like, what are you thinking? You know, come back when you're a bit older. So in the interim, she started working at a clothing shop. I think it was a retail shop or a sewing where they did sort of repairs or something like that. And as soon as she could, she left that and then went to the abattoir and applied again and, and got the job and was elated.

• 8:31Gemma Bath?

  As a 16-year-old girl, working at an abattoir, it's not really what you would picture for a teenage girl, is it?

• 8:35Speaker 01

  No.

• 8:37Gemma Bath?

  And she pretty quickly climbed the ranks there.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, she really took to it. She loved it. She loved it. She loved her knives. Everyone said she loved her knives. She kept them by her bed, she kept them sharpened. They were like an extension of herself. That's how much she loved it. And I know that she grew up with that kind of work around them because an annual family thing was to, you know, kill a steer or something, bring it back to the property and butcher it and distribute pieces of, you know, meat, big chunks of meat to the family. And it was something that she would have experienced as a child. So I imagined in that scenario that she would have, you know, been quite interested and fascinated

• 9:21Speaker 01

  by this process of, of cutting meat and bleeding out animals and all of that. And I imagine that she was also curious about it and probably was shown the kind of details and how you do this and that. Seemed to have had quite a fascination with. That side of life, well, death, I would, I should say.

• 9:42Gemma Bath?

  Death and killing, because working in an abattoir, like, reading about what the actual job descriptions are, like, in terms of climbing those ranks, the, the highest rank you want to get to is the kill room.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:53Gemma Bath?

  You know, like, for people that aren't in that world, like, it sounds vulgar.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  It does, and that was her favorite place to go during her breaks. She wanted to go to the kill room. She enjoyed watching the, um, the, the slaughterman, um, sort of zap the, the pigs and they would, you know, seize up and fall down. And I watched a lot of video to research the process of slaughtering animals. And I actually found videos, um, from that time and that area, um, in a slaughterhouse. And the window it gave me was the sheer level of violence that's required to do that work. But also to do it over and over again, you become very desensitized to it. It just becomes, and I thought, watching the video, I thought,

• 10:43Speaker 01

  you know, people who kind of go for that work must have an inkling in them, as Catherine did, um, where they really enjoy that sort of violence, is what I thought. Because I watched, you know, some of these slaughtermen go through it like they were just packing, you know, peas or something. It was just, all right, here's the next one, zap, slap, stab, stab, stab. And it was, it was really, really violent.

• 11:10Gemma Bath?

  Yeah.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  And I thought, working in an environment like that, to see that day in, day out, you would be desensitized to it. It wouldn't mean anything to you to stab and, and bleed out and slaughter. Do you know what I mean? So I think Catherine felt very comfortable there.

• 11:26Gemma Bath?

  She went on to become a mum of four to three different men. Do we know what kind of mother she was?

• 11:32Speaker 01

  From what I gathered, I think she was a good mum. She cared about her children. She clearly loved them. She looked after them. Um, there was never a sense that her violence or rages were ever taken out on her children. There, there was no evidence for that that I found. If anything, she was the sort of person, she was very, you know, a woman of, of, of really striking contradictions, because people, many people said she was, she could be really kind and generous and she'd offer, you know, you know, lift to the, to the doctors if you needed it. She'd offer to look after your kids, um, take them

• 12:12Speaker 01

  to the park if you needed a babysitter. So for that side of things, she just didn't, she wasn't the Catherine that we know from the headlines, which again, I found really fascinating, because there was such contradiction in her. It was like Jekyll and Hyde, you know? And people reported that if you crossed her the wrong way, if you said something that she didn't like, or somehow felt threatened, you turn like that on a dime. And, um, it was like she became a different person. And I remember reading some said, oh, if they were walking down the street and they saw her walking along the street, and they were like, oh, there's Catherine, I don't know what side of the fence she's on today, they

• 12:55Speaker 01

  would cross the street to avoid her, just to make sure that they didn't get her crosshairs. Whereas others were like, you know, I had a really great time with her. We had a lot of fun. We would go to the top pub and hang out. She was great. I never had any issue with her. So, there you go.

• 13:09Gemma Bath?

  But didn't she put her eldest daughter on the train tracks?

• 13:13Speaker 01

  She did, yes.

• 13:15Gemma Bath?

  That to me feels pretty violent and like a bad mother.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right. Look, I take that back. You're right. There were some instances that I did read where she was a little erratic with her children. That's right. Um, it's now coming to mind, because I think I did put it in the book, where one of her, um, in-laws, um, found that, um, Melissa was put in a bath that was too hot for her. And, and this in-law was quite worried, I think it was her mother-in-law, or maybe her sister-in-law was worried about that. And Catherine was a bit sort of standoffish. Um, there were a few instances, and yes, putting your baby on the tracks, I mean.

• 13:55Gemma Bath?

  Isn't that attempted murder?

• 13:56Speaker 01

  It is.

• 13:57Gemma Bath?

  Why did she do that?

• 13:58Speaker 01

  She was reacting, um, to news that her then-partner had, um, left with another woman. Um, he was cheating on her and decided he couldn't deal with her violent behavior and, you know, her, her erratic moods. So he left one day and went to Queensland with this other woman who they knew around town. And the, the kind of rage and the insecurity, um, it just, it sounds like it just ate away at her. And she tried everything she could to get his attention. And that was one of the ways that she did it. If I do this, he will come back.

• 14:43Gemma Bath?

  If I kill my baby, he will come back.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:50Gemma Bath?

  It's very strange to, you know, hear something so horrific like that, and then to hear that, one, she got Melissa back, and then went on to have three more children, and is being described as a good mum.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it, it really is.

• 15:03Gemma Bath?

  It's like that incident just kind of faded away.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  And the fact that she got her child back.

• 15:08Gemma Bath?

  Yeah, in the first place.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that speaks a lot to how gender can really inform how we view domestic violence. Because essentially, this story is a story about domestic violence against men, in her case, you know? She had a history of it. All of her partners were, um, victims of her abuse. She was a serial abuser. But in the end, what we know about her are the headlines, you know? There was never anything that said, this woman has been abusing for a long time, she's a domestic abuser, and it culminated in this horrible act of murder. Instead, it was, look at what this crazy woman did. She slaughtered, you

• 15:53Speaker 01

  know, her, her partner. So it's a very good point. Yeah, she got her children back, and people did describe her as a pretty good mum, you know, when she was in that frame of mind.

• 16:04Gemma Bath?

  Well, it should be said, was there any kind of postpartum illness there?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:09Gemma Bath?

  There was?

• 16:10Speaker 01

  There was, yeah. So after the train track incident, they treated her for a couple of weeks and diagnosed her with postpartum depression.

• 16:19Gemma Bath?

  Okay.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Gave her medication and then off she went, you know, she was released. And then the second time, she was only there for a day. She discharged herself, basically. She didn't want to stay. So there wasn't any further dig beyond postpartum depression. Okay, we know what this is. Here's some medication. Here's your baby back.

• 16:38Gemma Bath?

  Yeah, right.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's really, you know, times have changed, of course, but back then, you know, the seventies, I think there was this, um, a much more ingrained sort of sense of, um, how we view mothers and, you know, and, and, and, and fathers, the masculine versus feminine, men versus women. And, and of course, a man can't be abused by a woman, you know? So this is something else. It's, it's because she's depressed, you know, or, um, yeah, and no one expects a mother to do something like that. So I think there was no fear about giving her children back or keeping her with her kids. Yeah.

• 17:20Gemma Bath?

  I want to delve into some of her prior relationships, because it is, you know, once again, so surprising that this woman did not have a criminal record at all, before she was charged with murder.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:34Gemma Bath?

  Let's start with David, who she went on to marry. From what I can tell, that was a very abusive marriage.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:41Gemma Bath?

  And she was the perpetrator.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Very much so. I think that's where, in my opinion, you really start to see this kind of, um, MO in her, and how she keeps the men in her life, that terror of abandonment. Um, prior to David, she didn't really have any partners, so he was the first. And when that didn't work out, because her moods were, you know, kind of all over the place, I think it really shook her to the core and became this pattern for the rest of her, her adulthood, um, and how she dealt with relationships. So with David, they met at the slaughterhouse,

• 18:23Speaker 01

  um, hit it off very quickly. She was very sexual, so there's, um, speculation there that she sort of went after him. Um, and he loved, you know, the first couple of years with her. He had a great time. He said it was, she was the best wife. She was a great person to be around. Had so much fun with her. We had, you know, all these parties and this and that. And then something happened. Um, maybe he started to notice the pattern, but that was a recurring theme in her relationships. The first year or so, fantastic. And then

• 19:02Speaker 01

  it just kind of goes off the cliff. So I, I think maybe it was a case of insecurities, um, coming, creeping in, this fear that things are great now. I can't bear the thought of losing it. And so self-sabotage comes in and mood, mood, you know, these mood shifts come in, and suddenly they're fighting and he can't stand it anymore. And he sort of distances himself more and more. And it just snowballs from there.

• 19:33Gemma Bath?

  Well, the psychiatrist that eventually evaluated her for the trial, pinpointed abandonment as her core trigger.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:41Gemma Bath?

  So that makes a lot of sense.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:45Gemma Bath?

  After the break, Roji details the events of Catherine's wedding night to her ex-husband, David.

• 19:52Gemma Bath?

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• 20:28Gemma Bath?

  I want to share some of the details of what she did to David. Tell us about her wedding night.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Okay, so her wedding night.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  After they got married, they went home. And of course, in Catherine's mind, what you do is you consummate the marriage. And and she compared her night with what she learned from her mother, who was, you know, pretty boundaryless with details. She knew that her parents had sex, you know, five or six times on their wedding night. And that's what she needs to do. So David, of course, as you know, he was drinking from the morning. He was quite intoxicated by the time the day was over. And, you know, did his best and it wasn't enough for her. And she wanted more and he rallied again a second time. And she wanted a third time.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  And by then he just didn't have the energy. And she wouldn't accept that. And somewhere in her mind, I think she felt like this is not how it's supposed to be. If this is going to be a good marriage, if we're going to make it last, it has to be five times, like my parents. For some reason, that became the model for her. I'm not sure why, but it's what she felt she needed to do. And so when he couldn't do it, she took it by force. The way she saw her father do it with her mother is my interpretation of that. And so poor David wakes up with her hands wrapped around his throat.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  And he's gasping for air because she is choking the life out of him and demanding that he have more sex with her.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  So there begins their their life together.

• 22:19Gemma Bath?

  Yeah, what a way to start marriage.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:23Gemma Bath?

  And that kind of really does set the scene of what their marriage was like.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it just continued from there. Yeah, a lot of abuse, a lot of abuse.

• 22:32Gemma Bath?

  That abandonment theme really comes in when she falls pregnant. And then he leaves her and gets another woman pregnant.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:41Gemma Bath?

  So here she is pregnant and alone. And I can see where that, you know, why that's a trigger. Being pregnant and alone, like, that's horrible.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  It is horrible.

• 22:50Gemma Bath?

  But she was horrible to him.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. She was her own worst enemy in many ways. And I think not being able to control her emotions, that's where you have the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. She she exhibited many traits of of this disorder, this mental disorder. One of them, she just couldn't control her emotions and they overtook her. So yes, her husband leaves her, gets another woman pregnant. She's pregnant, she's dealing with it alone. The rage, the the the feeling of betrayal, the depression and anxiety that would overcome somebody. I mean, even the best of us, it would be horrendous. So for somebody who already has an issue with trying to control

• 23:35Speaker 01

  those very, very intense emotions, I am not surprised. Given her history and her diagnosis that she reacted the way she did. Not that it was right, obviously, but this was a woman who needed help and wasn't getting it.

• 23:49Gemma Bath?

  Well, not only did she try and kill her daughter, but she also threatened to kill his mother.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  That's right. She kidnapped her neighbors and forced them to to drive her up to Coffs Harbour, where his mother lived, because she felt here's another way I can get his attention. I can get him back. If I go up to his mother's house and kill her, then he'll be forced to come back and deal with me. So that was her plan. Yeah. And you saw what happened there. She kidnapped, I forget the woman's name, unfortunately, and her daughter and son. And then ended up at this petrol station where she was finally apprehended by police. And that's how they got the story. So, yeah, very irrational, very out of control.

• 24:36Gemma Bath?

  And still not charged with kidnapping.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Still not charged.

• 24:40Gemma Bath?

  Like conspiracy to murder.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  No, nothing.

• 24:43Gemma Bath?

  Like, this is a very violent woman and we could see the signs.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:46Gemma Bath?

  Another pattern I saw was that a lot of these men were scared of her, left her, but then they always came back.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  They did, yeah, they always came back.

• 24:56Gemma Bath?

  Why?

• 24:57Speaker 01

  People say it was the sex.

• 24:59Gemma Bath?

  Right.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, that she was that good, apparently. I mean, I don't mean to laugh about it, but people do say that. She was really uninhibited sexually and would do it anywhere, anytime with anyone and would do anything. So I think for a lot of these men, she probably was pretty strategic. And maybe it was unconscious, you know, but in the sort of men that she chose, because there are men out there who absolutely would not put up with what she did. But she knew her her type, you know, and these men that she chose, they did put up with it and they did come back. And they were very much drawn to her because of the sex. And it was sort of like, I get I get this at home. This is great, you know, I don't want to give this up.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  And and there would have been a side of her that was really loving, as they said. You know, a lot of them had a lot of fun with her. So you put that together. And look, you know, a lot of men, they have simple pleasures, you know, simple needs. Not all, but some do. And I think these men were probably in that category.

• 26:00Gemma Bath?

  It should be said as well that Catherine was quite a tall, strong woman. And she would pick men that were usually a lot smaller than her.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:09Gemma Bath?

  Which gave her control.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  That's right, yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. I think she was strategic about who she picked. I think she could tell on a subliminal level by their size, their demeanor, how they behaved, how they responded to her, that they would be easy to control. I think so, absolutely. And I think people, you know, there's a level of predation when you think of that, when you're looking for, not that she was consciously looking for victims, who knows? You know, I can't say that I know it was in her mind, but there are certain targets that you know to look for. And I think Catherine definitely went for that type. Yeah, and all of her men were shorter than her, they were slighter than her. And she was a very strong woman.

• 26:54Gemma Bath?

  The two other men before we get to the victim, John Price, there was, it's very confusing, another David and another John.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Two Davids, two Johns.

• 27:03Gemma Bath?

  Two Johns. Those relationships, did they follow a similar pattern in terms of, you know, affection, fury, fighting, breakup, sex? Was it all the same kind of thing?

• 27:15Speaker 01

  It was all the same kind of thing. It started with David and on to Dave Saunders, then on to John Chillingworth, Chillo, and then on to John Price. It was all exactly the same, the cycle of love, sex, happiness, joy, you know, having fun. And then mood shift and fighting and anger and violence and abuse. And then apologies and reconciliation and come back to me and I'm sorry. And okay, I'm back. And then it starts all over again, you know? So the drama was very much a part of her DNA. It's almost like she couldn't live without that. She didn't know how else to be if there wasn't some sort of drama happening, some sort of conflict.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  She grew up with it in her household, a lot of conflict, a lot. So it was modeled for her. And that was what family life was. That was what relationship looked like. And so she recreated it in all of her relationships.

• 28:15Gemma Bath?

  With the second Dave, there was another act of real cruelty that should have been a sign.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  The dog.

• 28:22Gemma Bath?

  The dog, tell us about that.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so she was very unhappy that he came home late for dinner. I mean, he was like 10 minutes late or something, you know, very, very minor thing. And started arguing. I think that was when she hit him over the head with a frying pan. Because as soon as he walked in the door, out came the frying pan and she was just in a rage. And they had an altercation and he was trying to stop her and calm her down. And they're fighting, fighting, fighting. And she decides, right, and she storms out of the house, finds a puppy that he was going to give to his daughter by a previous marriage as a birthday present or a Christmas present. And she grabbed this little pup and just sliced its throat clean with one of her knives and right in front of him.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  And it was just, again, you know, there there is a correlation between.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Killers who first begin with animals. And that should have been a major red flag, you know? So, yeah, he ended up leaving and disappearing. He went underground not long after that because he thought, right, if she can do this, I've got to get out of here.

• 29:34Gemma Bath?

  It feels like all the men kind of in the end fled.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Yes, they did. Except for David, she ended up leaving him.

• 29:41Gemma Bath?

  Right.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Which I thought was interesting, yeah. I think by that point, she had found Dave Saunders. Dave Kellett was always on the road as a trucker. And she probably decided, I've got another one, you know, screw you.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  I'm not, I'm not going to be abandoned by you. I'm going to control this and I'm going to leave you.

• 30:03Gemma Bath?

  But his overwhelming emotion there.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  David Kellett?

• 30:07Gemma Bath?

  Yeah, relief.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah, he was relieved. He absolutely was relieved because he thought, how am I going to get out of this? You know, he's sharing a child with this woman. He has seen what she can do, the train tracks, you know, the plot to kill his mother, the kidnapping. You know, you think to yourself, how am I going to extract myself from this situation?

• 30:27Gemma Bath?

  Yeah. Can you tell us about her house that was only a six minute drive from John Price's?

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:34Gemma Bath?

  Because it paints a very interesting picture of her, doesn't it?

• 30:36Speaker 01

  It sure does. That was another fascinating thing when I read about that. It was like, oh, my God, it gets, it gets, I don't want to say better, but like in terms of just the, these data points about her and the violence, the love of violence. So her house was just covered. It was like a museum of death. It was covered from every inch of her walls to the ceilings, even on the floors, everywhere, the bookshelves with instruments of death, instruments used for violence. So there were pitchforks and, and riding crops and chains and whips and knives and all kinds of really macabre, you know, objects.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Her bookshelves were filled with

• 31:25Speaker 01

  movies that dealt with death. So they were like Friday, the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, all of that kind of thing. And the, this was entertainment for her. This is what she relaxed to, you know? She enjoyed watching these slasher films. They were her favorite. And look, I shouldn't speak because I love a good true crime documentary. But this was a bit next level. It really spoke to her, her, um, her kind of inclination with death, you know? And it was one of the things I thought was interesting. The forensic psychiatrist who diagnosed her for the prosecution, one of his quotes was something like, you know, she's not in the garden growing things.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  I don't see her doing things that bring life. She has more of a fascination with death. I'm paraphrasing here, these aren't his exact words, but the gist was death is something, she has what he termed necrophilis, a love of death. And you could see it in her home, in the entertainment that she consumed and in her day to day sort of interaction with her partners.

• 32:36Gemma Bath?

  See, Roji, this is where I'm struggling again to see her as a good mom. Because she raised children in this house.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:44Gemma Bath?

  Young children. And yet her partners trusted her with their kids.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  They did. They, they trusted her with their kids. Her neighbors trusted her with their kids. Believe me, when I read about it, I, I struggled as well. I thought there's got to be somewhere where somebody says that she did something wrong with the kids or she was violent with the kids. But there really wasn't much. There were the two, and so there was the baby on the tracks, which is horrendous. There was the Melissa in the bathtub with the water too hot. I think her mom was going through a, a, maybe a psychotic moment or episode. But for the most part, yeah, they, and her kids did spend a lot of time with their fathers or with, when she had younger kids by the different, you know, her, her first daughter was much older.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  And so her kids spent time with their big sister. And there's no talk of her children having come out violent or dysfunctional the way she did.

• 33:51Gemma Bath?

  Right, which is telling.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  It is.

• 33:53Gemma Bath?

  So they've all turned into normal civilized members of society.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  From what I could tell, yeah.

• 33:58Gemma Bath?

  But there does seem to be this side of her that was really into homemaking.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:02Gemma Bath?

  Cooking dinners and, and making sure things were, because she did kind of take on those more traditional female roles when it came to homemaking, didn't she?

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, she did. She loved knitting, you know, and she would go hang out with her, her knitting group, you know? She'd go to the community center and do bingo. So, yeah, there was a side of her. I think her deep desire was to have a family life, to have a partner there, to have her children, to make a home so that she'd have some measure of stability. I think at her core, she did want that. She just couldn't control herself. She couldn't control her emotions. And maybe she felt that having this structure could help her control this volatile nature that she had since she was quite young. So that to me was a motivating factor, as far as I could tell, for her

• 34:53Speaker 01

  kind of disappointment that she experienced whenever her relationships came apart. You know, and that, that was the trigger for her.

• 35:03Gemma Bath?

  Up next, Roji tells us about Catherine's relationship with the victim, John Price. Let's get to John Price. By the time she meets John, she has four children. He has three. Tell us about them and how they met and, and what he was like.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  So they met years before they got together through a mutual friend, actually through Dave Saunders. So when she was with Dave Saunders, he was friends with John. They met at the local RSL or, or, or the Top Pub, one of the two. And, and it was that, it was a meeting and not much happened after that. But then they reconnected. He moved to Aberdeen in eighty six, eighty seven, something like that. And some, some, I think they met at the Top Pub, this local hangout. And she decided that he was the one. She noticed him, he was a real charmer. People say he was this lovable kind of larrikin. He was always telling a story. People were always around him.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  He had jokes, he was laughing, he just loved to have a good time. And so she spotted him across the, the bar there and he's got this little audience around him and he's having fun and she thought, that's the guy I want. And she even said to her, her mate, who she was at the pub with that night. And so Catherine being Catherine, she approached him and, and basically was like, you know, made it clear that she was interested.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  And I think sex became the, the way that she hooked him. And everyone said about John, his friends, that he was just weak when it came to women. He loved women and he loved sex. And that was a big part of his life by all accounts. So they hit it off. They liked to have fun together. They, they, you know, had their, their fun back home. And Catherine seems to me the sort of person that once she decided you're the one for her, that, you know, she wanted to start a relationship with you, that was it. She just muscled her way into your life, you know?

• 37:16Speaker 01

  And there was, there was, it didn't seem to me like there was much of a kind of, what do you call it? Courting. Where you sort of go on dates, you know, and see if it works. I think it was pretty immediate. And, and next thing you know, you know, and, and John apparently really enjoyed her company, you know? He really had a lot of fun with her and he said the same, you know, in the beginning, she was terrific. So it wasn't long after they started dating that he allowed her to come in, live with him in, in, in his home. And for her, that was a huge deal because again, she could be the maternal homemaking mom, have a place for her children.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  And she wanted to be married, you know, she wanted that stability. And she also wanted the financial stability of having a partner who earned really good money. At the time, he was earning six figures and this was back then, you know, that was quite good money. So she wanted that package, you know? And when it wasn't happening, I think that really, again, another trigger for her.

• 38:22Gemma Bath?

  And so at this point, they had her youngest two at home, but his three were a bit older. So it was only the two children.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 38:30Gemma Bath?

  And they also moved into John's house and, as you say, had a fairly good relationship. When did it start going sour and how? Abusive did it get?

• 38:40Speaker 01

  So it started going sour when it really started to get quite dysfunctional was she, she wanted to get married and she actually proposed to him. He did not want to get married. She also found out that he was leaving all of his possessions, his house and whatever, you know, assets he had to his ex-wife, Colleen, and his children. So Eric and Sarah were not his kids. They never had children together. So nothing was going to Catherine or her kids, despite them having been in a relationship for a number of years. So when she discovered that, again, another trigger.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  I think it probably triggered a sense of abandonment, betrayal, not being taken seriously. And so she confronted him about this a number of times. Why won't you marry me? Why are you leaving all your stuff, all of your possessions to, to your, your ex-wife? You know, what about me? I've been here in your life. I've been looking after you. What about me? And even his friends tried to tell her, look, he loves you. He does, but he just wants to make sure that they're cared for. You know, he shares children with this woman. She wouldn't accept that. And it just became this thorn in her that just grew and grew and grew. And she tried to convince him he wouldn't budge.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  And that triggered her and the violence came.

• 40:09Gemma Bath?

  Also the conniving came because she sent a video to his work.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:14Gemma Bath?

  And this was the September of 1988. What was in the video?

• 40:19Speaker 01

  So she went around and took video of things that he had taken from his job.

• 40:25Gemma Bath?

  Like stolen?

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Well, he says, no, they were going to be tossed out anyway. She says they were stolen. I don't know what the truth is, but the point is she went around and took video and sort of pointed out all the things that came from his work that shouldn't have come. The main thing was this first aid kit that he had taken and that violated health and safety. And I think maybe there was up on the part of his employer, this drama. We don't want this drama coming into, at our doorstep because here we get this video of this woman who's accusing so and so, and we've heard about her.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  So I think all of it together was quite a turn off maybe for them and the health and safety thing. They felt this is a good way to kind of keep this drama out of, out of our offices here. So that was a really vindictive act for her. And that was one of her, again, her MO. She was a paybacker as, as the forensic psychiatrist sort of outlined in his report that she was the sort of person, if you did her wrong, she was going to get you back. Revenge was very big for her. So that was an act of revenge for him not marrying her and not leaving anything to her in his will.

• 41:52Gemma Bath?

  Well, he lost his job, which I'm assuming was the goal, but it was a job he'd held for 20 years.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:59Gemma Bath?

  And by that point, she wasn't working, was she? She'd had a back injury.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 42:03Gemma Bath?

  So who was she expecting to support them?

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 42:06Gemma Bath?

  But it's like she didn't think that far.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  No.

• 42:08Gemma Bath?

  She was thinking of the revenge, not the...

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:12Gemma Bath?

  So what happened after this? Did he break up with her?

• 42:15Speaker 01

  He did break up with her.

• 42:17Gemma Bath?

  Okay.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  He did. He finally thought, that's, that's it. I cannot believe you would do this to me. You've cost me so much, so you're out. But she managed to worm her way back into his life. How? My guess is the sex. That's what I'm thinking.

• 42:36Gemma Bath?

  That seems to be her tool.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Yep. And she was incredibly manipulative that way. She just knew how to manipulate them. She knew what, she must have known what buttons to push. And one of them was the sex button for sure. So he lets her back into his life. And by that point, everyone is thinking, you're crazy, mate. This is really dumb. His children, his mates, his friends who'd known for years, they kind of lost respect for him.

• 43:06Gemma Bath?

  Really?

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, they did. Because after that, after the abuse, how can you possibly let her back in? And I'm thinking to myself, how? How could he? I think trying to extrapolate and imagine what the likely reason is, I think, one, there is the sex. And I think, two, he was afraid.

• 43:27Gemma Bath?

  Of her?

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do. I think, again, this is my interpretation and it's the, the, the kind of thread I went with in the book. I feel he was terrified of what she could do and that it was better to keep the enemy closer so that he can at least keep an eye on what she was doing. He was worried for his children, knowing how vindictive she was. And maybe he heard about the baby on the train tracks. It did go around town, you know? So it could have been a case of, if I kick her out now for good, there's no telling what she will do. So he slowly let her back in, I think to keep a closer eye on her. That's, that's what I personally think because otherwise, why would you?

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Why would you do that?

• 44:14Gemma Bath?

  Exactly.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:16Gemma Bath?

  And she went straight back to being physically violent with him, stabbing him in the shoulder in one instance. Do we know why she did that?

• 44:24Speaker 01

  It was when she had said some cruel things to his daughter. If I remember correctly, she claimed, she told his daughter, oh, you know what? John isn't really your father. He isn't really your father. And of course that wasn't true. But again, she's needling and, and being vengeful and just wanting to hurt him through his children. And I think that's why he was afraid because she went out of her way to spread this lie about him. So he confronts her about it and they get into a fight and that's when she stabs him.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  I'm pretty sure that that was that reason, or it was because she thought he was flirting with somebody. It was, you know, one of these kind of minor things, or it was his confronting her about her behavior towards his, his, um, his children. And the fight escalated and she had a knife in her hand and just, you know, just lost it and, and stabbed him.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  And then later described it as an accident. Oh, he, he kind of fell into my knife is what she told the police. He was just, he must have gotten too close. You know, I had the knife up and, you know, he must have just gotten too close. It's like, really? Yeah.

• 45:49Gemma Bath?

  Let's talk about that last day that John was alive. It was a Monday and he'd actually taken out an AVO on her that day.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 46:01Gemma Bath?

  Because of something that had happened on the weekend? So he'd finally, finally had enough?

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yep. They had a terrible fight on the weekend. She got really violent with him and I think he saw the writing on the wall and he was really terrified. We don't know what happened, what she said and exactly what kind of violence took place, but we know that they had a terrible, terrible row. So much so that the next day he went into work and actually said to his boss, if I don't show up for work tomorrow, it's because she's killed me. He literally said that to his boss and he told his colleagues that day. They could see he was afraid. So something really horrible happened and maybe she had threatened and said, I'm going to kill you.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  She had threatened to cut off his, his, his penis, you know? So he was really, really frightened. The, the following morning after that fight on Sunday, he goes and gets the AVO. He documents it all. He wants to make sure this is on the record. Then he goes into work and says, look, I'm pretty, pretty scared. If, if you don't see me tomorrow, then, you know, something's happened.

• 47:10Gemma Bath?

  Because the way an AVO works is she's not allowed near him, which means she's kicked out of his house.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they did kick her out. Yeah.

• 47:19Gemma Bath?

  So what did her Monday look like then?

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Her Monday was spent kind of planning for it, it seems.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  All this back and forth, planting seeds to, to, to write the story of her own victimhood. You know what I mean? I want to make sure that it's documented that he abused me. And so she went around telling people stories about this and that, planting the seeds so that she'd have sort of people who could corroborate her, her, her, her side of things.

• 47:49Gemma Bath?

  Did he abuse her?

• 47:50Speaker 01

  We don't know. He apparently would defend himself and they would have it out. So I think maybe some blows were thrown both ways. He always claimed it was self-defense and people who knew him well say he was not an abusive person. He wouldn't hurt anybody. If he did, it was because he was trying to defend himself. So that much was in the record. He was not an abuser in the sense of he would just lash and lash out at her for nothing because, you know, maybe she spilled something, what have you. When you hear cases of abuse, oh, I, you know, I didn't make dinner right and he slapped me. It was never a case of that.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  It was conflict that she initiates and then he sort of holds his own, you know?

• 48:40Gemma Bath?

  So that final day, she goes around and documents these alleged instances of abuse.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  She goes to the GP, shows the bruising on her. She also scratched her neck. I recall in, in some of the research that it was found that she had done that to herself, you know, to make it look like, to, to strengthen her side of the story.

• 49:03Gemma Bath?

  Then she takes her kids out for Chinese at a restaurant.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 49:07Gemma Bath?

  And drops them off at her eldest daughter's house.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Yep, Natasha's.

• 49:11Gemma Bath?

  Which was unusual, right? She didn't kind of do that on a school night?

• 49:14Speaker 01

  No, she didn't. Not without having decided in advance or, or brought, you know, clothing and, and lunch things, you know, to prepare for school. So she always had the stuff that they needed for school the next day if they were staying. And this time around, it was the last minute. You know, Natasha wasn't expecting them to spend the night and they didn't have the things that they needed for school. So it was, yeah, it was an unusual night and it gave her daughter Natasha a sense of something's not right here. And she, she testified that that night when they were at the Chinese restaurant, that she felt her mom was a little off, you know, something wasn't right.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  And she did ask her, you're not going to do anything, are you? So she had a sense that... Things, you know, maybe escalating.

• 50:08Gemma Bath?

  Do we know how the night started? Because she did end up going over to John's house quite late, really. Do we know how it all began?

• 50:15Speaker 01

  He'd gone after work to his friend's house to kind of just unload. I think he was feeling quite stressed and they had a beer. And his friends were trying to convince him not to go home. Because that morning, he said, look, I'm worried that something's going to happen. If you don't see me at work tomorrow, it's because I'm dead. Don't go home, you know, stay here. And he's like, no, no, I'm worried about my kids. I have to be home if they come home. I don't want Catherine to do anything, so better that I be home. So he goes home, goes to bed.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Around 11, a little after 11, Catherine violates the AVO,

• 50:51Speaker 01

  lets herself into his house. She still had the key and goes in. He's asleep in the bedroom. So she first watches a bit of television, Star Trek, Deep Space Nine or something is what she said she was watching. She watched a few minutes of that, had a drink from the fridge and then went into the bathroom to have a shower. And she changed into a little negligee that she bought earlier. Goes into the bedroom where he's sleeping and proceeds to seduce him awake. He wakes up, finds her in the bed and goes along with it. And they end up having sex that night. And again, I ask myself, why? Why would you do that?

• 51:36Speaker 01

  I think he felt that, because I'm imagining if he sees her there and she's on top of him and she's trying to seduce him, he could do one of two things. He could either just go with it and fall asleep and maybe get away that way. Or he could tell her then in there, get out of my house. I don't want you here. You shouldn't be here. And then what does she do? Then what is he dealing with? Maybe that's what went through his mind.

• 52:04Gemma Bath?

  I want to skip now to the morning.

• 52:08Gemma Bath?

  Neighbors and workmates kind of were the first to raise the alarm. And police arrived at John's home as part of a welfare check. Can you tell us what they found?

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, they found probably one of the most gruesome crime scenes in Australian history. They walk in and there is immediately blood on the floor. They came in through the back. So through the back, and I had gone to the house. I went to Aberdeen to just see the whole scene. So you walk into the back and it lets you in to, towards the kitchen. And immediately there's blood on the floor, everywhere. There's blood on the walls, just a really violent scene. Somebody had just a terrible demise here.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  And as they push further into the, through the kitchen, the first thing that one of the officers saw, actually through the window as they're peering in,

• 53:12Speaker 01

  was this, what they thought was a curtain, this sort of wrinkly looking shower curtain, I thought, just hanging from this hook in the archway of the kitchen. Didn't think anything of it until they walk in. Then he brushes past this curtain to find that it's a little wet and a little cool. And he looks down on his arm and sees that there's blood. And he looks back at this curtain and realizes it's not a curtain, it's human skin. She had skinned his entire body in one full pelt. That's the thing that really.

• 53:49Gemma Bath?

  It's hard to get the image out, isn't it?

• 53:51Speaker 01

  It really is. It's not pieces, it's one full piece.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  That includes his hair, his ears, his genitals. Everything's intact, which shows you the skill that she.

• 54:05Gemma Bath?

  For the time that would have taken.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  It actually, they worked out that it took probably 45 minutes or a little under that, which isn't a long time.

• 54:16Gemma Bath?

  No, that, that surprises me, actually.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And I only found that out a bit later with work in the abattoir and how long it takes to, to do that to like a, a large, you know, cow or something. That, and working out the timeline, they reckon it took her definitely less than an hour.

• 54:33Gemma Bath?

  Then they find what they assume is a body.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Yes, they assume is his body, which was headless, skinless.

• 54:45Gemma Bath?

  And posed.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  And posed, yes. So she had him, she arranged his body sort of upright and crossed his legs, you know, the left over the right, I think it was, and had his arms sort of, you know, resting on the, the back of the chair with a drink bottle in his hand.

• 55:07Speaker 01

  And there's no head, you know? So this is the scene these poor officers walk in on. And in fact, for them, some of them had to take leave after that and have psychiatric

• 55:20Speaker 01

  sort of therapy to, to, to cope with the, this image that they, I think one of them left the force for good, if I remember. But it was really traumatic for them to walk in on a decapitated, skinned body and blood everywhere. And it gets worse.

• 55:38Gemma Bath?

  It does get worse. That's the thing, it just keeps getting worse. I don't think I've ever heard of a crime scene this horrific.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:44Gemma Bath?

  Revisiting the details, I've known this case for years, but revisiting the details, it is, it is really hard to wrap your head around.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:51Gemma Bath?

  So it gets worse.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  It gets worse. So one of the other things that one of the detectives noticed was the scent of cooking. He could tell that there was a meal that had been cooked recently. So at first he thought, had they been sitting down to breakfast when this happened? No, as they go into the kitchen, they realize that there's been food in the oven. There's something on the stove. They take the lid off this pot on the stove and they find his head that she had boiled in water with vegetables. She'd also put vegetables that she'd cut up like she would with any meal, roasted them in the oven

• 56:35Speaker 01

  and cooked up pieces of his flesh that she'd cut away from his rear and served all of that with homemade gravy and the vegetables and plated them on the table, put little name tags, one for each of his children who would have been coming home later that day.

• 56:56Gemma Bath?

  It's horrifying.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  It really is, it really is. Yeah, very twisted.

• 57:02Gemma Bath?

  I have heard reports, mixed reports as to whether she tasted the meat.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was.

• 57:10Gemma Bath?

  Do you know if that's true?

• 57:11Speaker 01

  There was speculation that that's what happened, that she tasted it and decided, ugh. Or maybe she just thought, I just want a little taste of you, but then threw a big chunk of it out the window. So it landed in the, by the side of the house there. So when the police came, they found this chunk of meat thinking, was this for the dog? What, what's this meat here? And they realized it was a piece of poor John Price. So some of the officers speculated that she maybe had made herself a plate, taken a bite and, and, and just decided, no, I'm not doing this.

• 57:48Gemma Bath?

  It gets even more vengeful because she left a number of notes, didn't she?

• 57:52Speaker 01

  She left, she left the one note on the coffee table that was really badly written. It shows you that her, her writing skills, she had terrible spelling.

• 58:04Gemma Bath?

  I couldn't understand what she was trying to say in that note, I'll be honest.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  No one really could. It was basically, she was saying, you know, time got you back for what you did to me. You raped my daughter. It was false accusations, all misspelled, didn't make any sense. But yeah, she left that note as, as kind of like, this is why I did this to you because you. So I think maybe she was trying to plant this, again, a seed that John had abused my, my child. And this is, you know, as a mother whose child was abused, I, I, I got revenge. And he, he's the, he's the bad guy here, which is, I think was the purpose of this note. But again, she wasn't a thinker. Yeah, so.

• 58:51Gemma Bath?

  How did John die? Did he suffer?

• 58:54Speaker 01

  Oh, he suffered terribly, gosh. When, this is the part, more than anything, that really got me. Because I could imagine, you know, writing the scene, I could imagine he's just finished having sex with this woman. He gets up to go do, to, to, to have a pee, basically, and wash up. And he comes back and the knife comes out. He lays down and then she just plunges it into his chest. That's the first blow. And then another one comes down and that just gets him springing out of bed. He tries to flee, but she stays close and she continues to stab him in the back as he runs. There were no defensive wounds on him, none whatsoever.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  They were all mostly in the back, so he's running for his life. And the pounding of this knife continues for 37 times through his abdomen, through his lungs, through his kidneys, his buttocks.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  The description of the, what the injuries would have caused, which I read in the forensic notes, the collapse of the lungs, for example, all this air fills in the cavity and so your ability to breathe is diminished considerably. So he's suffocating.

• 1:00:18Gemma Bath?

  So we know he was awake for a lot of that attack.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  He was awake the whole time.

• 1:00:22Gemma Bath?

  For the 37 stabs.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, he was. He was running, he was awake, he was feeling the pain. Of course, his adrenaline kept him going. He was losing his breath, couldn't breathe. The pressure inside of him from all of the air that was escaping from the lungs and the blood now that's filling him up, he's trying, he's trying to breathe. He can't breathe, but he keeps going and she keeps plunging the knife, keeps plunging the knife. He makes it to the door and grabs the handle and manages to open it, hoping to get outside to get some help. But he collapses. She drags him back inside, shuts the door, and I think there she gives him

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  the final blows in the front, in his stomach and abdomen. And he expires there. And that's when she either, they don't know if she cleans up herself, goes to the bank, takes money out of his account, comes back and then proceeds to do the butchering, or if she did the butchering first, then cleaned up and then went to the bank, took the money out, comes back to the house and then takes a handful of sleeping pills.

• 1:01:39Gemma Bath?

  It's horrifying, the details of like, she went to the bank, she cooked vegetables and a meal. Like there were such same moments amongst all of this, amongst this evil. So as you mentioned, she has some sleeping tablets. So when these officers arrive, find this horrific scene, she's snoring in bed.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  She is, yeah, and pretty clean. There's no blood on her. There's all this blood everywhere, even in the bedroom. It's congealed, some of it around the edges. And they find this woman sleeping and she's clean. So I think that that also struck me, you know, that out of all of this chaos and mayhem and bloody mess, here's this snoring woman who's just, you know, showered and put on some fresh clothes and has gone to sleep.

• 1:02:33Gemma Bath?

  Did she say anything when they arrived, when they arrested her?

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  Not really. She maintained she couldn't remember anything, you know? She played this kind of card, like, I don't know, I'm dazed, you know? I've been on pills. I don't know. I don't remember what happened. Kind of like she was in a fugue state or something. And that was pretty much the line of her, you know, how she answered the initial line of questioning with Bob Wells. I don't remember, I don't remember. Yeah, I must have. I don't remember, you know? She just sort of pushed it all off.

• 1:03:05Gemma Bath?

  So you're saying that once she was in custody, she didn't admit to what she'd done? She kind of feigned almost amnesia?

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, she did. She feigned amnesia. She wanted them to think that she was a little cuckoo, a little crazy. That was, that was one of her plans. You know, this was one of the things that, that the prosecution seized on because I don't know if you, in the book, she tried to get her nephew to, to, to attack John and burn his car. She told some people, I'll just make out like I'm, I'm crazy and, you know, and I'll get away with it. So I think when she, you know, was arrested and she's in custody and she's answering these questions, it was more like, I don't know, I don't know, you know, it wasn't me. I don't know. I can't remember. Sort of trying to plant that seed, like,

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  she wasn't in her right frame of mind, so she wasn't entirely responsible for what she did.

• 1:04:03Gemma Bath?

  I think like, given everything we've talked about, I can understand how a woman like this would murder. What I struggle to understand is why she would do everything after that? Why do you think it is? Is it that revenge thing again?

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  So why she would go ahead and butcher his body and slaughter him and all of that after, like, why not?

• 1:04:26Gemma Bath?

  And cook a meal and, you know, like to go to the, the lengths of evil that she went to after killing him. Have we been able to ascertain why? Have the psychiatrists been able to tell us why?

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  That's a great question. I think the psychiatry side of it is that she is what they called a paybacker. Very vindictive, very, very vengeful. So yeah, there was an act of revenge in that. It was a final kind of, you know, I got you. But to who, you know, his family?

• 1:04:58Gemma Bath?

  He's dead, so.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  Exactly. So I, I, I see where they could extrapolate that based on past behavior. My personal theory is I think she went into autopilot because she's a butcher. This is what she does. And the way she slaughtered his body, his corpse, followed the playbook of how you dress a corpse that you slaughtered, you know? The way you skin it. When you take the skin off, you have to take the head off. You cannot take the skin completely off without removing the head.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  That for me was a detail that made me think she was doing to John what she did in the abattoir. And in fact, it may not have even the distinction. Maybe there was a blurry sort of line for her in her mind that once I've slaughtered, you know, this is what you do. You skin and you decapitate and, and, and the way she did it followed the pattern of slaughtering and dressing an animal in the abattoir. I hate to say it, but that's, I think that that's where her mind went. Because your question is great, why would she do that?

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  Why not just leave it at, you know, horribly the stabs? But to then go spend another hour doing this, it really is, yeah, it's, it begs that question.

• 1:06:33Gemma Bath?

  Was she diagnosed with anything?

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  She was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, yes. The forensic psychiatrists, both for the defense and the prosecution, determined that she had this disorder whose markers, you know, basically manifests in things like emotional dysregulation, terror of abandonment, very, very dysfunctional relationships and ability to maintain long-term relationships. And she had all of those markers. But in a twist, in my opinion, that had nothing to do with the murder. Though she had

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  what they felt was borderline personality disorder, they also felt that there might have been a bit of psychosis there. It still was determined that she was fully culpable, unresponsible for what she did and that aware that what she was doing was wrong, but did it anyway. So despite the diagnosis, that was all not given as a reason for this horrible act of violence. So as far as they were concerned, she was fit to stand trial. And I think that's when Catherine decided, I'm going to plead guilty rather than not guilty. They're not finding me by reason of insanity or whatever she was hoping for.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  And I think to spare going through trial and go, spare herself and her family perhaps, going through the detail of everything that happened and watching the video, because they, they did show it during the pre-trial hearings. And she went nuts in the courtroom.

• 1:08:16Gemma Bath?

  What do you mean by nuts?

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  She just kind of went a little, not a little, quite a lot. She, she was so, it seems that she was so triggered by having to relive that.

• 1:08:28Gemma Bath?

  So they showed a video of the crime scene, basically a, a police officer walking around and showing what had happened.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:35Gemma Bath?

  And she was like moaning and.

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  Yes, that's right. She was moaning and rocking in her chair and just not coping at all.

• 1:08:42Gemma Bath?

  But we've seen that this person is very vengeful, very manipulative. Could she have been putting that on?

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  She could have been. And some people thought so, yeah. His, Price's family certainly thought so, yeah.

• 1:08:55Gemma Bath?

  So she spared everyone a trial. They jumped to sentencing. There were still a number of witnesses that gave testimony to try and work out what that sentence was going to be. What did you find interesting about that process? Was there anything that stood out to you from those witness and kind of expert testimonies?

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  What stood out to me was the, again, what highlighted how, what a contradiction she was, because there were people who did say they were shocked, they couldn't reconcile the woman they knew with what she did. And then there were others who were like, yeah, Catherine was pretty unhinged, you know? So who do you believe? You know, who, what face did she put on when and for whom, you know? When you have some people who, who were like, she was, you know, she was a good friend, I enjoyed her company, and others who, who crossed the street when they saw her. So that struck out to me during that

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  testimony with people kind of giving these character testimony. It was a tough one. I can imagine it would have been a difficult retrial, it would have been a difficult case for everyone involved.

• 1:10:09Gemma Bath?

  Well, the judge ended up giving her life without parole, which is a huge deal.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the first woman in Australian history to date to have that.

• 1:10:20Gemma Bath?

  So no woman since?

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  No woman since. No, not that I've heard. And certainly while writing it, I haven't heard of anyone else who has since been sentenced to life without parole. So she was the first and only. And on her file, it was stamped on there, never to be released.

• 1:10:41Gemma Bath?

  Did she react? Do we know if she had any reaction to that sentence?

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  I don't recall that she did. Her family did, her father did, who apparently was in the courtroom and, and he was very wistful about it. But no, I don't think she did. I actually think that for her, again, this is just what I extrapolate, I think that for her, it was kind of achieving the, the dream of stability. I think there was a part of Catherine that really wanted a stable environment, a stable life. And I think prison gave her that, you know? It meant that she would never be alone. There was always somebody there

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  around her. It meant that there was routine and, and, and help if her moods, you know, if she couldn't regulate her moods, there was structure. And so she couldn't be this boundaryless, emotionally dysregulated, triggered woman, you know, the relationships are hard. I mean, the best of us can be triggered, you know? They're, they're very complicated and they can stir up so much emotion in you and sometimes a lot of anxiety, anger, depression. So for somebody who already has an inability to regulate that, to deal with the emotion that comes with relationships, the complexity of relationships, I think for Catherine was

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  hell, clearly. And I think prison probably gave her a measure of peace that she never would have gotten otherwise.

• 1:12:24Gemma Bath?

  I find Katherine Knight's story really interesting because it's often used as an example as to, oh, women are domestic violence perpetrators as well. Because obviously we know that men are usually the perpetrators.

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:12:45Gemma Bath?

  We're losing a woman a week, usually at the hands of a man. And then you'll often hear, well, what about Katherine Knight? She was violent, she killed her partner, she was abusive to men. But can you help me kind of explain, she is the exception, isn't she? Not, when it comes to female killers, she is so far out of the realms of what we see when it comes to the psychology behind why women usually kill.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  Very much so. Catherine, I like to say that she flipped the script because she killed more like a man.

• 1:13:22Gemma Bath?

  She did.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  She killed in a way that, with behaviours that we associate more with male violence. Whereas women who kill, they tend to do it, it's much quieter, you know, it's usually with poison. They target vulnerable adults or children is usually the case, women who kill. And they're usually serial killers who kill quietly. And they're motivated by financial gain. So there was like, for example, Dorothy Puente in the US who was killing, you know, these older, I believe it was, she had a, like a lodging house and she'd

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  have people come and rent, people would come, seniors would rent a room in her house and she would kill them and take their social security or something. Yeah.

• 1:14:13Gemma Bath?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  Lucy Letby, the little babies.

• 1:14:17Gemma Bath?

  The babies in NICU.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Lizzie Borden, who poisoned, you know, her, her family. So Catherine definitely is an outlier in the way and the method that she killed. But she wasn't a serial killer, but she was definitely a serial abuser. And in terms of domestic violence, she definitely was a perpetrator of domestic violence as defined by law in New South Wales. The behaviours that, that you attribute to domestic violence, she definitely had those behaviours. So yes, women make up the vast majority of victims of domestic violence. But men, 12% of men

• 1:14:59Speaker 01

  in this country face domestic violence and have, have done so from the age of 15, according to the ABS. And it's not an insignificant number.

• 1:15:10Gemma Bath?

  No.

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  You know, and about something like 2,000 annually are hospitalized for domestic violence offences. And the vast majority of the perpetrator is a woman. Yeah. Or partner in their life. There are also, the number actually increases if you include abuse by other men. So, you know, domestic abuse against men does happen. Catherine is proof of that. I don't think that because the numbers are so, so much smaller, that it's something that shouldn't be called out for what it is.

• 1:15:49Gemma Bath?

  Of course.

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:50Gemma Bath?

  Has writing this book changed your view of Catherine in any way or helped you try and understand what happened to her?

• 1:15:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, a bit. It has actually. Where it's changed my view is, I think, if, and I was talking to someone else about this, they, they made a terrific observation that I actually hadn't put together, even though it's what my book is about. But had Catherine been a man, I think that the headlines would have been serial abuser, you know, who, who's had years of domestic abuse, ends in this horrible act of violence. But because Catherine was a woman, it was just the headlines. This woman, you know, slaughtered and skinned

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  her partner. So what it made me realise about Catherine is the signs should have been taken more seriously. That she was a woman, I think, was to her detriment in, in that realm, because no one expected a woman to do that. And because of that, she didn't get the help that she needed. And they didn't, you know, there was no criminal history, as, as you know. So I think there's a part of me that feels you didn't get the help you needed, and maybe gender had a role to play in that.

• 1:17:21Gemma Bath?

  I want to end on John's family, because obviously they're the victims that are left behind. Do we know what became of them and their lives? And are they still in Aberdeen?

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  I don't know, to be honest with you. I did, I tried to locate her partners. They all went underground. There was no contact information for any of them. I know that Dave Saunders, you know, he took leave of absence and he, he was so terrified of Catherine that he just went into hiding. And from what I can tell, they all just live very quiet lives. They do not want to be in the spotlight. They don't want any information of theirs out there. I didn't want to reach out to his family. Out of respect, I think it would

• 1:18:14Speaker 01

  be too difficult to, on my part and on their part, to relive something like this. My guess is that they're still somewhere in the Hunter Valley, perhaps?

• 1:18:25Gemma Bath?

  I hope they've been able to have some kind of a happy life after

• 1:18:29Speaker 01

  And to find some peace.

• 1:18:31Gemma Bath?

  the horror of this story and find some peace. Yeah.

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah, I hope so too.

• 1:18:35Gemma Bath?

  Thank you so much for joining us and giving us so much more insight into this, what really is infamous Australian story.

• 1:18:43Speaker 01

  Thank you very much for having me. I was very glad to be here and chat with you about it.