Katherine Mary Knight (born 24 October 1955) is the first Australian woman to be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. She was convicted of the murder of her partner, John Charles Thomas Price, in October 2001, and is currently imprisoned at the Silverwater Women's Correctional Centre in New South Wales. She stabbed him to death and then skinned him. She then put his skin on a meat hook, cooked his head and parts of his body, and placed them together with vegetables on plates with placecards with his children's names.
In February 2000, a series of assaults on Price culminated with Knight stabbing Price in the chest. Finally fed up, he kicked her out of his house. On 29 February, he stopped at the Scone Magistrate's Court on his way to work and took out a restraining order in an attempt to keep her away from both him and his children. That afternoon, Price told his co-workers that if he did not come to work the next day, it would be because Knight had killed him. They pleaded with him not to go home but he told them that he believed she would kill his children if he did not. Price arrived home to find that Knight, although not there herself, had sent the children away for a sleep-over at a friend's house. He then spent the evening with his neighbors before returning home and going to bed at 11 pm. Earlier that day, Knight had bought new black lingerie and had videotaped all her children while making comments which have since been interpreted as a crude will. Knight later arrived at Price's house while he was sleeping and sat watching TV for a few minutes before having a shower. She then woke Price and they had sex, after which he fell asleep.
At 6 am the next day, the neighbor became concerned that Price's car was still in the driveway and when Price did not arrive at work, his employer sent a worker to see what was wrong. Both the neighbor and worker tried knocking on Price's bedroom window to wake him, but after noticing blood on the front door alerted the police, who arrived at 8 am. Breaking down the back door, police found his body with Knight comatose from taking a large number of pills. She had stabbed Price with a butcher's knife while he was sleeping. According to the blood evidence, he awoke and tried to turn the light on before attempting to escape while Knight chased him through the house, he managed to open the front door and get outside but either stumbled back inside or was dragged back into the hallway, where he finally died after bleeding out. Later, Knight went into Aberdeen and withdrew $1,000 from Price's ATM account. Price's autopsy revealed that he had been stabbed at least 37 times, in both the front and back of his body, with many of the wounds extending into vital organs. Several hours after Price had died, Knight skinned him and hung the skin from a meat hook on the architrave of a door to the lounge room. She then decapitated him and cooked parts of his body.
