By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2026-08-05 18:03:40 | Updated at 2026-08-05 20:14:43
5 hours ago
Long before I moved to Sydney from my native New York, I was a true crime lover. The TV series Forensic Files was my entry into the world of dramatized murder cases. Plus, as a journalist, I'd spent years reporting and writing about people at their best and their worst.
Like millions of others, I'd developed an enduring, if not morbid, fascination with true crime, not necessarily for the gore, but for the psychology. And I grew up in 80s New York, a time when crime was at its peak.
After I settled in Australia, I began reading about the country's most infamous criminal cases. I expected to find stories I'd never heard before.
But I wasn't prepared for Katherine Knight, a case so extraordinary it would consume several years of my life.
The headlines seemed almost impossible to believe. A mother of four stabs her partner to death 37 times, then skins, decapitates, butchers and cooks portions of his flesh as dinner for his children. I remember stopping after those words, staring in disbelief at the screen, my mouth open in a small 'o.'
More than 25 years later, Knight remains the first and only woman in Australian history sentenced to life without parole.
Like many Australians, I initially knew her only through the horror of those headlines; the things she had done on the evening of February 29, 2000 – a leap year day that would not come around again for another four years.
Her de facto partner, John Price, had arrived at his home in the small Hunter Valley town of Aberdeen, New South Wales, after work. Friends had earlier warned him not to be alone with Knight. Their relationship had become increasingly volatile, and he had recently separated from her after years of violence and intimidation. He had even obtained legal protection against her before briefly allowing her back into his life. That decision would prove fatal.
Katherine Knight remains the first and only woman in Australian history sentenced to life without parole
Knight stabbed her partner John Price to death 37 times, then skinned, decapitated, butchered and cooked portions of his flesh
Knight murdered Prince on the evening of February 29, 2000, at his home in the small Hunter Valley town of Aberdeen, New South Wales
Sometime after 11pm, Knight snuck into his home while he slept, showered then entered his bedroom and seduced him. They had sex. After they finished, he went to the toilet to wash up. When he returned, she attacked him with a butcher's knife. Price fled the room in desperation, taking multiple stab wounds to his back, buttocks and legs as he ran, leaving a trail of blood through the house before collapsing by the front door.
What happened over the following hours shocked even the most experienced homicide detectives.
Drawing on skills she had learned while working in local slaughterhouses, Knight proceeded to skin Price's corpse, in one full pelt, including the face, the genitals and the hair, all intact. She hung the skin from a meat hook near the kitchen. Police reports stated that the stab wounds could clearly be seen in the skin.
She had also decapitated him and placed his head in a pot to boil. Then she butchered his flesh. Police later discovered cooked portions prepared alongside vegetables, drizzled with homemade gravy.
The case instantly became one of Australia's most notorious murders. The more I read, the more I realized the murder itself was really the final chapter of a much longer story.
As I came to discover, Knight had established a pattern of violence towards the men in her life long before she murdered Price.
Former partners described repeated beatings, threats, intimidation and revenge whenever she felt crossed or wronged in some way. One partner was stabbed with scissors, and his dog killed in front of him because he arrived home late for dinner. Another was struck with a frying pan as he walked in the front door. Another with a hot iron.
All described living in constant fear of provoking her rage. Relationships followed a familiar cycle of affection, jealousy, violence, reconciliation and renewed violence. By the time Price entered Knight's life, the warning signs had been there for years, unchecked.
That deepened my curiosity. I needed to know her origin story, so that I could fathom the unfathomable. What was her family life like? What shaped her? Why did violence become such a defining feature in her relationships?
It didn't take long to uncover a childhood wracked by instability. Her mother, Barbara Roughan, was still married to John Roughan, with whom she had four sons, when she began a relationship with Price's friend and co-worker Ken Knight.
The years that followed were plagued with violence and dysfunction. Ken Knight allegedly demanded sex from Barbara multiple times a day and would take it by force if she refused. They eventually had four children together; two sons, and two daughters – Katherine and fraternal twin, Joy.
Knight had established a pattern of violence towards the men in her life long before she murdered Price
Knight's tiny weatherboard cottage is now derelict and abandoned
The author, Rojé Augustin, visited Aberdeen 26 years after Knight's heinous crime
By all accounts, the boundaries between Barbara and her daughters were blurred. Barbara reportedly confided in the girls about her sex life, exposing them to stories of coercion, sexual violence and a profound distrust of men.
Knight also alleged she had been sexually abused by members of her own family, claims that were neither substantiated by police records, nor dismissed by those who knew her.
As a teenager, she developed a reputation for explosive anger, leaving school at fifteen to work at the local slaughterhouse, where she quickly became known for her physical strength and skill with knives.
What made her compelling was that Knight was a woman of striking contradictions. She could be generous, funny and fiercely loyal. She doted on her children and was always ready to help her neighbors. But if you got in her cross hairs, as neighbors put it, she would erupt into a terrifying rage with little warning.
Many people struggled to reconcile the woman they knew with the crimes she would eventually commit.
Before her trial, Knight underwent forensic assessment. Psychiatrists concluded she exhibited features consistent with borderline personality disorder, including profound emotional dysregulation and an intense fear of abandonment.
And yet, in a stunning twist, they also concluded she understood exactly what she had done when she murdered Price. She knew it was wrong but did it anyway. In legal terms, she was fully responsible for her actions and fit to stand trial. I found this decision extraordinary, because I both agreed and disagreed.
The more I researched the story, the more interested I became in the patterns of her life and behavior. Again and again, I saw the same themes emerge: jealousy, rejection, possessiveness, revenge and control. Violence and sex became Knight's way of responding to conflict.
She spent years terrorizing and manipulating men. I came to think of her not simply as a murderer but as a serial abuser whose violence culminated in one unimaginable act.
As an American living in Australia, I was also struck by something else. Outside of Australia, Katherine Knight's name is far less familiar than those of Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer or John Wayne Gacy. Yet her case can stand alongside any of them for its sheer brutality and psychological complexity. She challenges many assumptions about violent offenders, particularly the assumption that extreme domestic violence is exclusively a male phenomenon.
What I realized as I pieced together a narrative that would become The Butcher of Aberdeen was that her story is essentially one of domestic violence against men, a topic that remains largely overlooked in mainstream public discourse.
Months after reading court records, newspaper reports, basically everything I could get my hands on about the case, I found myself travelling to Aberdeen, the place where the tragic tale unfolded. I walked the same streets that Knight and Price had walked, I had a beer with the barman and two locals at the Top Pub where Knight and Price hung out, I took photos of her tiny weatherboard cottage, now derelict and abandoned, and of Price's home, which has sat empty since that fateful night 26 years ago.
The facts of the case remain almost beyond comprehension. Nothing can diminish the horror of what happened to Price or the devastation experienced by those who loved him. But if Knight's story has anything to teach us, it is that domestic violence is not strictly about gender, it is about power and control.
The Butcher of Aberdeen: A Story of Sex, Madness and Murder by Rojé Augustin is published by Post Hill Press
