Woman who cooked partner’s flesh for children loses appeal

AN ABATTOIR worker sentenced to life in prison in 2001 for killing her partner and attempting to serve his flesh to his children had her appeal rejected, a court said yesterday.

Katherine Mary Knight, 48, was given a life sentence after she pleaded guilty to murdering her partner, John Price, at their home in Aberdeen, 60 miles north-west of Sydney, in February 2000.

Knight stabbed 44-year-old Mr Price 37 times with a butcher’s knife before removing his skin and hanging it from a meat hook in the couple’s living room. She then cut off his head and put it in a pot on the stove, and baked flesh from his buttocks along with vegetables and gravy to serve to his adult children.

Police arrived at the scene before Mr Price’s son and daughter could discover the macabre meal. Knight used skills she learnt at the abattoir to skin him and hang his hide.

“The gruesome steaks were then arranged on plates together with the vegetables which she had baked and left as meals for the son and daughter of the deceased accompanied by vindictive notes,” Justice Barry O’Keefe said during sentencing.

Even experienced crime scene officers were so shocked they had to take stress leave, the sentencing judge said. Knight appeared before the New South Wales state Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday to appeal against the severity of her sentence. The court rejected it, but said she could appeal again in February.