Thread by @IhuezeMD

Childhood trauma has to be one of the leading reasons why people exhibit psychopathic behaviour.

Let's take Katherine Knight for eg, she became the first female in Australia to receive a life sentence without parole after she decapitated & cooked her boyfriend James Price.

Most lovers' quarrels end with an apology. But for Katherine Mary Knight, cold-blooded revenge was the only answer.

Born on Oct. 5,1955, in New South Wales, she was the product of a scandalous affair between her mother, Barbara Roughan, & her father, Ken Knight.
Roughan, already a mother of four boys, met Knight through her former husband.

When their secret rendezvous came to light, it rocked the conservative town they resided in.

Already a tumultuous start to life, Knight’s chaotic childhood continued as such. Her father was a violent alcoholic who raped her mother multiple times a day. Knight herself also claims that she was sexually assaulted by several family members until the age of 11.

In school, Knight was known as a bully who terrorized smaller children. Without ever learning how to read or write, she quit at the age of 15 to work at a clothing factory. A year later, she landed her “dream job” at a slaughterhouse cutting out the internal organs of animals.

Journalist Peter Lalor wrote in Bloodstain, his true-crime book on Katherine Knight, that she loved her job so much that she hung her first set of butcher’s knives over her bed — just in case she ever needed them.

And eventually, she did.

While working in the butcher shop, Knight met David Kellett, a raging alcoholic much like her father who was prone to fistfights whenever the opportunity presented itself. Used to this kind of violence, Knight surprised her new beau when she joined in on one of his drunken melees

He soon realized, however, that Knight was capable of doing more than a little damage with her fists. Before long was finding himself being dominated by her.

In 1974, she convinced him to marry her. He was heavily intoxicated the entire time and her mother even warned him about her daughter’s temper, saying that Knight had “a screw loose somewhere.”

On their wedding night, Knight and Kellett consummated their marriage three times. When he fell asleep, Knight took issue with her new husband’s premature exhaustion and started to strangle him.

Thankfully, Kellett woke up and managed to fight Knight off. Even though she attempted to kill him only one day into their marriage, the union lasted for 10 more years. The marriage was, however, far from perfect.

Kellett developed a nasty habit for being unfaithful, & once even left his wife & their two daughters in the middle of the night. After discovering one of Kellett’s affairs, Knight placed their 2-month-old infant on a railway line & then threatened several people with a stolen ax

She was diagnosed with postnatal depression after witnesses saw her violently pushing and swinging her second child in a stroller down a busy street.

She spent a few months in a psychiatric hospital, where she told nurses that she intended to kill a mechanic who had fixed Kellett’s car because that made it possible for him to leave her. Despite this threat, Kellett took Knight back when she was released from the hospital. 🤦🏾‍♂️🤦🏾‍♂️

Their reunion didn’t last long, and Knight went through a period of deep distress after Kellett finally left her.

Just six years later, Katherine Knight met David Saunders.
After her breakup with Kellett, Knight jumped into a whirlwind romance with David Saunders, a local miner.

A few months after meeting, Saunders moved in with her and her two daughters. However, he kept his apartment, and Knight became incredibly jealous and suspicious about what he did when she wasn’t around. Like her previous relationships, this one quickly grew toxic and violent.

At one point she slit the throat of his two-month-old dingo puppy in front of him just to show what she was capable of.

Still, they stayed together and even had a daughter a year later.

However, Saunders left Knight shortly after the birth because she had attempted to kill him with a pair of scissors. She then met a man named John Chillingworth. They stayed together for three years and had a child, Eric, Knight’s first son.

While no violent incidents have been reported about their relationship, it would end after Chillingworth learned that Knight was having an affair with a man named John Price. The beginning of Knight and Price’s relationship was without complications.

He had two older children who lived with him and seemed to like Knight, and he made enough money as a miner to keep her comfortable. However, when she suggested they marry, and he declined, she turned violent.

Knight framed Price for stealing things from his company & got him fired. Though he initially kicked her out, a few months later they started seeing each other again.

However this time, he refused to let her move back in.

According to their friends & neighbors, Knight began to escalate.

In February of 2000, an argument between Price and Knight culminated with her attempting to stab him in the chest. He took out a restraining order against her in an attempt to keep his children safe.

Toward the end of the month, Price let on that he was concerned for his safety and told his coworkers that if he ever went missing, it was because Knight killed him.

He had a right to be afraid.

On Feb. 29, Price came home from work & followed his usual routine of checking in with the neighbors before going to bed at 11 p.m. Knight came shortly after, made herself dinner, watched TV, showered, & then went upstairs. She woke Price, the two had sex, and he went back to bed

Then, Katherine Knight took a butcher knife from next to her bed — where she had always kept them — and stabbed Price 37 times. According to blood evidence, he woke up during the attack but could not fight her off.

Eventually, he succumbed to his wounds, and Knight dragged his body downstairs, skinned him, and hung his body from a meat hook hanging in the living room.

Then, she decapitated him and cut up pieces of his body to cook in a dish with potato, pumpkin, beets, zucchini, cabbage, squash & gravy.

She then made a dish for herself, though from the half-discarded contents it appeared she couldn’t finish it.

She then lay down next to the headless, mutilated corpse of Price, took a large number of pills, and passed out.

Price’s coworkers heeded his warning the next morning and called the police after he didn’t show up for his shift.

The police arrived to find the gruesome scene and immediately detained the comatose Katherine Knight. Once she woke up, she claimed to have no memory of the night before. In the kitchen, police found Price’s head, boiling in a pot of vegetables on the stove.

The police arrived to find the gruesome scene and immediately detained the comatose Katherine Knight. Once she woke up, she claimed to have no memory of the night before. In the kitchen, police found Price’s head, boiling in a pot of vegetables on the stove.

On the table, they found two full plates, each labeled with a name. In horror, the police realized that Knight had planned to serve John Price’s body parts to his children.

Eventually, Katherine Knight was charged with his murder.

In October of 2001, her trial commenced but it didn’t get very far. For reasons still unknown to this day, Knight changed her plea to guilty and the judge adjourned the case without testimony.

She was escorted to prison that day and the judge ordered that her papers be marked “never to be released.” For the first time in history, a woman in Australia was given a life sentence without parole.

It was a fitting sentence given that Knight stabbed her boyfriend 37 times, skinned his body & cooked parts of him into a stew that she intended to serve to his children
To this day, Katherine Knight still maintains her innocence & refuses to accept responsibility for her actions

Katherine Knight has appealed her sentence before and was denied almost immediately. She is still serving her life sentence at Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre.

Here's a picture of Katherine Knight and James Price.

@__nhyira__ read