Blood Stain

by Peter Lalor

  Over 25 years later Melissa heard the story from her family. She confronted her mother with it and says Katherine started to talk about pyjamas and nonsense. Melissa concluded she was lying. If ever asked, Kath said she was suffering post-natal depression, which suggests she didn’t tell Melissa the truth. (Years later a truck driver would talk of another incident where he had come out of the top pub around this time and noticed something under the cabin of his truck before he’d driven off. He checked and found it was a little baby in a pram—Melissa.)

  This day somebody called the police and Constable Daryl Mackell calmed her down. He decided she was having women’s problems and drove with her up the highway to St Elmos Hospital Tamworth in the ambulance. She told the doctors her parents didn’t love her and this had built up in her mind. It was her second visit and the doctors knew there was little they could do for her. For some reason Katherine was discharged the same night into her parents’ care. When she signed herself out she promised to go berserk again. This time with a knife. Said she was going to do the job properly this time. She arrived home before Mackell, who’d had to get a lift back to Scone in the ambulance.

  Katherine was back in town. Kellett had betrayed her and Kellett had to pay. At some stage Ken, who knew what she was capable of, had gone up to the Short Street house and taken away the gun, which was kept on the verandah. The family sent Shane, the little brother, to stay with her, but she told him not to go to sleep or she’d cut his throat. He figured they’d be better off back at their parents, so they went back to McAdam Street. He wasn’t stupid enough to sleep there when his big sister was talking about picking up her knives.

  When the Knights woke up the next morning Kath was already gone. She had a plan. She was going to find some order in this chaos, some justice for the crime that had been committed against her. Somebody had to pay. She got up early and walked back to get her things ready. A cheque. A money box. Some bandages. Scissors. Knives. All the things that really matter.

  That Tuesday morning Constable Mackell was sitting in the police house filling Sergeant Lyne in on the hysteria of the day before, but before he could complete the story he looked out the window and says, ‘Crikey. There she goes now.’

  Margaret MacBeth was a local teenager who worked with Kath at the meatworks and lived with her mum. They weren’t friends. Margaret never liked her. That morning her mother, who also worked at the abattoir, woke her to say that Katherine was at the door, saying Melissa was sick and needed to be taken to the doctor. Kath then walked back across the highway to Short Street to get the baby ready. Marg, her siblings and mum got in the car and drove across the road to find Kath waiting on the comer in the purple top and trousers that she wore everywhere. Something was obviously not right. She seemed agitated and preoccupied, but Marg knew she was a weird one.

  —What took ya so long?

  Kath spotted the kids in the car and started muttering.

  —There’s too fucking many of ya, I’ll have to get rid of some of ya.

  The family could see she was acting very strangely, but were worried about the sick baby. Kath asked Margaret to come into the house and give her a hand with the bassinette. Margaret followed her in and waited while Kath appeared to be tucking the blankets in. Next thing she knew Kath had pulled a huge curved knife from the bassinette. Margaret backed off, tried to get away and stumbled like she was in some bloody nightmare where your legs don’t work. Heart thumping like it was going to explode. Knees turned to jelly. She got out the front and fell under the lemon tree and Kath was on top of her. Nicked her cheek with the enormous knife. Margaret got away again but it was on for young and old. Kids were screaming and Margaret was bleeding.

  She was saying it was no use yelling or screaming; she’d planned this and the neighbours weren’t home. They weren’t.

  —Margaret, you know how much I like blood, don’t ya. You know.

  Margaret did know. She’d seen her at work nicking the arteries of animals. Kath said she was going to kill them all and showed them the knives and bandages and scissors and money boxes. Kath said she was going to cut them up and bandage them back together.

  Margaret was a mess and the kids were freaking out. Cars were going by on the highway but they were trapped in this deserted dead-end street. Nobody could see them. Margaret’s mother managed to calm Kath down, but she was still out of her mind. She wandered around the verandah. Kept going back to it, looking for something that should have been there. She wanted to take the car and drive to get Kellett, but they managed to negotiate. They’d drive her there. Margaret reckons they were at the house for an hour, talking and trying to calm her down. All the time Kath kept looking around the verandah. They didn’t know what she was looking for.

  At some stage Kath’s brother and his wife arrived. He found his little sister in a right state and gave her a piece of his mind.

  —Let ‘em go, ya fucking mad bitch.

  Kath told them to fuck off. They drove away saying they were going to get the minister. Maybe God could help her. Margaret’s mum said little Henry had asthma and was distressed; he needed to go home and lie down. Kath agreed to that and told him not to run as he took off. He wandered down to the end of Short Street, dashed across the highway and got the neighbours to call the police. Kath got in the car and told them she’d use the knife if they tried anything. They told her they needed petrol and so drove the 100 metres to the Caltex service station at the end of Short Street. Kath was happy with that; she wanted to cash a cheque. It was on the highway and Henry could see them from across the road. If only the police would come. Where were they?

  At the service station the family made a break for it. Margaret, her mother and another sibling ran into the office and locked themselves in. They thought they’d be safe in there. But Katherine went berserk again. With one hand she grabbed a large metal blade off an agricultural slasher and started wielding it around. Her strength was incredible. Then she turned on old Ken Sullivan. Hoppy.

  —You fixed Kellett’s car for him, you cunt. You’ll pay too.’

  She grabbed his crutch and started to smash things with it. Kath was trying to get at the family through the window. Smashing the louvres.

  —Youse tried to get away now I’m going to kill youse all. I’m gonna cut youse up.

  Margaret was in shock. It was a horror movie and she couldn’t get off-camera and back into her seat. The mad woman who nicked arteries for fun was only a few panes of glass away and sure as hell was going to kill them. Henry was watching from across the road. Where were the police? How could it take so long? The station was only a few hundred metres away. It was going on and on and they were nowhere to be seen. It seemed like half an hour before Lloyd Lyne and his partner arrived.

  Kath dropped the slasher and grabbed one of the children by the front of his jumper. Boy in one hand, knife in the other. Even today the 73-year-old former sergeant remembers the fear on that boy’s face.

  He had on a football jumper—I don’t remember the colours—and his little eyes were popping out. You hear about that when people are horrified and his were actually sticking out. The poor little bugger.

  They convinced her to let the boy go.

  When she let him go, he ran straight out of the station, across the road, through the gate and into his house and didn’t come out again. He never looked back.

  The two police came at her from either side, pushing her back with brooms. Sergeant Lyne talked her down. Then she expired. All the anger was gone. Her rage dissolved into despair again. She started to say that she wasn’t going back to the hospital. They couldn’t take her back there. She wouldn’t go back to Tamworth. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t. Kath said later she remembered the police threatening to shoot her. Melissa slept through the whole thing.

  Kath was handcuffed and they decided that Tamworth might not be the answer after the previous day’s experience. Sergeant Lyne had a nick on his arm that he thinks came from the knife but he says she didn’t
try to attack him. In Aberdeen today they say he was stabbed but it’s not true. Again she was thrown to the psychiatrists. A doctor completed a Schedule 2 psychiatric admission form, which enabled the police to transfer her to Morisset Hospital on Lake Macquarie. Kath was kept in the lockup at the back of the station and Mrs Lyne fed her lunch while everything was organised. Then they left.

  Back in Aberdeen the family nursed its wounds, physical and psychological. They went to the police to press charges but they were told it was pointless. They went to the Knights looking for some sort of explanation and perhaps an apology. They were told Kath was a mad bitch. Her twin, Joy, was interested in the bit of the story where her sister had picked up a heavy piece of steel that even the cops had trouble lifting. ‘She’s fucking strong, isn’t she?’ Ken told them he’d taken the gun away and that was what she was looking for on the verandah. Imagine if she’d had a gun. Margaret thought she couldn’t be chilled more. Shane told them he’d tried to stay there the night before but she’d threatened to cut his throat. The family figured she’d taken off at about 5.30 am. No apologies.

  Kath was sedated and watched carefully. Morisset was a large-scale old-style psychiatric institution built in 1909 and at times held up to 1600 patients. It had a number of wings including a high security section for the criminally insane and in those days had an admissions ward. Even today disturbed men and women catch the train to town and then make the long walk out to the hospital gates to ask to be taken in, but the admissions ward is now closed. They are turned away and wander back to the station, the voices in their heads getting more urgent.

  Kath told the staff that her husband had run off with another girl who was pregnant and now he was spending all his money on her. Said her parents didn’t love her. Still sobbing and distressed, Katherine told the admissions nurse that she had been depressed since her husband left and she’d tried to hurt him, Melissa and herself. She said that once she believed in God but now that she had been abandoned she no longer did. She said she blamed Melissa for Kellett leaving and wanted to kill her.

  One doctor made a note during her stay that would prove to be chillingly accurate.

  This lady is of low intelligence—she can barely read or write. Her environmental background is poor—she is one of eight children who did badly at school and married at 17.5 years having had little to do with men prior to meeting her husband. Although she says she was not in love with her husband when they married she now does love him with the birth of their 3 month old baby.

  The marriage seems to have been a very unstable one with sexual incompatibility and … though it was a happy one until she became pregnant. The pregnancy was unplanned and she wanted it at first, as did her husband. After the birth of a baby girl her husband had shown his displeasure by calling it ‘all the names he could lay his tongue to’.

  On leaving the hospital he shipped her off to his mother’s for a fortnight at Coffs Harbour, then to his brothers at Moree for a week. On returning home there were arguments and each threatened to leave the other.

  At this time she says she felt that she hated the baby and wanted to kill her as she blamed the child for her husband’s feelings towards her.

  After seeing her doctor she was admitted to St Elmos Hospital at Tamworth where she stayed for a fortnight.

  After returning home she was told by her twin sister that her husband was playing around with a 16-year-old girl and had gone to Sydney with her.

  On hearing this news the patient went berserk at her home and was apprehended by Muswellbrook police and returned to St Elmos. She signed herself out however and on returning home proceeded to go berserk again, this time with a knife. She broke into premises to seek refuge from the police who eventually apprehended her.

  She says now that the reason for her violent behaviour lay in the belief that she could get hold of her husband’s mother and in that way get to her husband and obtain an explanation from him for his behaviour.

  The girl has little insight into herself. She acts impulsively and violently when roused. She is both immature and intellectually [unstable] and seems to have little awareness of the consequences which might result from her irrational behaviour.

  She has no real friends, has great difficulty with interpersonal relationships.

  She says she feels that the relationship has ended and expresses many hostile feelings towards her husband who she says is ‘spending all his money on the girl—he never spent any on me’.

  There is probably little we can do for this girl but a cooling off period is probably required for the sake of all concerned.

  He noted she was of limited intelligence and suffering a personality disorder. None of the doctors who examined her seemed willing to stick their neck out and say that Katherine was mad. None ever has.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, up the highway in Queensland, things weren’t working out between Kellett and his new friend and she took off back to town. ‘It was just companionship really, but as it was she was pregnant. Me and this girl never got on.’ He decided to give it another go with Katherine; after all, they’d only recently bought the house and he was missing his daughter terribly. He rang her parents up to see if she would have him back. They told him she was locked up in the psychiatric ward and that they had Melissa. He was left with the distinct impression he wouldn’t be invited to the Knights’ for Christmas that year. David picked up his mother from Coffs Harbour to help sort things out and then drove to Morisset.

  They found Katherine heavily sedated in a high security part of the hospital. She seemed moved to see her mother-in-law and had some news for her. I wanted to take the car and see ya because you are the only one that loved me, but I wanted to kill ya.

  Mrs Paulger thought it was the drugs talking. She remembers her daughter-in-law talking to a nurse about a man in the same ward.

  —If he gets in me bed I’ll kill him.

  It struck her that despite the sedation, Katherine was alert enough about her sexual situation. Kath was always on guard about unwanted sexual advances and no amount of drugs would change that. Still, she was heavily sedated. ‘She was like a zombie and it was a terrible place, the ward she was in had steel mesh and locked doors and there were males and females in there.’

  Ken was sent a telegram by the hospital alerting him to a hearing before a magistrate about his daughter’s continued confinement. In the end Mrs Paulger and Kellett fronted the magistrate at the hospital and Katherine was released into her mother-in-law’s care—the woman she had been trying to kill when they brought her here.

  Her discharge sheet added further confusion to the story about exactly where Katherine had been heading that Tuesday morning, but gives further insights into her state of mind at the time.

  This young lady was brought to this hospital on a schedule 2 from Dr G. J. Young of Muswellbrook, escorted by Aberdeen Police. She had become violent and aggressive after hearing that her husband had deserted her. On one occasion she had taken an axe and was threatening people. She had been recently treated in Tamworth Hospital after expressing suicidal feelings and aggressive impulses which were directed at her three month old baby. The police escorted her back to the hospital at Tamworth. However, she was reluctant to stay and discharged herself the same evening.

  On the following day she became disturbed once again. This time she was brandishing a knife at police. After damaging property in the town the police finally apprehended her.

  On examination she was below normal intelligence and had poor insight as far as understanding the consequences of her actions. There had been numerous problems with her marriage and believed that her husband had deserted her. She was immature both in her manner and her attitude. She seemed generally concerned for the welfare of her baby but appeared to need guidance with infant’s care.

  Katherine settled down well after admission. On hearing of her admission here her husband and mother-in-law visited and expressed concern for her future. Her husband admitted there
had been problems with the marriage but expressed the desire of reconciliation. Katherine was discharged into the care of her mother-in-law, Mrs F. Paulger …

  Katherine was so relieved to be out, but even more happy to find that her husband had come back. She loved him as wholly that day as she had hated him two weeks earlier.

  Kellett and his mother drove from the hospital out to Ken and Barbara’s place in the early evening to pick up Melissa. The family were still living in McAdam Street and there seemed to be a lot of young adults and relatives around the house. Katherine went inside and fetched her daughter while the other two waited in the car. There was no way Dave was going in there. They’d kill him. The whole situation seemed menacing.

  Suddenly Barbara Knight was at the driver’s window with her hands around Kellett’s throat trying to strangle him. It was like the wedding night all over again. There was a lot of screaming and yelling. Her brothers, smirking and laughing on the verandah, didn’t move to intervene. Mrs Paulger, who wasn’t in the best of health, was horrified. This was the streak Barbara told her had run through the female side of the family. ‘She was choking my son to death and David just sat there staring ahead with his hands on the wheel. He didn’t say a word, didn’t even blink.’

  Mrs Paulger ran to the house next-door hoping to get somebody to ring the police but nobody came to the door. She ran back, crying and pleading. Barbara was a powerful woman. By this time Katherine had emerged from the house. She knew how to handle her own family. Knights could take care of Knight business. She grabbed her mother by the shoulder, swung her around and knocked her to the ground with single punch to the head. Git ya fuckin’ hands off him. That’s my man. We’re going to work it out. He came back for me.

  Kellett says it knocked the old girl out. Katherine was a strong girl with big, man-sized hands and seemed to know how to throw a punch.