by Peter Lalor
I love you Price, e.
with all my hart
Kathrine.
There’s a few Xs and Os, symbols of kisses and hugs, to finish off the clumsy gesture, but it’s a nice thought and Pricey wasn’t the sort of guy who was going to pick you up on your spelling. Probably didn’t even notice that she couldn’t spell her own name.
Katherine Knight and John Price had teamed up together in late 1993, as John Chillingworth found out so painfully that New Year’s Day. The date on the card suggests it was two months before Chillingworth knew anything about it.
Kath was absolutely, totally in love. This was the big one for her. There was no room to play around with wandering drunks, good time boys or the like. She was getting on and needed a life partner. Needed it real bad. Of course, she couldn’t see that she’d chosen one just like all the others. Pricey loved a drink, a good time, had a bit of the wandering spirit… He could have been any of the previous blokes. God, she’d met him in a pub, the same place she’d met the last three. In some ways John and Kath were a perfect match. Divorcees in their late 30s, they were both outgoing and a little over the top. Kath loved to dress up and dance and Pricey would dance with a chair if nobody was available. They hit the pub and the club with a vengeance. Living the night life in Aberdeen.
His daughter, Rosemary, knew Kath through her friend Tracy, Charlie Knight’s daughter, and told Michelle Coffey of Who Weekly that she had thought Kath was good for her dad.
When Mum left Dad he was always totally pissed and at the pub … He had a couple of girlfriends after that, but Dad was lonely, and I think that was how it all started off. I did get on really well with her at the start.
Rosemary said her dad loved Kath and her husband Brad agreed.
Yeah, he did. He called her babe, and I think he really liked having her round, even though she’d fly off the handle for nothing. He was affectionate and he’d go up and give her a kiss, or whatever.
The couple came to a comfortable arrangement. She would stay nights there—there were spare rooms for the little kids—and then she would go back to her old place at MacQueen Street in the morning and the children would get ready for school. There was hardly a sign of their occupation at St Andrews Street; they had their pyjamas under the pillow and little else. After school they’d reunite at Kath’s before heading back to John’s. It was an arrangement that protected Kath’s welfare situation. Over the years she did move more stuff into the house, but it was always in the face of some opposition. It was never really her home, as she discovered once when she tried to move the crockery around. She got a right revving up over that one. Colleen put those things there and that was the way John liked it. His kids never really took to her either and that was the source of a lot of ongoing conflict. Johnathon was still living there and he was openly resentful. He told the police they never got on.
I was still living with Dad in St Andrews when he first began seeing Kathy… things seemed okay between them. They would have the odd argument. I remember on one occasion, about nine months into [the] relationship there was an argument between the two. Kathy got abusive and started throwing things around the house and smashing things. She was scratching at Dad and hitting at Dad. Dad yelled out to me and I grabbed hold of Kathy and pushed her out of the house … I know that the police were called many times to the house about domestics.
John’s account of the fight gives another indication of her temper and also her strength—it took two men to calm her down. The tension between himself and Kath and Dad led to Johnathon moving out and sharing a home with a mate.
During the time I would see Dad a lot of the times. I would see Dad at the pub. We would never talk about Kathy. I would visit him at home, and Kathy and her kids would be there. I never spoke to her. I knew they were fighting a lot… From the time I knew Kathy, she would seem okay but after a few drinks she would just snap. It didn’t take many drinks for her to be drunk.
The Price kids were protective of their dad and always had been. After Colleen left, Rosemary, the eldest girl, remembers a couple of girlfriends including a woman called Helen, who had three kids, who moved in for a while.
Dad and Helen got on well together and I never knew of any problems between them. I do not know of any physical violence between Dad and Helen. I am not sure why Helen and Dad broke up, although I did have a confrontation with her which may have had some effect.
I did get on with Helen but it was just a bit of jealousy on my behalf that caused our problem. My brother Johnathon also had a run in with her about her removing things from Dad’s house. It was about 1992 that Helen and Dad broke up.
Dad did have a brief relationship with another woman after Helen, but I think it was just a physical relationship; there was nothing much to it. I can’t even recall her name at this time.
Naturally Pricey was keen on a physical relationship and he liked having a woman there to come home to, but the idea of being tied down again didn’t appeal. He loved Kath and put up with her outbursts because he was a softie, but his heart wasn’t totally in the relationship. And that stung her. She gave him as much as she could. Cooked his meals, did his sewing, kept the house tidy and kept him happy in bed, but she was increasingly frustrated because she knew he was holding back. There was part of him mortgaged to his first wife and the kids, and she couldn’t change that. She never really did make any inroads on that house. His shirts hung where Colleen had hung them, the plates hadn’t moved, the curtains were the ones she’d chosen.
Kath still had the three kids around at this time. Melissa had moved out to a caravan park in Muswellbrook, yet she was still under Kath’s control. One young local says he was drinking in the front bar of the Aberdeen Hotel with her one afternoon when her mother appeared at the door in one of those moods that sent the whole town scurrying for cover. Kath was furious. She raced up to Melissa, grabbed her by the hair and smashed her head into the bar before knocking her to the floor, where she began to punch and kick her, telling her to get outside, but not giving her any chance to get up. The man says Kath dragged her across the floor by her hair and out to the red van parked outside where she smashed the girl’s head into the side of the van a few more times, before throwing her into it. The cowering drinkers had worked up the courage to watch from the window and could hear her bellowing from behind the wheel. Could see the fury in her face as she looked back at the bar before driving off. And nobody did a thing. Not one of those big men in the bar was willing to step in and stop Kath when she was like this. They all knew what she was capable of.
Melissa says this did not occur, that it’s another small town story. It’s hard to know the truth, but all the locals in Aberdeen will tell you they would never cross Kath Knight when she was angry.
Like Barbara, Katherine was a strict mum and when Natasha left school she became house cleaner and tenant at MacQueen Street, paying the rent out of her welfare cheques. She would have to keep the place spotless. Neighbours remember Natasha copping terrible verbal abuse if Mum came home from Pricey’s and found something not to her liking. And, she would be punished in some way. Kath always figured that if you did the wrong thing you had to pay. One local remembers driving home one evening from Muswellbrook and finding Natasha by the side of the road. She was only in her mid teens at the time and it was already dark. She told the woman she’d been arguing with Kath and she’d been thrown out of the car miles from town, just as Saunders had been years before. Kath hadn’t come back to pick her up. The kid needed to learn a fucking lesson and you keep right fucking out of it. I’ll bring me kids up the way me parents brung me up.
Nobody dared cross her. A couple of the local boys recall being at the MacQueen Street home chatting with Natasha when they were about 14. Kath came home and went berserk, grabbing a pole and chasing them. The boys ran for their lives, the larger one helping his mate over the back fence before jumping it himself.
Her smaller kids were kept on a short leash too. A neighbour remember
s the youngest boy getting into terrible trouble because he’d left his jumper at school. An enraged Kath dragged him by the neck from the backyard to his bedroom and locked him there. He screamed and pleaded for five whole hours but she would not let him out. He’d stuffed up and he had to pay. You did wrong, you got punished. You deserved it. There’s talk that he was once hung from the clothes line. It was harrowing for the neighbours to listen to that boy scream all that time over a forgotten school jumper.
Kath was always after a bit of extra money and on top of the money she was taking from the kids’ fathers and the rent from Natasha, she started picking up a bit of extra by charging her nephew, Jason Roughan, rent to live in a pokey old caravan in the backyard. That enterprise came to an end when Kath came home and thought she smelt marijuana smoke in the van. She threw him out on the spot.
Pricey’s youngest daughter would make trips down from Tamworth to stay with her father in Aberdeen. It gave her a chance to do some horse riding in the hills around town and catch up with her old man who loved her with abandon. She found it was never uneventful with her dad’s new girlfriend. They got on well enough. Kath would pick her up when she came down, take her out for a feed and make her feel welcome before Pricey got home. She could be a bit demanding at times, didn’t like the way the young one ran a bit wild when she was in Dad’s care. Sometimes they clashed, but it was never over anything major. The kid just reckoned Kath couldn’t tell her what to do and Pricey would agree when he got home. Once the older woman demanded the teenager do the dishes after she’d been out all day, otherwise she wouldn’t be allowed out again. The kid told her where to go and when Pricey got home he supported her. Kath wasn’t used to such easy-going parenting and thought he was letting the girl run wild.
As time passed the daughter began to see another side of Dad’s girlfriend. She was a strange one. One night when they were camping Katherine said she’d been abducted by aliens; a story she would tell to others as well. The alleged incident occurred in about 1983 and Kath says other members of the family also saw the UFO. Katherine believed in ghosts. She’d seen Uncle Oscar, the one who shot himself. Barbara, her mother, saw ghosts too, visions of her grandmother and a naked boy on the lawns. Pricey’s kid thought she was weird. She even used to put the gravy on the back step to settle.
One day the teenager and a friend dropped into the old house at MacQueen Street to get some money for cigarettes—they said it was for food—Kath agreed, but said she’d be getting it back off Pricey that afternoon. Always careful with money. The girls were waiting in the cluttered living room where there was ‘all this old shit on the wall, push mowers on the roof, when Ken arrived. Kath was in the kitchen cutting something up when her dad said something she didn’t like. Ken could be pretty abrasive.
She had this big frigging knife and she came out and she started getting up him with the knife in the hand, pointing the knife at him and yelling and the way she was doing it. I shit myself; full on shit myself. I was scared and he said, ‘I’ve had enough of you’ and walked out sort of thing and I said, We’re going now’, and my mate said, ‘She’s weird, man, … she could’ve put the knife down and used her finger. That’s what everyone else would do.’
Snapped like a dry twig, Kath. Rosemary remembers that she and Dad would be all lovey-dovey and affectionate and then: bang. One time they were sitting on the front verandah when Kath came out and did some sweeping. When she stopped, Pricey picked up the broom and touched her on the bum and ‘she went absolutely mental. Don’t treat me like a slut! It was just bizarre. Then five seconds later, it was as though nothing happened’.
She was good at the domestics though, would wash up after dinner. She loved Rosemary’s kids, Pricey’s grandchildren, would sew for them and indulge them. Kath made a video of Rosemary’s wedding to Brad. She loved making movies, was always shooting the kids’ concerts or the new babies. Rosemary’s kids called her Nana Kath. She only had her family; she didn’t really have any friends.
Katherine didn’t care what the world thought or did. In 1994 Geraldine Edwards bought the shop next-door and got to know her neighbour reasonably well. She was in earshot of her terrible temper and foul mouth. If somebody parked a car outside Kath’s place on one of her bad days then God help them.
Gerrie liked her, but learned that you didn’t cross her. One Friday night she went across to the pub and didn’t get home until midnight. She rarely went to the pub and while she was gone her dogs became agitated. The next morning Kath stormed into the shop, ignoring the customers, and launched into her neighbour.
She went right off. Said those fucking dogs barked and barked and barked and I banged on the wall and they barked more and it was f.u.c.k this and c.u.n.t—a word I hate—that, and there were customers in the shop, but it didn’t worry her.
Gerrie apologised and said she didn’t know they would bark and if she ever went out again she’d leave a number so Kath could call if there was a problem. In an instant Kath changed from banshee to human and said, ‘Okay, then.’ Walked out and the whole shop took a deep breath.
I was frightened of Katherine in a way but I didn’t know what it was that I was frightened of. It was just that she was just the kind of person I would never want to have a run in with. She was the sort who would say exactly what she thought. It didn’t matter to her what people said or thought about her, she would say what she wanted, wear what she wanted and she just did not have any tact. She just didn’t care. It was like she’d say, ‘Stuff the lot of ‘em, I’m going to say what I want, do what I want and I don’t have to put on any appearances for any of them.’
Katherine had become increasingly over the top. She didn’t have any sense of protocol or decorum. She was nice enough. Friendly and good fun, but if something annoyed her she knew no reason or control. Sewing had became a passion. She’d make clothes and show them off and they were gaudy and inappropriate. There was one pair of shorts that were cut so high they were indecent. Aberdeen still talks about the day she washed the front of the house down wearing them and a bikini top. The town laughed behind her back. But not too loud. She would be all over fellas in the pub and they took to calling her the Red Squirrel. Pricey called her the Speckled Hen, or the Speckled Fucking Hen, or the Mad Cunt. Over the years he became increasingly derogatory and it wasn’t always in jest, but he loved her and she could put up with it.
One day she came into the pub to pick him up after she’d been on one of her regular long walks. She was boasting about how tight her leg muscles were. ‘Pity it’s not your cunt’, Price said. The others there were horrified and there was a terrible moment of silence when she could have gone either way, but she laughed it off and said that he kept coming back to it no matter what it was like.
With John, Kath changed a little. Through all those years with hard-drinking men she had kept pretty sober, but with Pricey she began to drink more. She liked rum with cola and chocolate liqueurs, sickly alcoholic women’s drinks. They didn’t agree with her, just as Pricey’s children didn’t. She’d have a few and start to stew. Get real nasty. In the early days of their relationship she would go out some nights with a girlfriend and would often sit and have one or two when she was trying to get John out of the pub, which was a bit like trying to get a mollusc off a rock. Usually though, she’d have an orange juice. Now she was getting drunk every week or so.
Things took a bad turn for Kath in March 1995, about fifteen months into the relationship. She was making no progress with this bloke and it was frustrating her. He was holding back. It was starting to really get to her and one day she’d been drinking rum and some liqueur and he’d been drinking and they started to get nasty. She wanted him to commit. She wanted him to marry her and he was squirming around. Refusing to be nailed. Things got really heated and Pricey said he was only in it for the sex and she should get used to it. It was nothing serious. Just a bit of fun. Katherine was hurt and furious and got herself into a right state. She stormed out. She’d show him. With
Natasha watching, she gulped down an overdose of pills and told the kid not to call an ambulance, she wanted it all to end. She wanted to be with her mother and to be rid of those kids and the bullshit. In truth, it was all about attention and sympathy. It had worked before and, like all her suicide attempts, it was not that serious. Natasha rang her aunt and an ambulance took Kath to the Scott Memorial Hospital, where she continued to be obnoxious and maudlin.
She was kept overnight and was much better in the morning. But Pricey’s words would always ring in her ears and she knew his kids were actively keeping him from her. The resentment between the Price kids and Katherine was an open wound that began to fester. Young Johnathon and Kath were bitter, bitter enemies and over the years Kath began to bad mouth him and the two girls. Kath reckoned Pricey’s son had been out of line with her daughter and Melissa told the police about an incident Kath would not let go.
I knew John Price junior from primary school at Aberdeen—not as friends, I just knew him. Rosemary was the year above me and I knew her through my cousin Tracy. She would come out and stay at the farm with us. When I was 17 I was living in a caravan park on the river at Muswellbrook. I had been in contact with Mum, and John and her were going to lunch to the club at Aberdeen. We had lunch then went into the pool room. Johnathon was my step brother. I needed to get back to Muswellbrook and he said he would drop me home. He dropped me back at the caravan. I let myself in and he came in behind me. I don’t remember any conversation. He walked down to the end of my caravan and sat on my bed. He undid his pants and began touching himself. He even grabbed dishwashing liquid and began touching himself. I freaked and told him to leave and threatened him to leave. I left the caravan and came back and he was still there and I told him he was sick and I was going to tell his father and my mother. He then left after I picked up a camera and said something like, ‘If you don’t get out of here I’m going to show your father what you are really like.’