Blood Stain

by Peter Lalor

  There are a number of versions of the story, but Johnathon didn’t want to tell his.

  When Bob Wells and Victor Ford interviewed Kath, she put her spin on it.

  —Are you able to tell me about your relationship was [with] John Junior. How you got on with him?

  —He hated my guts.

  She reckoned that Johnathon had shouted out in the pub that he had had anal sex with Melissa, but she set him straight and told him he’d only ever got to masturbate in front of her. Johnathon hated her and on the day before his father was killed he visited the house. His account indicates the level of antipathy between the two.

  The last time I saw [Dad] was on the Monday. He was on the back verandah. I was down there looking for some parts for my car in Dad’s shed … She was there, hanging out clothes on the line, but I didn’t even acknowledge her and she walked straight inside when she saw me.

  Kath didn’t endear herself to Pricey’s kids. One of the more spectacular conflicts involved his youngest and paternity issues. The recurring theme. The girl was about 13 at the time and visiting for school holidays. Knight sat her down for a friendly chat and explained that her father was not her biological father. The kid bawled her eyes out—the world had just slipped from under her feet. How could she have been fooled about something so important for so long? When Pricey got home she launched into him. Tears streaming down her cheeks.

  —I’m not your daughter.

  —What the fuck are you talking about?

  —Kath said you’re not my dad.

  —Kath wouldn’t know jack shit. Of course I’m your father.

  The girl was not totally reassured but felt a bit better. Then Kath arrived and continued with the lie. Pricey was real cranky about this.

  —You don’t know shit, Kath. Shut the fuck up and keep out of this.

  Katherine was always looking for a wedge between the kids and their dad, but when it came to her own family she was the connecting point. Without her, they would probably have all drifted apart. Despite all the anger and confrontations between them, the blame for misdeeds past, she was the one who kept in touch with all of them, passed on the updates. Was first on the phone if a grandchild was born or a relative died. She resented them, but could not reject them. For some reason she threw herself into other people’s families, elbows and all. Kellett’s mum showed her kindness, so she headed up the highway with a suitcase full of bandages and knives and scissors. She denounced Kellett’s, Saunders’, Chillingworth’s and Pricey’s mum. Calling them all terrible names. Prostitutes and sluts the lot of ‘em.

  Colleen Price was furious when she found out what Katherine had said to her youngest daughter and that finished any relationship the two mothers had.

  It appears Kath was developing a small drinking problem and around 1995 she checks herself into an alcohol rehabilitation centre in Queensland. Price’s daughter says that John told her one day she was an alcoholic and she was so gullible she ran off for help. Katherine spent three months up there getting help, although there’s some confusion about why she did it.

  ‘I actually went to Queensland for the mental abuse side of it. I actually had to say I was an alcoholic—I went to the AA meetings—it’s a big AA in Queensland.’

  Pricey had told Kath he didn’t want a serious relationship and now was telling friends he wanted her out of his house.

  Trevor Lewis, a miner who lived in St Andrews Street and a friend of Pricey’s for about twenty years, was helping build a shed in the backyard of his mate’s house and witnessed an interesting exchange between the couple. John asked Kath to get them a couple of beers. She refused. He told her to fuck off out of his house then and she said, ‘You’ll never get me out of this house, I’ll do you in first.’ Everybody who knew them knew this sort of banter. Him calling her every name under the sun and her giving it back in spades. However, her tenure in his house was a common theme of niggling between the pair and the heat seemed to increase over the years. She was pressing him to divorce Colleen and marry her, and he was reluctant to do so. A mate, Laurie Lewis, remembers many arguments between the pair on the subject. He was often called in to break it up.

  They became engaged, but Pricey told his mates it was nothing too serious; something to keep the peace. His kids reckon she took his money and went out to buy a diamond ring. It was a joke. He would never marry her. He told Laurie he felt she wanted to get her hands on his house. At this time Colleen was urging John to put the house in the kids’ names for that reason. He told Ron Murray that she’d bought the ring. ‘That keeps her happy, but we’re not getting married.’

  Sometimes it could be so petty. In October 1997 Pricey called the police because Kath was pissed and playing music too loud. He was drunk too, he wanted to go to bed and if she kept this up there’d be violence. The cops came and Price greeted them in a dressing gown. She’d turned the music down, but she was still driving him up the wall, then she came out in a see-through nightie. The police made a record of the conversation. Eyes on the notebook.

  Kath: What’s going on? What’s all the fuss about? Why are you here?

  Police: John is saying you won’t let him go to bed and the music has been too loud.

  Kath: What do you want to go to bed for?

  John: I’m tired, I want to go to bed. That’s all I want to do is to go to bed and you won’t leave me alone.

  Kath: There is no problem here. We have been having a good time singing and dancing. We just had a shower together and we were going to go to bed to make love.

  John: I just want to go to bed. Will you let me go to bed?

  Kath: Yes, let’s go to bed.

  It was a rough time. Five days later she fronted at the hospital alleging Price had assaulted her in the car outside the house, hitting her in the jaw and the wrists as she held the steering wheel. There were no charges. Another time Pricey got a little confused and called out the barmaid’s name when they were having sex. That was the cause of a major falling out that even some of his mates heard about. Got a bit of a laugh in the pub. They all knew Pricey was a pants man and would chase anything if he had a few in him. Kath knew that too and was particularly suspicious about a local widow. God help him if he got caught talking to her. She told Gerrie Edwards, her neighbour in MacQueen Street, that he would pay for any infidelity.

  ‘If I ever catch Pricey playing up on me I told him I’d kill him and cut his dick and balls off.’

  By this stage Kath probably figured he owed her the house. She cooked, she cleaned, she ran him back and forth to the pub, she was owed something in return. She was entitled to it. Then he got jack of it. He asked her to go for good after an argument about the house. It was the start of the great schism between Kath, John, his family and their friends. Gerrie Edwards remembers a conversation over the back fence at this time. Kath told Gerrie that Price had asked her to leave and she told him she wanted $10000 (Pricey later mentioned the same sum to Bowditch) because she’d discovered that he’d left the house to his kids. He told her there was no way she was getting any money. She told Gerrie she’d got the bastard back.

  She had kissed him goodbye that morning, knowing he was in for a hell of a shock when he got to work. As soon as he’d left, she called the family in. They had to get her possessions out of St Andrews Street before he got home. Joy, Shane, Barry Roughan and his wife Val came around and took things out of the shed and the house and down to MacQueen Street.

  Pricey was getting his house back.

  Kath had taken her favourite video camera and had filmed first aid boxes and the like that John had taken from the mine. He didn’t mind a bit of petty pilfering and it was a constant problem on the sites. Kath sent a copy of the video to the mine management and one to the police. While she was doing a runner with all her precious possessions, Pricey was called in at work and questioned about the theft. He denied it and then they produced the video. He was gone. He was suspended and eventually dismissed, losing his $100000 a year job, superannu
ation and long service leave in the process.

  When John got back from work he threw her out of his home, or at least that’s what people think, but Barry Roughan helped her shift and he remembers the haste of trying to get everything done before Pricey got back. There was no need to throw her out.

  Kath’s revenge shocked everybody. Gerrie Edwards says there was a quiet irony in that when she bought Kath’s house and knocked down the garden sheds they were filled with property from the mines. Laurie Lewis was infuriated by what happened. He’d picked John up for work that morning and remembered Kath had given him a kiss as if there was nothing going on at all. Talk about Judas. Kath was never one to have a guilty conscience. You messed her round, you paid. All was fair in her love wars. Laurie told her that he never wanted to speak to her or have anything to do with her again. Young Johnathon was incensed at what had happened and refused to let his wife or child have anything to do with Kath. Family functions became almost impossible. For a while Rosemary refused to speak to Kath too.

  Later Kath told Dr Milton that she had sent the video ‘after the very first time he hit me’.

  Henry Perry, one of the youngsters involved in the Caltex service station incident 20 years earlier, remembers talking to Pricey around this time. He thinks John might have been applying for a job at the abattoir. He knows he was looking for work at the time. Henry told Pricey about what had happened to him and his family back in the 1970s. He said, ‘If you go back to her you’re history.’ Pricey said he wouldn’t be getting back with her.

  But Pricey went back. About three weeks later Henry saw them together and made a mime with his hands like he was videoing the couple. John laughed, but nobody else did. Laurie Lewis noted that John started to drink at a different pub after that time because he couldn’t face his friends. Trevor Lewis remembers saying to Pricey that Kath would kill him if they stayed together. Pricey agreed but said he loved her. Ron Murray says he lost a lot of respect in town over that and his mates cut him out a bit. John said he’d lost his job, there was nothing else to lose. Both sides were unimpressed. Barry Roughan still reckons it was a waste of time shifting her out.

  And so they began the second major chapter in their relationship. Kath told Natasha that this was an end game. It either worked out or somebody was going to pay.

  ‘I told him that if he took me back this time, it was to the death.’

  Pricey told her if she killed him he’d come back to haunt her. Oh, and don’t bring that fucking camera anywhere near my house. Kath lent it to her sister and borrowed it from her when necessary. John Price was 43 years old and unemployed. He was at a loose end. It wasn’t a good situation and he took to hanging out at the top pub a bit more regularly while picking up a bit of work here and there.

  The new licensee, Paul Farrell, moved in in June 1998 and found Pricey came with the bar. They became best mates and the customer would drive his ute down to help them with the renovations. Farrell helped him fill in job applications, although he suspected Pricey read and wrote better than he let on. Kath was back on the scene by now and Farrell remembers her dropping Price off at the pub and coming back two hours later to pick him up. Often he’d put her off for another hour or so.

  Kath was a good bird like that. Ron Murray says she used to run him down to the pub on a Friday afternoon to meet John and sometimes pick him up later. He says she was good hearted. He recalls them verbally jousting, Pricey calling her a mad cunt, or the Speckled Fucking Hen and her responding in kind. He often spoke harshly to her and about her, but the publican says he got the feeling it was a show of bravado in front of mates. Pricey would sometimes say he loved her.

  Kath would get out too. Amanda Pemberton, a 29-year-old from Muswellbrook, was a friend of hers. They’d hit the pub Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays up until about the time Pricey lost his job. After that they got together on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the RSL and workers’ clubs in Muswellbrook.

  Amanda was well aware of Kath’s frustrations. She remembers she was extremely jealous and worried that Pricey would leave her, once threatening to cut his balls off in front of her if he did.

  The one thing that I did see in Kathy during the time I spent with her was that she had a very bad temper. If it was one thing that I could tell about her was her bad temper. From seeing her temper I would not like [to] be on the wrong side of her if she got cranky with me. The slightest thing would set her off and she would swear, yell and get away from things. She would also sometimes go to the pub and drown her sorrows. On a number of occasions she did this with me, especially in the early stages of her relationships with Pricey.

  The main thing that seemed to upset Kathy about Pricey was that he was not home on time. Things like going to the pub after work, talking to other people. Kathy seemed as though she wanted Pricey all for herself and did not want to share him with anyone else.

  Sometimes Amanda would be invited to come in for a chat or have dinner with the pair, but it was Pricey that invited her most of the time. She liked Pricey. He was a nice bloke.

  Gerrie Edwards remembers her in the pub one night, flaunting her jealousy and anger like a homicidal peacock. It was July 1998 and the shopkeeper was having a Christmas in July celebration at the bowling club with some friends, when she saw Katherine in the front bar. She was very drunk, red-faced, swearing and screaming. Going on about that cunt Pricey and how she’d cut his fucking balls off. Gerrie tried to calm her down. Kath said some old girlfriend of Pricey’s had given him a hug at the pub or something and things had spun out of control from there. She was just so jealous and insecure.

  One night Kath and John went up and had dinner with Dave Saunders and Glenda Reichel. Dave and Price shared a love of cars and beer; in fact, Dave had introduced Kath and John. It was years before, back in Segenhoe Street, and Saunders was pulling down the twin cam Corona. The one she vandalised another time. Anyway, the car had been in bits for months and Saunders was saying one night at the Commercial that he was sick of the slow thing he was driving and he was going to get that Corona back together. Pricey showed up 9 am the next morning and they spent the day drinking beer and getting the car running. They were too drunk to take it out when they were finished so Pricey came back the next day and they took it for a run. This night Pricey and her showed up for dinner he was telling Glenda about maintenance and the kids, and Kath started to get real shitty. Jealous. Didn’t like seeing him talking to another woman. They had to talk her down and then she was right again.

  So life continued in its own fraught, frustrating and self-defeating manner. Katherine wanted to be Pricey’s wife. She had her eyes on that house and while he loved her, he would have given it all up to have Colleen back. It was Col’s house, he used to tell her that. Nothing had changed.

  He was always a bit lighthearted. He’d say, ‘You can have the house, Col,’ and I’d say, ‘No, I don’t want it.’ You see, he worked his arse off and his dad and mum always used to say, ‘Buy yourself a house,’ and he always wanted one, and that’s why I let him have it. It was a nice home and I loved it, but to me it was bricks and mortar.

  I told him for years after he got with her that whatever he did he had to put the house in the kids’ names because you’re not letting her take it, because I didn’t give it to you to give it to her, and for years I was on at him all the time about it and saying have you put it in the kids’ names and he’d say, ‘No, I was going to put in yours,’ and I’d say ‘No, do it for them.’ I said, ‘It’s not her house.’ I said, ‘You worked your arse off for this and she’s not getting it.’

  If only all the women he met were like Colleen.

  By 1999 Kath was running out of options. She thought this was the last shot and it was all falling apart. She couldn’t pry him away from the ex-wife or the kids and he was becoming more distant, pushing her away, testing her limits. Pricey was feeling like a man who has got nowhere to turn. They’d painted themselves into a comer and it was becoming increasingly obvious to both of
them that there was only one way it was going to end.

  His mate Paul Farrell had left the pub and moved on, but Price used to keep in touch and late in 1999, maybe it was Grand Final time, Paul got a call at a pub he was looking after in Camperdown. Mid conversation Pricey broke down. ‘I’ve got to get rid of the bitch.’ He started to sob. ‘What’s happened now, mate?’ Pricey had trouble getting the words out and what he said shocked the publican. ‘She stabbed me the other night, I don’t know what to fuckin’ do.’ Farrell told him to ring the police but Pricey wouldn’t. If she couldn’t get him she’d get the kids; that’s what she had said she would do.

  John didn’t show anyone the stab wound. He hid it under his shirt until the day he died. Everybody would just say the same thing, they were already saying. ‘She’s gonna kill you, mate.’ He didn’t need to be told that. At the same time, she ran around town telling the authorities. Kath claims she told the police and her lawyer. She was always looking to protect herself, cutting off avenues of complaint. She got in first and told the police it was an accident. She wasn’t wearing her glasses and he came too close.

  He gives me heaps for when I actually cut him with the knife, I was actually pointing [it] at him. I went to my solicitor. I went to the police about it. I didn’t know I had a knife in my hand. He gave me heaps that night. He put his arms around me that night, told me I deliberately did it.

  She had all manner of excuses for the incident. She’d tripped. It was his fault. She wasn’t wearing her glasses. It could just as easily have been a spoon as a knife. Anyway, he’d dumped her in it when he got picked up for driving under the influence after he went to court and lost his licence and he told the judge it was my fault. It was all lies. He deserved it. Kath reckoned she was going to leave him. He didn’t deserve her. And he could only tell Paul Farrell, couldn’t bring himself to tell anyone else.

  John’s daughter remembers catching a glimpse of a big bruise on his chest a few months before he died. He said it was nothing and to forget it. She thought he might have been fighting with her brother and later, when she made the connection, she cried bitter, awful tears. ‘He said, “It’s nothin’, darl. Don’t worry about it.” I just wish he could have told us. I wish we could have been there for him.’