by Peter Lalor
The animosity between the Knights and the Prices has been causing headaches for Bob Wells, who has had to tell Jason Roughan, Kath’s nephew, to pull his head in or he’ll be spending the trial in a cell. Bob Price has an esky in a car in the carpark and is topping up constantly. It’s becoming a circus and some of the Price relatives are embarrassed.
Forensic pathologist Dr Tim Lyons is called to the stand and begins to explain how the skin was removed and how it was of considerable weight, possibly about fifteen kilograms. He says it’s impossible to say if the wounds to the back and legs were inflicted when Price was running or lying down and that it had been hard enough just to match up the 37 entry holes in the skin to the ones in the body and limbs. Lyons says the death would have been fairly quick. He also suggests the blood stains in the bedroom may have come from the carotid artery in the neck. Macadam is interested in more emotive responses.
—Doctor, in your experience of years of attending crime scenes and the like, I imagine that even in your past experience you would never have come across a case such as this before?
—I have never seen such an unusual case as this before.
After lunch discussion revolves around the decapitation, with Lyons explaining how there were no marks on the bones and the knife had to cut through muscles, tendons, ligaments and neurovascular bundles. It had to be a sharp knife, but it also had to be a skilled hand. Macadam suggests:
—It is one thing to chop a person’s head off with an axe or meat cleaver or something like that with brute force, but this was a much more delicate operation, if delicate is the right word?
—Yes, it appeared to be, if I could use the word, [to] have been anatomically dissected.
They move on to the subject of skinning, which only Lyons has had any experience of.
Knowing how long it takes to carry out certain dissection techniques which I do, I mean, I can say to you I think it would not have taken just a few minutes, but it is something that could probably been completed within 30 minutes to an hour, but beyond that I would not like to say.
He estimates it would take five to ten minutes to remove the head with a sharp knife. O’Keefe struggles to understand the evidence and says to Thraves, ‘I am just trying to ascertain what you do. I have never cut a head off.’ To help him understand, Lyons draws a diagram with a pencil and is then excused. The court is then played the video of Bob Wells and Victor Ford interviewing Katherine Knight at the hospital. O’Keefe says he is ‘anxious to see the mien of the prisoner’.
On Thursday they play the video Knight made on the night of the murder and after lunch Peter Muscio gives evidence about the crime scene, producing the knives and a glove for the judge to handle them with because they are still bloody. The policeman gives his opinion that Katherine has had to carry the head through the arch with the skin hanging from it when Thraves suggests there is something wrong with his client. Katherine is sitting in the box. Eyes closed. O’Keefe says they should continue. She begins to moan and rock and kick the partition and scream. Shane Knight yells from the gallery that she needs help and O’Keefe adjourns the hearing. Katherine is carried out screaming, ‘No...no...no.’ It’s a chilling interruption. Bob Wells thinks she was crying ‘John...John …’
The next morning the judge explains that the previous day’s episode was over in a matter of minutes. ‘Mrs Knight was given a cup of tea with lots of milk and sugar in it and then removed to the prison.’ She was later given a mild sedative. Dr Delaforce is called to the stand. He is asked about the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. Macadam wants to know if this is behind what happened on the night of the murder. Delaforce doesn’t think so.
What she did on the night was part of her personality, her nature, herself, but it is not a feature of borderline personality disorder. It is not even slightly connected.
He is asked whether her post-traumatic stress disorder has anything to do with the murder. He says again he thinks it is more her nature than the disorder that caused the murder. Macadam pushes it further, asking if she took pleasure from the defilement of John Price’s corpse.
There is much to indicate that and that is why I say that she probably enjoyed what she did … It is probable that she thought about doing things like that for a long time, perhaps many years. Remember, up until the mid eighties she worked at the abattoirs, and if you of course introduce the idea of dealing with animal parts, and she told me how she enjoyed getting out the blood from the bone marrow, cleaning that out; she enjoyed slicing, she enjoyed that work. Not many people do, or would, but she enjoyed it. She particularly enjoyed going to the old man who was involved in killing the pigs.
She particularly enjoyed, especially enjoyed, it was a wonderful peace for her to sit at home and look around her room, and she has told me, she has described her room at home, the lounge room and living room area, and I have seen a video of what is hanging on the wall, and there were horns from animals, there were animal skins… other dead animal parts and some of these skulls had a little bit of skin still hanging on them and it was all around her and she would tell me she would move from one chair to another so she could get a different view. She loved that. It gave her so much peace and that was important to her.
Knight had crossed Price’s legs and propped his arm on a bottle after killing him. Delaforce offers the opinion that the arrangement of Price’s body was a demonstration of ‘the control and power usually present in crimes of this nature. It is a fundamental feature of it.’ The issue of the video Resurrection is raised by Delaforce. It was one of the movies found in her house. O’Keefe says he found it disturbing to watch and it is. The movie was released in 1999 and follows a serial killer who zaps his victims with an electric stun gun like they use in abattoirs and then removes their limbs while they are conscious. At one stage bodies hang from meat hooks in a cool room. Delaforce finds the movie highly significant and her taste in movies equally so. ‘For some people I think it is harmless escapism, but for some people it is an absolute morbid interest which excites them.’ He says that just as in the movie, some people are excited by being sprayed by blood and if Katherine had stabbed Price once or even 30 times and walked away claiming she had lost control, that could be understood.
Well, she had a lot of anger in her life. Maybe she just totally lost control, but it is more than that. It is more than just stabbing, cutting, the knife going in and out, many many times. The skill, the time, the focus that must have been required to cut the head—and I have been told it was cut with considerable skill—to be able to take virtually all the skin off, again with considerable skill, must have shown her purpose, her intent and her desire, I would say. It must have taken considerable time to do that and to continue doing that one would want to do that. I can’t find any other explanation, that it was pleasurable, and I think that is a critical thing. She has done more than is required just to kill. We know because it is fairly common … that one partner will kill another because of problems in the relationship and the sudden loss of control. But this to me is different. As I say, I can accept the 30 or more stab wounds; maybe she just totally lost control over the time which was required to inflict those wounds. But just imagine the time, the skill, the purpose, the intent, the motivation behind cutting the head off with surgical precision of considerable degree—skinning the body, the time, the skill, the purpose. Why would anybody do that? That is not about killing, that has got to be about something else.
He finds the cooking of the body parts harder to explain and wonders if Katherine wanted to cook the flesh off the skull. He suggests there is an element of payback and degradation, saying it is a ‘very pathological example of payback.’ He equates this revenge with the time she sent the video of the stolen goods to Price’s employer and the destruction of John Chillingworth’s teeth. Saunders’ dingo, however, was more a heat of the moment thing.
Macadam asks about another possibility.
What I am just wondering, doctor, is your view as t
o whether or not the prisoner is perhaps possessed of sufficient, dare I say it, cunning to realise that anybody looking at this incident would immediately jump to the conclusion that whoever did that would have to be mad.
Delaforce concedes it could be possible but thinks that the payback and gratification of fantasies go together. The prosecutor wants to know if Jason Roughan’s evidence that she wanted to hurt Price monetarily for calling her a slut and buying other people drinks is relevant. The psychiatrist says that she is
absolute vindictive, retribution, payback person in operation. It gives a basic reason for hurting Mr Price, even to kill Mr Price, but then, as I have indicated, why not one blow to the head or poison or one stab wound? It becomes more than that. It becomes an opportunity to carry out these perverted interests related to what I call the probably fantasies she had about this gruesome conduct.
Delaforce explains that his position hardened against Knight when he learned she had robbed Price.
The significance of the money is paramount, pivotal I have called it in my second report. It is grubby. It is a personal intent to go and get some money. This comes down to money, to go off to the bank teller, to withdraw the money for herself or whoever, whatever, obviously is purposeful behaviour for personal gain. If she is that controlled at that stage to be able to do that, to me that is a reflection more so of how she must have been in the rest of the night.
Katherine has sat through the evidence with no show of emotion apart from the one outburst, although she seems to be fascinated by the discussion. Dr Delaforce’s assessment has been totally damning and just gets worse when he is asked about her future prospects.
Anybody that has already caused problems to her or will in the future, and that would include some members of the Price family, his children. I don’t rate that highly but it is a matter of significance to look at that. I would think it would be more to do with what would happen in the future.
In a moment of levity the judge wonders if this would include the prosecutor. Delaforce doesn’t think so but he believes she is a future threat.
To get a taste of what she has done here, what she has done can increase the risk of it happening again, and that has been proven over and over and over again with murders of this gruesome nature, that it does not stop at one; but in doing what they have done, they were motivated to express those perverted fantasies, they get a taste of it and they want to do it again. That is a particular concern I have.
Dr Rod Milton is then sworn in and says he does not believe Knight’s claims of amnesia, suggesting it was ‘simulated’ and undermined by her ‘ordered behaviour’ on the night indicated such. He also discounts the suicide attempt. ‘I think on balance it was not a genuine suicide attempt. It fitted I think with the pattern of covering in certain ways things that had been done.’
He reads an extract from his report for the court and echoes some of what Delaforce has said:
The personality problems demonstrated in the history of Mrs Knight’s life are not in my view psychiatric disease—they are her nature. These personality problems did not stop her from knowing what she was doing, or whether it was right or wrong. Nor did they stop her from exercising control over her actions when she chose …
Milton’s expert opinions are not good for Knight. He refers to her ‘ruthlessness’ in getting Price sacked from the mine, her sense of ‘entitlement’ to his home and the fact that ‘there is no guilt; there wasn’t any shame. She blames others for what she does.’ He mentions her attitude to the youngest son as suggesting ‘some underlying hostility towards the male sex’. Like Delaforce, he thinks that she may have pretended to be mad to get away with the crime. ‘It is consistent with other aspects of astuteness that Ms Knight has demonstrated.’ Unlike Delaforce he does not think she is suffering post-traumatic stress, nor is he convinced about borderline personality disorder.
The cross-examination by Knight’s lawyer bears no apparent fruit and O’Keefe adjourns the court until Monday October 29 to discuss issues of possible rehabilitation.
Dr Delaforce is recalled on the Monday as the defence wants to revisit the issue of Katherine’s taste for horror videos, particularly Resurrection. Thraves asks if it would matter if she did not watch that video and the psychiatrist says it does, as the taste for such material ties in with the decorations in her house and is relevant to her personality. There is some suggestion of a ‘copycat’ element related to the video. He paints a grim picture of the house on the main street of Aberdeen.
It is a place to me of death, of destruction. She is not in the garden and growing things. I am not aware there is a pet budgie or something like that. It is a theme of death and some writers in psychiatry have made a lot of significance of this. They have given it a term in fact of necrophilous, and it literally means a love of death. She is surrounded by it, all of these dead things. She enjoyed her work at the abattoir, then comes the violence in the various movies, and the selfishness, grubbiness of taking the money. It is all there. It is all there. It all adds up … The wall hangings were incredibly significant to me.
O’Keefe seems intrigued by the psychiatrist’s evidence and offers his own observations for analysis, wondering why Knight did not want to watch the crime scene video but ‘appears from observation where I sit in relation to the Bench to have given rapt attention to the evidence by both psychiatrists of which she is centre’. Delaforce replies, ‘I think she needs to know what people think of her, the good or the bad, because she gets a lot of bad throughout her life.’ He says that maybe she doesn’t need the video to aid her memory. ‘She could have such a rich fantasy life that continues every day, every night, the fantasy of violence.’
Thraves has his first potential runs on the board with admissions that the video is relevant to Knight’s state of mind, but the next witness that is recalled is concerned with more concrete things.
The crime scene detective Muscio takes the stand at 3.15 pm and begins to talk of congealed fat, water temperatures and cold steaks. The scientific officer says he cannot completely reconstruct Knight’s movements on the night, but thinks she washed before preparing the vegetables and the footprint that had almost sent Wells and Dellosta into a panic eighteen months ago is still causing problems. Muscio is baffled by the appearance of just one bloody print.
I have searched and searched and searched my mind, your Honour, as to how it got there. I did expect to see a left foot or another right foot impression, but it was not to be.
The following day the defence call John Hinder to the stand, Katherine’s brother-in-law and former husband of her twin sister Joy, and the defence plays its hand. He testifies that Katherine had only picked up the video with Resurrection on it on the day of the murder and explains that the family is constantly swapping and dubbing tapes. They are implying that any suggestion of copy cat intent is rubbish.
After lunch Joy is called and Thraves asks if she is John’s husband, which causes some mirth and an explanation from her that the pair separated in July. She says in evidence that Barry Roughan had dropped the Resurrection tape at her house on the Monday and Katherine had borrowed it on the Tuesday when she came to say she’d take the children camping on the weekend. Macadam’s cross-examination is stem. He puts it to her that her story is ‘pure fabrication … absolute, utter fabrication’. Joy denies this, but her evidence looks weak during further cross-examination.
Hearing the twist in the case, Bob Wells has rung Barry Roughan to ask him if what the family is testifying is accurate. He goes down and picks up the half-brother, who appears later in the week and testifies that it is Katherine’s tape and he’s borrowed it and left it at Joy’s weeks before the murder.
The defence also call its psychiatrist, Dr Leonard Lambeth, who interviewed Knight in prison the previous month and produced a sixteen-page report—both Delaforce’s and Milton’s ran over 50 pages. He concludes that she has borderline personality disorder and post-traumatic stress. The judge says that many people
have personality disorders but they do not stab, cook and decapitate. Lambeth agrees, but says:
I think, your Honour, that the personality disorder very possibly determines, if you like, the decision—’I will do this’. The way the decision is carried out—if you like, the plastic part of the decision—is determined by other factors, not including the personality but also including experience, social mores and generally the way the person lives.
Lambeth thinks the fight between Price and Knight on the Sunday triggered the crime.
Lambeth doesn’t seem to make too much of an impression on O’Keefe, who says,
I don’t see a great deal of difference, quite frankly, except in semantic terms, between what the doctor, this witness, has said and the outcomes postulated in the final analysis by doctors Delaforce and Milton. On the night in question none of them have this borderline personality disorder as the final operative factor.
An exchange between the judge and the defence lawyer late in the afternoon gave some warning of what sentence O’Keefe was considering.
—We have got all this material and I have got to do something with it in relation to the sentence that I impose on this lady.
—I understand that, your Honour, and I have to do something with it to try and persuade your Honour in a certain direction.
—Not to do what you fear I might do?
—Fear is probably the appropriate word in the circumstances, your Honour.
Knight gives no indication that she understands the ramifications of this exchange and continues to sit, straight-backed and passive in the dock.
On Thursday 1 November O’Keefe adjourns the trial to give the defence and prosecution time to prepare their final addresses which they deliver on Monday 5 and Tuesday 6 November. As the East Maitland court has already been booked, the sentencing moves to Newcastle.
19
A sentence and a smile