Associated Press
SYDNEY, Australia – A court gave life imprisonment Thursday to a woman who murdered her partner before skinning his body and carving it up to serve to his children.
Justice Barry O’Keefe said Katherine Mary Knight, 45, is a “very dangerous person” and ordered her never to be released. Knight, a slaughterhouse worker, pleaded guilty last month to murdering John Price, 44, at his home near Newcastle, 120 miles north of Sydney in February 2000.
She stabbed Price at least 37 times, decapitated him, skinned his body and later included his flesh in meals for the man’s son and daughter, accompanied by vindictive notes, O’Keefe said. Prosecutors did not suggest to the court that the children actually ate the meals.
Knight claimed she could not remember what happened.
But prosecutor Mark Macadam said Tuesday that Knight told her brother five months earlier that she would murder Price and claim insanity. Price broke off the relationship shortly before the slaying.
“In America, she would have gotten the death penalty,” Price’s son Jonathan told Australian Broadcasting Corp. television. “In Australia, I think the justice system is too lenient.”
Australia has no death penalty.
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