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The Woman Hannibal Lecter -Katherine Knight

Tooba mirza
5 min readSep 8, 2020

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Katherine Mary Knight is the first Australian woman to be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

Katherine was born in a small town Tenterfield in New South Wales. She was raised in an unconventional and dysfunctional family environment. Her mother, Barbara Roughan was married to Jack Roughan in Aberdeen whom she had four sons before the adulterous relationship with Ken Knight, a co-worker of her husband. The Roughan and Knight families were well known in the conservative rural town, and the affair caused a major scandal. Ken and Barbara moved to Moree where she had four children with Ken including girl twins, the younger one was Katherine. Her father was an alcoholic who openly used violence and intimidation to rape his wife Barbara up to ten times a day.

Around the age of 16, she dropout from the school to start her “dream job” at the slaughterhouse. According to the reports, her co-workers described that she was remarkable with the knife.

Her love life is described as disastrous, Knight first met hard-drinking co-worker David Stanford Kellett in 1973. Often, if Kellett got into a fight, Knight would step in and back him up with her fists. In Aberdeen, she was well known for physically threatening anyone who upset her. Knight married Kellett in 1974. On their wedding night, Knight tried to strangle Kellett; she later explained it was because he fell asleep after only having intercourse three times. Their marriage went on for 10 years during that time she had two daughters with him; After then they got separated.

Knight met 38-year-old miner David Saunders in 1986. A few months later, he moved in with her and her daughters, although he kept his old apartment in Scone. Knight soon became jealous regarding what he did when she was not around and would often throw him out. She got really upset from that so she cut the throat of his two-month-old dingo pup in front of him, for no more reason than as an example of what would happen if he ever had an affair, before going on to knock him unconscious with a frying pan. Dispute of that they had a daughter together but shortly after she was born they had an argument and Kathrine stab him with the pair of scissors. After that incident, he left her without a trace.

In 1990, Knight became pregnant by 43-year-old former abattoir co-worker John Chillingworth and gave birth the following year to a boy named Eric. Their relationship lasted three years before she left him…

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Tooba mirza
Tooba mirza

Written by Tooba mirza

Lover of writing and addicted to Crime and Netflix. I read like words are my drug. Currently, 16 but I have big dreams. toobamirza00@gmail.com

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