Katherine Mary Knight: Australia's Hanna Lecter -- The Crime Library

John Price drinking with Katherine

Kath's erratic on-again-off-again style saw to it that the relationship only lasted three years (the locals were amazed that it even lasted that long) and ended acrimoniously when Kath Knight dumped Chillingworth for John Price, an Aberdeen local she had been having an affair with behind Chillingworth's back for some time.

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Although distraught at the time, as it turned out the spurned John Chillingworth was the luckiest bloke on the planet. He would overcome his broken heart, get off the booze and do something constructive with his life. But by taking up with the wicked witch of Aberdeen, John Price had signed his own death warrant.

From all accounts John "Pricey" Price was a terrific bloke who'd give you his left arm if you needed it and was liked by everyone who knew him. He'd been married and had three kids when the marriage broke up in 1988. His wife took the youngest, a 2-year-old girl when she left and he ended up with a teenage boy and girl to look after. He owned a three-bedroom brick bungalow on St. Andrews Street in Aberdeen and brought home a good salary from working in the local mines. The family wanted for nothing.

Pricey met Katherine Knight at a local hotel in 1993 and, at 38, they were the same age, and it wasn't long before they were an "item" around town. He went into the relationship with his eyes wide open. He had heard all of the rumors about the way she treated her men but chose to ignore them.

The relationship started out the same as all of Kath's previous liaisons. She was the devoted, loving spouse who cooked and sewed and picked her man up and drove him home from the hotel when he couldn't walk. Plus she was hot in the sack. His kids got along famously with her brood and life was a bunch of roses. But it didn't take long for the cracks to show. The accusations of infidelity, the fights, separations and the inevitable getting-back together.

Pricey's house on St. Andrews Street

In late 1995 Kath moved in with Pricey at the family house on St. Andrews Street. It must have seemed like living in Buckingham Palace after her crammed little cottage with the dead animals on the walls. The drinking escalated and so did the fighting. They could be seen at each others' throats in the street outside the front of their respective houses and at any of the local hotels where they drank. It was all fun and games one minute and they were giving each other a gobfull the next.

In 1998 Kath showed Pricey's bosses at the mines a videotape she had secretly recorded at home of some items that Pricey had allegedly stolen from work. Kath maintained that she recorded the tape as revenge over a fight about his ongoing refusal to marry her. They had come to blows and he had belted her. She had planned on showing the tape to Pricey to use as blackmail against him. But after another horrendous fight, she decided to go one step further and show it to his employers.

Although the items on the tape were past their "used by" date or considered to be rubbish and scavenged from the company tip, it was enough to get Pricey sacked from the job that he had loved for 17 years.

The same day Pricey booted her out of his home and she fled back to her tiny chamber of horrors in MacQueen Street. The story of her viciousness spread through the tiny township like a bushfire fanned by gale force winds. Given her track record, it didn't surprise a soul.

When Pricey took Kath back a few months later — though he didn't move her back into his house — he lost a lot of friends who now wouldn't have anything to do with him when she was in his company.

Their fights resumed with renewed venom. They would get drunk and argue over her getting him sacked from the mine. Then it was on for all to see. It was plain to even a deaf and blind mute that while they couldn't live with or without each other, that something awful was going to give. It was just a matter of time.

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