Katherine Mary Knight: Australia's Hanna Lecter

Childhood & Slaughterhouses

Katherine Mary Knight

Katherine Mary Knight was born half an hour after her twin sister Joy at Tenterfield Hospital in northwestern New South Wales on October 24, 1955. Her mother Barbara already had four boys, Patrick, Martin, Neville and Barry, by a previous marriage and another son, Charlie, with Katherine's father Ken. Another son, Shane, would follow in 1961.

When Barbara's previous marriage broke up the two older boys, Patrick and Martin, had stayed with their father, Jack Roughan, and the two younger lads, Neville and Barry, went to live with an aunt in Sydney. When Jack Roughan died in 1959, Patrick and Martin went to live with their mother.

Ken Knight was an abattoir slaughterman who travelled with his family throughout Queensland and New South Wales applying his back-breaking trade in 12-hour shifts at Wallangarra, Gunnedah, Tenterfield and Moree and wherever the work was to be found. Ken and Barbara and their six children eventually settled in Aberdeen in 1969 where there was steady work at the local abattoir.

From all accounts young Katherine was a loving little girl who was kind to animals, and her only brush with retribution was as a 13-year-old when she appeared before the Children's Court on a minor charge and received a good behavior bond.

Given her lifelong environment, it's hardly surprising that all Katherine Knight wanted to do when she grew up was to work in the abattoirs. In every town she had ever lived there was a meatworks. To her, the thick afternoon waft of the remains of the day's kill as it was rendered into tallow must have smelled like French perfume.

Joy Hinder, Katherine's Twin Sister

At 16 she joined her father, twin sister Joy and brother Charlie boning out carcasses at the Aberdeen abattoir. In the predominately male domain, Katherine became as tough as the best of them and gave as much as she got in the boning-floor jargon that would make a wharfie blush. She was renowned for not taking a backward step and with her knife in hand she'd challenge anyone who offended her to armed combat to abruptly sort the matter out. No one ever took her on. Katherine's proudest possession was her set of razor sharp boning knives which she kept in pride of place above her bed so she could have one last look at them at night before nodding off to sleep, no doubt to dream about killing animals and carving up their remains.

Given her future violence, it would be fair to say that it was this period in her life that played a major role in the molding of the monster that Katherine Knight would become.