I Want To Believe Notes

Katherine Knight

This story first takes place in Aberdeen, country New South Wales. In the 1940's The Aberdeen Meatworks was the money maker of the town and was being managed by Jack Roughan. He married a woman named Barbara and they had four boys.

It was the talk of the town when Barbara ran off with Ken Knight, another worker in the abattoir. She had another four children with Knight, two boys and two girls, one of them being a girl named Katherine Knight.

Katherine was born on the 24th of October, 1954 at Tamworth hospital along with her twin sister, Joy. When Katherine was a toddler, Barbara's first husband Jack died, which meant Barbara had to look after all 8 children.

As a child Katherine was described as a shy girl with a bad temper. Because of her family situation she moved from school to school a lot which rid her the chance of making close friends. She was however, very close to her sister and her Uncle Oscar Knight.

Side note: he was a champion horseman who sadly committed suicide in 1969 and Katherine to this day claims his ghost visits her on occasion.

According to reports, Ken Knight would beat Barbara and then Barbara would take it out on her children by beating them.

At age 15, Katherine left Muswellbrook High School even though she couldn't read or write. Her only aspiration in life was to work at the Aberdeen Meatworks. At 16 she began working there in the offal room then became a de-boner (I'm a deboner as well).

Similar to a chef, people who worked particular jobs at the abattoir were given their own set of knives. Katherine cherished her knives and it is reported that there was something odd about the way Katherine would go about her job, a kind of joy and pleasure which made the other workers uncomfortable.

She would cut certain arteries to watch the animals bleed in different ways. She got off on the screaming and death of the animals at the abattoir and the fear she would have gotten from the other employees watching her work.

In the 70's Katherine was entering her 20's. She was tall with bright orange hair, weak chin and an awkward smile.

There was a new boy in town, David "Shotty" Kellett. They became involved immediately. She was about a foot taller than him but that didn't stop them from getting married straight away at her request.

At their wedding, Katherine's mother Barbara said to David "You better watch this one or she'll fucking kill you. Stir her up the wrong way or do the wrong thing and you're fucked, don't ever think of playing up on her, she'll fucking kill you. She's got a screw loose somewhere".

And she wasn't wrong. On their wedding night Shotty woke up to Katherine trying to choke him. She was angry because they had only had sex two times when she was told her parents had sex five times on their own wedding night.

David's sister, Sandy, who lived with them for a few months described her as lovely and very charming, whereas his mother says she had a bit of a roughness about her.

Sandy is quoted saying "she would be extremely happy, she'd be flying around the house singing and the next minute she'd go into a rage".

At one point while Katherine was heavily pregnant with their first child, she threatened David with a broken bottle.

Unsurprisingly soon after that he left Katherine for another woman and moved to Queensland. By this point their first child, Melissa was already a few days old and the day after Kellett left Katherine was pushing the baby down the street, violently throwing the pram from side to side in a rage as though she was about to push the baby into traffic.

She was admitted to St Elmo's hospital in Tamworth and was diagnosed with post-natal depression although she was shortly released.

A few days later she placed the two month old Melissa onto a railway line and went into a stranger's backyard where she started to swing an axe around her head. The train was only minutes away when a man who was foraging near the railway line saw the baby and quickly rescued it.