Katherine Knight - David Kellett

David Kellett

Katherine first met hard drinking co-worker David Stanford Kellett in 1973 and completely dominated him. If Kellett got into a fight at the hotel, Knight would step in and back him up with her fists without fail. In Aberdeen, she was renowned for offering armed combat to anyone who upset her.

Knight married Kellett in 1974, at her request, with the couple arriving at the service on her motorcycle with a very intoxicated Kellett on the pillion. As soon as they arrived, Knight’s mother, Barbara, gave Kellett some advice:

"The old girl said to me to watch out. '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 fuckin' kill you.' And that was her mother talking! She told me she's got something loose, She's got a screw loose somewhere."

On their wedding night she tried to strangle him. Knight explained it was because he fell asleep after only having intercourse three times.

The marriage was particularly violent and, on one occasion, a heavily pregnant Knight burned all of Kellet's clothing and shoes before hitting him across the back of the head with a frying pan, simply because he had arrived home late from a darts competition after making the finals. In fear for his life, Kellet fled before collapsing in a neighbors house, and he was later treated for a badly fractured skull. Police wanted to charge her, but Knight was now on her best behaviour and talked Kellet into dropping the charges. In May 1976, shortly after the birth of their first child, Melissa Ann, Kellett left her for another woman and moved to Queensland, apparently unable to cope with Knight's possessive, violent behavior. The next day, Knight was seen pushing her new baby in a pram down the main street, violently throwing the pram from side to side. Knight was admitted to St Elmo's Hospital in Tamworth where she was diagnosed with postnatal depression and spent several weeks recovering. After being released, Knight placed two-month-old Melissa on a railway line shortly before the train was due, then stole an axe, went into town and threatened to kill several people. A man known in the district as "Old Ted", who was foraging near the railway line, found and rescued Melissa, by all accounts only minutes before the train passed. Knight was arrested and again taken to St Elmo's Hospital, but, apparently recovered, signed herself out the following day.

A few days later, Knight slashed the face of a woman with one of her knives and demanded she drive her to Queensland to find Kellett. The woman escaped after they stopped at a service station, but by the time police arrived Knight, had taken a little boy hostage and was threatening him with the knife. She was disarmed when police attacked her with brooms and she was admitted to the Morisset Psychiatric Hospital. Knight told the nurses she had intended to kill the mechanic at the service station because he had repaired Kellett’s car, which had allowed him to leave, and then kill both her husband and his mother when she arrived in Queensland. When police informed Kellett of the incident, he left his girlfriend and along with his mother, they both moved to Aberdeen to support her.

Knight was released on 9 August 1976 into the care of her mother-in-law, and along with Kellett, they now moved to Woodridge, a suburb of Brisbane, where she obtained a job at the Dinmore meatworks in nearby Ipswich. On 6 March 1980, they had another daughter, Natasha Maree. In 1984, Knight left Kellett and moved in, first with her parents in Aberdeen, then to a rented house in nearby Muswellbrook. Although she returned to work at the abattoir, she injured her back the following year and went on a disability pension. No longer needing to rent accommodation close to her work, the government gave her a Housing Commission house in Aberdeen.