SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- A woman who murdered her partner, skinned his body and carved it up to serve to his children was sentenced Thursday to life in prison.
Katherine Mary Knight, a 45-year-old slaughterhouse worker, is a "very dangerous person," Justice Barry O'Keefe said. He ordered that she never be released.
Knight pleaded guilty last month to the February 2000 killing of John Price, 44, at his home near Newcastle, 120 miles north of Sydney.
She stabbed Price at least 37 times, decapitated him, skinned his body and later included his flesh in meals for the son and daughter of the deceased, accompanied by vindictive notes, O'Keefe said. Prosecutors did not suggest to the court that the children ate the meal.
Knight claimed she could not remember what happened in the house.
But prosecutor Mark Macadam said Tuesday that Knight had told her brother five months earlier that she would murder Price and claim insanity. Price broke off the relationship shortly before the slaying.
"In America she would have got the death penalty," Price's son, Jonathan told Australian Broadcasting Corp. television. "In Australia, I think the justice system is too lenient."
Australia has no death penalty.
