Town note
One of the first settlements in the Upper Hunter Valley.
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In March 2000 the town of Aberdeen, a town of about 2,000 people in the Upper Hunter Shire of New South Wales, produced a murder that the presiding judge would call almost beyond contemplation in a civilised society.
She was born on 24 October 1955, a twin to her sister Joy. The scandal drove Barbara and Ken out of town, and the family only returned to Aberdeen in 1959, the year Jack died.
She took a job at the local abattoir and was promoted to boner, work she loved. Colleagues noticed her staring at them while she cut and saying it would be easy to do this to a human. In 1974 she met David Stanford Kellett, a truck driver at the abattoir and a heavy drinker. They married, with the bride arriving at the church on her motorcycle and the groom too drunk to stand on the back. Later, seven months pregnant, she burned all his clothes and fractured his skull with a cast-iron frying pan because he came home an hour late from a darts competition. Their daughter Melissa was born in 1976. Kellett left her for another woman and fled to Queensland. A passer-by saved the child. Their daughter Natasha Marie was born in 1980. In 1984 she left him and returned to Aberdeen with the two girls, went back to the abattoir, injured her back and went on disability.
In December 1987 she met a miner named David Saunders. When he crossed her she slit the throat of his eight-week-old dingo puppy in front of him. She hit him with an iron, stabbed him in the stomach with scissors and burned his belongings. She filed a false report that got her an apprehended violence order against him, and offered her nephew $500 to destroy his car and then to throw acid in his face. Saunders fled to Scone and went into hiding.
In 1995, aged 45, she met John Charles Thomas Price, known as Pricey, a well-respected miner with three children and a house at Andrew Street. She moved in and kept her butcher's knives in the kitchen. He called that time a bunch of roses. In 1998 she wanted to marry and he refused. She secretly filmed him bringing home outdated medical kits from work, added a commentary presenting herself as a concerned citizen, and sent it to his employer; he lost a job he had held for 17 years. In 1999 she slashed his chest with a knife, and told her daughter and her brother that if he took her back it was to the death, and that she would kill Pricey and get away with it by pretending to be mad. In February 2000 she stabbed him in the chest. He recovered, threw her out, and on 29 February 2000 obtained a restraining order.
She let herself into Andrew Street with her key, watched Star Trek, showered, changed, and had sex with Price before he fell asleep. At 1 a.m. on 1 March she began stabbing him. She then skinned him in one piece, hung the pelt on a meat hook in the doorway, cut off his head at the C3-C4 junction and boiled it in a pot with potato, pumpkin, cabbage and zucchini. She cut steaks from his buttocks, baked them, plated them with name cards for two of his children and left a fifth piece for the dog. She withdrew $1,000 from his bank account at an ATM.
Police broke in that morning after he failed to appear for work; the constable pushed aside what he took for a curtain and found it was skin. She denied any memory of the killing, blamed lifelong abuse by men and never showed remorse. Three psychiatrists found a personality disorder but no mental illness; she was sane, the judge said, but a bad woman. She is held apart from other prisoners and now says she is a Christian.