An Australian woman who stabbed her partner to death, skinned him, carved him up and cooked him as a meal for his children lost her appeal against the severity of her life sentence on Monday.
"This was an appalling crime, almost beyond contemplation in a civilised society," said Appeal Court judge Peter McClellan, dismissing Katherine Knight's claim that the sentence was excessive.
"This was a violent and cruel crime during which the deceased must have suffered extreme trauma," McClellan said in a written judgement on behalf of the three appeal court judges.
In 2001, Knight, 50, became the first woman in Australia to be jailed for the term of her natural life without chance of parole, after being convicted of murdering her de facto husband, John Price, 44.
The former abattoir worker had stabbed price 37 times with a butcher's knife as she chased him around the home they shared in the Hunter Valley winelands, about a two-hour drive north of Sydney.
The mother of four then skinned him, hung his hide from a meat hook in their living room, cooked his head in a pot and roasted his buttocks in the oven before dishing them up with vegetables and gravy.
{{/usCountry}}The mother of four then skinned him, hung his hide from a meat hook in their living room, cooked his head in a pot and roasted his buttocks in the oven before dishing them up with vegetables and gravy.
{{/usCountry}}The plates containing the macabre meal, with notes for Price's two adult children, were found by police before the children arrived home.
The judge said Knight had expressed no remorse for the killing and Price's family might be at particular risk if she was ever released.