Life for woman who boiled head 

A woman who stabbed her partner 37 times before skinning him, beheading him and baking his body parts has lost an appeal against her life sentence.

Katherine Knight claimed the February 2000 killing of her de facto husband, John Price, was not in the worst category of murder and did not warrant life in prison.

The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal today rejected Knight's appeal against the sentence, which she claimed was manifestly excessive.

"This was an appalling crime, almost beyond contemplation in a civilised society," Justice Peter McClellan said in his written judgement.

In 2001, the mother of four became the first woman in Australia to be jailed for the term of her natural life after pleading guilty to a murder described as "horrendous" by the sentencing judge, Justice Barry O'Keefe.

Knight appealed the decision, claiming the mutilation of Price's body after his death was not relevant to the seriousness of the offence.

She also claimed she did not receive an adequate discount for her guilty plea, or a psychiatric disorder.

Knight, 50, killed Price in his Aberdeen home, in the Hunter Valley, on February 29, 2000.

The former abattoir worker stabbed the 44-year-old father of two 37 times before skinning him and hanging his hide from a meat hook in their lounge room.

She then cut off his head and boiled it in a pot and baked pieces of his buttocks to serve with vegetables and gravy to his adult children.

Justices McClellan, Michael Adams and Megan Latham today dismissed Knight's appeal.

Justice Adams said the mutilation was so closely linked with the killing that "it must be regarded as an integral part of the killing itself". "It demonstrates the extraordinary extent of the applicant's brutality."

Although he rejected the appeal, Justice Adams said Justice O'Keefe had erred in ruling Knight was never to be released.

"I would uphold the ground of appeal that it was not open to the learned sentencing judge to find that the applicant was so dangerous she could never be released," he said.

Justices McClellan and Latham agreed the sentence was appropriate.

"This was a violent and cruel crime during which the deceased must have suffered extreme trauma," Justice McClellan said. "The crime was the product of a violent personality intent upon claiming the life of her de facto in a relationship which was plainly failing."

He said Knight had expressed no remorse for the killing. "The psychiatric evidence indicates that her personality is unlikely to change in the future and, if released, she would be likely to inflict serious injury, perhaps death, on others,"

Justice McClellan said.