"A good butcher doesn't hack. A good butcher doesn't force. You let the blade do the work ... The knife barely moves, see? Just a steady tug, a flick of the wrist. Up over the ribs now. Keep your angle. You're not gutting - you're peeling."
And so begins Rojé Augustin's book, The Butcher of Aberdeen, with a matter-of-fact account of a father patiently teaching his daughter how to skin a carcass.
Knowing what is to come and who the daughter grew up to be, it's chilling.
Augustin's book explores the true-crime story of Katherine Mary Knight, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder of John Price 26 years ago.
Price's headless body was found by police in his Aberdeen home on March 1, 2000.
He had been stabbed 37 times. His skin was hanging from a meat hook and his head was cooking on a stove.
Slices of his buttocks had been cooked and served, on plates, at a table with vegetables and gravy.
It is believed the macabre scene was left for Price's children to find.
Justice Barry O'Keefe in November 2001 sentenced Knight to life imprisonment without parole, marking the court papers with the words "never to be released".
The sentence was an Australian first for a woman.
Justice O'Keefe ruled Knight's actions were premeditated, monstrous and evil, demonstrating "cognition, volition, calm and skill".
The Butcher of Aberdeen is not the first book written about Knight, but it's a story Augustin wanted to tell. She's a true-crime fan, and the case had long fascinated her.
She wanted to find out more about the human behind the shocking crime.
Was it nature or nurture?
How could someone - a woman, a mother - do what she did?
"The reason I wrote the book is that I wanted to bring this really bizarre case to life, for me. I wanted to play it out in my head and understand," Augustin says from her home in Sydney's inner west.
"I took what was already out there and restructured it and fleshed it out in a way that made it more understandable and gave it more humanity."
Augustin combined detailed research of the facts of the case with a compelling narrative. She wanted to tell Knight's story by filling in the gaps.
And she wanted answers to her own questions.
"One of the things about the murder I think hasn't been pieced together properly was the actual act of slaughtering, stabbing, skinning and decapitating. I feel Katherine was on autopilot when she did that, because it definitely paralleled her work at the abattoir," she says.
"Apparently it took her less than 45 minutes to get the whole thing done. It shows you how skilled she was."
Augustin describes her book as a "dramatised account of a true story" based on court documents, sentencing reports, transcripts, media coverage and legal judgments.
"There are, however, gaps in the record - gaps that represent the private moments, the unspoken thoughts, the conversations no one but Katherine and her victims would have been privy to," she writes in the book's foreword.
"To tell the story in a way that conveyed the lived reality of the people involved, I have taken dramatic licence to reconstruct scenes, emotional beats, and dialogue to underline the facts in the case."
As an adult, Knight would become notorious for her sexual manipulations, violent outbursts, volatile relationships, her inability to maintain healthy relationships, and, ultimately, the brutal nature of her crime.
Augustin takes a closer look at Knight's childhood to find out why she became the adult she did.
She says Knight's turbulent relationships with men paint a portrait of a woman tormented by a fear of abandonment and driven by a desperate need for control.
At the heart of Augustin's narrative is Knight's perceived inner conflict: a constant battle between the need for love and a tendency to be violent; between a desire for connection and an overwhelming urge for revenge. It is this conflict that led to increasingly dysfunctional relationships and caused her violent tendencies to ultimately spiral out of control, Augustin says, culminating in a shocking act of murder that would forever mark her as one of Australia's most infamous killers.
For Augustin, Knight's story is a tragic combination of the consequences of childhood trauma and the complexities of human nature.
"[The book] is what I would call narrative non-fiction - a work that sits on the border between fact and imagination. Everything that happened, happened; what I have added here are the connective tissues of human experience," Augustin continues in the foreword.
"My aim was not to sensationalise the violence, but to explore what led to it: the jealousy, the coercion, the assaults, the red flags no one acted on; to interpret and to guide the reader closer to the shifting contradictions of Katherine Knight's inner and outer life.
"I focused on the pivotal moments, and her time working at the abattoir. Slicing, boning, and bleeding out carcasses gave me a natural way to echo the kind of violence she later inflicted on John Price."
Augustin was born and raised in New York City and graduated from Columbia University with a bachelor of arts (with honours in literature and writing).
She began her career at the New York Daily News before transitioning to television, first at CBS News Productions, working in cable documentary features, then to 20/20 with Barbara Walters and John Stossel, Primetime with Diane Sawyer, and Good Morning America Weekend Edition.
Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Bebe Jones, was self-published and won the 2013 US National Indie Excellence Award in African American fiction.
"I have always loved true crime, from the earliest days of Forensic Files, where they did re-enactments of true-crime cases," Augustin says.
"I got so swept up in them I would binge whole seasons.
"The Butcher of Aberdeen is by far my best and most satisfying work. I already loved the genre and watch true crime to relax, and I feel like I have found a lane I want to stay in."
Augustin was researching notorious Australian crime stories when she came across Katherine Knight's story.
"She's a woman and committed this really, really brutal crime. She skinned, decapitated, cooked someone ... but what really held my attention was why? How could somebody, particularly a woman, become capable of such catastrophic violence?
"And so I started digging and researching, and the more I found out, the more I wanted to tell Katherine's story. I wanted to bring it to life in a way that I could understand it, which is why I chose to write it in this narrative, non-fiction form.
"I really wanted to understand: was it nature or nurture? Was it her environment or was she just born that way? So that's what the book basically explores."
Augustin was particularly interested in the violent nature of Knight's crime, which is atypical for women who kill.
"Katherine flipped the script," she says.
"She killed more like a man than she did a woman.
"Her method of abuse was also very male, in a way. I think she was very strategic in the men that she chose because they all dealt with her abuse for ages.
"I think the power and control is what drove it."
Price's murder made headlines worldwide due to its gruesome nature and, again, the fact the murderer was a woman.
"Instinctively we think of women as nurturing and caring rather than cruel and dominant, that's the narrative. So when people like Katherine come along, it blows people's minds," Augustin says.
"I think nature definitely played a role. But what shaped that personality?
"Violence was very much a part of her life, from childhood. Most of her family worked in the abattoir at some point in their lives. She had worked in the abattoir since she was 15.
"Katherine enjoyed going to the kill room, she enjoyed watching.
"I think there was very much a desensitisation to violence on her part.
"I found it a little surprising that the prosecution and the psychiatrist assessments came to the conclusion that yes, she may have had borderline personality disorder and all these problems in her childhood, but she was still responsible for what she did and knew right from wrong and therefore was fit to stand trial.
"I wondered how can you even consider any degree of sanity in an act like that? How could somebody be in any way in their right mind and capable of doing an act like that?"
What about the fact that Knight left a gory scene that could potentially have been stumbled upon by Price's children?
"I feel that's why [the judge] felt this was part of who she was, and therefore she was fit to stand trial, because she showed a lot of vindictiveness and revenge," Augustin replies.
As part of her research for the book, Augustin visited Aberdeen. She wanted to get a feel for the town and its people to help with her telling of the story.
"I was very careful about any legalities in my book. All the information I got was on the record. When I did take licence, it was fully based on the evidence," she says.
"For example, we know from the record that Katherine was a very jealous and vindictive person. She fought a lot with her partners. So I imagined scenarios where the fight was about jealousy.
"And while I may have made up some dialogue, it was based on what I knew her patterns of behaviour were. I was very careful not to say anything, or speculate, beyond what was already there.
"I did try to find her partners. I didn't try to get in touch with her children, or John's, out of respect. I reached out to Katherine at Silverwater and she refused any interviews."
Katherine Knight remains in Silverwater Women's Correctional Centre in Western Sydney. She lost an appeal against her sentence in 2006.
