WOULD YOU BUY THESE HOUSES OF HORROR?

A FRESH COAT OF PAINT CAN'T HIDE THE PAST

- Compiled by Emma Levett.

CANNIBAL'S COTTAGE

There's a reason a three-bedroom home in Aberdeen, regional NSW was recently sold for $285,000, well below the area average. It’s because, within its roomy interior, one of Australia’s most heinous crimes took place.

In February 2000, Katherine Knight killed her partner John Price, there. A skilled abattoir worker, Knight stabbed John at least 37 times, then skinned and decapitated his body, hanging his human pelt from a doorframe.

Police officers who entered the scene remember the pleasant scent of cooking, but soon discovered that Knight had cooked up parts of John’s body, including his head, and then set bowls of her gruesome stew on the table for his children.

The trial judge later said he had never again “struck something of the horrific nature of Knight's case”.

Knight pleaded guilty in 2001 and was the first Australian woman to be jailed for life without the possibility of parole.