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Infamous Murder Houses

Once, sleepy Aberdeen, situated on the New England Highway 270 kilometres north/north-west of Sydney, was best known as the birthplace of the blue heeler cattle dog. But not anymore. These days Aberdeen is known as the home of Katherine Knight, one the most depraved females the world has known.

At 8 o’clock on the morning of Wednesday, 1 March 2000, police were called to a three-bedroom brick bungalow at 84 Andrews St at Aberdeen, the tiny rural township of 1750 residents. There they found the skinned, headless corpse of Katherine Knight’s de facto husband, John Price, sitting on the lounge with a soft drink bottle cradled in his arms.

On the kitchen stove was a pot containing Mr Price’s head and a variety of vegetables being prepared for a stew. In the oven they found two plates with cooked slices of Mr Price’s buttocks and vegetables in readiness for his two children when they arrived home for dinner. Fortunately they stayed out for the night.

Katherine Knight, an abattoir worker, was sent to prison for life. The house in Andrews Street still stands and is a local tourist attraction. At the time of writing it was rented out because no one wants to buy it.

In a 1940 Melbourne newspaper it was reported that the members of the Melbourne Bread and Cheese Club intended using a house at 64 Cubitt St, Richmond, as their headquarters. This came about after it was discovered that it was the home of one of Australia’s most evil female serial killers, Martha Needle, who had done away with her first husband and their three daughters with rat poison in the 1800s.

The members unanimously elected Martha as their ‘patron saint’ and commissioned a portrait of the murderess holding a tin of her chosen poison, Rough on Rats, to be hung in a place of honour over the fireplace. Martha, who had been executed in 1894, was toasted before each meeting.

The house at number 3 Moorhouse Street, Willagee, on the outskirts of Perth, Western Australia, was an unkempt white brick, two-bedroom bungalow. Its garden was overrun with weeds and dead flowers and it was badly in need of a coat of paint.

Yet, in 1987 this unglamorous dwelling became the most notorious house in Australia. People slowed down and pointed and whispered as they drove past.

The house in Moorhouse Street was the love nest, torture chamber and killing field of Catherine and David Birnie, who were a husband and wife serial killer team, the rarest form of serial killers in the world. It was here that they committed atrocities to their young female victims.

Their victims’ ages ranged from 15 to 31. Whenever the Birnies felt like killing someone they would drive along the highways of Perth and pick up hitchhikers or other young women in need of a lift. Their victims never suspected the friendly couple until it was too late.

At knifepoint they were taken back to Moorhouse Street and murdered. The lucky ones were put to sleep with an overdose of sleeping pills and then strangled. The less fortunate victims were either stabbed or bludgeoned to death with a knife or an axe as they cowered in their shallow graves in a secluded pine forest a short drive out of Perth.

The Birnies were sent to prison for life. At last notice the house at number 3 Moorhouse Street, Willagee, was still standing and occupied by a Housing Commission tenant who found out about the previous tenants only after they had signed the lease. Apparently they are not happy.

In Melbourne at 27 Andrew Street, Windsor, in March 1892, Frederick Deeming bashed his new wife to death and buried her body beneath the fireplace. Previously, in England, Deeming had killed his wife and four children and also secreted their bodies beneath the fireplace. The cottage at 27 Andrew Street still stands in its original condition. The actual kitchen from the house in England was dismantled and resurrected in Madam Tussaud’s Waxworks in London along with the likeness of Deeming in one of the regimental uniforms he wore to court his wives. At the time the exhibit was said to be very popular.

It was at 213 Oxford Apartments, Milwaukee, USA, between 1988 to 1991, that Jeffrey Dahmer, a 28-year-old chocolate factory worker, murdered 17 young men, violated their corpses and ate their body parts. Police were overwhelmed by the putrid smell that hit them when they opened the door.

Inside they found three bodies dissolving in acid vats in his bedroom, a man’s head in the fridge along with three other severed heads and seven skulls, hands, heads and fingers stored in the freezer. Dahmer admitted to committing the atrocities to the deceased that defy the imagination. He was sent to prison for 1070 years where he was murdered by another inmate. As far as I am aware the apartment building still stands and is occupied.

It was at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, England, that labourer Fred West and his wife Rose raped, tortured and murdered their victims and buried nine of their bodies in the backyard, including that of Fred’s daughter, Heather.

Although Rose West vehemently denied her part in the killings, in 1994, the Wests were sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. Fred West committed suicide in jail. Number 25 Cromwell Street became such a macabre tourist attraction that it has since been bulldozed down and a new house built.

It was at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London, in the early ’50s that arguably the world’s most horrific murders took place, making it possibly the best known murder address of all time.

It was here that mild-mannered office clerk and necrophiliac serial killer John Reginald Christie murdered his eight victims, had sex with their corpses and buried their bodies in the backyard, under the floorboards and in the wall cavities.

The upstairs tenant, Timothy Evans, a dim-witted truck driver, was incorrectly found guilty of murdering his wife Beryl and their baby daughter Geraldine. Christie later confessed to their murders but it was too late: Evans had already been hung.

John Christie went to the gallows in 1953. The slum dwelling at 10 Rillington Place has long since been bulldozed and the street name changed to Rushton Close, Notting Hill. Who knows, it may have even featured in the movie of the same name.