Stories Fables Ghostly Tales Podcast

This episode explored a difficult but important idea:
the traits that define serial killers are not strengths—they are structural weaknesses.
Popular culture often frames serial killers as calculating, fearless, or powerful. But when examined through real cases and repeated behaviours, the opposite becomes clear. Every trait that allowed harm also guaranteed escalation, exposure, and collapse.
Manipulation
Boundary violation
Fantasy

Compartmentalization
Entitlement
What ultimately separates a normal citizen from a serial killer is not anger, trauma, or dark thoughts.
It is correction.
Most people feel guilt and stop.
Most people feel fear and pull back.
Most people recognize boundaries and restrain themselves.
Serial killers are defined not by emotionless cruelty, but by the absence of internal systems that interrupt harm.
These traits are not impressive.
They are not rare gifts.
They are warning signs.
And they always fail the person who relies on them.
Thank you for listening legends! And I hope this episode hits the spot for you! 💜💜💜💜

Four blocks...
That’s all Theresa Fusco needed to walk to get home...
On a November night in 1984, she stepped out of a roller rink in Lynbrook, New York. The lights were still buzzing behind her. Music still playing. Teenagers still laughing. The world she’d been part of for the last few hours kept moving forward without her.
Something had gone wrong inside. She’d been fired from her job at the snack bar. Witnesses later remembered her crying as she left. The record doesn’t preserve the exact words exchanged, or the reason it escalated to that moment. What it does preserve is how she walked out—upset, shaken, and alone.
And then she started home.
Four blocks is nothing. It’s the kind of distance that feels safe. Familiar. Automatic. The kind of walk you don’t think twice about—especially at sixteen.
Theresa never arrived home...
What followed was not just a murder, but a chain reaction that stretched across decades: fear gripping a small community, pressure mounting on investigators, confessions that later unravelled, and three men sent to prison for a crime they did not commit.
For years, the system believed it had an answer.
It didn’t.
DNA—silent for decades—eventually spoke. It overturned convictions. It reopened wounds. And it left one question hanging in the air longer than anyone should have to wait for the truth.
Who killed Theresa Fusco?
In this episode, we trace that four-block walk forward and backward through time. We sit in the quiet moments most stories rush past: a girl holding back tears, a parent insisting something is wrong, evidence sealed away and nearly forgotten, and the long, unbearable weight of waiting.
And then—forty years later—something ordinary is thrown away.
A small, modern detail bridges the past and the present, forcing the case to move again. Not toward spectacle. Toward accountability.
This is not a story about shock.
It’s a story about how easily someone can disappear.
How hard the truth can be to recover.
And how one name deserves to be spoken with care, even after all this time.
Her name was Theresa Fusco, we shall always remember you.
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Thank you immensely for your patience mates on this episode! Thank you for the well wishes via email and through Patreon💜💜💜💜 lucky to have a community full of legends!

Listener discretion
This is a confronting episode. It involves graphic violence.
I keep the tone respectful, but it’s still a hard listen — so please take care of yourself while you’re hearing it.
If you or someone you know needs support in Australia, you can contact 1800RESPECT (24/7).
💜💜💜Welcome Legends! 💜💜💜
Tonight’s episode is one of the heaviest I’ve ever covered on Stories Fables Ghostly Tales — a case from Aberdeen, New South Wales (NSW) in the Hunter Valley, known widely in Australian true crime as “The Butcher of Aberdeen.”
This is the story of Katherine Knight and John Price, and the events that unfolded across late February 2000 into March 1, 2000 — a 2000 murder case that remains one of the most infamous and confronting examples of New South Wales crime in modern memory.
And I want to be really clear before you hit play:
This episode isn’t here to sensationalise anything. It’s here to bear witness — and to show how domestic violence and coercive control can build quietly, behind closed doors, until the consequences become irreversible.
What we cover in the episode
In this one, The Tale Teller takes you through the full arc — not just the headlines — including:

A grounded look at Aberdeen NSW and the Hunter Valley setting, and why this case shook a small town so deeply

Who John Price was, and what people around him noticed in the lead-up

The history of Katherine Knight, and the escalating violence that came before this relationship

The relationship dynamic — intimidation, control, threats, and the warning signs of coercive control

The final days before the murder, including the AVO / restraining order and why leaving is often the most dangerous moment

The night of the crime (Feb 29 / March 1, 2000) and what investigators walked into

The court outcome in NSW, including life imprisonment without parole

The aftermath, and why this remains one of the most infamous Australian homicide cases ever recorded

A closing reflection on why domestic violence should never be treated as a “private matter”

Katherine Knight was later held at Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre, and this case remains a grim reference point in True Crime Australia — not because of spectacle, but because it forces a conversation people still avoid.
The Town of Aberdeen Australia:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aberdeen_NSW_banner.JPG
Thank you for being here, truly.
💜💜💜💜💜💜💜
For supporting the show, for listening with care, and for backing storytelling that doesn’t treat real people like entertainment.
I’m your Tale Teller…
and I’ll see you in the next one. 🖤

What happens when a case goes cold — but because time got there first....
Because in true crime, some stories don’t stay unsolved due to a lack of effort.
They stay unsolved because the world simply didn’t have the tools to hear what the evidence was trying to say.
This week on Nocturne Files: True Crime, we step into the case of Kerryn Tate — last seen in daylight in Mount Lawley in 1979, and found the following morning in bushland near Karragullen.
For decades, her case lived inside a gap.
A small window of time where everything changed… and nobody could explain how.
Cold cases aren’t only about what we don’t know.
They’re about what stops moving.
Leads that run out.
Witnesses who forget.
Details that soften at the edges.
A file that stays open — but never progresses.
And yet, sometimes… the future shows up.
Not with a confession.
Not with a dramatic reveal.
But with science — patient, methodical, unromantic science — finally catching up to a question that’s been waiting for years.
This episode explores that shift.
Not with sensationalism or shock-value detail, but by sitting with what it means when an answer arrives late — and how a name can change the weight of silence, even when there’s no courtroom ending.
Because some truths don’t arrive loudly.
They arrive slowly.
Piece by piece.
Over decades.
That’s all I’ll say for now.
Thank you for being curious.
And thank you for being willing to sit with the unresolved parts — with care.
💜💛 You're all amazing, and thank you so much for your fantastic support! 💜💛
Grateful as always you living legends!!! And here's to more True Crime Episodes just around the corner....
— Your Tale Teller

🕯️ A Question at the Heart of This Episode
There’s a quiet question that sits at the centre of this week’s episode.
What happens when someone disappears — and never comes back — but there’s no crime scene, no physical proof, and no clear ending?
In true crime, these are known as no-body cases. And they’re some of the most unsettling stories we encounter, not because they’re dramatic, but because they’re incomplete.
No-body cases aren’t about what we can see.
They’re about what stops happening.
Phone calls that never come.
Routines that never resume.
Lives that simply… pause, and never restart.
For a long time, silence is treated as uncertainty. But as years pass, that silence begins to take on a different weight. It stops feeling neutral. It starts to feel deliberate — or interrupted.
This episode explores that shift.

Not with graphic detail or courtroom theatrics, but by sitting with the idea that absence itself can tell a story, if we’re willing to listen long enough.
No-body cases ask us to rethink what “evidence” really means. They challenge our instincts. And they remind us that some truths don’t arrive loudly — they arrive slowly, over time.
That’s all I’ll say for now.
Thank you for being curious.
And thank you for being willing to sit with the unanswered.
You're all amazing, and thank you so much for your fantastic support!
— Your Tale Teller