Kylie Maybury cold case: Mother’s anguish as Gregory Davies admits 1984 rape and murder
MURDER victim Kylie Maybury’s body was dumped less than a minute’s drive from her killer’s home in 1984. Her anguished mother said today: “If I had my way, I would kill the man.”
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MURDER victim Kylie Maybury’s mother, Julie, was shocked when told by the Herald Sun the house the killer lived in was less than a minute’s drive from where her daughter’s body was dumped.
That man was Gregory Keith Davies, 74, who yesterday admitted raping and murdering six-year-old Kylie.
The Herald Sun last year discovered Davies — who was known as Keith Davies — used to live in Gordon Grove, Preston, with his parents and 10 siblings and that he was living there with his mother, Eileen, and youngest brother, Robert, at the time Kylie was murdered.
Kylie’s body was found dumped in a gutter in Donald St, Preston — just 500m from the Davies family home and not far from Ms Maybury’s unit in Gregory Grove, East Preston.
The Herald Sun last year showed Ms Maybury a photograph of the Gordon Grove home the Davies family used to live in.
She immediately recognised the distinctive house and that she had visited it as a teenager with a friend.
She had also delivered pamphlets there when she was a delivery girl.
“It is bizarre and scary that I have been in that house,” Ms Maybury said yesterday.
“I knew the mother in particular, but may even have met Keith — although I don’t remember him.
“I probably heard him, though, as I know he used to play the guitar and that’s one thing I used to hear all the time when I walked into the Davies’ house.
“I met his mum and some of his family when I was a teenager. A friend of mine used to know one of the Davies boys and I used to go to the Davies family home in Gordon Grove with her.”
Ms Maybury said it wasn’t until the Herald Sun showed her the photograph of the home that she realised she knew some of the Davies family.
“When I was told the name of the man who was charged over Kylie’s death, it meant nothing to me and I didn’t think there was any connection between us,” she said. “But the second I saw the photograph of the house, I knew I had been there as a teenager. That house is very close to where Kylie’s body was discovered.”
The homicide squad asked the Herald Sun not to reveal details of Ms Maybury’s connection to the house until after Davies either pleaded guilty or was found guilty.
The Gordon Grove house has changed hands several times since the Davies family lived there and the current owners have no connection to the Davies family.
Ms Maybury, 57, yesterday told the Herald Sun she was delighted Davies had pleaded guilty — it meant Kylie was finally getting justice.
“I didn’t think I would stay alive that long to see justice, but I’m still here and justice has come,” she said.
“Davies is definitely the killer, they got him through DNA. They got a match and that prompted him to plead guilty. He thought he had got away with it for more than 30 years, but DNA caught up with him.
“Kylie can now rest in peace. I really think capital punishment should be allowed for offenders like Davies.
“Somebody who does dreadful things to a child, like Davies did to Kylie, doesn’t deserve to live.
“Yes, Davies will be in jail, but he’s still breathing, eating and seeing the light of day. Kylie isn’t and that just isn’t fair. If I had my way, I would kill the man myself.”
Kylie’s body was found in Preston in the early hours of November 7, 1984.
Davies kidnapped her the previous afternoon while she walking home after buying sugar at a nearby shop.
An autopsy revealed Kylie had been drugged, raped and probably suffocated.
Ms Maybury said Kylie has been constantly in her thoughts since that sad day in 1984 when she didn’t come home after going to a nearby shop to buy a bag of sugar.
“I think about her every day, she’s in my dreams,” she said yesterday.
“I go to the cemetery quite a fair bit, just to see her and have a talk to her. She was a beautiful little girl. She was very good at callisthenics.
“She won a gold medal. The group gave it to me a couple of weeks prior, before her death.
“She was a placid little girl.
“She would have gone a long way in life.
“Unfortunately a man came along, called Gregory Davies, snatched her, really, really sucked her in and killed her.
“He wrecked my life.”
Ms Maybury said her husband Bruce had provided her with enormous support and had helped her cope with life after Kylie. “I’ve been married to Bruce for five years, but we have been together for 15. He’s my rock,” she said.
“I would also like to thank the homicide squad, both the original investigator, Peter O’Connor, who has been very helpful over the years, and the current detective, Paul Rowe, who has also been superb.
“It’s remarkable that they just never gave in until they got their man — and get him they did.”
Not only has Ms Maybury had to cope with the murder of her beloved daughter, but a series of bizarre and tragic twists and turns in the case over the years brought more trauma into her shattered life.
They included:
KYLIE’S grandfather John Moss committing suicide in October 1985, just prior to the first anniversary of his granddaughter’s death and shortly after he was accused and then cleared of killing her;
HER uncle Mark Maybury killed himself in jail in February 1987, leaving behind a suicide note in which he named two dead paedophiles he claimed to have murdered;
KYLIE’S grave was desecrated in 1985 by a man who claimed to be a gypsy from Queensland and who put a big Greek urn on it before warning Fawkner Crematorium staff he had put a curse on the urn that would see anyone moving it suffer a “punishment worse than death”;
ONE-TIME prime suspect and convicted child killer Robert Arthur Selby Lowe got legal aid in 1997 to fund a High Court constitutional challenge to the validity of the Act police were attempting to use to forcibly take his DNA so they could compare it with DNA Kylie’s killer left on her body;
POLICE hoped Lowe’s legal battle to keep his DNA to himself was a sign he was guilty and were bitterly disappointed when they eventually got his DNA and it proved he wasn’t Kylie’s killer.
Kylie was snatched near her home in East Preston on Melbourne Cup Day 1984 — the day Peter Cook rode Black Knight into the history books.
Like many Australians, Ms Maybury took her daughters, Kylie and two-year-old Rebecca, to the pub to watch the race that stops a nation.
At Kylie’s inquest, before Coroner Hugh Adams in January 1986, Ms Maybury — who was separated from her husband — explained that she and the girls spent the morning at home in their flat.
“About 12.45pm, I left home and went to the Council Club Hotel with my two daughters and a neighbour of mine, Lorna Simpson,” Ms Maybury said. “We arrived at the hotel at about 1.15pm. We had some lunch and watched the Melbourne Cup on the big television screen. We left shortly after the running of the Melbourne Cup and went and visited a friend of mine by the name of Liz Radakovic in Thornbury.
“We left there shortly after 4pm and went home.
“We arrived home just before 4.30pm and went straight to Lorna’s flat to have a cup of tea. In the flat were myself, Lorna and my two daughters.
“Lorna made me a cup of tea and I then rang my mother in Albury.
“I was still on the phone when Lorna wanted some sugar from the shop. Lorna asked Kylie if she would go to the shop and get the sugar and I said she could as long as she came straight back.”
Ms Simpson gave Kylie 90c to buy the sugar.
“Before she left to go to the shop, she wanted to know how to spell ‘I love you’ so I wrote it on the bottom of a newspaper,” Ms Simpson told police. “I used either a blue or black ink biro.
“I then gave the same biro to Kylie and she wrote ‘I love you’ on her arm. After she had written on her arm, she left to go to the shop.”
Kylie never made it back from the shop.
“At least now I know the man who grabbed her will die in jail,” Ms Maybury said.