Kylie Maybury’s killer Gregory Keith Davies sexually abused at least 12 other child victims
MURDERED Preston schoolgirl Kylie Maybury wasn’t the first or last child raped by prolific sex offender and killer Gregory Keith Davies, a Herald Sun investigation has discovered.
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MURDERER Gregory Keith Davies sexually attacked a dozen children in the years before and after he raped and killed schoolgirl Kylie Maybury.
He knew all 12 of his female victims and had regular and easy access to them.
The much-married Davies, 75, has pleaded guilty to the 1984 murder of Kylie, 6, and will on Monday appear in the Victorian Supreme Court for a pre-sentence plea hearing.
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A Herald Sun investigation has also discovered:
DAVIES this month told his daughter in a jailhouse confession that, while he doesn’t remember murdering Kylie, “I must have done it because my DNA is a match to Kylie’s killer’s DNA”.
SOMEBODY very close to Davies anonymously told police in 1997 that they should investigate Davies over the Maybury murder — yet Davies wasn’t charged until nearly 20 years later.
A DAVIES family member recently claimed Davies’ mother Eileen had “blood on her hands” because she knew her son was sexually abusing children for decades but never dobbed him in.
DAVIES’ mother and her friend Patricia, who later became Davies’ third wife, sat in Ararat prison in the late 1990s during Davies’ rehabilitation program as he read out details to them of his sexual abuse of six children — yet both women continued to stand by him and kept his abominable behaviour secret from others.
A DAVIES family member recently claimed Davies escaped jail in 1984 over sexual assaults committed against four other children because police allegedly talked them out of pressing charges “by saying it would be too traumatic for the children to go through the court process”.
DAVIES’ daughter revealed on Sunday that she has been in contact with two more of her father’s victims and that they hadn’t reported the sexual abuse they suffered “but they have confided in me and I believe them”.
ONE of those victims contacted police after Davies was arrested in 2016 and told a detective she would be prepared to press sexual assault charges against Davies if it would help get him convicted over the Maybury murder.
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Kylie’s mother Julie Maybury made an emotional visit on Sunday to her daughter’s grave at Fawkner Cemetery to give Kylie a message.
“Justice is almost here Kylie,” she said as she leaned over the gravestone.
“I hope you will be finding yourself at peace at last and that you can fly with the angels.
“I know you will be beside me tonight and be in my dreams, my beautiful Kylie.”
Davies’ daughter, 28, who asked not to be identified, is using Monday’s Herald Sun to publicly apologise to Julie Maybury — as well as the sexual abuse victims — for her father’s monstrous behaviour.
Another Davies family member claimed Davies’ mother Eileen Davies, who died in 2010, had “blood on her hands” for not reporting her son’s perverted behaviour to police when she first discovered or suspected it.
“Had she done so, then Kylie might still be alive and the other victims he molested after her murder wouldn’t have had their lives ruined,” she recently told the Herald Sun.
The relative, who asked not to be named, claimed Mrs Davies knew before Kylie was murdered in 1984 that her son had previously raped at least one young girl and bashed another with a hammer during a frenzied attack.
Police questioned Davies — who is one of 11 children — and his mother about Kylie’s death a few days after her body was found in a Preston gutter near the Davies family home.
Neither of them mentioned the unreported rape or the ten years Davies spent in jail over the sexually motivated 1970 hammer attack on 14-year-old Lucy Stasiewcz.
Had Mrs Davies done the decent thing when police questioned her in 1984, then her son would almost certainly have become an instant suspect for the Maybury murder.
But her silence meant he didn’t get charged until 32 years later.
Kylie’s uncle Mark and grandfather John Moss both killed themselves after being wrongly treated as suspects for murdering Kylie.
“They also might still be alive if Mrs Davies had reported her son to police when she had the chance,” the Davies family member said.
“Sadly, a decision was made to keep his child sex offending quiet.
“That left him free to sexually abuse other girls, which he did for years.”
Davies’ daughter, his only child, told the Herald Sun on Sunday that she wasn’t aware of when Mrs Davies found out her son was sexually abusing children, but had been told by other family members that it was decades ago.
“From what I can tell a lot of it has been kept hush hush,” she said.
“But in terms of his mother, my grandmother, I think she was in denial.
“She was a Christian and just did not want to believe that her son had done something this horrific.”
Davies was jailed for two and a half years in 1996 over sex attacks on six young girls.
He was working as a Windsor Hotel housekeeper at the time he murdered Kylie in 1984, prior to that he was a welder.
Davies was a talented musician and artist and in later years he helped his current wife Patricia run a bed and breakfast place in Waterford Park, near Kilmore.
His daughter Jill — not her real name — recently confronted her estranged father over his sickening crimes.
She spoke to him in Port Phillip Prison on November 6 — exactly 33 years since her father abducted and later murdered Kylie Maybury.
“I didn’t realise until I was leaving the jail that it was the 33rd anniversary, I felt sick after that,” Jill said.
“I plan to visit him again; it is something I have to do for myself.
“I need to ask him things about my life, why he abandoned me and why he has done what he did.
“I need answers to help me cope, answers only he can provide. I’m doing this for my wellbeing, not his.”
Jill is breaking her silence to reveal she has spoken to some of her father’s sexual assault victims and to ask the Herald Sun to pass on her apologies about her father’s behaviour.
“I particularly want to say sorry to Kylie’s mother,” she said on Sunday.
“I can’t imagine what she’s going through. If it was my child I would be absolutely devastated.
“I am really sorry that this has happened. I wish it never did.
“I hope that with him being convicted it does bring her some peace of mind. He deserves whatever sentence he gets.
“There is no excuse for what he’s done, none whatsoever.”
Kylie’s mother Julie Maybury, 57, told the Herald Sun on Sunday she appreciated Jill’s gesture.
“But I will never forgive Davies for taking my beautiful Kylie’s life,” she said.
“I hope the other prisoners make his life hell and that he dies a painful death in jail.”
Jill, Davies’ only child, said on Sunday she wanted Julie Maybury to know that she would also never forgive her father for what he did to Kylie.
She said as soon as her father was arrested for murdering Kylie, she and her mother contacted police and “gave them as much information about his background as we could”.
Kylie had been sent to buy sugar from a local Preston corner shop when Davies kidnapped her on Melbourne Cup Day in 1984.
Her body was found dumped in a gutter near the Davies family home the following morning.
Jill said her father told her during their recent prison visit that he remembered most of what he did on the day Kylie was abducted, including stopping at a shop to buy food on his way home from a family barbecue — probably the shop Kylie went to.
“He said the last thing he remembered from that day was falling asleep in a chair,” she said.
“We’ll probably never know if he really doesn’t remember it or whether it’s just what he is saying.”
It wasn’t until 32 years later that Davies became a suspect, after the Victoria Police cold case squad had a fresh look at the Maybury murder.
The Herald Sun revealed in November 2014 that the squad was re-examining the Maybury killing.
“I am hoping an article on the case triggers someone’s conscience,” the then head of the squad, Det-Sen-Sgt Boris Buick, told the Herald Sun.
That investigation resulted in detectives arresting Davies at the Waterford Park home he shared with his third wife Patricia on June 6 last year after DNA they took from him two months earlier was found to match DNA obtained from semen left on Kylie’s body and clothing.
Davies’ daughter Jill said her father has shown no remorse over the murder.
While he continued to claim he had no memory of attacking Kylie, he confessed to Jill during her recent prison visit that he must have done it because his DNA was a match to Kylie’s killer’s DNA.
“If I had done something bad and I didn’t remember it and someone told me ‘you’ve done this’ and there was proof I had done it I would feel absolutely horrified,” Jill said.
“I would be showing remorse, but he doesn’t.
“He said to me the fact the DNA is his means he must have done it, but he doesn’t show any feeling about it.”
Jill said her father denied ever having sexually abused children.
“I have spoken to victims who haven’t come forward, and don’t really want to, but they have confided in me that it happened,” she said.
“I’ve got no doubt, like he swears to me that he didn’t do it, but I know the truth.
“No matter what he says I’m not going to believe it. I honestly believe he did do it.
“I have had two victims who have come forward to me, so we know it happened.”
Jill said her mother left her father just before she found out she was pregnant with her.
“Mum gave him every chance possible to see me and he didn’t,” she said.
“I had tried to reach out to him in the past and he promised to call me back and it never happened, so I pretty much gave up.
“The way I see it is he pretty much abandoned me.”
Jill only saw her father off and on for brief periods over the years.
She revealed he was initially married to a woman she only knew as Mary-Ann, who he married when Jill was just a few months old.
After that marriage failed, he married his current wife Patricia, who is about 15 years older than him. Davies recently told his daughter that Patricia was now in a care home suffering from dementia.
Davies was married to his first wife at the time he attacked 14-year-old Lucy Stasiewcz with a hammer on a Hurstbridge line train in 1970, an assault which saw him jailed for 10 years.
Jill said she hadn’t seen her father for several years at the time a cousin rang her to warn her in 2016 that he had been charged with murdering Kylie Maybury.
“I was absolutely mortified, but at the same time I wasn’t surprised because I already knew about the girl he attacked on the train and the sexual assaults on children,” she said.
“So I knew that he was capable of doing something sexual, but in terms of actually killing her, I didn’t think he would be capable of that.
“And when I spoke to my mum about it her first instinct was ‘did he mean to do it’, in terms of, we don’t think he actually meant to kill her but we do believe that he meant to rape her.
“We think it may have been that he has covered her mouth to basically stop her from screaming and he’s actually covered her mouth and nose, which has made her stop breathing.”
Jill’s mother Cheryl — not her real name — recently told the Herald Sun she met Davies in 1988 — four years after he murdered Kylie Maybury.
“We met at a country and western night at an Ararat pub,” she said.
“He was a regular attendee at the monthly Sunday night country and western club in Ararat and he also attended another one in Maryborough on a fairly regular basis.
“They would have an open microphone and some friends of mine invited me to get me out of the house.
“I was a single mother with a three-year-old daughter at the time, and Keith, as he called himself, I’m not sure when he dropped the Gregory, was there with his friends and his friends knew my friends.
“Keith was performing and I was quite impressed with his singing, he had a really nice voice. He did actually record an album and the photograph on the cassette cover was Keith in his country and western outfit.
“We bonded over music more than anything.
“He was very good with my daughter when we were at the pub, he didn’t see her as a nuisance. He bought her drinks and talked to her, which impressed me.
“I was 28 when we met. He was 17 years older than me.”
Cheryl and Davies ended up being in a relationship for about 18 months.
She left him when she accidentally fell pregnant with their daughter, Jill.
“I did so because he was trying to manipulate me and control my life,” Cheryl said.
“He was trying to stop me seeing my friends and just generally being very controlling and I was suspicious about his past.
“One time, when we were still together, police knocked on my door looking for him.
“Keith told me it was over an unpaid electricity bill, but I was later able to find out it was over a fraud he committed.
“It wasn’t until after he was charged over the Maybury murder in 2016 that I found out about him having spent 10 years in jail after he attacked the girl with the hammer in 1970.
“He never showed any signs when I was with him of somebody who was hiding something in his past.
“That is chilling considering I now know we met just four years after he raped and murdered Kylie.
“When police interviewed me about him after he was charged in 2016, I told them I was horrified that he didn’t show any signs of remorse or signs of a person who had something weighing on his heart.
“Far from it, he was actually the life of the party when he was in a relationship with me. He would laugh, have a joke.
“He loved playing his guitar, both for himself and in front of an audience.”
Cheryl said Davies did start asking to spend time with their daughter after he married his second wife, Mary-Ann.
“I remember trying to hand her over one day when she was aged about three,” she said.
“She literally put claw marks in my shoulder; there was blood on my shoulder. That’s how much she didn’t want to go and see him and Mary-Ann.”
Cheryl said she believed Davies’ mother Eileen knew he was molesting children for decades and “swept it under the carpet”.
“She certainly knew from at least 1996,” she said.
“I was with her and her friend Patricia, who later married Keith, in Ararat jail in 1996 when Keith read out the charges laid against him over his sexual assaults on six children.
“I was actually sent a letter from Ararat prison asking me to be part of Keith’s rehabilitation support.
“I suppose because of our daughter they thought it appropriate that I be involved.
“I remember sitting there in a room in the prison and having no idea what he was going to say or what was expected of me.
“I agreed to go mainly out of curiosity to find out what exactly he had done.
“Part of the program then was to make the person read out what they were charged with and say what they had done.
“We were all seated in an area. His mother was there, as was Patricia, the woman who later became his wife.
“Even though Keith read the charges he told us when the prison officers were not there that he didn’t really do it ‘but I’ve got to tell you I did because otherwise they are not going to let me out of here’.
“So he was in denial then, despite the fact he obviously had sexually abused all those children.
“When it came time for us to leave I went to one of the officers and said ‘I think you need to know that the whole time he was in there he was in denial, when one of you guys would walk past he would play the game, then he would go back to denial’.
“I told them I didn’t want any part of it, that there was no way I was going to support him getting out early.
“I felt so contaminated that I had brought this man into my life.”
Cheryl said she presumed at the time that Davies’ mother Eileen had brought her friend Patricia along to prison that day just for emotional support.
“I didn’t find out until later that there was actually a relationship between Patricia and Keith,” she said.
Cheryl said she found it difficult to imagine how Patricia could continue in a relationship with Davies, and later marry him, after hearing first-hand what he had done to so many young girls.
“I think she must have been in denial, like Keith’s mother, despite all the evidence he was guilty,” she said.
Cheryl said she expects — and hopes — Davies will die in jail.
“I do not believe he has the right to leave that jail,” she said.
“Under the circumstances of what he has done, I just feel it would be a total slap in the face to everybody if he was ever allowed out into society again.
“And I believe he would offend again if he did get out.”
