Child rape and murder victim Kylie Maybury’s killer attacked 12 other victims before dna caught him
KYLIE Maybury was six when she went to the shop for some sugar. Several hours later her tiny body was found dumped in a Preston gutter. But women in her killer’s life protected him for years, despite knowing he had perverted secrets.
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THIS Melbourne Cup Day will be the first for 34 years that Julie Maybury can celebrate knowing her daughter’s killer will die in jail.
Six-year-old Kylie was abducted, raped and murdered on the day of the Melbourne Cup in 1984 — the year Peter Cook rode Black Knight to victory.
Kylie’s tiny body was dumped in a Preston gutter several hours after she was kidnapped.
The evil pervert responsible — Gregory Keith Davies — literally got away with murder for more than three decades.
KYLIE MAYBURY KILLER ABUSED OTHERs
WHAT THE KILLER’S DAUGHTER HAD TO SAY
KILLER ATTACKED ANOTHER GIRL WITH A HAMMER
He was jailed for life in December last year after pleading guilty to the sex murder of Kylie.
“This anniversary of Kylie’s murder will be easier for me as it is the first since we finally got justice for her,” Ms Maybury told the Herald Sun yesterday.
“I had just about given up living long enough to see Kylie’s killer caught.
“Seeing him charged and then jailed for life in December last year doesn’t bring Kylie back, but it gives me some closure.
“I am eternally grateful to the Victoria Police cold case homicide team, particularly detective sergeant Paul Rowe, for reinvestigating Kylie’s murder and getting a result more than 30 years after she was killed.
“That result shows they never give up and provides hope to family members in other unsolved murder cases that they too might get justice one day.
“The person that murdered Kylie wrecked my life, so it is comforting to me knowing he will deservedly die in jail and that he will be doing it tough behind bars.
“I still feel Kylie’s presence around me all the time and since getting justice for her I believe she’s flying really high in the sky with the angels and that she can finally rest in peace.
“I haven’t felt that on any of the previous 33 anniversaries.”
The 2016 arrest of Davies followed the Herald Sun revealing in November 2014, in an article to mark the 30th anniversary of the Maybury murder, that Boris Buick, the then head of the Victoria Police cold case and missing persons squad, had ordered a review of the case.
“I was recently contacted by a family member of the young girl,” Sen-Sgt Buick told the Herald Sun then.
“She just wanted to know how things were going, whether there had been any new leads.
“Sadly, I had to tell her there hadn’t been.
“But that approach prompted me to order a review of the case.
“I think this is an appropriate case to bring to public awareness again, just because of the circumstances.
“This was a young girl who was raped and murdered and her body thrown in the street. It is a terrible case.
“I am hoping an article on the case will triggers someone’s conscience.
“Allegiances change over time and sometimes when relationships deteriorate a wife may dob in her husband or a crook that has a falling out with another crook will dob in that crook and away we go.
“Maybe the person who did it is dead, we just don’t know. We have no firm suspect.
“There will be people out there who know something about this murder. We want those people to tell us what they know.
“The person who murdered Kylie left something indelible behind, their DNA.
“That means the killer is identifiable.
“If the Herald Sun article generates some nominations of suspects then we will pursue DNA testing to see if any of them are the killer.”
That Herald Sun article did generate new calls to police and at 9am on the morning of June 9, 2016, detectives went to arrest Davies at the Waterford Park home he shared with his much older wife.
Davies, 73 at the time of his arrest, appeared in an out-of-sessions court hearing at Melbourne West police station later that night.
He was charged with one count each of murder, rape and false imprisonment
Davies, asked by bail justice Grant Coultman-Smith whether there were any exceptional circumstances why he should be granted bail, he replied: “Not as yet, your honour.”
Homicide squad detective sergeant Paul Rowe told the hearing Davies was arrested at his home about 9am that day before being taken to the Spencer St police complex, where he was later charged.
Kylie’s mother Julie Maybury turned up at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on May 28, 2017, expecting to give evidence in the committal hearing against Davies.
Davies stunned her by pleading guilty that day.
That surprise guilty plea enabled the Herald Sun to legally reveal the following day that Ms Maybury used to visit the Davies’ family home at the time her daughter’s killer lived there.
Ms Maybury was shocked when the Herald Sun told her the house Davies used to live in was less than a minute’s drive from where her daughter’s body was dumped.
When she was shown 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 and 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.
“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.”
Davies’ 2017 guilty plea brought an end to the mystery of who was responsible for one of Australia’s most baffling and disturbing cold cases.
It was through DNA that the homicide squad finally got there man.
DNA wasn’t on anybody’s radar when Davies kidnapped Kylie as she walked back to her Gregory Grove home in East Preston on Melbourne Cup Day in 1984 after buying a bag of sugar at a nearby shop.
The first time DNA evidence was used in a criminal case in Victoria wasn’t until five years later and it hadn’t been used as evidence anywhere in the world at the time Davies attacked Kylie.
That meant Davies had no idea at the time that the bodily fluids he left behind would one day be able to not just implicate him in the rape and murder of Kylie, but prove he did it.
It wasn’t until homicide squad detectives visited Davies on April 8, 2016, at his home in Ryans Rd, Waterford Park — after suspicions arose from an earlier tip off to police that he might be Kylie’s killer — that they got a voluntary DNA sample from him to compare with the one from the Kylie crime scene.
Those detectives were ecstatic when the Victoria Police DNA database found the DNA the killer left behind perfectly matched Davies’ DNA.
That DNA match led to the arrest of Davies in June 2016.
He initially denied raping and murdering Kylie, telling detectives it was coincidence that he happened to be in the area at the time Kylie went missing.
Faced with the damning DNA evidence, Davies decided to plead guilty on May 28, 2017, on what had been set down as the first day of his preliminary hearing.
Ms Maybury shed a tear in court that day as she stared down the man who so cruelly took away her beloved Kylie.
She had been preparing to take the witness box to give evidence.
Grasping her husband Bruce’s hand, she breathed a sigh of relief as Davies told the court he was pleading guilty to the brutal crime that shocked the nation.
Outside the court that day, Ms Maybury said Davies’ guilty plea was unexpected, but welcome.
“I’m so totally over the moon that he’s done it,” she said.
“We all can move on and we don’t have to look in the dark again. The dark is nearly over.”
Just weeks before Davies was sentenced to life in December 2017 the Herald Sun revealed Davies sexually attacked a dozen children in the years before and after he raped and killed Kylie Maybury.
He knew all 12 of his female victims and had regular and easy access to them.
The Herald Sun also revealed that:
DAVIES 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 claimed in late 2017 that 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 claimed in October 2017 that 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 to the Herald Sun that she had 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.
Davies’ daughter, aged 28 at the time she spoke to the Herald Sun in November 2017, said she wanted to use the pages of the Herald Sun to publicly apologise to Kylie’s mother Julie — as well as the sexual abuse victims — for her father’s monstrous behaviour.
Another Davies family member claimed to the Herald Sun in late 2017 that 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 said.
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.
Kylie’s uncle Mark and grandfather John Moss both killed themselves after tragically and wrongly being 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 in November 2017 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.”
The Victoria Police cold case homicide crew members started reinvestigating Kylie’s killing in 2015.
The squad’s Paul Rowe said they found a police document in the Maybury file which stated he had been given an alibi by his sister-in-law Barbara, with the alibi relating to Davies’ claim he was with his brother Edward and his wife Barbara at the time Kylie was taken and then spent the night home alone.
“I don’t know the extent of what the sister-in-law specifically says, they certainly record the fact that he is alibied by her,” Det-Sgt Rowe told the Herald Sun.
“Whether they accepted Davies’ assertion about his alibi, or whether they spoke to her and she verified it to a certain extent, I don’t know as the file doesn’t say.
“Anything is possible as we are relying on how someone has written something on a piece of paper that doesn’t give all the details.”
The sister-in-law was dead by the time cold case detectives found the information report stating she had given Davies an alibi for the time Kylie was abducted, so they couldn’t ask her about it.
Nor could they quiz one of the detectives who spoke to Davies and the sister-in-law in 1984 as he too is dead — and the second detective involved said he couldn’t remember the details of the discussion from more than three decades ago.
What they did do was go to the Waterford Park home Davies shared with his third wife, Patricia, to ask him for a DNA sample to compare with DNA previously obtained from the stored Maybury crime scene samples.
“We still talk about it now as to why he voluntarily agreed to give us the DNA sample that day,” Det-Sgt Rowe said.
“In my view it goes towards the impression I have of him as a person.
“He’s created a smokescreen within his life, despite having served time, despite the sexual offences he has committed.’
“A smokescreen that perhaps he’s not really guilty, that he’s taken responsibility for things other people have done, that people are making up stuff about him and that the world is against him.
“Certainly he has convinced his wife of that.
“Certainly he lives that lie constantly in his everyday life and how other people view him within his circle is really important to him.
“So when we knocked on his door, bearing in mind his wife was there, to ask for his DNA he couldn’t really say no.
“She said to him ‘you’ve got nothing to worry about, you’ve done nothing wrong’ so it’s then pretty hard for him to refuse our request because doing so would cause his wife to wonder what he had to hide.”
Davies’ DNA was taken to be compared to DNA Kylie’s killer left in and on her body and clothing.
“When you don’t get a match you tend to get an email from our forensics team and when you do get a match you get a phone call,” Det-Sgt Rowe said.
“So when your biologist is on the phone it’s a good sign.”
It was certainly a good sign when forensic scientist Kate Bradley rang to say Davies’ DNA matched the DNA profile extracted from the Maybury samples with a probability of 100 billion to one.
Davies was charged on June 6, 2016, and, faced with the compelling DNA and other evidence, decided to plead guilty to murdering Kylie.
“That was a great result and testament that cold cases never go away,” Det-Sgt Rowe said.
“It sounds idealistic to say we never give up, but the reality is murder cases never get closed until they are solved.”
Det-Sgt Rowe said solving any cold case was obviously very pleasing and helped motivate detectives to keep tackling cases no matter how old or difficult they were.
“Getting a result in the Kylie Maybury case was particularly rewarding for me,” he said.
“It involved a six-year-old girl going to the shops to buy sugar.
“She was born in 1978 and so was I.
“So I think to myself I have had almost 40 years and she had six.
“That’s probably a good reason to get up and come to work every day.”
Asked if he believed Davies’ claim that he doesn’t remember abducting, raping and murdering Kylie, Det-Sgt Rowe said “not in the slightest little bit”.
Kylie’s mother Julie was in court in December last year to hear Justice Lex Lasry jail Davies for life and order that he serve a minimum of 28 years — and as Davies was 75 when he was sentenced that minimum term almost certainly means he will die in jail.
Ms Maybury wept when Justice Lasry spoke about the shocking details of the crimes committed against her daughter, and the terrible injuries she suffered.
But she had composed herself by the time she walked out of the Supreme Court to bravely address the waiting media pack.
She said she was relieved the saga was over and that Davies would almost certainly die in prison.
“He’s a monster. You can’t call him anything else but that,” Ms Maybury said.
“How can he do that to a little girl? It’s just disgusting that anyone could do that to a little girl, it makes me sick.
“I’d like to kill him myself.”
Ms Maybury told the Herald Sun the following day that Davies being sentenced to life — and finally getting justice for Kylie — had given her some closure in her life.
“But it doesn’t bring my beautiful Kylie back,” she said.
keith.moor@news.com.au