Mother’s ’33 years of hell’ ends with cold case guilty plea

The Kylie Maybury murder case has finally been laid to rest, with a 74-year-old man pleading guilty to the killing 33 years ago.

The 6-year-old girl disappeared from a street in East Preston, a northern Melbourne suburb, on Melbourne Cup Day in 1984, after going to local shops to buy sugar for her mother.

Her body was found in the gutter of a street in the area a day later; she had been raped and strangled.

The case received plenty of media attention at the time, with the local press dubbing Maybury the ‘Cup Day Girl’.

A Victorian man, Gregory Keith Davies, entered a guilty plea today to charges of rape and murder, on what was due to be the first day of his trial. He had been charged last June, but police have not yet revealed how they tracked Davies down or whether DNA advances assisted in the case. There had been a $1 million reward on offer for information on Maybury’s killer.

The Age reported that the little girl’s mother, Julie Ryan, was in court today to see her daughter’s alleged murderer.

“It’s been 33 years and he’s put me through hell,” she said outside court, according to The Age. “I didn’t [expect the guilty plea] and I’m so totally over the moon that he’s done it, it’s just made life so much easier.

Davies has been remanded in custody and is due back in court tomorrow.

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