Gregory Keith Davies caved in the skull of a 14-year-old girl, who, like Kylie, was on her way home to her mother, in a case so horrific it should have been a warning sign to authorities that he was likely to strike again.

On September 25, 1970, Davies set upon the girl, Lucy, on a train travelling on the Hurstbridge line.

He told police he planned to rape Lucy but was turned off by how much she was bleeding and so fled the train.

Lucy's parents were told their only daughter would probably die, and that if she recovered she would never walk again.

Davies, who was charged with attempted murder and grievous bodily harm, was found to have committed the attack, but details of his sentence cannot be published.

Davies was free 14 years later when Kylie was attacked, and on the loose for another 32 years after that, before he was finally brought to justice.

Lucy, who is now 60, did not know the man who changed her life forever had even been charged with Kylie's rape and murder until she was contacted by The Age.

She had suppressed his name from her memory.

Davies pleaded guilty on Monday to snatching six-year-old Kylie from a Preston street on November 6, 1984 then raping her and dumping her body the next day. He was only charged with the crime last year.

Lucy is so deeply troubled that the man who attacked her was free to kill that she has called for a full investigation into any unsolved crimes that could also be tied to the 74-year-old.

Davies was only linked with Kylie's murder after his DNA matched a sample left on her body.

How 'The Age' reported the court case in 1970.

Lucy, then a student at Hurstbridge High School, was on her way home to her sick mother when Davies crept up behind her on the train as it travelled between Hurstbridge and Diamond Creek.

She did not hear or see Davies until he started the frenzied beating.

She was hit several times on the head with a hammer, and fell to the floor bleeding. Davies left her carriage, but then came back and hit her again on the shoulder. Lucy was found on the floor when the train stopped at Eltham.

Davies was arrested at Diamond Creek station after a police officer noticed him on the platform.

When the officer spoke to Davies, he appeared nervous and agitated. The officer then saw the blood-stained hammer in a Gladstone bag Davies was carrying.

Lucy proved the pessimistic doctors wrong, and after a month in hospital was able to go home.

But she had no feeling on her left side, and while her injuries improved with time, her mind would never heal.

"He didn't rape me, but he did hurt me really badly. And he probably thinks, she's alive, that's fine, but he does not know what he's left.

"I struggled through school, but I made it, and then I worked, had kids and married, and all that stuff, but the pain I have been suffering with through it all is pretty bad."

Lucy had three children, two of them daughters. She never let go of the anguish she felt when they caught the train.

"My kids used to think I was being really ridiculous and over-mothering," Lucy said. "But I had to do it. I was petrified."

Having children of her own made Lucy understand how traumatised her parents must have been when they thought she would not survive, and for the rest of her teenage years, as everyone tried to get on as normal.

"I was in hospital for a month, maybe more. The following year I did not want to go to school, but my father made me. That was really hard, facing everybody. But everyone was really great."

There was no counselling offered back then though. And no victims of crime compensation to help Lucy's family pay the medical expenses.

The closest Lucy came to any support to help her cope with the trauma which would stalk her for the rest of her life came in the form of a policewoman who constantly stopped by her hospital bed.

"She was amazing. She really was. I don't even remember her name."

Eventually, Lucy became curious about the man who had left her lying in a pool of blood on the train carriage floor. Her parents did not speak of it much, thinking they were protecting her.

So, when she was an adult, Lucy spent hours looking through old newspaper articles. She eventually found an article about her case. It did not name her, but it named the man who had been charged: Gregory Keith Davies, a 28-year-old welder from Francis Grove in Thornbury.

She could not find anything about his sentence, but remembered her parents saying he had been sent to Ararat. While a sex offenders facility' had not been established there at that time, there was a prison, and an asylum.

The Age has not been able to confirm details of Davies' sentence for the attack on Lucy, but has found archival news articles showing he was committed to trial in November, 1970. He pleaded not guilty and was refused bail.

Lucy said whatever Davies' sentence, it obviously did nothing to suppress his urgings.

"In the sentencing for his attack on me, there was a failure there," Lucy said.

"Because perhaps if that was harsher, than he might have thought twice about doing it again.

"I have often thought about him and I just wanted him to know what he had done, and ask him why, to make him see what he actually has done to me. But he probably doesn't care. He wouldn't care."

Davies will face a plea hearing in the Supreme Court on September 21.