It was a from Lithgow taxi driver, Barbara Morrison, who had been waved down by a terrified teenager on the main street of the town just west of the Blue Mountains.

Melanie and her friend Kerry, both 19, had been attacked by a stranger as they walked from a nightclub to the local pool for a late-night dip.

Less than 12 hours later, a third friend they were due to meet at the pool, local beauty queen Alison Lewis, 19, was found naked, strangled and buried in the long-jump pit at the nearby athletics oval.

It was a murder case that captivated the country, not least when suggestions emerged that a police officer had taken 40 minutes to act on information that Ms Lewis might be missing.

Last week, the case took yet another dramatic twist when that officer, Mr See, was partially vindicated in a NSW District Court ruling that came after two decades of post-traumatic stress, public recriminations and battles with his employer.

Mr See, 56, has been fighting for worker's compensation for "chronic major depressive disorder" but the police have continually knocked him back, arguing his illness is not caused by being "hurt on duty".

On the night, Mr See was the supervisor at Lithgow station and had two officers with him.

When the 3.18am call came in, his two officers were busy charging a drunk driver before releasing him on bail.

Mrs Morrison said she would take Melanie and Kerry to hospital, one was in shock, the other was bleeding from the back of the head.

However, at hospital they revealed another friend, Ms Lewis, was supposed to meet them at the pool.

Mrs Morrison visited the station at 3.35am to relay the concerns over Ms Lewis. "It's pretty serious, Steve," she recalled saying.

Mr See would later tell numerous inquiries that he was torn; faced with an impossible choice.

Should he breach a force-wide directive not to leave a drunk prisoner in custody with just one officer, given the risk of suicide or violence?

Or should he breach the local commander's directive that officers don't attend jobs alone?

He made no mention of the missing girl when he asked his officers at 4.18am to head to the hospital to speak to the two teens.

When the officers arrived, the girls relayed their concerns about Ms Lewis and a search began immediately.

That afternoon, her body was found. She had been murdered local delinquent Jay William Short, the same man who randomly attacked her friends.

Four days later, Mr See's own hell started.

Mrs Morrison lodged a complaint about the police response. Channel Nine's A Current Affair ran an expose and the "media circus" came to town, Mr See said.

When he went shopping he would notice people turn to others "and mutter things". The migraines, sleepless nights and anxiety started.

An internal police inquiry cleared him but the Ombudsman intervened and released a scathing report.

"It appears that Constable See was incapable of understanding the significance of what he was being told, particularly when Mrs Morrison came to the station," the report said.

"His handling of the matter and his response during the police investigation raise real questions as to his competence."

In a shock about-face, police commissioner Peter Ryan publicly apologised to the Lewis family for Mr See's alleged errors.

In a meeting with the late deputy police commissioner Bev Lawson, he was forced to accept a "serious reprimand" and said he was told: "[The prisoner] was just a [drunk driver]. Why didn't you lock him away and forget about him?"

He plunged further into depression, preoccupied with resentment.

"He perceived that, through no fault of his own, the system he had served so conscientiously had turned against him to appease the media," one of his doctors noted.

Insomnia, panic attacks and breakdowns peppered his time with the police and were aggravated by compensation claims that were continually rejected for not being work-related.

He persevered on restricted duties until he was medically discharged in 2010.

District Court Judge Garry Neilson was tasked with determining whether Mr See's chronic major depressive disorder was caused by being "hurt on duty" or not.

In a 120-page judgment that took two years to write, he raised doubts over whether the actions taken by the police force were the predominant cause of Mr See's illness and whether it constituted reasonable forms of discipline.

He said police were not responsible for stressors such as media coverage and the Ombudsman's report.

However, there was no doubt Mr See's injuries arose out of duties performed on the night of March 2, 1997.

"He may have made the wrong choice, he may have failed to appreciate all the possibilities, he may have been negligent ... but he did not abandon his service," Judge Neilson said.

Crucially, he said the Ombudsman's report and the "subsequent acquiescence" of the police leadership "very much suggest fact-finding based on that wonderful advantage, the benefit of hindsight".

"No allowance appears to have been made for the possibility that Ms Lewis was not 'missing' and in harms way but merely that her whereabouts were unknown to her two friends," he said.

"Nor was any allowance made for the possibility that, left unsupervised in a police cell, [the drunk driver] may have come to harm."

Ms Lewis' killer was released on parole in December.