How a Shocking Rape and Murder Case Was Resolved – Fifty-Eight Years After.

In the summer of 2023, Jo Smith, was tasked by her supervisor to review the Louisa Dunne case. Louisa Dunne was a 75-year-old woman who had been sexually assaulted and killed in her Bristol home in June 1967. She was a parent of two children, a grandmother, a woman whose first husband had been a prominent trade unionist, and whose home had once been a center of political activity. By 1967, she was residing by herself, twice widowed but still a familiar presence in her local neighbourhood.

There were no witnesses to her murder, and the initial inquiry unearthed little to go on apart from a handprint on a rear window. Officers canvassed eight thousand doors and took nineteen thousand palm prints, but no identification was found. The case remained open.

“Upon realizing that it was dated 1967, I knew we were only going to solve this through scientific analysis, so I went to the archive to look at the evidence containers,” says Smith.

She found a trio. “I opened the first and closed it again right away. Most of our cold cases are in forensically sealed bags with barcodes. These were not. They just had old paper tags saying what they were. It meant they’d never been subject to modern forensic examinations.”

The rest of the day was spent with a co-worker (it was his first day on the job), both gloved up, securely packaging the items and listing what they had. And then nothing more happened for another nearly a year. Smith pauses and tries to be tactful. “I was very enthusiastic, but it did not generate a huge amount of enthusiasm. It’s fair to say there was some doubt as to the value of submitting something that aged to forensics. It was not considered a priority.”

It sounds like the opening chapter of a mystery book, or the first episode of a cold case TV drama. The final outcome also seems the stuff of fiction. In June, a nonagenarian, Ryland Headley, was found guilty of the victim’s rape and murder and given a sentence to life.

A Record-Breaking Investigation

Spanning fifty-eight years, this is believed to be the oldest cold case closed in the UK, and perhaps the globe. Subsequently, the unit won recognition for their work. The whole thing still feels extraordinary to her. “It just doesn’t feel tangible,” she says. “It’s forever giving me goose bumps.”

For Smith, cases like this are proof that she made the correct professional decision. “He thought policing was too risky,” she says, “but what could be better than resolving a 58-year-old murder?”

Smith entered the police when she was in her twenties because, she says: “I’m nosy and I was fascinated by people, in helping them when they were in crisis.” Her previous role in safeguarding involved grueling hours. When she saw a job advert for a crime review officer, she decided to pursue it. “It looked really engaging, it’s more of a regular hours role, so here I am.”

Revisiting the Clues

Smith’s job is a non-uniformed position. The specialist unit is a small group set up to look at cold cases – murders, rapes, long-term missing people – and also review live cases with fresh eyes. The original team was tasked with gathering all the old case files from around the area and relocating them to a new secure storage facility.

“The case documents had started in a precinct, then, in the years since 1967, they were transferred several times before finally coming here,” says Smith.

Those boxes, their contents now properly secured, returned to storage. Towards the end of 2023, a new senior investigating officer arrived to lead the team. The new officer took a novel strategy. Once an engineer, Marchant had “taken a hard left” on his career path.

“Cracking cases that are challenging – that’s my analytical approach – trying to think in innovative manners,” he says. “When Jo told me about the box, it was an obvious decision. Why wouldn’t we try?”

The Breakthrough

In cold case crime dramas, once items are sent off to forensics, the results come back in days. In real life, the testing procedure and testing take many months. “The laboratory scientists are interested, they want to do it, but our work is always slightly on the back-burner,” says Smith. “Live-time murders have to take precedence.”

It was the end of August 2024 when Smith received a message that forensics had a complete genetic fingerprint of the rapist from the victim’s clothing. A few hours later, she got a follow-up. “They had a hit on the DNA database – and it was someone who was living!”

Ryland Headley was 92, a widower, and living in Ipswich. “When we realised how old he was, we didn’t have the luxury of time,” says Smith. “It was all hands on deck.” In the period between the DNA match and Headley’s arrest, the team pored over every single one of the numerous original statements and records.

For a while, it was like navigating two time periods. “Just looking at all the photographs, seeing an old lady’s house in 1967,” says Smith. “The accounts. The way they portray people. Today, it would typically be different. There are so many generational differences.”

Understanding the Victim

Smith felt she came to understand the victim, too. “Louisa was such a prominent person,” she says. “Lots of people were saying that they saw her outside her home every day. She was twice widowed, estranged from her family, but she wasn’t reclusive. She had a gaggle of women who used to meet and gossip – and those were the women who realised something was very wrong.”

Most of the team’s days were spent analyzing documents. (“Humongous amounts of paperwork. It wouldn’t make compelling television.”) The team also interviewed the original GP, now eighty-nine, who had been at the crime scene. “He remembered every particular from that day,” says Smith. “He said: ‘I’ve been a doctor all my life and seen a lot of dead bodies but that’s the only one that had been murdered. That stays with you.’”

A History of Crimes

Headley’s prior offenses seemed to leave little question of his guilt. After the 1967 murder, he had moved, and in 1977 he had admitted to assaulting two elderly women, again in their own homes. His victims’ harrowing statements from that earlier trial gave some idea into the victim’s last moments.

“He threatened to strangle one and he threatened to suffocate the other with a cushion,” says Smith. Both women fought back. Though Headley was initially sentenced to life, he appealed, supported by a psychiatrist who stated that Headley was acting out of character. “It went from a life sentence to less time,” says Smith.

Closing the Case

Smith was there for Headley’s arrest. “I knew what he looked like, I knew he was going to be 92, and I also knew how strong the evidence was,” she says. The team were concerned that the arrest would trigger a medical incident. “We were uncovering the darkest secret he’d kept hidden for 60 years,” says Smith.

Yet everything was able to go ahead. The court case took place, and the victim’s living relative had been identified and approached by family liaison. “Mary had believed it was never going to be solved,” says Smith. For the family, there had also been a stigma about the nature of the crime.

“Rape is often not reported now,” says Smith, “but in the mid-20th century, how many elderly ladies would ever report this had happened?”

Headley was told at sentencing that, for all practical purposes, he would remain incarcerated. He would spend his life behind bars.

A Profound Effect

For Smith, it has been a special case. “It just feels distinct, I don’t know why,” she says. “With current investigations, the process is very responsive. With this case you’re proactive, the urgency is only from yourself. It began with me trying to get someone to take some notice of that box – and I was able to follow it right until the end.”

She is confident that it is not the last solved case. There are about 130 cold cases in the archives. “We’ve got so much more to do,” she says. “We have several murders that we’re re-examining – we’re constantly submitting evidence to forensics and following other lines of inquiry. We’ll be forever unlocking the past.”