How a Disturbing Rape and Murder Case Was Cracked – 58 Decades Later.

In the summer of 2023, Jo Smith, was asked by her team leader to review the Louisa Dunne case. The woman was a elderly woman who had been raped and murdered in her Bristol home in the month of June 1967. She was a parent of two children, a grandparent, a woman whose first husband had been a leading trade unionist, and whose home had once been a focal point of civic engagement. By 1967, she was residing by herself, twice widowed but still a familiar presence in her local neighbourhood.

There were no one who saw anything to her killing, and the initial inquiry found few leads apart from a palm print on a rear window. Investigators canvassed 8,000 doors and took 19,000 palm prints, but no identification was found. The case stayed unsolved.

“Upon realizing that it was dated 1967, I knew we were only going to solve this through forensics, so I went to the storage facility to look at the evidence containers,” states the officer.

She found a trio. “I opened the first and put the lid back on again right away. Most of our cold cases are in forensically sealed bags with barcodes. These weren’t. They just had brown cardboard luggage labels indicating what they were. It meant they’d never undergone modern forensic examinations.”

The rest of the day was spent with a co-worker (it was his initial day on the job), both gloved up, securely packaging the items and listing what they had. And then nothing more happened for another eight months. Smith pauses and tries to be diplomatic. “I was very enthusiastic, but it did not generate a huge amount of enthusiasm. Let’s just say there was some scepticism as to the worth of submitting something that aged to forensics. It wasn’t seen as a priority.”

It sounds like the opening chapter of a crime novel, or the first episode of a investigative series. The end result also seems the material for a story. In June, a nonagenarian, Ryland Headley, was found guilty of the victim’s rape and murder and sentenced to life.

An Unprecedented Investigation

Covering fifty-eight years, this is believed to be the oldest cold case closed in the United Kingdom, and possibly the world. Subsequently, the unit won an award for their work. The whole thing still feels extraordinary to her. “It just doesn’t feel tangible,” she says. “It’s forever giving me chills.”

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

Smith joined the police when she was 24 because, she says: “I’m inquisitive and I was fascinated by people, in assisting them when they were in crisis.” Her previous experience in safeguarding involved demanding 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 standard schedule role, so I took the position.”

Examining the Clues

Smith’s job is a civilian role. The major crime review team is a small group set up to look at historical crimes – homicides, rapes, disappearances – and also re-examine active investigations with a new perspective. The original team was tasked with gathering all the old case files from around the region and relocating them to a new secure storage facility.

“The case documents had originated in a local police station, 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 lead detective arrived to head up the team. DI Dave Marchant took a novel strategy. Once an aerospace engineer, Marchant had “taken a hard left” on his career path.

“Solving problems that are hard to solve – that’s my analytical approach – trying to think in innovative manners,” he says. “When Jo told me about the box, it was an absolute no-brainer. Why wouldn’t we give it a go?”

The Key Discovery

In cold case crime dramas, once items are sent off to forensics, the results come back quickly. In actuality, the submission process and testing take a long time. “The forensic team are keen, they want to do it, but our work is always slightly on the back-burner,” says Smith. “Live-time murders have to take priority.”

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

The suspect was ninety-two, a widower, and living in another city. “When we realised how old he was, we didn’t have the time to waste,” says Smith. “It was all hands on deck.” In the weeks between the DNA match and Headley’s arrest, the team pored over every single one of the thousands original statements and records.

For a while, it was like navigating two time periods. “Just looking at all the photos, 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 on the doorstep every day. She was twice widowed, separated 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 amiss.”

Most of the team’s days were spent analyzing documents. (“Humongous amounts of paperwork. It wouldn’t make great TV.”) The team also spoke with the original GP, now 89, 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 haunts you.’”

A History of Crimes

Headley’s prior offenses seemed to leave little doubt of his guilt. After the 1967 murder, he had moved, and in the late 1970s he had pleaded guilty to assaulting two older women, again in their own homes. His victims’ disturbing statements from that earlier trial gave some idea into the victim’s last moments.

“He menaced to choke one and he threatened to smother the other with a cushion,” says Smith. Both women fought back. Though Headley was initially sentenced to life, he challenged the verdict, supported by a mental health professional who stated that Headley was acting out of character. “It went from a life sentence to less time,” says Smith.

Securing Justice

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 compelling the proof was,” she says. The team were concerned that the arrest would trigger a health crisis. “We were uncovering the darkest secret he’d kept hidden for sixty years,” says Smith.

Yet everything was able to proceed. The trial 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.

“Sexual assault 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 never be released. He would spend his life behind bars.

A Profound Effect

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

She is confident that it won’t be the last solved case. There are approximately one hundred and thirty unsolved investigations in the archives. “We’ve got so much more to do,” she says. “We have several murders that we’re reviewing – we’re constantly submitting evidence to forensics and following other lines of inquiry. We’ll be forever opening boxes.”