How a Appalling Rape and Murder Case Was Resolved – Fifty-Eight Decades Later.

In June 2023, Jo Smith, was tasked by her supervisor to review the Louisa Dunne case. The victim was a 75-year-old woman who had been raped and murdered in her Bristol home in June 1967. She was a mother of two, a grandparent, a woman whose previous spouse had been a leading 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 figure in her Easton neighbourhood.

There were no witnesses to her murder, and the initial inquiry discovered little to go on apart from a handprint on a back window. Officers canvassed 8,000 doors and took nineteen thousand palm prints, but no identification was found. The case remained open.

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

She found a trio. “I opened the first and put the lid back on again immediately. Most of our cold cases are in sterile evidence bags with identification codes. These were not. They just had old paper tags saying what they were. It meant they’d never undergone modern scientific testing.”

The rest of the day was spent with a colleague (it was his initial day on the job), both gloved up, securely packaging the items and cataloging what they had. And then nothing more happened for another eight months. Smith hesitates and tries to be diplomatic. “I was quite excited, but it wasn’t met with a huge amount of enthusiasm. Let’s just say there was some doubt as to the value of submitting something that aged to forensics. It was not considered a high-priority matter.”

It resembles the opening chapter of a crime novel, or the first episode of a investigative series. The final outcome also seems the material for a story. In the following June, a 92-year-old man, Ryland Headley, was found culpable of the victim’s rape and murder and given a sentence to life.

A Record-Breaking Case

Covering fifty-eight years, this is believed to be the longest-running unsolved investigation closed in the United Kingdom, and perhaps the world. Later that year, the investigative team won recognition for their work. The whole thing still feels remarkable to her. “It just doesn’t feel tangible,” she says. “It’s forever giving me goose bumps.”

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

Smith joined the police when she was in her twenties because, she says: “I’m inquisitive and I was fascinated by people, in assisting them when they were in crisis.” Her previous experience in child protection involved grueling hours. When she saw a job advert for a cold case investigator, she decided to apply. “It looked really engaging, it’s more of a standard schedule role, so here I am.”

Revisiting the Clues

Smith’s job is a non-uniformed position. The major crime review team is a compact team set up to look at cold cases – homicides, rapes, disappearances – and also review live cases 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 central archive.

“The Louisa Dunne files had started in a precinct, then, in the years since 1967, they were transferred to multiple locations 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 engineer, Marchant had made a drastic change on his professional journey.

“Cracking cases that are challenging – that’s my engineering mindset – trying to think in innovative manners,” he says. “When Jo told me about the evidence, 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 quickly. In actuality, the submission process and testing take a long time. “The laboratory scientists are keen, they want to do it, but our work is always slightly on the lower priority,” says Smith. “Current investigations have to take priority.”

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

Ryland Headley was ninety-two, widowed, 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 period between the DNA match and Headley’s arrest, the team read every single one of the numerous original accounts and records.

For a while, it was like navigating two eras. “Just looking at all the photographs, seeing an old lady’s house in 1967,” says Smith. “The witness statements. The way they describe people. Today, it would usually be different. There are so many changes over time.”

Understanding the Victim

Smith felt she came to understand the victim, too. “Louisa was such a big character,” she says. “Lots of people were saying that they saw her on the doorstep every day. She was widowed twice, estranged from her family, but she remained social. 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 compelling television.”) The team also interviewed the doctor, now eighty-nine, who had attended the scene. “He remembered every detail 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 previous convictions 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 raping two elderly women, again in their own homes. His victims’ harrowing statements from that previous case gave some insight into the victim’s last moments.

“He threatened to choke one and he threatened to smother the other with a pillow,” 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 a shorter term,” 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 most hidden truth he’d kept hidden for sixty years,” says Smith.

Yet everything was able to go ahead. The trial took place, and the victim’s granddaughter had been identified and approached by family liaison. “Mary had assumed it was never going to be resolved,” says Smith. For the family, there had also been a sense of shame about the nature of the crime.

“Sexual assault is massively underreported now,” says Smith, “but in the mid-20th century, how many elderly ladies would ever tell anyone this had happened?”

Headley was told at sentencing that, for all practical purposes, he would remain incarcerated. He would die in prison.

A Profound Effect

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

She is confident that it won’t be the last resolution. There are approximately one hundred and thirty unsolved investigations in the archives. “We’ve got so much more to do,” she says. “We have a number of murders that we’re re-examining – we’re constantly submitting evidence to forensics and pursuing other leads. We’ll be forever opening boxes.”