The Way a Shocking Rape and Murder Investigation Was Resolved – 58 Years Later.

In the summer of 2023, an investigator, was asked by her supervisor to examine the Louisa Dunne case. The victim was a elderly woman who had been raped and murdered in her Bristol home in June 1967. She was a parent of two children, a grandmother, a woman whose previous spouse had been a prominent trade unionist, and whose home had once been a focal point of civic engagement. By 1967, she was living alone, twice widowed but still a recognized presence in her Easton neighbourhood.

There were no witnesses to her murder, and the initial inquiry discovered little to go on apart from a palm print on a rear window. Investigators canvassed 8,000 doors and took 19,000 palm prints, but no match was found. The case stayed open.

“When I saw 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,” states the officer.

She found three. “I opened the first and closed it again immediately. Most of our unsolved investigations are in sterile evidence bags with barcodes. These were not. They just had brown cardboard luggage labels saying what they were. It meant they’d never undergone modern forensic examinations.”

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 there was no progress for another nearly a year. Smith hesitates and tries to be tactful. “I was very enthusiastic, but it wasn’t met with a huge amount of enthusiasm. It’s fair to say there was some scepticism as to the worth of submitting something so old to forensics. It wasn’t seen as a priority.”

It sounds like the beginning 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, the defendant, was found guilty of Louisa Dunne’s rape and murder and given a sentence to life.

An Unprecedented Case

Covering 58 years, this is believed to be the longest-running cold case closed in the UK, and possibly the globe. Later that year, the unit won an award for their work. The whole thing still feels extraordinary to her. “It just doesn’t feel real,” she says. “It’s forever giving me goose bumps.”

For Smith, cases like this are proof that she made the correct career choice. “My father believed policing was too dangerous,” she says, “but what could be better than resolving a 58-year-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 helping them when they were in distress.” Her previous experience in safeguarding involved grueling hours. When she saw a vacancy for a crime review officer, she decided to pursue it. “It looked really interesting, it’s more of a standard schedule role, so here I am.”

Examining the Evidence

Smith’s job is a non-uniformed position. The specialist unit is a compact team set up to look at historical crimes – homicides, sexual assaults, disappearances – and also re-examine active investigations with a new perspective. The original team was tasked with collecting all the old case files from around the region and moving them to a new central archive.

“The case documents had started in a precinct, then, in the years since 1967, they moved 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 lead the team. DI Dave Marchant took a different approach. Once an aerospace engineer, Marchant had made a drastic change on his professional journey.

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

The Key Discovery

In cold case crime dramas, once items are sent off to forensics, the results come back quickly. In actuality, the testing procedure and testing take a long time. “The forensic team 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 message that forensics had a full DNA profile of the assailant from the victim’s clothing. A few hours later, she got another message. “They had a hit on the DNA database – and it was someone who was still alive!”

Ryland Headley was ninety-two, a widower, and living in Ipswich. “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 read every single one of the numerous original statements and records.

For a while, it was like living in 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. Nowadays, it would usually be different. There are so many generational differences.”

Getting to Know the Victim

Smith felt she came to understand the victim, too. “She was such a big character,” 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 amiss.”

Most of the team’s days were spent reading and summarising. (“Humongous amounts of paperwork. It wouldn’t make great TV.”) The team also interviewed the doctor, now 89, 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 haunts you.’”

A History of Violence

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 admitted to raping two elderly women, again in their own homes. His victims’ harrowing statements from that earlier trial gave some insight into the victim’s last moments.

“He threatened to strangle 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 mental health professional who stated that Headley was not behaving normally. “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 compelling the proof was,” she says. The team feared that the arrest would trigger a health crisis. “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 contacted 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 massively underreported now,” says Smith, “but in the 60s and 70s, 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 reactive. 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 box – and I was able to see it through right until the conclusion.”

She is certain that it is not the last resolution. There are about 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 sending things to forensics and following other leads. We’ll be forever opening boxes.”