How a Shocking Sexual Assault and Killing Investigation Was Solved – 58 Decades Later.
In the summer of 2023, a major crime review officer, received a request by her supervisor to review a decades-old murder file. Louisa Dunne was a elderly woman who had been sexually assaulted and killed in her Bristol home in the month of June 1967. She was a mother of two, a grandparent, a woman whose previous spouse had been a prominent labor activist, 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 figure in her Easton neighbourhood.
There were no witnesses to her murder, and the police investigation unearthed little to go on apart from a palm print on a back window. Police 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 storage facility to look at the exhibits boxes,” states the officer.
She found three. “I opened the first and put the lid back on again immediately. Most of our cold cases are in forensically sealed bags with identification codes. These weren’t. They just had brown cardboard luggage labels indicating 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 wearing protective gloves, forensically bagging the items and listing what they had. And then there was no progress for another eight months. Smith pauses and tries to be tactful. “I was very enthusiastic, but it wasn’t met with a huge amount of enthusiasm. Let’s just say there was some scepticism as to the value of submitting something so old to forensics. It wasn’t seen as a high-priority matter.”
It resembles the beginning of a mystery book, or the first episode of a investigative series. The final outcome also seems the stuff of fiction. In June, a nonagenarian, the defendant, was found culpable of Louisa Dunne’s rape and murder and given a sentence to life imprisonment.
An Unprecedented Case
Covering 58 years, this is believed to be the longest-running unsolved investigation solved in the United Kingdom, and possibly the world. Subsequently, the investigative team won recognition 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 professional decision. “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 24 because, she says: “I’m inquisitive and I was interested in people, in assisting them when they were in crisis.” Her previous experience in child protection involved grueling hours. When she saw a vacancy for a cold case investigator, she decided to pursue it. “It looked really engaging, it’s more of a regular hours role, so I took the position.”
Examining the Evidence
Smith’s job is a civilian role. The major crime review team is a small group set up to look at cold cases – murders, sexual assaults, disappearances – and also re-examine active investigations 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 central archive.
“The Louisa Dunne files had started in a local police station, then, in the years since 1967, they moved to multiple locations before finally arriving at the archive,” says Smith.
Those boxes, their contents now forensically bagged, 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 challenging – that’s my engineering mindset – 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 Key Discovery
In cold case crime dramas, once items are sent off to forensics, the results come back in days. In real life, the submission process and testing take many months. “The forensic team are keen, they want to do it, but our work is always slightly on the lower priority,” 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 full DNA profile of the assailant from the victim’s skirt. A few hours later, she got a follow-up. “They had a match on the genetic registry – and it was someone who was still alive!”
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 a full team effort.” In the weeks 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 photos, seeing an the victim’s home in 1967,” says Smith. “The witness statements. The way they describe people. Nowadays, 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 outside her home 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 reading and summarising. (“Vast quantities of paperwork. It wouldn’t make great TV.”) The team also spoke with the original GP, now eighty-nine, who had attended the 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 Pattern 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 raping two elderly 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 appealed, supported by a psychiatrist who stated that Headley was not behaving normally. “It went from a life sentence to a shorter term,” says Smith.
Securing Justice
Smith was present at 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 medical incident. “We were uncovering the most hidden truth he’d kept hidden for sixty years,” says Smith.
Yet everything was able to proceed. The court case took place, and the victim’s living relative had been identified and approached by specialist officers. “Mary had believed 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.
“Rape is often not reported 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 spend his life behind bars.
A Lasting Impact
For Smith, it has been a unique 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 driving the inquiry, the pressure is only from yourself. It started with me trying to get someone to take some interest of that evidence – and I was able to see it through right until the conclusion.”
She is certain 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 a number of murders that we’re re-examining – we’re constantly sending things to forensics and pursuing other leads. We’ll be forever unlocking the past.”
