How a Shocking Sexual Assault and Killing Case Was Cracked – Fifty-Eight Years After.

In the summer of 2023, an investigator, received a request by her sergeant to examine 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 grandmother, a woman whose previous spouse had been a prominent labor activist, and whose home had once been a hub of civic engagement. By 1967, she was living alone, having lost two husbands but still a recognized presence in her Easton neighbourhood.

There were no witnesses to her killing, and the police investigation unearthed little to go on apart from a palm print on a rear window. Officers canvassed eight thousand doors and took 19,000 palm prints, but no identification was found. The case stayed 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 exhibits boxes,” says Smith.

She found a trio. “I opened the first and put the lid back on again right away. Most of our unsolved investigations are in forensically sealed bags with identification codes. These were not. They just had old paper tags 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, forensically bagging the items and cataloging what they had. And then nothing more happened for another eight months. Smith pauses and tries to be diplomatic. “I was quite excited, but it did not generate a huge amount of enthusiasm. Let’s just say there was some doubt as to the value of submitting something so old to forensics. It was not considered a high-priority matter.”

It resembles the opening chapter of a mystery book, or the premiere of a investigative series. The final outcome also seems the stuff of fiction. In the following June, a 92-year-old man, Ryland Headley, was found culpable of the victim’s rape and murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

An Unprecedented Case

Spanning 58 years, this is believed to be the longest-running unsolved investigation solved in the UK, and possibly the globe. Subsequently, the unit 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 confirmation that she made the correct career choice. “My father believed policing was too risky,” 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 nosy and I was fascinated by people, in helping them when they were in distress.” Her previous role in child protection involved grueling hours. When she saw a job advert for a cold case investigator, she decided to apply. “It looked really interesting, it’s more of a regular hours role, so here I am.”

Examining the Clues

Smith’s job is a civilian role. The major crime review team is a compact team set up to look at historical crimes – homicides, rapes, long-term missing people – and also review active investigations with fresh eyes. The original team was tasked with collecting all the old case files from around the area and relocating them to a new secure storage facility.

“The Louisa Dunne files 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 forensically bagged, returned to storage. Towards the end of 2023, a new lead detective arrived to lead the team. The new officer took a different approach. Once an aerospace 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 new ways,” he says. “When Jo told me about the evidence, it was an obvious decision. Why wouldn’t we try?”

The Key Discovery

In television shows, once items are sent off to forensics, the results come back in days. In actuality, 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 notification 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!”

The suspect 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 period between the DNA match and Headley’s arrest, the team read every single one of the thousands original accounts and records.

For a while, it was like living in two eras. “Just looking at all the photos, seeing an the victim’s home in 1967,” says Smith. “The accounts. The way they describe people. Today, it would typically be different. There are so many generational differences.”

Understanding the Victim

Smith felt she got to know 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 group 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. (“Vast quantities of paperwork. It wouldn’t make compelling television.”) The team also spoke with the original GP, now 89, 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 Violence

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 assaulting two elderly women, again in their own homes. His victims’ harrowing statements from that previous case gave some idea into the victim’s last moments.

“He threatened to choke one and he threatened to suffocate the other with a pillow,” 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 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 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 sixty years,” says Smith.

Yet everything was able to go ahead. 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.

“Rape is often not reported now,” says Smith, “but in the 60s and 70s, how many elderly ladies would ever report this had happened?”

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

A Lasting Impact

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 driving the inquiry, 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 conclusion.”

She is confident that it won’t be the last solved case. There are approximately 130 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 leads. We’ll be forever opening boxes.”