The Way a Shocking Rape and Murder Case Was Resolved – Fifty-Eight Years After.
In the summer of 2023, a major crime review officer, was asked by her supervisor to examine a cold case from 1967. The victim was a elderly woman who had been raped and murdered in her Bristol home in the month of June 1967. She was a mother, a grandmother, a woman whose previous spouse had been a leading trade unionist, and whose home had once been a hub of civic engagement. By 1967, she was living alone, twice widowed but still a well-known presence in her local neighbourhood.
There were no witnesses to her killing, and the police investigation 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 match was found. The case remained unsolved.
“Upon realizing 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 exhibits boxes,” says Smith.
She found three. “I opened the first and closed it again right away. Most of our unsolved investigations are in sterile evidence bags with barcodes. These weren’t. They just had old paper tags saying 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 initial day on the job), both gloved up, securely packaging the items and listing what they had. And then there was no progress for another nearly a year. Smith pauses and tries to be diplomatic. “I was quite excited, but it did not generate a great deal of enthusiasm. Let’s just say there was some doubt as to the worth of submitting something so old to forensics. It wasn’t seen as a high-priority matter.”
It resembles the opening chapter of a crime novel, or the first episode of a cold case TV drama. The end result also seems the material for a story. In the following June, a nonagenarian, Ryland Headley, was found culpable of Louisa Dunne’s rape and murder and given a sentence to life imprisonment.
An Unprecedented Investigation
Covering fifty-eight years, this is believed to be the longest-running unsolved investigation closed in the UK, and possibly the world. Subsequently, the unit won recognition 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 dangerous,” she says, “but what could be better than solving a 58-year-old murder?”
Smith entered 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 role in child protection involved grueling hours. When she saw a vacancy for a crime review officer, she decided to pursue it. “It looked really engaging, it’s more of a standard schedule role, so here I am.”
Revisiting the Clues
Smith’s job is a civilian role. The major crime review team is a small group set up to look at cold cases – homicides, sexual assaults, disappearances – and also review active investigations with a new perspective. The original team was tasked with gathering all the old case files from around the region and moving 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 arriving at the archive,” says Smith.
Those containers, their contents now forensically bagged, returned to storage. Towards the end of 2023, a new lead detective arrived to head up the team. The new officer took a different approach. Once an aerospace engineer, Marchant had “taken a hard left” on his professional journey.
“Solving problems that are hard to solve – 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 give it a go?”
The Breakthrough
In cold case crime dramas, once items are sent off to forensics, the results come back quickly. In real life, the testing procedure 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. “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 assailant 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 still alive!”
Ryland Headley was 92, a widower, and living in another city. “When we realised how old he was, we didn’t have the luxury of time,” 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 thousands original statements and records.
For a while, it was like navigating two time periods. “Just looking at all the photographs, seeing an the victim’s home in 1967,” says Smith. “The accounts. The way they describe 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 prominent person,” she says. “Lots of people were saying that they saw her outside her home every day. She was widowed twice, separated 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 reading and summarising. (“Vast quantities of paperwork. It wouldn’t make compelling television.”) The team also spoke with the doctor, now 89, who had been at the crime scene. “He remembered every detail from that day,” says Smith. “He said: ‘In my career 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 Violence
Headley’s prior offenses seemed to leave little question of his guilt. After the 1967 murder, he had moved, and in 1977 he had admitted to raping two older women, again in their own homes. His victims’ harrowing statements from that earlier trial gave some idea 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 mental health professional who stated that Headley was acting out of character. “It went from a life sentence to a shorter term,” 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 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 granddaughter had been contacted by specialist officers. “Mary had assumed it was never going to be solved,” 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 60s and 70s, how many older women would ever report this had happened?”
Headley was told at sentencing that, for all intents and purposes, he would never be released. He would die in prison.
A Profound Effect
For Smith, it has been a unique case. “It just feels distinct, I don’t know why,” she says. “With current investigations, the process is very reactive. 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 evidence – and I was able to see it through right until the end.”
She is certain that it won’t be the last solved case. There are about one hundred and thirty cold cases in the archives. “We’ve got so much more to do,” she says. “We have several murders that we’re re-examining – we’re constantly submitting evidence to forensics and pursuing other leads. We’ll be forever unlocking the past.”
