How a Appalling Sexual Assault and Killing Investigation Was Resolved – Fifty-Eight Years After.

In the summer of 2023, an investigator, received a request by her supervisor to “take a look at” the Louisa Dunne case. The woman 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 grandmother, a woman whose previous spouse had been a leading trade unionist, and whose home had once been a focal point of political activity. By 1967, she was living alone, having lost two husbands but still a recognized figure in her Easton neighbourhood.

There were no one who saw anything to her killing, and the initial inquiry unearthed few leads apart from a handprint on a rear window. Police knocked on eight thousand doors and took 19,000 palm prints, but no match was found. The case stayed unsolved.

“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,” says Smith.

She found a trio. “I opened the first and closed it again right away. Most of our unsolved investigations are in forensically sealed bags with identification codes. These weren’t. They just had old paper tags indicating 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, forensically bagging 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 very enthusiastic, but it wasn’t met with a huge amount of enthusiasm. Let’s just say there was some doubt as to the worth of submitting something so old to forensics. It was not considered a high-priority matter.”

It sounds like the beginning of a crime novel, or the first episode of a investigative series. The final outcome also seems the stuff of fiction. In the following June, a nonagenarian, Ryland Headley, was found guilty of Louisa Dunne’s rape and murder and given a sentence to life.

A Record-Breaking Investigation

Covering 58 years, this is believed to be the longest-running unsolved investigation solved in the United Kingdom, and possibly the world. Later that year, the investigative team won an award for their work. The whole thing still feels extraordinary 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 dangerous,” she says, “but what could be better than resolving a decades-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 role in safeguarding involved demanding hours. When she saw a job advert for a crime review officer, she decided to apply. “It looked really engaging, it’s more of a standard schedule role, so I took the position.”

Revisiting the Evidence

Smith’s job is a non-uniformed position. The major crime review team is a small group set up to look at historical crimes – homicides, rapes, 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 were transferred several times 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 engineer, Marchant had made a drastic change on his career path.

“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 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 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 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 a follow-up. “They had a match on the DNA database – and it was someone who was living!”

The suspect was ninety-two, widowed, 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 pored over every single one of the numerous original statements and records.

For a while, it was like navigating two eras. “Just looking at all the photos, seeing an old lady’s house in 1967,” says Smith. “The witness statements. The way they portray people. Nowadays, it would usually be different. There are so many generational differences.”

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 wasn’t reclusive. She had a group of women who used to meet and gossip – and those were the women who realised something was very wrong.”

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 original GP, now 89, who had been at the crime 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 History of Violence

Headley’s previous convictions seemed to leave little question of his guilt. After the 1967 murder, he had moved, and in 1977 he had pleaded guilty to assaulting two elderly 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 cushion,” 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.

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 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 proceed. The trial took place, and the victim’s granddaughter had been contacted by specialist officers. “She 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 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 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 evidence – and I was able to follow it right until the end.”

She is confident that it is not 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 reviewing – we’re constantly submitting evidence to forensics and following other leads. We’ll be forever unlocking the past.”