How a Shocking Sexual Assault and Killing Investigation Was Solved – 58 Years Later.

In the summer of 2023, Jo Smith, was tasked by her sergeant to review a decades-old murder file. Louisa Dunne was a elderly woman who had been sexually assaulted and killed in her home city home in 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 center of political activity. By 1967, she was living alone, twice widowed but still a well-known figure in her Easton neighbourhood.

There were no witnesses to her killing, and the police investigation found few leads apart from a palm print on a back window. Investigators canvassed 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 storage facility to look at the exhibits boxes,” states Smith.

She found a trio. “I opened the first and closed it again right away. Most of our cold cases 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 been subject to modern scientific testing.”

The rest of the day was spent with a co-worker (it was his initial day on the job), both wearing protective gloves, forensically bagging the items and cataloging what they had. And then there was no progress for another eight months. Smith pauses and tries to be diplomatic. “I was very enthusiastic, 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 was not considered a priority.”

It resembles the beginning of a crime novel, or the premiere of a investigative series. The final outcome also seems the stuff of fiction. In June, a nonagenarian, Ryland Headley, was found culpable of the victim’s rape and murder and sentenced to life.

An Unprecedented Investigation

Spanning fifty-eight years, this is believed to be the oldest cold case closed in the UK, and perhaps the globe. Subsequently, the investigative team won an award for their work. The whole thing still feels remarkable to her. “It just doesn’t feel real,” she says. “It’s forever giving me chills.”

For Smith, cases like this are confirmation that she made the correct career choice. “He thought policing was too risky,” she says, “but what could be better than solving a decades-old murder?”

Smith joined the police when she was 24 because, she says: “I’m inquisitive and I was fascinated by people, in helping them when they were in crisis.” Her previous experience in child protection involved demanding 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 regular hours role, so I took the position.”

Revisiting the Clues

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, sexual assaults, disappearances – and also review 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 secure storage facility.

“The case documents 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 boxes, their contents now properly secured, returned to storage. Towards the end of 2023, a new lead detective arrived to head up the team. DI Dave Marchant took a novel strategy. Once an aerospace engineer, Marchant had “taken a hard left” on his professional journey.

“Solving problems that are hard to solve – that’s my analytical approach – 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 television shows, once items are sent off to forensics, the results come back in days. In actuality, the submission process and testing take many months. “The laboratory scientists are interested, 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 complete genetic fingerprint of the rapist from the victim’s clothing. A few hours later, she got a follow-up. “They had a hit on the DNA database – and it was someone who was living!”

Ryland Headley 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 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 photographs, seeing an the victim’s home in 1967,” says Smith. “The accounts. The way they describe people. Nowadays, it would typically be different. There are so many generational differences.”

Understanding the Victim

Smith felt she got to know the victim, too. “She 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, separated 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 amiss.”

Most of the team’s days were spent analyzing documents. (“Vast quantities of paperwork. It wouldn’t make great TV.”) The team also interviewed the original GP, now 89, who had been at the crime scene. “He remembered every particular 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 haunts you.’”

A History of Crimes

Headley’s prior offenses seemed to leave little question of his guilt. After the 1967 murder, he had moved, and in the late 1970s 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 menaced to strangle one and he threatened to suffocate 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 acting out of character. “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 strong the evidence 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 60 years,” says Smith.

Yet everything was able to proceed. The court case 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 massively underreported now,” says Smith, “but in the 60s and 70s, how many older women would ever tell anyone this had happened?”

Headley was told at sentencing that, for all practical purposes, he would never be released. He would spend his life behind bars.

A Lasting Impact

For Smith, it has been a unique case. “It just feels different, I don’t know why,” she says. “With current investigations, the process is very reactive. With this case you’re proactive, the urgency is only from yourself. It began with me trying to get someone to take some interest of that evidence – and I was able to follow it right until the end.”

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