How a Appalling Sexual Assault and Killing Case Was Resolved – Fifty-Eight Years Later.

In the summer of 2023, a major crime review officer, received a request by her sergeant to “take a look at” the Louisa Dunne case. Louisa Dunne was a 75-year-old woman who had been sexually assaulted and killed in her home city home in June 1967. She was a mother, a grandparent, a woman whose first husband 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, having lost two husbands but still a recognized figure in her local neighbourhood.

There were no one who saw anything to her killing, and the initial inquiry found few leads apart from a handprint on a rear window. Police canvassed 8,000 doors and took nineteen thousand palm prints, but no match was found. The case remained 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 storage facility to look at the evidence containers,” says the officer.

She found a trio. “I opened the first and closed it again immediately. Most of our unsolved investigations are in sterile evidence bags with identification codes. These were not. They just had brown cardboard luggage labels indicating what they were. It meant they’d never undergone modern scientific testing.”

The rest of the day was spent with a co-worker (it was his first day on the job), both gloved up, forensically bagging the items and listing what they had. And then nothing more happened for another eight months. Smith hesitates 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 resembles the opening chapter of a mystery book, or the first episode of a cold case TV drama. The end result also seems the material for a story. In June, a 92-year-old man, the defendant, was found culpable of the victim’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 cold case closed in the UK, and perhaps 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 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 58-year-old murder?”

Smith joined the police when she was 24 because, she says: “I’m inquisitive and I was fascinated by people, in assisting them when they were in distress.” Her previous experience in child protection involved grueling hours. When she saw a vacancy 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.”

Examining the Evidence

Smith’s job is a civilian role. The major crime review team is a compact team set up to look at cold cases – homicides, rapes, disappearances – and also re-examine live cases with fresh eyes. The original team was tasked with gathering all the old case files from around the region and relocating them to a new secure storage facility.

“The Louisa Dunne files had originated in a precinct, then, in the years since 1967, they moved 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 lead the team. DI Dave Marchant took a novel strategy. Once an aerospace engineer, Marchant had made a drastic change on his professional journey.

“Cracking cases that are hard to solve – that’s my analytical approach – trying to think in innovative manners,” 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 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 back-burner,” says Smith. “Live-time murders 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 rapist 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 still alive!”

Ryland Headley was ninety-two, 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 all hands on deck.” In the period between the DNA match and Headley’s arrest, the team pored over 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 photos, seeing an old lady’s house in 1967,” says Smith. “The witness statements. The way they describe people. Today, it would typically be different. There are so many generational differences.”

Getting to Know 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, separated from her family, but she wasn’t reclusive. 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 interviewed 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 haunts you.’”

A Pattern of Violence

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 admitted to raping two older women, again in their own homes. His victims’ disturbing statements from that previous case gave some insight into the victim’s last moments.

“He menaced 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 not behaving normally. “It went from a life sentence to less time,” says Smith.

Closing the Case

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 darkest secret he’d kept hidden for sixty years,” says Smith.

Yet everything was able to go ahead. The court case took place, and the victim’s living relative had been contacted by specialist officers. “She had believed it was never going to be resolved,” says Smith. For the family, there had also been a stigma about the nature of the crime.

“Sexual assault 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 practical purposes, he would remain incarcerated. He would spend his life behind bars.

A Lasting Impact

For Smith, it has been a special case. “It just feels distinct, I don’t know why,” she says. “With current investigations, the process is very responsive. With this case you’re driving the inquiry, the urgency is only from yourself. It started with me trying to get someone to take some notice of that evidence – and I was able to see it through right until the end.”

She is confident 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 re-examining – we’re constantly submitting evidence to forensics and following other leads. We’ll be forever opening boxes.”