How a Disturbing Rape and Murder Investigation Was Cracked – Fifty-Eight Decades Later.
In June 2023, Jo Smith, was tasked by her team leader to examine a cold case from 1967. The woman was a elderly 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 first husband had been a leading labor activist, and whose home had once been a hub of civic engagement. By 1967, she was living alone, twice widowed but still a recognized presence in her Easton neighbourhood.
There were no witnesses to her murder, and the initial inquiry discovered little to go on apart from a handprint on a back window. Officers canvassed eight thousand doors and took 19,000 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 scientific analysis, so I went to the storage facility to look at the evidence containers,” states Smith.
She found three. “I opened the first and closed it again immediately. Most of our unsolved investigations are in forensically sealed bags with barcodes. These were not. They just had brown cardboard luggage labels indicating 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 wearing protective gloves, securely packaging the items and listing what they had. And then there was no progress for another eight months. Smith pauses and tries to be tactful. “I was quite excited, but it wasn’t met with a great deal of enthusiasm. Let’s just say there was some scepticism as to the worth of submitting something so old to forensics. It wasn’t seen as a high-priority matter.”
It sounds like the opening chapter of a crime novel, or the first episode of a cold case TV drama. The final outcome 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 sentenced to life.
An Unprecedented Case
Spanning 58 years, this is believed to be the oldest unsolved investigation solved in the UK, and possibly the globe. Subsequently, the investigative team won recognition for their work. The whole thing still feels remarkable 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 career choice. “He thought policing was too dangerous,” she says, “but what could be better than resolving a 58-year-old murder?”
Smith entered the police when she was 24 because, she says: “I’m nosy and I was fascinated by people, in assisting them when they were in crisis.” Her previous role in safeguarding involved grueling hours. When she saw a job advert for a cold case investigator, she decided to pursue it. “It looked really interesting, it’s more of a regular hours role, so here I am.”
Revisiting the Evidence
Smith’s job is a non-uniformed position. The specialist unit is a small group set up to look at cold cases – murders, rapes, 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 central archive.
“The case documents had originated in a precinct, then, in the years since 1967, they were transferred several times 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 senior investigating officer arrived to lead the team. DI Dave Marchant took a different approach. Once an engineer, Marchant had “taken a hard left” on his career path.
“Cracking cases that are challenging – that’s my analytical approach – trying to think in innovative manners,” he says. “When Jo told me about the evidence, it was an absolute no-brainer. Why wouldn’t we give it a go?”
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 lower priority,” 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 complete genetic fingerprint of the assailant from the victim’s skirt. A few hours later, she got a follow-up. “They had a match on the genetic registry – 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 time to waste,” 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 numerous original accounts and records.
For a while, it was like navigating 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 came to understand the victim, too. “She was such a prominent person,” she says. “Lots of people were saying that they saw her on the doorstep every day. She was twice widowed, estranged 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 very wrong.”
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 eighty-nine, who had been at the crime scene. “He remembered every detail 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 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 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 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 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 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 60 years,” says Smith.
Yet everything was able to go ahead. The trial took place, and the victim’s living relative had been contacted by family liaison. “Mary had believed it was never going to be resolved,” 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 older women 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 special 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 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 conclusion.”
She is certain that it won’t be the last solved case. There are about 130 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 sending things to forensics and following other leads. We’ll be forever opening boxes.”
