How a Disturbing Sexual Assault and Killing Investigation Was Resolved – 58 Years Later.

In the summer of 2023, a major crime review officer, was tasked by her supervisor to “take a look at” the Louisa Dunne case. The victim was a elderly 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 previous spouse had been a prominent labor activist, and whose home had once been a hub of political activity. By 1967, she was living alone, having lost two husbands but still a recognized figure in her local neighbourhood.

There were no witnesses to her killing, and the initial inquiry discovered few leads apart from a palm print on a rear window. Investigators canvassed eight thousand doors and took nineteen thousand palm prints, but no identification was found. The case stayed unsolved.

“When I saw that it was dated 1967, I knew we were only going to solve this through forensics, so I went to the archive to look at the exhibits boxes,” states the officer.

She found three. “I opened the first and put the lid back on again right away. Most of our cold cases are in forensically sealed bags with barcodes. These weren’t. They just had brown cardboard luggage labels saying what they were. It meant they’d never been subject to modern forensic examinations.”

The rest of the day was spent with a colleague (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 very enthusiastic, but it wasn’t met with a huge amount of enthusiasm. Let’s just say there was some scepticism as to the worth of submitting something that aged to forensics. It wasn’t seen as a priority.”

It sounds like the opening chapter of a crime novel, or the first episode of a investigative series. The end result also seems the stuff of fiction. In June, a 92-year-old man, Ryland Headley, was found culpable of the victim’s rape and murder and given a sentence to life.

A Record-Breaking Case

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

For Smith, cases like this are confirmation that she made the correct professional decision. “My father believed policing was too risky,” she says, “but what could be better than solving a decades-old murder?”

Smith entered the police when she was in her twenties because, she says: “I’m inquisitive and I was interested in people, in assisting them when they were in distress.” Her previous experience in safeguarding 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 regular hours role, so here I am.”

Examining 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 – murders, sexual assaults, long-term missing people – and also re-examine active investigations with a new perspective. The original team was tasked with gathering all the old case files from around the area and moving them to a new secure storage facility.

“The Louisa Dunne files had started in a local police station, then, in the years since 1967, they moved to multiple locations before finally coming here,” 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. The new officer 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 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 give it a go?”

The Breakthrough

In cold case crime dramas, once items are sent off to forensics, the results come back quickly. In actuality, the testing procedure and testing take many months. “The forensic team are interested, they want to do it, but our work is always slightly on the lower priority,” says Smith. “Current investigations have to take precedence.”

It was the end of August 2024 when Smith received a message that forensics had a complete genetic fingerprint of the assailant 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, a widower, and living in Ipswich. “When we realised how old he was, we didn’t have the time to waste,” says Smith. “It was a full team effort.” 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 photographs, seeing an old lady’s house in 1967,” says Smith. “The witness statements. The way they portray people. Nowadays, it would typically be different. There are so many changes over time.”

Getting to Know the Victim

Smith felt she got to know 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 twice widowed, separated from her family, but she remained social. 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 spoke with the doctor, now eighty-nine, 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 previous convictions seemed to leave little question of his guilt. After the 1967 murder, he had moved, and in 1977 he had admitted to assaulting two older women, again in their own homes. His victims’ disturbing statements from that earlier trial gave some insight into the victim’s last moments.

“He threatened to strangle 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 challenged the verdict, supported by a psychiatrist who stated that Headley was not behaving normally. “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 health crisis. “We were uncovering the most hidden truth 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 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 stigma about the nature of the crime.

“Sexual assault is massively underreported 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 never be released. He would die in prison.

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 proactive, the urgency 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 confident that it is not the last resolution. 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 following other leads. We’ll be forever opening boxes.”