The Way a Disturbing Rape and Murder Investigation Was Solved – 58 Decades Later.

In the summer of 2023, a major crime review officer, was asked by her sergeant to “take a look at” a cold case from 1967. The woman was a elderly woman who had been sexually assaulted and killed in her home city home in the month of June 1967. She was a parent of two children, a grandmother, 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, twice widowed but still a well-known figure in her local 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 8,000 doors and took nineteen thousand palm prints, but no match was found. The case remained unsolved.

“Upon realizing 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,” states Smith.

She found a trio. “I opened the first and put the lid back on again right away. Most of our unsolved investigations are in forensically sealed bags with barcodes. These weren’t. They just had old paper tags saying what they were. It meant they’d never been subject to modern scientific testing.”

The rest of the day was spent with a colleague (it was his initial day on the job), both wearing protective gloves, forensically bagging the items and cataloging what they had. And then nothing more happened for another eight months. Smith hesitates and tries to be tactful. “I was quite excited, but it wasn’t met with a great deal of enthusiasm. It’s fair to say there was some doubt as to the worth of submitting something that aged to forensics. It wasn’t seen as a high-priority matter.”

It resembles the opening chapter of a crime novel, or the premiere of a cold case TV drama. The final outcome also seems the stuff of fiction. In the following June, a 92-year-old man, the defendant, was found guilty of Louisa Dunne’s rape and murder and given a sentence to life.

An Unprecedented Case

Covering 58 years, this is believed to be the oldest cold case closed in the UK, and possibly the world. Later that year, the unit 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 proof that she made the right career choice. “My father believed policing was too risky,” she says, “but what could be better than solving a 58-year-old murder?”

Smith entered the police when she was in her twenties because, she says: “I’m nosy and I was fascinated by people, in assisting them when they were in distress.” Her previous experience in safeguarding involved grueling hours. When she saw a job advert for a crime review officer, she decided to pursue it. “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 non-uniformed position. The major crime review team is a small group set up to look at cold cases – 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 region and relocating them to a new secure storage facility.

“The case documents had originated in a local police station, 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 forensically bagged, 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 professional journey.

“Solving problems 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 obvious decision. 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 quickly. In real life, the submission process and testing take many months. “The laboratory scientists 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 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 skirt. A few hours later, she got another message. “They had a hit on the genetic registry – and it was someone who was living!”

Ryland Headley was 92, a widower, and living in another city. “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 eras. “Just looking at all the photos, seeing an the victim’s home 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.”

Understanding the Victim

Smith felt she got to know the victim, too. “Louisa was such a prominent person,” 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 remained social. 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. (“Humongous amounts of paperwork. It wouldn’t make compelling television.”) The team also interviewed the doctor, 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 Pattern 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 pleaded guilty to raping two older women, again in their own homes. His victims’ disturbing statements from that earlier trial gave some idea into the victim’s last moments.

“He menaced to strangle one and he threatened to smother the other with a cushion,” says Smith. Both women resisted. 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 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 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 identified and approached by family liaison. “She had assumed 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.

“Sexual assault is often not reported now,” says Smith, “but in the 60s and 70s, how many elderly ladies would ever tell anyone 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 responsive. 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 box – and I was able to see it through right until the end.”

She is certain that it won’t be the last resolution. There are about 130 unsolved investigations in the archives. “We’ve got so much more to do,” she says. “We have a number of murders that we’re reviewing – we’re constantly sending things to forensics and pursuing other lines of inquiry. We’ll be forever unlocking the past.”