The Way a Disturbing Rape and Murder Case Was Cracked – Fifty-Eight Years After.
In the summer of 2023, an investigator, was asked by her sergeant to review the Louisa Dunne case. The victim was a elderly woman who had been raped and murdered in her Bristol home in June 1967. She was a mother, a grandparent, a woman whose first husband had been a leading trade unionist, and whose home had once been a hub of political activity. By 1967, she was residing by herself, having lost two husbands but still a well-known figure in her Easton neighbourhood.
There were no one who saw anything to her killing, and the initial inquiry discovered few leads apart from a handprint on a back window. Investigators canvassed 8,000 doors and took 19,000 palm prints, but no match was found. The case remained open.
“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,” says Smith.
She found three. “I opened the first and closed it again immediately. Most of our cold cases are in forensically sealed bags with identification codes. These were not. They just had brown cardboard luggage labels saying what they were. It meant they’d never undergone modern forensic examinations.”
The rest of the day was spent with a co-worker (it was his first 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 diplomatic. “I was very enthusiastic, but it wasn’t met with a huge amount of enthusiasm. It’s fair to say there was some scepticism as to the worth of submitting something so old to forensics. It was not considered a priority.”
It sounds like the beginning of a mystery book, or the first episode of a investigative series. The final outcome also seems the stuff of fiction. In the following June, a 92-year-old man, Ryland Headley, was found guilty of Louisa Dunne’s rape and murder and sentenced to life.
A Record-Breaking Investigation
Spanning 58 years, this is believed to be the longest-running cold case closed in the United Kingdom, and possibly the globe. Subsequently, the unit won an award for their work. The whole thing still feels remarkable to her. “It just doesn’t feel tangible,” she says. “It’s forever giving me chills.”
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 entered 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 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 here I am.”
Examining the Clues
Smith’s job is a non-uniformed position. The major crime review team is a compact team set up to look at historical crimes – homicides, rapes, disappearances – and also review live cases with a new perspective. The original team was tasked with collecting all the old case files from around the area and moving them to a new central archive.
“The Louisa Dunne files had started in a precinct, then, in the years since 1967, they were transferred to multiple locations before finally coming here,” 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 “taken a hard left” on his professional journey.
“Solving problems that are hard to solve – that’s my analytical approach – trying to think in new ways,” he says. “When Jo told me about the box, it was an obvious decision. Why wouldn’t we try?”
The Breakthrough
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 back-burner,” says Smith. “Live-time murders 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 skirt. 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!”
The suspect was 92, a widower, and living in another city. “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 read every single one of the thousands original accounts and records.
For a while, it was like living in 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 portray people. Nowadays, it would usually 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 big character,” she says. “Lots of people were saying that they saw her on the doorstep every day. She was twice widowed, 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 very wrong.”
Most of the team’s days were spent analyzing documents. (“Humongous amounts of paperwork. It wouldn’t make compelling television.”) The team also interviewed the original GP, now 89, who had attended the 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 Pattern of Violence
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 assaulting two elderly 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 choke one and he threatened to smother the other with a pillow,” says Smith. Both women resisted. 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 less time,” 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 strong the evidence was,” she says. The team were concerned 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 granddaughter had been contacted by family liaison. “She had assumed it was never going to be resolved,” says Smith. For the family, there had also been a stigma about the nature of the crime.
“Rape is often not reported now,” says Smith, “but in the mid-20th century, 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 Profound Effect
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 began with me trying to get someone to take some interest of that box – and I was able to follow it right until the conclusion.”
She is confident that it won’t be the last resolution. There are about 130 cold cases in the archives. “We’ve got so much more to do,” she says. “We have a number of murders that we’re re-examining – we’re constantly sending things to forensics and pursuing other lines of inquiry. We’ll be forever opening boxes.”
