How a Disturbing Rape and Murder Investigation Was Solved – 58 Years After.

In the summer of 2023, a major crime review officer, was tasked by her team leader to review the Louisa Dunne case. 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 mother, a grandmother, a woman whose first husband had been a prominent labor activist, and whose home had once been a hub of political activity. By 1967, she was residing by herself, twice widowed but still a recognized figure in her local neighbourhood.

There were no one who saw anything to her murder, and the police investigation discovered little to go on apart from a palm print on a back window. Investigators knocked on 8,000 doors and took nineteen thousand palm prints, but no match was found. The case stayed 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 exhibits boxes,” says the officer.

She found three. “I opened the first and put the lid back on again right away. Most of our unsolved investigations are in forensically sealed bags with identification codes. These were not. They just had old paper tags indicating 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 initial day on the job), both wearing protective gloves, securely packaging the items and cataloging what they had. And then nothing more happened for another nearly a year. Smith hesitates and tries to be diplomatic. “I was quite excited, but it wasn’t met with a huge amount of enthusiasm. Let’s just say there was some doubt as to the value of submitting something so old to forensics. It was not considered a priority.”

It resembles the opening chapter of a mystery book, or the premiere of a cold case TV drama. The end result also seems the material for a story. In June, a nonagenarian, Ryland Headley, was found guilty 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 unsolved investigation closed in the United Kingdom, and perhaps the world. Later that year, the investigative team won an award for their work. The whole thing still feels remarkable to her. “It just doesn’t feel real,” she says. “It’s forever giving me goose bumps.”

For Smith, cases like this are proof that she made the correct professional decision. “He thought 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 24 because, she says: “I’m inquisitive and I was fascinated by people, in assisting them when they were in crisis.” Her previous role in child protection involved demanding hours. When she saw a vacancy for a cold case investigator, she decided to apply. “It looked really interesting, it’s more of a regular hours role, so here I am.”

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, long-term missing people – and also re-examine active investigations with fresh eyes. The original team was tasked with collecting all the old case files from around the region and moving them to a new central archive.

“The Louisa Dunne files had started in a precinct, then, in the years since 1967, they moved to multiple locations before finally coming here,” says Smith.

Those boxes, their contents now forensically bagged, returned to storage. Towards the end of 2023, a new senior investigating officer arrived to head up the team. The new officer took a novel strategy. Once an engineer, Marchant had “taken a hard left” on his career path.

“Solving problems that are hard to solve – that’s my engineering mindset – trying to think in innovative manners,” he says. “When Jo told me about the box, it was an obvious decision. Why wouldn’t we give it a go?”

The Key Discovery

In cold case crime dramas, once items are sent off to forensics, the results come back quickly. In real life, the testing procedure and testing take many months. “The forensic team 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 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 clothing. A few hours later, she got a follow-up. “They had a match on the DNA database – and it was someone who was living!”

The suspect 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 weeks between the DNA match and Headley’s arrest, the team read 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 the victim’s home in 1967,” says Smith. “The accounts. The way they portray people. Nowadays, it would typically be different. There are so many generational differences.”

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 outside her home 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 analyzing documents. (“Humongous amounts of paperwork. It wouldn’t make great TV.”) The team also interviewed the doctor, now eighty-nine, 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 History of Crimes

Headley’s previous convictions seemed to leave little doubt 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’ harrowing statements from that previous case gave some idea into the victim’s last moments.

“He menaced 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 appealed, supported by a psychiatrist who stated that Headley was acting out of character. “It went from a life sentence to less time,” 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 strong the evidence was,” she says. The team were concerned that the arrest would trigger a health crisis. “We were uncovering the most hidden truth he’d kept hidden for 60 years,” says Smith.

Yet everything was able to go ahead. The court case took place, and the victim’s granddaughter had been identified and approached by family liaison. “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 massively underreported now,” says Smith, “but in the mid-20th century, how many older women would ever report this had happened?”

Headley was told at sentencing that, for all intents and purposes, he would never be released. He would spend his life behind bars.

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 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 follow it right until the end.”

She is confident that it is not the last resolution. 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 reviewing – we’re constantly sending things to forensics and following other lines of inquiry. We’ll be forever unlocking the past.”