How a Shocking Sexual Assault and Killing Case Was Solved – 58 Years After.

In June 2023, a major crime review officer, was tasked by her team leader to examine a decades-old murder file. The woman was a 75-year-old woman who had been raped and murdered in her home city home in the month of June 1967. She was a mother, a grandparent, a woman whose previous spouse had been a prominent trade unionist, and whose home had once been a center of political activity. By 1967, she was residing by herself, having lost two husbands but still a familiar presence in her local neighbourhood.

There were no one who saw anything to her murder, and the police investigation found little to go on apart from a handprint on a back window. Police canvassed 8,000 doors and took 19,000 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 scientific analysis, so I went to the archive to look at the exhibits boxes,” 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 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 co-worker (it was his first day on the job), both gloved up, forensically bagging 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 did not generate a huge amount of enthusiasm. Let’s just say there was some scepticism as to the value of submitting something that aged to forensics. It wasn’t seen as a priority.”

It sounds like the beginning 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, the defendant, was found culpable of Louisa Dunne’s rape and murder and given a sentence to life imprisonment.

An Unprecedented Investigation

Covering 58 years, this is believed to be the longest-running cold case solved in the United Kingdom, and possibly the globe. Later that year, the unit 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 chills.”

For Smith, cases like this are confirmation that she made the right professional decision. “My father believed policing was too dangerous,” 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 distress.” Her previous role in child protection involved grueling hours. When she saw a job advert for a cold case investigator, she decided to apply. “It looked really engaging, it’s more of a regular hours role, so here I am.”

Revisiting the Clues

Smith’s job is a non-uniformed position. The specialist unit is a small group set up to look at historical crimes – murders, sexual assaults, disappearances – and also re-examine live cases with a new perspective. The original team was tasked with gathering all the old case files from around the region and relocating them to a new central archive.

“The case documents had started in a local police station, then, in the years since 1967, they were transferred several times 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 lead detective arrived to head up the team. The new officer took a novel strategy. Once an engineer, Marchant had “taken a hard left” on his professional journey.

“Cracking cases 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 try?”

The Breakthrough

In cold case crime dramas, 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 back-burner,” says Smith. “Current investigations have to take precedence.”

It was the end of August 2024 when Smith received a notification that forensics had a full DNA profile of the rapist from the victim’s skirt. A few hours later, she got a follow-up. “They had a hit on the DNA database – and it was someone who was still alive!”

Ryland Headley was 92, widowed, 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 read every single one of the numerous original accounts and records.

For a while, it was like navigating 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. Today, it would usually 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 widowed twice, 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 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 History of Violence

Headley’s prior offenses seemed to leave little question of his guilt. After the 1967 murder, he had moved, and in 1977 he had pleaded guilty to raping two older women, again in their own homes. His victims’ disturbing statements from that previous case gave some idea into the victim’s last moments.

“He menaced 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 appealed, supported by a mental health professional 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 present at 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 medical incident. “We were uncovering the most hidden truth he’d kept hidden for sixty years,” says Smith.

Yet everything was able to go ahead. The trial took place, and the victim’s granddaughter 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 stigma about the nature of the crime.

“Rape is massively underreported now,” says Smith, “but in the mid-20th century, how many elderly ladies 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. “In a live case, the process is very responsive. With this case you’re proactive, the urgency is only from yourself. It began with me trying to get someone to take some interest of that evidence – and I was able to see it through right until the conclusion.”

She is certain that it is not the last solved case. There are about one hundred and thirty unsolved investigations 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 lines of inquiry. We’ll be forever unlocking the past.”