The Way a Shocking Rape and Murder Case Was Resolved – 58 Decades Later.

In the summer of 2023, Jo Smith, was asked by her team leader 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 June 1967. She was a parent of two children, a grandmother, a woman whose previous spouse had been a leading labor activist, and whose home had once been a center of civic engagement. By 1967, she was living alone, twice widowed but still a familiar figure in her local neighbourhood.

There were no witnesses to her killing, and the police investigation discovered little to go on apart from a palm print on a back window. Investigators canvassed 8,000 doors and took 19,000 palm prints, but no identification 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 archive to look at the evidence containers,” says the officer.

She found a trio. “I opened the first and put the lid back on again right away. Most of our cold cases are in forensically sealed bags with identification codes. These weren’t. They just had old paper tags indicating 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 initial day on the job), both wearing protective gloves, 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 quite excited, but it did not generate a huge amount of enthusiasm. Let’s just say there was some doubt as to the value of submitting something that aged to forensics. It was not considered a priority.”

It resembles the opening chapter of a mystery book, or the premiere of a investigative series. The end result also seems the material for a story. In June, a nonagenarian, Ryland Headley, was found culpable of Louisa Dunne’s rape and murder and given a sentence to life imprisonment.

A Record-Breaking Investigation

Covering fifty-eight years, this is believed to be the oldest cold case solved in the UK, and perhaps the world. Subsequently, the unit won recognition for their work. The whole thing still feels remarkable 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 correct career choice. “He thought policing was too dangerous,” she says, “but what could be better than resolving a 58-year-old murder?”

Smith joined the police when she was in her twenties 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 demanding hours. When she saw a vacancy for a cold case investigator, she decided to apply. “It looked really engaging, it’s more of a regular hours role, so I took the position.”

Examining the Evidence

Smith’s job is a civilian role. The specialist unit is a small group set up to look at cold cases – murders, sexual assaults, disappearances – and also review active investigations with fresh eyes. The original team was tasked with collecting all the old case files from around the area and moving them to a new secure storage facility.

“The case documents had started 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 containers, their contents now forensically bagged, returned to storage. Towards the end of 2023, a new lead detective arrived to lead the team. The new officer took a different approach. Once an engineer, Marchant had “taken a hard left” on his professional journey.

“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 evidence, it was an absolute no-brainer. 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 actuality, 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 notification that forensics had a full DNA profile of the rapist from the victim’s clothing. A few hours later, she got a follow-up. “They had a match 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 luxury of time,” 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 accounts and records.

For a while, it was like navigating two eras. “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 usually be different. There are so many generational differences.”

Understanding 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 widowed twice, estranged 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 amiss.”

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 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 doubt of his guilt. After the 1967 murder, he had moved, and in 1977 he had admitted to raping two elderly women, again in their own homes. His victims’ disturbing statements from that previous case gave some insight into the victim’s last moments.

“He threatened to choke one and he threatened to suffocate the other with a cushion,” says Smith. Both women fought back. Though Headley was initially sentenced to life, he challenged the verdict, 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.

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 feared 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 court case took place, and the victim’s living relative had been contacted by specialist officers. “She had believed 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.

“Rape is massively underreported 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 intents and purposes, he would never be released. He would spend his life behind bars.

A Lasting Impact

For Smith, it has been a unique case. “It just feels different, I don’t know why,” she says. “In a live case, the process is very reactive. With this case you’re proactive, 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 is not the last resolution. There are approximately 130 cold cases 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.”