{"id":332834,"date":"2025-12-24T06:13:03","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T06:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/332834\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T06:13:03","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T06:13:03","slug":"what-happened-next-how-a-shocking-rape-and-murder-case-was-solved-58-years-later-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/332834\/","title":{"rendered":"What happened next: how a shocking rape and murder case was solved \u2013 58 years later | Crime"},"content":{"rendered":"

In June 2023, Jo Smith, a major crime review officer for Avon and Somerset police, was asked by her sergeant to \u201ctake a look at the Louisa Dunne case\u201d. Louisa Dunne was a 75-year-old woman who had been raped and murdered in her Bristol<\/a> home in June 1967. She was a mother of two, a grandmother, 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 living alone, twice widowed but still a well-known figure in her Easton neighbourhood.<\/p>\n

There were no witnesses to her murder, and the police investigation unearthed little to go on apart from a palm print on a rear window. Police<\/a> knocked on 8,000 doors and took 19,000 palm prints, but no match was found. The case stayed unsolved.<\/p>\n

\u2018I was quite excited\u2019 \u2026 Jo Smith, the officer who reopened the case. Photograph: Sam Frost\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I saw 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 exhibits boxes,\u201d says Smith. She found three. \u201cI opened the first and put the lid back on again immediately. Most of our cold cases are in forensically sealed bags with barcodes and case reference numbers. These weren\u2019t. They just had brown cardboard luggage labels saying what they were. It meant they\u2019d never been subject to modern forensic examinations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rest of the day was spent with a colleague (it was his first day on the job), both gloved up, forensically bagging the items and listing what they had. And then nothing more happened for another eight months. Smith pauses and tries to be diplomatic. \u201cI was quite excited, but it wasn\u2019t met with a huge amount of enthusiasm. Let\u2019s just say there was some scepticism as to the value of submitting something so old to forensics. It wasn\u2019t seen as a priority.\u201d<\/p>\n

It sounds like the opening chapter of a Val McDermid novel, or the first episode of a cold case TV drama, like Unforgotten. (Isn\u2019t there always an obstructive sergeant struggling with budget and caseload?) The final outcome also seems the stuff of fiction. In June this year, a 92-year-old man, Ryland Headley, was found guilty of Louisa Dunne\u2019s rape and murder and sentenced to life.<\/p>\n

Spanning 58 years, this is believed to be the longest-running cold case solved in the UK, and possibly the world. In November, Smith and her colleagues won Investigations Team of the Year at the National Conference for Senior Investigating Officers. The whole thing still feels extraordinary to her. \u201cIt just doesn\u2019t feel real,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s forever giving me goose bumps.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Smith, cases like this are proof that she made the correct career choice back when her father was trying to persuade her to be a primary school teacher instead. \u201cHe thought policing was too dangerous,\u201d she says, \u201cbut what could be better than solving a 58-year-old murder?\u201d<\/p>\n

When Jo told me about the box, it was an absolute no-brainer. Why wouldn\u2019t we give it a go?<\/p>\n

Smith joined the police when she was 24 because, she says: \u201cI\u2019m nosy and I was interested in people, in helping them when they were in crisis.\u201d Her previous six years in the force were in child protection \u2013 Smith worked on the Sophie Elms case, Britain\u2019s youngest female paedophile<\/a>, and by the time that finished in 2019, she went on maternity leave for her second child and extended it into a career break. \u201cWhen you\u2019ve got children of your own, you might not want to go back to that,\u201d she says. The hours were also grim. \u201cIt had meant nights spent working, weekends cancelled.\u201d When she saw the job advert for a crime review officer, she decided to apply. \u201cIt looked really interesting, it\u2019s more of a Monday-to-Friday, nine-to-five, so here I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith\u2019s job is a civilian role: she had to resign from the police to take it. Avon and Somerset\u2019s major and statutory review team is a small group of police and civilians, part-time and job sharers, set up in 2008. They look at cold cases \u2013 murders, rapes, long-term missing people and unidentified bodies and body parts \u2013 and also review live cases with fresh eyes. The original team was tasked with gathering all the old case files from around the region (\u201ccrawling round attics of police stations trying to find boxes,\u201d says Smith) and relocating them to a new central archive, a former armoury in Avon and Somerset police headquarters in Portishead. \u201cThe Louisa Dunne files had started in a local police station, then, in the years since 1967, they moved to Kingswood, then somewhere down in Weston-super-Mare before finally coming here,\u201d says Smith.<\/p>\n

The Dunne investigation was nicknamed \u2018Operation Beatle\u2019 in a nod to its 1967 origin. Photograph: Sam Frost\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Those boxes, their contents now forensically bagged by Smith and her colleague, returned to storage. Towards the end of 2023, a new senior investigating officer arrived to head up the team. DI Dave Marchant took a different approach to his predecessors. Once an aerospace engineer, Marchant had, as he puts it, \u201ctaken a hard left on the career path\u201d. He\u2019d started as a volunteer officer in his spare time (\u201cI wanted to do something a bit fun, a bit different, and my wife had banned me from the army reserve\u201d), then found he enjoyed policing far more than his day job. After seven years in uniform, he\u2019d joined the CID before arriving at the crime review team. \u201cI think I\u2019ve now got one of the best jobs in the force,\u201d he says. \u201cSolving problems that are hard to solve \u2013 that\u2019s my engineering mindset \u2013 trying to think in new ways. We\u2019re making our own luck. When Jo told me about the box, it was an absolute no-brainer. Why wouldn\u2019t we give it a go?\u201d<\/p>\n

In cold case crime dramas, once items are sent off to forensics, the results come back in days or weeks. In real life, the submission process and testing take many months. \u201cThe forensic team are interested, they want to do it, but our work is always slightly on the back-burner,\u201d says Smith. \u201cLive-time murders, when you\u2019ve got someone on remand, in custody or potentially still out there, have to take priority.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the end of August 2024, the final day of her summer holiday, when Smith received a message that forensics had a full DNA profile of the rapist from Dunne\u2019s skirt. A few hours later, she got another message. \u201cThey had a match on the DNA database \u2013 and it was someone who was still alive!\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryland Headley, who was found guilty of Louisa Dunne\u2019s rape and murder and sentenced to life. Photograph: Avon and Somerset police\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Ryland Headley was 92, widowed, and living in Ipswich. \u201cWhen we realised how old he was, we didn\u2019t have the luxury of time,\u201d says Smith. \u201cIt was all hands on deck.\u201d In the 11 weeks between the DNA match and Headley\u2019s arrest, the team read every single one of the 1,300 statements and 8,000 house-to-house records to see if Headley had entered the inquiry (he hadn\u2019t). Another colleague was deep in the 1967 archives at Bristol City Hall, searching for Headley\u2019s name, road by road. (He found a record of him living in the area on the third day of searching.)<\/p>\n

For a while, it was like living in two eras. \u201cJust looking at all the photos, seeing an old lady\u2019s house in 1967,\u201d says Smith. \u201cThe witness statements. The way they describe people. Today, it would typically be: \u2018He was wearing a tracksuit.\u2019 In the statements, it\u2019s: \u2018He always wore brown trousers, a tie and a jacket.\u2019 There are so many generational differences. Neighbours were saying: \u2018I did hear a noise but the chap behind me is always beating his wife so I just thought it was that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith felt she got to know Dunne, too. \u201cLouisa was such a big character,\u201d she says. \u201cLots of people were saying that they saw her on the doorstep of 58 Britannia Road every day. She was twice widowed, estranged from her family, but she wasn\u2019t reclusive. She had a gaggle of women who used to meet and gossip \u2013 and those were the women who realised something was very wrong when she wasn\u2019t outside her house and they couldn\u2019t get hold of her. She was very much part of the fabric of Easton in the 60s. In one statement, someone said: \u2018I don\u2019t think she\u2019d have gone through that without putting up a fight.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Louisa Dunne \u2026 \u2018she was very much part of the fabric of Easton in the 60s.\u2019 Photograph: Avon and Somerset Police\/PA<\/p>\n

Most of the team\u2019s days were spent reading and summarising. (\u201cHumongous amounts of paperwork. It wouldn\u2019t make great TV.\u201d) The only door they knocked on was that of Dr Norman Taylor, the GP, now 89, who had attended the scene. \u201cWe had his original statement in front of us and asked him what he could remember from that day,\u201d says Smith. \u201cHe remembered every detail from the moment he went through the front door, as clear as if it was yesterday. He said: \u2018I\u2019ve been a doctor all my life and seen a lot of dead bodies but that\u2019s the only one that had been murdered. That stays with you. Every time I\u2019ve driven through that part of Bristol, I\u2019ve thought about Louisa and the fact that whoever did this was still out there.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Headley\u2019s previous convictions seemed to leave little doubt of his guilt. After Dunne\u2019s murder, he had moved with his family to Ipswich, where in 1977 he had pleaded guilty to raping two women, aged 79 and 84, again in their own homes. His victims\u2019 harrowing statements from that earlier trial gave some idea of Louisa Dunne\u2019s last moments. \u201cHe threatened to strangle one and he threatened to smother the other with a pillow,\u201d says Smith. Both women fought back, trying to scratch Headley\u2019s face; one tried to bite him but didn\u2019t have her false teeth in. One pleaded: \u201cWould you want someone to do this to your mother or your sister?\u201d Though Headley was initially sentenced to life, he appealed, supported by a psychiatrist who stated that Headley was acting out of character because of sexual frustration within his marriage. \u201cIn effect, his wife wasn\u2019t doing her wifely duties,\u201d says Smith. \u201cIt went from a life sentence to seven years to him serving just three or four.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith was present at Headley\u2019s arrest and felt no compunction knocking on the door of a slow, seemingly confused old man. \u201cI knew what he looked like, I knew he was going to be 92, and I also knew how strong the evidence was,\u201d she says. The team feared that the arrest would trigger a medical incident. \u201cWe were uncovering the darkest secret he\u2019d kept hidden for 60 years,\u201d says Smith. It was also possible that, once in custody, Headley would not be deemed fit for interview, or that once charged, he wouldn\u2019t be fit for trial. Yet everything was able to go ahead. The trial took place in June.<\/p>\n

Louisa Dunne\u2019s living relative \u2013 her granddaughter, Mary Dainton \u2013 had already been identified and approached by specialist family liaison officers. \u201cI didn\u2019t meet her until we were well into the court process,\u201d says Smith. \u201cWe have a strong bond now \u2013 we went out a couple of weeks ago for tea and cake. Mary had assumed it was never going to be solved.\u201d Dainton\u2019s mother (Dunne\u2019s daughter) had been estranged from Dunne when she was murdered and had never recovered from that. \u201cFor Mary, there had also been a stigma about her gran being raped and murdered. People wouldn\u2019t talk to her.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s quite possible that this \u201cstigma\u201d could explain why no further rapes by Headley have yet emerged. \u201cRape is massively underreported now,\u201d says Smith, \u201cbut in the 60s and 70s, how many elderly ladies would ever tell anyone this had happened?\u201d<\/p>\n

Headley was told at sentencing that, for all practical purposes, he would never be released. He would die in prison.<\/p>\n

For Smith, it has been a special case. \u201cIt just feels different, I don\u2019t know why,\u201d she says. \u201cIn a live case, the cop who is there first does the basics, then someone else takes over, then CID, then the murder squad. You have the victim\u2019s family, there\u2019s lots of pressure, it\u2019s very reactive. With this case you\u2019re proactive, the pressure is only from yourself. It started with me trying to get someone to take some notice of my baby, that box \u2013 and I was able to see it through right until the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is confident that it won\u2019t be the last. There are about 130 cold cases in the Avon and Somerset police archives. \u201cWe\u2019ve got so much more to do,\u201d she says. \u201cWe have several murders that we\u2019re reviewing \u2013 we\u2019re constantly sending things to forensics and following other lines of inquiry. We\u2019ll be forever opening boxes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In June 2023, Jo Smith, a major crime review officer for Avon and Somerset police, was asked by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-332834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}