How a Shocking Rape and Murder Case Was Resolved – Fifty-Eight Years After.
In the summer of 2023, an investigator, received a request by her sergeant to “take a look at” a decades-old murder file. Louisa Dunne was a 75-year-old woman who had been raped and murdered in her Bristol home in June 1967. She was a mother, a grandmother, a woman whose first husband had been a prominent trade unionist, and whose home had once been a hub of civic engagement. By 1967, she was living alone, twice widowed but still a well-known figure in her local neighbourhood.
There were no witnesses to her murder, and the police investigation found few leads apart from a handprint on a rear window. Police knocked on 8,000 doors and took 19,000 palm prints, but no match was found. The case stayed open.
“Upon realizing that it was dated 1967, I knew we were only going to solve this through scientific analysis, so I went to the storage facility to look at the exhibits boxes,” states Smith.
She found a trio. “I opened the first and closed it again right away. Most of our cold cases are in forensically sealed bags with barcodes. These weren’t. They just had brown cardboard luggage labels indicating what they were. It meant they’d never been subject to modern scientific testing.”
The rest of the day was spent with a co-worker (it was his initial day on the job), both gloved up, securely packaging the items and listing what they had. And then there was no progress for another eight months. Smith pauses and tries to be tactful. “I was quite excited, but it wasn’t met with a great deal of enthusiasm. It’s fair to say there was some doubt as to the value of submitting something that aged to forensics. It was not considered a high-priority matter.”
It resembles the beginning of a mystery book, or the first episode of a cold case TV drama. The final outcome also seems the stuff of fiction. In the following June, a nonagenarian, the defendant, was found guilty of the victim’s rape and murder and given a sentence to life.
An Unprecedented Investigation
Spanning fifty-eight years, this is believed to be the longest-running cold case closed in the UK, and possibly the world. Subsequently, the investigative team won recognition for their work. The whole thing still feels remarkable 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 career choice. “He thought policing was too risky,” she says, “but what could be better than solving a 58-year-old murder?”
Smith joined the police when she was 24 because, she says: “I’m nosy and I was interested in people, in assisting them when they were in crisis.” Her previous experience in safeguarding involved grueling hours. When she saw a vacancy for a crime review officer, she decided to apply. “It looked really interesting, it’s more of a standard schedule role, so here I am.”
Revisiting the Clues
Smith’s job is a civilian role. The major crime review team is a small group set up to look at historical crimes – homicides, rapes, long-term missing people – and also review live cases with fresh eyes. The original team was tasked with gathering all the old case files from around the area and relocating them to a new secure storage facility.
“The Louisa Dunne files had originated in a precinct, 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. DI Dave Marchant took a novel strategy. Once an aerospace engineer, Marchant had “taken a hard left” on his career path.
“Cracking cases that are challenging – that’s my engineering mindset – trying to think in new ways,” he says. “When Jo told me about the evidence, it was an obvious decision. Why wouldn’t we try?”
The Key Discovery
In cold case crime dramas, once items are sent off to forensics, the results come back in days. In actuality, the submission process and testing take many months. “The forensic team are keen, they want to do it, but our work is always slightly on the back-burner,” says Smith. “Current investigations 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 assailant from the victim’s clothing. A few hours later, she got another message. “They had a hit 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 time to waste,” says Smith. “It was all hands on deck.” In the period between the DNA match and Headley’s arrest, the team pored over every single one of the thousands original statements 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. Today, it would usually be different. There are so many generational differences.”
Getting to Know the Victim
Smith felt she came to understand the victim, too. “She 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, 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 very wrong.”
Most of the team’s days were spent analyzing documents. (“Vast quantities of paperwork. It wouldn’t make compelling television.”) The team also interviewed the original GP, now eighty-nine, 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 haunts you.’”
A History of Crimes
Headley’s prior offenses seemed to leave little question 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 earlier trial gave some idea into the victim’s last moments.
“He threatened to strangle 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 appealed, supported by a psychiatrist who stated that Headley was not behaving normally. “It went from a life sentence to a shorter term,” 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 compelling the proof 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 sixty years,” says Smith.
Yet everything was able to proceed. The trial took place, and the victim’s granddaughter had been identified and approached by specialist officers. “She had assumed it was never going to be solved,” says Smith. For the family, there had also been a stigma about the nature of the crime.
“Sexual assault is often not reported now,” says Smith, “but in the 60s and 70s, 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 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. “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 interest of that evidence – and I was able to see it through right until the conclusion.”
She is certain that it won’t be the last solved case. There are approximately one hundred and thirty cold cases in the archives. “We’ve got so much more to do,” she says. “We have a number of murders that we’re reviewing – we’re constantly submitting evidence to forensics and pursuing other lines of inquiry. We’ll be forever opening boxes.”
