The Way a Shocking Sexual Assault and Killing Investigation Was Cracked – Fifty-Eight Decades Later.

In the summer of 2023, Jo Smith, was asked by her sergeant to examine the Louisa Dunne case. The woman was a 75-year-old woman who had been raped and murdered in her Bristol home in June 1967. She was a parent of two children, a grandmother, a woman whose previous spouse had been a prominent labor activist, and whose home had once been a hub of civic engagement. By 1967, she was residing by herself, having lost two husbands but still a familiar 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. Officers canvassed eight thousand doors and took nineteen thousand palm prints, but no identification was found. The case stayed open.

“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 storage facility to look at the evidence containers,” 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 barcodes. These were not. They just had old paper tags saying what they were. It meant they’d never been subject to modern scientific testing.”

The rest of the day was spent with a colleague (it was his initial day on the job), both gloved up, securely packaging the items and listing what they had. And then nothing more happened for another eight months. Smith hesitates and tries to be diplomatic. “I was very enthusiastic, but it wasn’t met with a great deal of enthusiasm. It’s fair to say there was some doubt as to the worth of submitting something so old to forensics. It was not considered a high-priority matter.”

It resembles the opening chapter of a crime novel, or the premiere of a cold case TV drama. The final outcome also seems the stuff of fiction. In June, a 92-year-old man, the defendant, was found culpable of the victim’s rape and murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

A Record-Breaking Investigation

Spanning fifty-eight years, this is believed to be the oldest cold case closed in the United Kingdom, 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 real,” she says. “It’s forever giving me goose bumps.”

For Smith, cases like this are proof that she made the right professional decision. “He thought policing was too dangerous,” she says, “but what could be better than resolving a decades-old murder?”

Smith joined the police when she was in her twenties because, she says: “I’m inquisitive 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 job advert for a crime review officer, she decided to pursue it. “It looked really interesting, it’s more of a regular hours role, so I took the position.”

Examining the Evidence

Smith’s job is a non-uniformed position. The specialist unit is a compact team set up to look at historical crimes – homicides, sexual assaults, disappearances – and also review active investigations 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 secure storage facility.

“The Louisa Dunne files had originated in a precinct, then, in the years since 1967, they moved 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 senior investigating officer 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.

“Solving problems that are challenging – that’s my analytical approach – trying to think in new ways,” he says. “When Jo told me about the box, it was an absolute no-brainer. Why wouldn’t we give it a go?”

The Breakthrough

In television shows, once items are sent off to forensics, the results come back quickly. In actuality, the testing procedure and testing take many months. “The laboratory scientists are keen, they want to do it, but our work is always slightly on the back-burner,” 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 assailant from the victim’s skirt. A few hours later, she got another message. “They had a hit on the genetic registry – and it was someone who was still alive!”

The suspect was ninety-two, 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 all hands on deck.” In the period between the DNA match and Headley’s arrest, the team pored over every single one of the numerous original statements and records.

For a while, it was like navigating two eras. “Just looking at all the photos, seeing an the victim’s home in 1967,” says Smith. “The accounts. The way they describe people. Today, it would typically 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 widowed twice, estranged from her family, but she wasn’t reclusive. She had a group 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. (“Vast quantities of paperwork. It wouldn’t make great TV.”) The team also spoke with the original GP, now eighty-nine, who had attended the 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 Pattern of Crimes

Headley’s prior offenses seemed to leave little doubt of his guilt. After the 1967 murder, he had moved, and in the late 1970s he had admitted to assaulting two elderly women, again in their own homes. His victims’ disturbing statements from that previous case gave some idea into the victim’s last moments.

“He threatened 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 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 less time,” 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 compelling the proof was,” she says. The team were concerned that the arrest would trigger a medical incident. “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. “Mary 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 often not reported now,” says Smith, “but in the 60s and 70s, how many elderly ladies would ever report this had happened?”

Headley was told at sentencing that, for all practical purposes, he would remain incarcerated. He would die in prison.

A Lasting Impact

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 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 approximately 130 cold cases 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 sending things to forensics and following other leads. We’ll be forever unlocking the past.”