The Way a Shocking Sexual Assault and Killing Case Was Resolved – 58 Decades Later.

In the summer of 2023, Jo Smith, received a request by her supervisor to “take a look at” a decades-old murder file. Louisa Dunne was a elderly woman who had been sexually assaulted and killed in her Bristol home in June 1967. She was a mother, a grandparent, a woman whose first husband had been a leading labor activist, and whose home had once been a center of political activity. By 1967, she was living alone, twice widowed but still a well-known figure in her Easton neighbourhood.

There were no witnesses to her killing, and the police investigation found little to go on apart from a handprint on a rear window. Officers knocked on 8,000 doors and took 19,000 palm prints, but no match was found. The case remained open.

“Upon realizing that it was dated 1967, I knew we were only going to solve this through forensics, so I went to the storage facility to look at the exhibits boxes,” states the officer.

She found a trio. “I opened the first and closed it again right away. Most of our cold cases are in sterile evidence bags with identification codes. These were not. They just had old paper tags 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 wearing protective gloves, forensically bagging the items and listing what they had. And then nothing more happened for another nearly a year. Smith pauses and tries to be diplomatic. “I was very enthusiastic, but it wasn’t met with a huge amount of enthusiasm. Let’s just say there was some doubt as to the value of submitting something so old to forensics. It wasn’t seen as a high-priority matter.”

It resembles the beginning of a mystery book, 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 Louisa Dunne’s rape and murder and sentenced to life.

An Unprecedented Case

Covering 58 years, this is believed to be the oldest cold case closed in the UK, and possibly the world. Later that year, the unit won recognition for their work. The whole thing still feels extraordinary 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 professional decision. “My father believed policing was too dangerous,” she says, “but what could be better than solving a decades-old murder?”

Smith entered the police when she was in her twenties because, she says: “I’m inquisitive and I was interested in people, in helping them when they were in crisis.” Her previous experience in safeguarding involved demanding hours. When she saw a job advert for a cold case investigator, she decided to pursue it. “It looked really engaging, it’s more of a standard schedule role, so I took the position.”

Examining the Evidence

Smith’s job is a non-uniformed position. The major crime review team is a compact team set up to look at historical crimes – murders, rapes, long-term missing people – 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 area and relocating them to a new central archive.

“The Louisa Dunne files had started in a precinct, then, in the years since 1967, they were transferred several times before finally coming here,” says Smith.

Those boxes, their contents now properly secured, 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 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 box, it was an absolute no-brainer. Why wouldn’t we try?”

The Breakthrough

In television shows, once items are sent off to forensics, the results come back quickly. In real life, the submission process 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 precedence.”

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 genetic registry – and it was someone who was living!”

The suspect 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 period between the DNA match and Headley’s arrest, the team read every single one of the numerous original statements and records.

For a while, it was like living in two eras. “Just looking at all the photos, 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 changes over time.”

Getting to Know the Victim

Smith felt she got to know the victim, too. “Louisa 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 remained social. 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 analyzing documents. (“Vast quantities of paperwork. It wouldn’t make great TV.”) The team also spoke with the original GP, now 89, who had attended the 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 Pattern of Violence

Headley’s prior offenses seemed to leave little doubt 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 insight into the victim’s last moments.

“He threatened 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 psychiatrist who stated that Headley was not behaving normally. “It went from a life sentence to less time,” says Smith.

Securing Justice

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 60 years,” says Smith.

Yet everything was able to proceed. The trial took place, and the victim’s granddaughter had been identified and approached by family liaison. “She had believed it was never going to be solved,” 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 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 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 reactive. 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 box – and I was able to follow it right until the end.”

She is certain that it is not the last resolution. There are approximately one hundred and thirty 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 pursuing other lines of inquiry. We’ll be forever unlocking the past.”