The Way a Shocking Rape and Murder Investigation Was Cracked – Fifty-Eight Years After.

In the summer of 2023, an investigator, received a request by her team leader to “take a look at” a decades-old murder file. Louisa Dunne was a elderly woman who had been raped and murdered in her Bristol home in June 1967. She was a mother, a grandmother, a woman whose previous spouse had been a leading labor activist, and whose home had once been a center of political activity. By 1967, she was living alone, having lost two husbands but still a familiar presence in her local neighbourhood.

There were no one who saw anything to her killing, and the police investigation discovered little to go on apart from a palm print on a rear window. Officers canvassed eight thousand doors and took 19,000 palm prints, but no identification was found. The case stayed 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 evidence containers,” states the officer.

She found three. “I opened the first and put the lid back on again immediately. Most of our unsolved investigations are in forensically sealed bags with barcodes. These weren’t. They just had brown cardboard luggage labels 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 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 pauses and tries to be diplomatic. “I was quite excited, but it wasn’t met with a huge amount of enthusiasm. It’s fair to 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 sounds like the beginning of a mystery book, or the first episode of a investigative series. The final outcome also seems the material for a story. In June, a nonagenarian, the defendant, was found culpable of Louisa Dunne’s rape and murder and given a sentence to life imprisonment.

An Unprecedented Investigation

Covering fifty-eight years, this is believed to be the oldest unsolved investigation closed in the United Kingdom, and possibly the world. Later that year, the investigative team 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 career choice. “He thought policing was too risky,” she says, “but what could be better than solving a decades-old murder?”

Smith joined the police when she was 24 because, she says: “I’m inquisitive and I was fascinated by people, in assisting them when they were in distress.” Her previous experience in child protection involved demanding hours. When she saw a vacancy for a cold case investigator, she decided to pursue it. “It looked really interesting, it’s more of a regular hours role, so here I am.”

Examining the Clues

Smith’s job is a non-uniformed position. The specialist unit is a small group set up to look at cold cases – murders, rapes, disappearances – and also review live cases with a new perspective. The original team was tasked with collecting all the old case files from around the region and relocating them to a new central archive.

“The case documents 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 properly secured, returned to storage. Towards the end of 2023, a new lead detective arrived to head up the team. DI Dave Marchant took a novel strategy. Once an engineer, Marchant had made a drastic change on his professional journey.

“Solving problems that are challenging – that’s my analytical approach – trying to think in innovative manners,” 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 cold case crime dramas, once items are sent off to forensics, the results come back quickly. 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 lower priority,” says Smith. “Current investigations 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 skirt. A few hours later, she got a follow-up. “They had a match on the genetic registry – and it was someone who was still alive!”

The suspect was 92, widowed, 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 weeks 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 time periods. “Just looking at all the photographs, seeing an the victim’s home in 1967,” says Smith. “The accounts. The way they describe people. Nowadays, it would usually be different. There are so many changes over time.”

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 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 amiss.”

Most of the team’s days were spent reading and summarising. (“Vast quantities of paperwork. It wouldn’t make compelling television.”) The team also spoke with the doctor, now 89, 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 question 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 insight into the victim’s last moments.

“He menaced to choke 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 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.

Closing the Case

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 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 court case took place, and the victim’s granddaughter had been identified and approached by family liaison. “Mary had assumed 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 often not reported now,” says Smith, “but in the 60s and 70s, how many older women would ever tell anyone this had happened?”

Headley was told at sentencing that, for all practical 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 different, I don’t know why,” she says. “With current investigations, the process is very reactive. With this case you’re driving the inquiry, the urgency is only from yourself. It began with me trying to get someone to take some notice of that evidence – and I was able to follow it right until the end.”

She is certain that it won’t be the last solved case. There are approximately 130 unsolved investigations in the archives. “We’ve got so much more to do,” she says. “We have several murders that we’re reviewing – we’re constantly submitting evidence to forensics and following other leads. We’ll be forever opening boxes.”