How a Appalling Sexual Assault and Killing Case Was Resolved – Fifty-Eight Years After.

In the summer of 2023, an investigator, received a request by her team leader to “take a look at” a cold case from 1967. The woman was a elderly woman who had been sexually assaulted and killed 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 trade unionist, and whose home had once been a hub of political activity. By 1967, she was residing by herself, having lost two husbands but still a recognized figure in her Easton neighbourhood.

There were no one who saw anything to her killing, and the police investigation unearthed few leads apart from a handprint on a rear window. Officers knocked on eight thousand doors and took 19,000 palm prints, but no match was found. The case remained unsolved.

“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 Smith.

She found three. “I opened the first and closed it again immediately. Most of our unsolved investigations 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 undergone modern forensic examinations.”

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 there was no progress for another nearly a year. Smith pauses and tries to be tactful. “I was very enthusiastic, but it did not generate a huge amount of enthusiasm. It’s fair to say there was some doubt as to the worth of submitting something that aged to forensics. It wasn’t seen as a priority.”

It sounds like the opening chapter of a mystery book, or the premiere of a cold case TV drama. The end result also seems the material for a story. In the following June, a 92-year-old man, the defendant, was found culpable of the victim’s rape and murder and given a sentence to life imprisonment.

An Unprecedented Case

Spanning fifty-eight years, this is believed to be the longest-running 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 remarkable to her. “It just doesn’t feel tangible,” she says. “It’s forever giving me chills.”

For Smith, cases like this are confirmation that she made the correct professional decision. “He thought policing was too dangerous,” she says, “but what could be better than solving a 58-year-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 distress.” Her previous experience in safeguarding involved grueling hours. When she saw a vacancy for a crime review officer, she decided to pursue it. “It looked really interesting, it’s more of a regular hours role, so here I am.”

Revisiting the Evidence

Smith’s job is a civilian role. The major crime review team is a compact team set up to look at cold cases – homicides, rapes, disappearances – and also review active investigations with fresh eyes. The original team was tasked with collecting 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 local police station, then, in the years since 1967, they were transferred several times 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 senior investigating officer arrived to head up the team. The new officer took a novel strategy. Once an engineer, Marchant had made a drastic change on his career path.

“Cracking cases that are hard to solve – that’s my engineering mindset – 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 try?”

The Breakthrough

In cold case crime dramas, once items are sent off to forensics, the results come back quickly. In real life, the submission process and testing take many months. “The forensic team are interested, they want to do it, but our work is always slightly on the back-burner,” says Smith. “Current investigations 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 a follow-up. “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 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 navigating two eras. “Just looking at all the photos, seeing an old lady’s house 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. “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 wasn’t reclusive. 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 great TV.”) The team also interviewed the original GP, now 89, 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 stays with 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 pleaded guilty to assaulting two older women, again in their own homes. His victims’ disturbing statements from that earlier trial gave some insight 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 resisted. Though Headley was initially sentenced to life, he appealed, supported by a psychiatrist who stated that Headley was acting out of character. “It went from a life sentence to a shorter term,” 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 were concerned that the arrest would trigger a health crisis. “We were uncovering the darkest secret he’d kept hidden for 60 years,” says Smith.

Yet everything was able to go ahead. The court case took place, and the victim’s living relative had been identified and approached by family liaison. “She had believed it was never going to be resolved,” says Smith. For the family, there had also been a sense of shame about the nature of the crime.

“Sexual assault is often not reported now,” says Smith, “but in the mid-20th century, 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 Lasting Impact

For Smith, it has been a unique case. “It just feels different, I don’t know why,” she says. “With current investigations, the process is very responsive. With this case you’re proactive, the pressure 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 confident that it won’t be the last resolution. There are approximately one hundred and thirty unsolved investigations 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 leads. We’ll be forever unlocking the past.”