How a Shocking Sexual Assault and Killing Case Was Resolved – 58 Decades Later.
In the summer of 2023, Jo Smith, received a request by her team leader to review a decades-old murder file. The victim was a 75-year-old woman who had been sexually assaulted and killed in her Bristol home in June 1967. She was a mother, a grandparent, a woman whose previous spouse had been a prominent labor activist, and whose home had once been a center of civic engagement. By 1967, she was living alone, twice widowed but still a familiar figure in her Easton neighbourhood.
There were no witnesses to her killing, and the initial inquiry unearthed little to go on apart from a handprint on a back window. Investigators knocked on 8,000 doors and took 19,000 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 forensics, so I went to the archive to look at the exhibits boxes,” says the officer.
She found a trio. “I opened the first and closed it again right away. Most of our unsolved investigations are in sterile evidence bags with identification codes. These weren’t. They just had brown cardboard luggage labels indicating what they were. It meant they’d never undergone modern forensic examinations.”
The rest of the day was spent with a co-worker (it was his first 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 hesitates and tries to be diplomatic. “I was very enthusiastic, but it wasn’t met with a great deal of enthusiasm. Let’s just say there was some scepticism as to the worth of submitting something so old to forensics. It was not considered a high-priority matter.”
It sounds like the beginning of a crime novel, or the premiere of a investigative series. 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 given a sentence to life.
A Record-Breaking Investigation
Spanning fifty-eight years, this is believed to be the longest-running cold case solved in the United Kingdom, and perhaps the globe. Later that year, the investigative team won recognition for their work. The whole thing still feels extraordinary 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 correct professional decision. “My father believed policing was too risky,” she says, “but what could be better than resolving a 58-year-old murder?”
Smith joined the police when she was 24 because, she says: “I’m inquisitive and I was interested in people, in helping them when they were in distress.” Her previous role in child protection involved demanding hours. When she saw a job advert for a crime review officer, she decided to apply. “It looked really interesting, it’s more of a standard schedule role, so I took the position.”
Examining the Clues
Smith’s job is a non-uniformed position. The specialist unit is a compact team set up to look at cold cases – homicides, sexual assaults, long-term missing people – 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 moving them to a new central archive.
“The Louisa Dunne files had originated 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 forensically bagged, returned to storage. Towards the end of 2023, a new senior investigating officer arrived to lead the team. The new officer 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 new ways,” he says. “When Jo told me about the box, it was an obvious decision. Why wouldn’t we try?”
The Key Discovery
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 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 complete genetic fingerprint of the rapist from the victim’s clothing. A few hours later, she got a follow-up. “They had a match on the genetic registry – and it was someone who was living!”
The suspect was ninety-two, widowed, and living in Ipswich. “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 weeks between the DNA match and Headley’s arrest, the team pored over every single one of the numerous original accounts 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 portray people. Nowadays, it would typically be different. There are so many changes over time.”
Understanding 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 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 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 stays with 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 1977 he had admitted 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 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 acting out of character. “It went from a life sentence to less time,” 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 feared that the arrest would trigger a health crisis. “We were uncovering the most hidden truth he’d kept hidden for 60 years,” says Smith.
Yet everything was able to go ahead. The trial took place, and the victim’s living relative had been contacted by specialist officers. “Mary had believed 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 massively underreported now,” says Smith, “but in the mid-20th century, how many older women would ever report this had happened?”
Headley was told at sentencing that, for all intents and purposes, he would remain incarcerated. He would spend his life behind bars.
A Profound Effect
For Smith, it has been a special case. “It just feels different, 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 started with me trying to get someone to take some interest of that box – and I was able to see it through right until the end.”
She is certain that it is not the last resolution. There are about 130 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 following other lines of inquiry. We’ll be forever unlocking the past.”
