The Way a Disturbing Rape and Murder Investigation Was Resolved – 58 Decades Later.

In the summer of 2023, a major crime review officer, received a request by her supervisor to examine a cold case from 1967. Louisa Dunne was a elderly woman who had been raped and murdered in her home city 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, twice widowed but still a well-known presence in her local neighbourhood.

There were no one who saw anything to her killing, and the initial inquiry found little to go on apart from a handprint on a rear window. Officers canvassed eight thousand doors and took nineteen thousand palm prints, but no match was found. The case stayed 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 archive 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 unsolved investigations are in forensically sealed 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 scientific testing.”

The rest of the day was spent with a colleague (it was his first day on the job), both wearing protective gloves, securely packaging the items and cataloging 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 did not generate a great deal of enthusiasm. Let’s just say there was some scepticism as to the value of submitting something so old to forensics. It was not considered a high-priority matter.”

It sounds like the opening chapter of a crime novel, or the premiere of a investigative series. The end result also seems the material for a story. In the following June, a nonagenarian, the defendant, was found guilty of the victim’s rape and murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

A Record-Breaking Case

Covering fifty-eight years, this is believed to be the longest-running cold case solved in the United Kingdom, and perhaps the world. Later that year, the investigative team 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 goose bumps.”

For Smith, cases like this are proof that she made the right professional decision. “My father believed policing was too risky,” she says, “but what could be better than solving a decades-old murder?”

Smith joined the police when she was in her twenties because, she says: “I’m nosy and I was interested in people, in assisting 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 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 historical crimes – homicides, sexual assaults, disappearances – and also re-examine active investigations with fresh eyes. The original team was tasked with gathering all the old case files from around the area and moving 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 containers, 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 different approach. Once an engineer, Marchant had “taken a hard left” on his professional journey.

“Solving problems that are challenging – that’s my engineering mindset – trying to think in innovative manners,” he says. “When Jo told me about the box, it was an obvious decision. Why wouldn’t we give it a go?”

The Breakthrough

In television shows, once items are sent off to forensics, the results come back in days. In real life, the testing procedure and testing take many months. “The laboratory scientists are interested, they want to do it, but our work is always slightly on the lower priority,” 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 another message. “They had a hit on the DNA database – and it was someone who was living!”

The suspect was ninety-two, widowed, 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 thousands original statements and records.

For a while, it was like living in two eras. “Just looking at all the photographs, seeing an old lady’s house in 1967,” says Smith. “The accounts. The way they describe people. Today, it would usually be different. There are so many changes over time.”

Understanding 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, separated 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 analyzing documents. (“Humongous amounts of paperwork. It wouldn’t make compelling television.”) The team also interviewed the doctor, 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 previous convictions seemed to leave little question of his guilt. After the 1967 murder, he had moved, and in the late 1970s he had pleaded guilty to raping two older women, again in their own homes. His victims’ harrowing statements from that earlier trial gave some idea into the victim’s last moments.

“He menaced to strangle one and he threatened to suffocate the other with a cushion,” 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 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 medical incident. “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 granddaughter had been identified and approached by specialist officers. “She had believed it was never going to be solved,” says Smith. For the family, there had also been a stigma about the nature of the crime.

“Sexual assault is often not reported 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 practical 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 urgency 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 conclusion.”

She is certain that it won’t be the last resolution. There are about one hundred and thirty 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 sending things to forensics and following other leads. We’ll be forever opening boxes.”