The Way a Appalling Rape and Murder Case Was Solved – 58 Years Later.

In June 2023, Jo Smith, was tasked by her sergeant to review a cold case from 1967. The woman was a 75-year-old woman who had been sexually assaulted and killed in her home city home in the month of June 1967. She was a mother, a grandmother, 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 residing by herself, having lost two husbands but still a familiar figure in her Easton neighbourhood.

There were no witnesses to her killing, and the initial inquiry found few leads apart from a palm print on a back window. Police canvassed eight thousand doors and took nineteen thousand palm prints, but no match 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 three. “I opened the first and closed it again immediately. Most of our unsolved investigations are in forensically sealed bags with identification codes. These weren’t. They just had old paper tags saying what they were. It meant they’d never been subject to modern scientific testing.”

The rest of the day was spent with a co-worker (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 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 value of submitting something so old to forensics. It wasn’t seen as a priority.”

It resembles the opening chapter of a crime novel, or the premiere of a cold case TV drama. The final outcome also seems the material for a story. In the following 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

Spanning 58 years, this is believed to be the longest-running unsolved investigation closed in the UK, 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 real,” she says. “It’s forever giving me goose bumps.”

For Smith, cases like this are confirmation that she made the right professional decision. “My father believed policing was too risky,” she says, “but what could be better than solving a 58-year-old murder?”

Smith joined the police when she was 24 because, she says: “I’m inquisitive and I was fascinated by 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 crime review officer, she decided to apply. “It looked really engaging, it’s more of a standard schedule role, so here I am.”

Examining the Evidence

Smith’s job is a civilian role. The specialist unit is a small group set up to look at historical crimes – murders, rapes, disappearances – 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 region and relocating them to a new secure storage facility.

“The case documents 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 senior investigating officer arrived to head up the team. DI Dave Marchant took a novel strategy. Once an engineer, Marchant had “taken a hard left” on his career path.

“Solving problems that are challenging – that’s my engineering mindset – trying to think in innovative manners,” he says. “When Jo told me about the evidence, 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 in days. 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 back-burner,” says Smith. “Live-time murders have to take priority.”

It was the end of August 2024 when Smith received a message that forensics had a full DNA profile of the assailant from the victim’s skirt. A few hours later, she got another message. “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 Ipswich. “When we realised how old he was, we didn’t have the luxury of time,” 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 thousands original accounts and records.

For a while, it was like living in two time periods. “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. “She was such a prominent person,” she says. “Lots of people were saying that they saw her on the doorstep every day. She was twice widowed, 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 very wrong.”

Most of the team’s days were spent analyzing documents. (“Vast quantities of paperwork. It wouldn’t make great TV.”) The team also interviewed the doctor, now eighty-nine, who had been at the crime scene. “He remembered every detail 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 History 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 elderly women, again in their own homes. His victims’ disturbing statements from that earlier trial gave some idea into the victim’s last moments.

“He menaced to choke 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 acting out of character. “It went from a life sentence to less time,” 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 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 contacted by specialist officers. “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 massively underreported now,” says Smith, “but in the mid-20th century, how many elderly ladies would ever report this had happened?”

Headley was told at sentencing that, for all intents and purposes, he would never be released. He would spend his life behind bars.

A Lasting Impact

For Smith, it has been a unique 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 notice of that evidence – and I was able to follow it right until the conclusion.”

She is confident that it is not the last solved case. 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 sending things to forensics and pursuing other leads. We’ll be forever unlocking the past.”