How a Appalling Sexual Assault and Killing Investigation Was Resolved – Fifty-Eight Decades Later.
In June 2023, a major crime review officer, was asked by her sergeant to examine a cold case from 1967. The victim was a elderly woman who had been raped and murdered in her Bristol home in June 1967. She was a parent of two children, a grandparent, a woman whose first husband had been a leading trade unionist, and whose home had once been a hub of political activity. By 1967, she was residing by herself, twice widowed but still a recognized presence in her Easton neighbourhood.
There were no witnesses to her killing, and the police investigation unearthed little to go on apart from a handprint on a rear window. Police knocked on eight thousand doors and took 19,000 palm prints, but no match was found. The case remained unsolved.
“Upon realizing 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 evidence containers,” says the officer.
She found three. “I opened the first and closed it again right away. Most of our unsolved investigations are in sterile evidence bags with identification codes. These were not. They just had old paper tags indicating what they were. It meant they’d never undergone modern scientific testing.”
The rest of the day was spent with a co-worker (it was his initial day on the job), both gloved up, forensically bagging 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 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 was not considered a priority.”
It sounds like the opening chapter of a mystery book, or the premiere of a cold case TV drama. The final outcome also seems the stuff of fiction. In the following June, a nonagenarian, Ryland Headley, was found culpable of the victim’s rape and murder and given a sentence to life.
A Record-Breaking Case
Covering 58 years, this is believed to be the oldest unsolved investigation closed in the UK, and perhaps the globe. Subsequently, the unit 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 right professional decision. “He thought policing was too dangerous,” she says, “but what could be better than solving a decades-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 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.”
Revisiting the Evidence
Smith’s job is a non-uniformed position. The major crime review team is a small group set up to look at historical crimes – homicides, rapes, disappearances – and also review live cases 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 case documents had originated in a local police station, 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 head up the team. DI Dave Marchant took a different approach. Once an aerospace engineer, Marchant had “taken a hard left” on his career path.
“Solving problems that are hard to solve – that’s my engineering mindset – trying to think in new ways,” 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 a long time. “The forensic team are interested, 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 complete genetic fingerprint of the assailant 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 still alive!”
Ryland Headley 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 a full team effort.” In the weeks between the DNA match and Headley’s arrest, the team pored over every single one of the thousands original accounts and records.
For a while, it was like navigating two time periods. “Just looking at all the photos, seeing an old lady’s house 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 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, separated 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 very wrong.”
Most of the team’s days were spent reading and summarising. (“Humongous amounts of paperwork. It wouldn’t make great TV.”) 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 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 admitted to raping two older women, again in their own homes. His victims’ disturbing statements from that earlier trial gave some idea into the victim’s last moments.
“He threatened to strangle one and he threatened to suffocate the other with a cushion,” says Smith. Both women resisted. Though Headley was initially sentenced to life, he appealed, supported by a mental health professional who stated that Headley was acting out of character. “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 strong the evidence was,” she says. The team feared that the arrest would trigger a medical incident. “We were uncovering the darkest secret he’d kept hidden for sixty years,” says Smith.
Yet everything was able to proceed. The trial took place, and the victim’s granddaughter had been contacted by family liaison. “She had assumed 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 often not reported now,” says Smith, “but in the 60s and 70s, how many elderly ladies would ever tell anyone this had happened?”
Headley was told at sentencing that, for all practical purposes, he would never be released. He would spend his life behind bars.
A Profound Effect
For Smith, it has been a special case. “It just feels distinct, I don’t know why,” she says. “In a live case, the process is very responsive. With this case you’re proactive, the urgency is only from yourself. It began with me trying to get someone to take some interest of that box – and I was able to follow it right until the end.”
She is confident that it is not the last solved case. There are about 130 unsolved investigations in the archives. “We’ve got so much more to do,” she says. “We have several murders that we’re re-examining – we’re constantly sending things to forensics and following other leads. We’ll be forever unlocking the past.”
