The Way a Appalling Sexual Assault and Killing Investigation Was Cracked – Fifty-Eight Years Later.

In the summer of 2023, a major crime review officer, received a request by her team leader to “take a look at” a decades-old murder file. 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 of two, a grandmother, a woman whose previous spouse had been a leading 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 presence in her local neighbourhood.

There were no witnesses to her killing, and the police investigation found little to go on apart from a palm print on a rear window. Police knocked on 8,000 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 forensics, so I went to the archive to look at the exhibits boxes,” states the officer.

She found a trio. “I opened the first and put the lid back on 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 been subject to 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, forensically bagging the items and listing 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 did not generate a great deal of enthusiasm. Let’s just say there was some doubt as to the value of submitting something so old to forensics. It wasn’t seen as a high-priority matter.”

It sounds like the beginning of a mystery book, or the premiere of a cold case TV drama. The final outcome 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 given a sentence to life.

A Record-Breaking Case

Spanning fifty-eight years, this is believed to be the oldest cold case solved in the United Kingdom, and possibly the globe. Later that year, the unit won an award for their work. The whole thing still feels extraordinary to her. “It just doesn’t feel real,” she says. “It’s forever giving me chills.”

For Smith, cases like this are confirmation that she made the correct career choice. “He thought policing was too dangerous,” 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 helping them when they were in distress.” Her previous experience in safeguarding involved grueling 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.”

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 cold cases – homicides, sexual assaults, long-term missing people – and also re-examine active investigations with a new perspective. The original team was tasked with gathering 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 local police station, then, in the years since 1967, they moved several times before finally coming here,” says Smith.

Those containers, their contents now properly secured, returned to storage. Towards the end of 2023, a new lead detective 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 professional journey.

“Solving problems that are challenging – 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 try?”

The Breakthrough

In cold case crime dramas, once items are sent off to forensics, the results come back quickly. In actuality, the testing procedure and testing take many months. “The forensic team are interested, they want to do it, but our work is always slightly on the lower priority,” says Smith. “Live-time murders have to take precedence.”

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 hit on the genetic registry – and it was someone who was living!”

The suspect was 92, widowed, 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 pored over 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. 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 outside her home every day. She was twice widowed, 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 analyzing documents. (“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: ‘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 haunts you.’”

A Pattern of Violence

Headley’s previous convictions seemed to leave little doubt of his guilt. After the 1967 murder, he had moved, and in the late 1970s he had admitted to assaulting two older women, again in their own homes. His victims’ harrowing statements from that previous case gave some idea into the victim’s last moments.

“He menaced to choke one and he threatened to suffocate 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.

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 living relative had been contacted by specialist officers. “Mary had believed 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.

“Sexual assault 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 die in prison.

A Lasting Impact

For Smith, it has been a special 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 driving the inquiry, 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 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 sending things to forensics and pursuing other leads. We’ll be forever unlocking the past.”