Nearly 58 years after the brutal killing of 75-year-old Louisa Dunne, a 92-year-old man, Ryland Headley, has been found guilty of her rape and murder in what is believed to be the UK’s oldest cold case ever solved.
Mrs Dunne was discovered strangled in her Easton, Bristol home on June 28, 1967. Despite an extensive investigation at the time—collecting 19,000 fingerprint samples, conducting 8,000 house-to-house visits, and taking 2,000 witness statements—no suspect was identified, and the case went cold.
A breakthrough finally came when Avon and Somerset Police reopened the investigation, and a preserved swab was subjected to modern DNA analysis. The results pointed to Headley, a convicted rapist from Ipswich who was in his 30s at the time of the murder.
Additional evidence, including a palm print on a window at the crime scene, further tied him to the attack.
Detective Inspector Dave Marchant, who led the renewed investigation, described Headley as a “dangerous serial offender” with a long and violent history, particularly against elderly women.
He praised the case as a powerful example of combining traditional detective work with modern forensic science.
Headley, who was arrested in November 2024, had previously raped two elderly widows—aged 84 and 79—in Suffolk in 1977, in crimes police say bear chilling similarities to the murder of Mrs Dunne.
Despite the overwhelming evidence, Headley denied the charges but was convicted at Bristol Crown Court. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Tuesday.
The conviction brings long-awaited justice to Mrs Dunne’s family and the local community, closing a nearly six-decade-long chapter of grief and uncertainty.
