A skirt stored in a box solved the rape and murder of pensioner 60 years later

Daily Mirror

02-07-2025

Ryland Headley was 34 when he strangled 75-year-old widow Louisa Dunne at her home in Easton, Bristol, on June 28, 1967 before leading a double life that saw him dubbed "a family man"
At 92 years old, Ryland Headley might have believed his darkest secret had died with time.
For almost six decades, he lived quietly, a pensioner often seen tending to his garden in Ipswich, seemingly carefree.
But this week, in a verdict at Bristol Crown Court, Headley was found guilty of the 1967 rape and murder of 75-year-old Louisa Dunne. The cold case - that was left unsolved for 58 years - has now become one of the longest-running murder cases ever solved in British history.
And at the centre of the breakthrough was a blue skirt, bagged and labelled by an officer all those years ago, then rediscovered by Detective Jo Smith from Avon and Somerset Police 's major crime review unit who reopened the box.
READ MORE: Ryland Headley, 92, to die in jail for 1967 rape and murder of Louisa Dunne, 75
Inside, she found the skirt Mrs Dunne had worn the night she died. "I understood we were potentially sitting on something that could finally yield answers," she told the Daily Mail.
The skirt still held a semen stain. From that, forensic scientists were able to extract a complete DNA profile thanks to modern techniques that were lacking in 1967.
When that DNA was uploaded to the national database, it pinged a match to 92-year-old Ryland Headley, a man who'd given a routine cheek swab to Suffolk Police in 2012 during an unrelated investigation.
Experts concluded it was a billion times more likely the semen came from Headley than from someone else. Added to that was his palm print - taken decades later after arthritis in his wrists had once made palm printing difficult - matched to one left on Mrs Dunne's window during the 1967 attack.
Hairs found on her body were also tied to him through DNA. For Mrs Dunne's family, it has been a haunting, nearly lifelong wait for justice.
"I was just 20 years old when my grandmother died and I'm now almost the same age as she was when she was killed," said her granddaughter, Mary Dainton, now 78, outside of court on Tuesday. "Louisa's brutal death had a big impact on my mother and her wider family. I don't think my mother ever recovered from it. The anxiety clouded the rest of her life."
Louisa Dunne, a twice-widowed mother-of-two, spent the night before her death visiting a friend. Her last known words were: "Good night. God bless. I don't know when I'll be seeing thee."
She was found the next morning by a concerned neighbour. Her body was cold and a stocking had been tied around her neck. She had been strangled.
Swabs at the time tested positive for semen. But without DNA technology and with a search radius that missed Headley's home by just a few streets, the trail quickly ran cold.
Mrs Dunne's cause of death was recorded as asphyxia due to strangulation and pressure on the mouth. Swabs taken from her vagina tested positive for semen.
Unbeknownst to police then, the killer had already started building a double life. Headley was a British Rail worker and a father-of-four who had emigrated from Jamaica in 1956 as part of the Windrush generation.
He married a Barbadian nurse, lived in modest rented homes, and seemed to be a quiet family man.
But that image crumbled after his 1978 conviction for the brutal rapes of two elderly women in Suffolk. He pleaded guilty and was handed a life sentence, later reduced to just seven years.
Released in the early 1980s, he lied to his family that he'd been set free because he was innocent.
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To the outside world, Headley was a polite, soft-spoken man known simply as 'Riley.' Even a local councillor who walked with him in later years described him as 'a nice chap.' But in reality, he was a depraved sexual predator who preyed on the elderly.
Police now believe his 1967 murder of Louisa Dunne may not have been his only undiscovered crime. 'He's a serial offender,' said Detective Inspector Dave Marchant. 'We need to identify if there is anything else out there. It doesn't matter how old a case is, whether it's from this morning, a year ago or in this case, nearly 60 years."
Both his rape victims from 1978 are long dead but the statements they gave 48 years ago were read out in court during his latest trial. What Headley said before raping them was chilling indeed. To the 84-year-old, he spoke of wanting "to care for you" before telling her that if she didn't do what he wanted: "I'll strangle you."
As Louisa Dunne's family left the courtroom, her granddaughter said: 'It saddens me deeply that all the people who knew and loved Louisa are not here to see that justice is being done."
Ryland Headley was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 20 years for the murder and rape of Louisa Dunne