Cold case killer: How the murder of a Bristol widow was solved after almost 60 years

ITV News

2 days ago

It is one of the biggest gaps between crime and punishment in criminal history: 58 years almost to the day.
So how did cold case detectives catch 92-year-old killer Ryland Headley after he had evaded justice for so long?
When he raped and murdered 75-year-old Louisa Dunne in June 1967, he left a partial palm print on the upper-rear window.
This was the focus of the original police inquiry which saw nearly 20,000 men in the Easton district give their prints to police officers.
But Headley, who was 34 at the time, was living just outside the parameters allowing him to go unchecked.
The DNA evolution
Although an autopsy took a swab of the semen found on Mrs Dunne's clothing, science in the 1960s could do little with it.
This is because the crime took place 20 years before the advent of DNA.
The UK National DNA Database is now the longest-running and largest forensic DNA database in the world, but it was only created in 1995.
The lead detective on the case, Reginald Hicks, retired in 1973 with the hope the case would be solved by a team later down the line.
In an interview ahead of his retirement, he was asked whether there were any unsolved crimes he felt 'sad' about leaving.
"Yes", he told the interviewer.
"We had the old lady, Louisa Dunne, in Easton in 1967 and the sad job of the boy, Phillip Green, at Shirehampton Golf course in April 1970."
"Do you think there's any possibility those cases will still be solved?", the interviewer asked.
"I should like to think someone would come forward with some vital information in order that those two jobs could be solved", Detective Hicks replied.
Case papers were stored in a police warehouse and other exhibits were stored in laboratories.
Avon and Somerset Police's Cold Case unit was set up in the early 2000s.
Investigators reviewed Louisa Dunne's case twice; in 2009 and 2014. It was deemed that there was not enough evidence to merit a deeper inquiry.
The breakthrough
But in late 2023, a new generation of cold case officers reviewed the case.
They looked for the swab with the semen taken from Louisa Dunne's body. This would have the DNA of her killer. But it had vanished in the archive.
Regional Forensic Coordinator Heidi Miller told ITV News that police then looked for other opportunities to bring the killer to justice.
"We had items of clothing. We had underwear. We had tapings from various areas. We had swabs. We had so many exhibits", she said.
Forensic scientist Andy Parry focused on Louisa's skirt, believing it could have the key to solving the crime.
He screened it for a chemical called Acid Phosphotase, which is often found in semen, which contains high levels of DNA.
But the screening failed, as the liquid had degraded over the years. So the scientist took two cuttings from Louisa's skirt which he examined microscopically.
The first, from the font of the dress, proved negative. But the cutting to the rear of the dress had high levels of DNA from microscopic sex stains.
From this, Andy Parry gained a full DNA profile of the offender. Heidi Miller described this as a "goosebump" moment.
Catching the killer who had evaded justice for almost 60 years
And more, when he loaded it onto the National DNA Database, it matched with Ryland Headley, who had given his DNA to Suffolk Police for an unrelated arrest in 2012.
They had their man. Mr Parry said Headley's DNA was a billion times more likely to be the same man who had left his sample at Louisa's murder scene than anyone else.
"Science has changed so much over those years and it will change so much in the future", said Heidi Miller.
"We still have lots of exhibits from all of these cases that we can potentially look to use in the future, even if we can't use them now."
After his arrest, Headley's hand prints were taken and there was a match between his print in 2024 and the one left at the scene in 1967.