M10News Crime Desk | June 30, 2025
LONDON – A 92-year-old man has been found guilty of raping and murdering a woman in what is believed to be the UK’s longest-running cold case to result in a trial.
Ryland Headley, now in his nineties, was convicted at Bristol Crown Court for the brutal 1967 killing of 75-year-old Louisa Dunne, a mother of two, in her Easton, Bristol home.
Dunne, born in 1892, was attacked on 28 June 1967. Neighbours, alarmed by her absence from her usual morning routine on the doorstep, discovered her lifeless body inside. She had suffered severe bruising, blood was visible coming from one ear, and her underwear had been forcibly removed.
A post-mortem revealed “extensive abrasions” to her face, consistent with a hand being pressed over her mouth.
Original forensic examinations in 1967 recovered semen from the victim’s clothing and intimate swabs, as well as a palm print from inside a rear window. However, at that time, DNA testing technology did not exist.
Despite a massive investigation — including over 19,000 palm print samples, 8,000 house-to-house inquiries, and thousands of statements — no suspect was apprehended. Headley, who lived just outside the primary investigation zone at the time, was never tested.
Breakthrough After Nearly Six Decades
The Convicted Criminal: A Look at Headley’s Past
The case remained dormant for decades, stored alongside other unsolved crimes at Avon and Somerset Police headquarters. In 2024, a forensic review led to new DNA tests on preserved evidence from the victim’s clothing.
Investigators were stunned when the results returned a DNA match to Headley, with forensic experts declaring it “a billion times” more likely that the genetic material belonged to him than anyone else.
“I had to read that email several times to believe what I was reading,” said Detective Inspector Dave Marchant of Avon and Somerset Police. “Then it was game on — we reopened the investigation.”
Headley was arrested at his home in Ipswich in November 2024. Forensic experts later matched his palm print to the one lifted from Dunne’s home in 1967.
During the trial, Headley — who did not testify — was linked to two previous rape convictions involving elderly women under similar circumstances roughly a decade after Dunne’s murder. Prosecutors argued these convictions demonstrated a clear “tendency” to commit such crimes.
“He broke into homes at night, targeted elderly women living alone, and subjected them to terrifying violence,” prosecutor Anna Vigars KC told the jury.
A Family’s Long-Awaited Justice
Dunne’s granddaughter, speaking before the verdict, recalled the shock of learning there had been a breakthrough.
“She said, ‘This is about your grandmother,’ and I just blurted out, ‘Have they caught him?’ I never thought I’d say those words. But they had.”
Reflecting on the ordeal, she added: “I accept that some murders never get solved — that you live with the emptiness and sadness. What happened to her was appalling, terrifying. I try not to dwell on the reality of it.”
The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed to Sky News that this is believed to be the UK’s longest gap between an offence and trial in a murder case.
DI Marchant urged police forces to continue reviewing historical investigations.
“This case shows you should never give up,” he said. “There should never be an arbitrary cut-off. When we reopened this in 2024, there was still a chance — and as it turned out, he was alive.”
© 2025 M10News | Crime News Desk
Report compiled by M10News, referencing Sky News coverage.
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