A 92-year-old man who evaded justice for almost 60 years will die behind bars after being convicted of raping and murdering a woman in Bristol in Britain’s oldest solved cold case.
Ryland Headley, 92, has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 20 years for the rape and murder of Louisa Dunne in 1967.
A jury found Headley guilty of attacking Louisa, 75, a stranger to him, at her home in the Easton area of the city in June 1967.
Headley, of Ipswich, Suffolk, was found guilty of rape and murder by a jury at Bristol Crown Court on Monday afternoon following a two-week trial, in what is thought to be the UK’s longest-running cold case to be solved.
He was 34 when he forced open a window at the home of Mrs Dunne, 75, in the Easton area of Bristol in June 1967 before attacking her.
Mrs Dunne, a mother-of-two, was found dead by neighbours in the front room of her terraced home in Britannia Road on the morning of June 28.
A pathologist concluded that Mrs Dunne died from asphyxia due to strangulation and pressure on her mouth, probably from a hand being held over it.
Bristol Constabulary, as the force was then, launched a huge investigation, taking the palm prints of 19,000 men and boys in an attempt to find a match to one left on an upstairs window.
But the case remained unsolved for more than 50 years until Avon and Somerset Police detectives sent items from the original investigation for DNA testing for the first time.
Semen recovered from a blue skirt worn by Mrs Dunne matched Headley’s DNA to a ratio that meant it was a billion times more likely to be from him than anybody else.
When his left palm print was finally taken, in November last year, it matched the print left at the scene.
