Man, 92, ‘got away with woman’s rape and murder for 60 years until new DNA hit’

A 92-year-old man ‘thought he would live out his days without having to answer for’ the rape and murder of a pensioner after getting away with it for nearly 60 years, a court has heard.

Louisa Dunne, 75, who had been twice widowed and lived alone, was found dead in her front room in Britannia Road, Easton, Bristol, by neighbours on the morning of June 28, 1967.

Police compared a palm print found on an upstairs window of Mrs Dunn’s home with 19,000 local boys and men as they hunted her killer, Bristol Crown Court heard.

Forensic DNA analysis had not yet been invented. The court has heard Headley and his wife Maggie had lived about 1.5 miles away from Mrs Dunne’s home at the time of her murder – outside the area where detectives had taken print samples.

Jurors were told the trail remained cold for the next 57 years until new DNA tests of the blue skirt worn by Mrs Dunne when she died yielded a billion to one match to Ryland Headley.

Headley, of Ipswich, Suffolk, is on trial at Bristol Crown Court where he denies charges of rape and murder. He has declined to give evidence.

On Wednesday, Anna Vigars KC, for the prosecution, and Jeremy Benson KC, for the defence, gave their closing speeches to the jury.

Mrs Vigars said that despite detectives trying to solve the case in the 1960s, it was left with Mrs Dunne’s death certificate reading ‘murdered by person or persons unknown’.

She said police were able to establish that Mrs Dunne had been fatally strangled by a scarf, with a hand forcibly held over her mouth, that she had been raped, and a window had been forced open at her home.

‘That’s the evidential picture from 1967. All of the clues but none of them, then, capable of being revealed,’ she said.

‘But now there is a rather more complete picture, thanks mainly to the advances that modern science has made.

‘It is now known that skirt has sperm from Ryland Headley.’

Earlier this week, they watched a video of officers attending Headley’s home in November last year – telling him they had investigative material that linked him to the 1967 murder.

He said: ‘I don’t know what you are talking about. Very strange, very strange.’

Statements were also read from two women whom Headley pleaded guilty to raping in October 1977. He was released from prison for those offences around three years later.

One 84-year-old woman, in a witness statement taken at the time, told how she had been asleep in bed when she awoke to Headley’s hands over her face.

The widow told him: ‘Please go, haven’t you got a mother? Surely you wouldn’t hurt an old lady of 84?’

Headley, who had broken into her home through a window, threatened to strangle the woman if she did not comply.

The second victim, aged 79, said she was left ‘stiff with fear, scared to death’ when Headley entered her bedroom as she slept.

She told him: ‘Leave me alone, would you want anybody to do this to your mother or sister?’

He threatened to kill the woman, also a widow, if she did not follow his instructions or made a sound.

Mrs Vigars told the jury these accounts give an ‘insight into what happened’ on the night Mrs Dunne was murdered, with similarities between the three cases.

The barrister, concluding her closing speech, said: ‘Mrs Dunne’s home was broken into by a man who had sex with her without her consent. He left her dead on the floor, strangled and suffocated.

‘He was a man who lived locally at the time but then uprooted his family and moved miles away.

‘He no doubt thought he would live out his days without having to answer for what he did 58 years ago.

‘But there is now, finally, a completion to the death certificate of Mrs Dunne. No longer murder by person or persons unknown. But murdered and raped by Ryland Headley.’

Jeremy Benson KC, representing Headley, said his client had ‘no recollection’ of having visited Mrs Dunne or having sexual intercourse with her.

‘He certainly didn’t rape her and he didn’t kill her,’ Mr Benson said.

Mr Benson told jurors that statements taken in 1967 would have then been tested under oath in court but due to the passage of time, this was not possible now.

He described Headley’s previous rape convictions as ‘shocking’ but said both women were left ‘unscathed’ despite his threats of physical violence.

He told the jury: ‘This is a sad and tragic event that took place some 58 years ago.

‘Mr Headley was convicted of awful crimes in 1977. He pleaded guilty to them. He was being interviewed about one and he voluntarily confessed to the other. He told police at the police station that he was responsible.

‘Since that time, since he was released in about 1980, he hasn’t been charged or convicted of any crimes until he was charged with these matters, when some 44 years had gone past.

‘Records and documents that could show where Mr Headley was on that fateful night have long gone.’

The trial continues.

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