LONDON — A 92-year-old man on Monday was convicted of the rape and murder of a woman in southwestern England in what is thought to be the UK's longest-running cold case ever to be solved.
A jury at Bristol crown court found Ryland Headley, then aged 34, guilty of attacking 75-year-old Louisa Dunne in June 1967.
''Louisa Dunne died in a horrifying attack carried out in the place where she should have felt safest — her own home,'' prosecutor Charlotte Ream said. ''For 58 years, this appalling crime went unsolved and Ryland Headley, the man we now know is responsible, avoided justice.''
Dunne was found dead in her home by a neighbor on June 28, 1967. The cause of her death was found to be strangulation and asphyxiation. She had also been raped.
Investigators retained Dunne's clothing, including a blue skirt, and other samples from her body for further examination. They also recovered a palm print from a window which Headley is believed to have used to gain entry to her home.
In 2023, the case was reexamined and the skirt was sent away for forensic testing in May last year. DNA recovered from the item of clothing linked Headley to the murder scene after his DNA was added to the national database in 2012 for an unrelated incident.
Forensic scientists concluded that DNA from the skirt matched Headley's and the palm print was also his. Headley was arrested at his home in Suffolk in November.
Headley was convicted of two counts of rape in the late 1970s, after he attacked women, aged 79 and 84, in Ipswich. He pleaded guilty to the charges in 1978 and was jailed for seven years.
