92-Year-Old Man Sentenced to Life Imprisonment for 1967 Murder in UK

Bristol, UK – A 92-year-old man has been convicted of the rape and murder of Louisa Dunne, whose body was found in her home nearly six decades ago, in one of the UK’s longest-standing cold cases to end in a conviction.

Ryland Headley, of Clarence Road, Ipswich, was found guilty at Bristol Crown Court following a trial that reopened the 1967 case. The jury unanimously convicted him of rape and found him guilty of murder by a 10-to-2 majority verdict.

Louisa Dunne, 75, also known as Louise, was discovered dead at her residence on Britannia Road, Easton, by a neighbour on 28 June 1967. A post-mortem examination determined the cause of death to be strangulation and asphyxiation. She had also been raped.

The case was reopened in 2023 by Avon and Somerset Police’s Major Crime Review Team. A renewed forensic examination of evidence, including clothing worn by the victim, led to the breakthrough. DNA recovered from Dunne’s blue skirt produced a full profile, which matched Headley’s — his DNA having been added to the national database in 2012 following an unrelated incident.

The court heard that the probability of the DNA belonging to someone other than Headley was one in a billion.

Headley was arrested at his home in Ipswich on 19 November 2024, and taken into custody for questioning. During the investigation, officers also re-examined a palmprint lifted from a bedroom window at the victim’s home in 1967. A fresh set of prints taken from Headley while in custody matched the print — a key piece of evidence that had previously been compared against over 19,000 individuals during the original investigation.

Further background presented during the trial revealed Headley’s violent history. In October 1977, he was convicted of raping two elderly women in Ipswich — one in her late seventies and the other in her mid-eighties. He broke into their homes at night and carried out the attacks after threatening them with violence. He admitted the offences and had 10 other burglaries taken into consideration.

Headley was initially sentenced to life in prison but successfully appealed and had the sentence reduced to seven years. His conviction at the time came after a large-scale fingerprinting campaign by Suffolk Police. He was identified after leaving fingerprints at one of the crime scenes and was arrested nine days later in London.

Headley now faces sentencing for a crime that has haunted investigators and the Easton community for nearly 60 years.