The Way a Disturbing Rape and Murder Case Was Cracked – Fifty-Eight Years After.

In June 2023, Jo Smith, received a request by her team leader to “take a look at” a cold case from 1967. The victim was a elderly woman who had been raped and murdered in her Bristol home in June 1967. She was a mother, a grandparent, a woman whose previous spouse had been a prominent trade unionist, and whose home had once been a focal point of political activity. By 1967, she was living alone, having lost two husbands but still a recognized figure in her Easton neighbourhood.

There were no one who saw anything to her killing, and the initial inquiry discovered little to go on apart from a handprint on a back window. Investigators knocked on 8,000 doors and took 19,000 palm prints, but no identification was found. The case stayed open.

“When I saw that it was dated 1967, I knew we were only going to solve this through forensics, so I went to the storage facility to look at the evidence containers,” states Smith.

She found three. “I opened the first and put the lid back on again immediately. Most of our cold cases are in sterile evidence bags with barcodes. These weren’t. They just had old paper tags saying what they were. It meant they’d never been subject to modern scientific testing.”

The rest of the day was spent with a co-worker (it was his initial day on the job), both gloved up, securely packaging the items and cataloging what they had. And then there was no progress for another eight months. Smith pauses and tries to be diplomatic. “I was quite excited, but it did not generate a great deal of enthusiasm. It’s fair to say there was some doubt as to the value of submitting something that aged to forensics. It was not considered a priority.”

It resembles the opening chapter of a crime novel, or the first episode of a investigative series. The end result also seems the stuff of fiction. In the following June, a nonagenarian, Ryland Headley, was found guilty of the victim’s rape and murder and given a sentence to life.

An Unprecedented Case

Spanning 58 years, this is believed to be the longest-running unsolved investigation solved in the UK, and possibly the world. Subsequently, the unit won recognition for their work. The whole thing still feels extraordinary to her. “It just doesn’t feel real,” she says. “It’s forever giving me chills.”

For Smith, cases like this are proof that she made the correct professional decision. “My father believed policing was too dangerous,” she says, “but what could be better than resolving a 58-year-old murder?”

Smith entered the police when she was in her twenties because, she says: “I’m inquisitive and I was interested in people, in assisting them when they were in distress.” Her previous role in child protection involved grueling hours. When she saw a vacancy for a crime review officer, she decided to apply. “It looked really engaging, it’s more of a regular hours role, so here I am.”

Examining the Clues

Smith’s job is a non-uniformed position. The specialist unit is a small group set up to look at cold cases – homicides, sexual assaults, disappearances – and also review active investigations with a new perspective. The original team was tasked with collecting all the old case files from around the region and moving them to a new secure storage facility.

“The case documents had originated in a local police station, then, in the years since 1967, they were transferred several times before finally arriving at the archive,” says Smith.

Those boxes, their contents now properly secured, returned to storage. Towards the end of 2023, a new lead detective arrived to lead the team. DI Dave Marchant took a novel strategy. Once an engineer, Marchant had made a drastic change on his career path.

“Cracking cases that are challenging – that’s my analytical approach – trying to think in innovative manners,” he says. “When Jo told me about the evidence, it was an absolute no-brainer. Why wouldn’t we give it a go?”

The Breakthrough

In cold case crime dramas, once items are sent off to forensics, the results come back quickly. In real life, the submission process and testing take a long time. “The laboratory scientists are interested, they want to do it, but our work is always slightly on the back-burner,” says Smith. “Live-time murders have to take precedence.”

It was the end of August 2024 when Smith received a message that forensics had a full DNA profile of the rapist from the victim’s skirt. A few hours later, she got a follow-up. “They had a hit on the DNA database – and it was someone who was still alive!”

Ryland Headley was ninety-two, widowed, and living in another city. “When we realised how old he was, we didn’t have the time to waste,” says Smith. “It was all hands on deck.” In the weeks between the DNA match and Headley’s arrest, the team read every single one of the thousands original statements and records.

For a while, it was like living in two time periods. “Just looking at all the photographs, seeing an the victim’s home in 1967,” says Smith. “The accounts. The way they describe people. Nowadays, it would typically be different. There are so many generational differences.”

Understanding the Victim

Smith felt she came to understand the victim, too. “She was such a big character,” she says. “Lots of people were saying that they saw her outside her home every day. She was twice widowed, estranged from her family, but she wasn’t reclusive. She had a gaggle of women who used to meet and gossip – and those were the women who realised something was amiss.”

Most of the team’s days were spent analyzing documents. (“Vast quantities of paperwork. It wouldn’t make great TV.”) The team also interviewed the doctor, now 89, who had attended the scene. “He remembered every particular from that day,” says Smith. “He said: ‘In my career all my life and seen a lot of dead bodies but that’s the only one that had been murdered. That haunts you.’”

A Pattern of Violence

Headley’s previous convictions seemed to leave little doubt of his guilt. After the 1967 murder, he had moved, and in the late 1970s he had pleaded guilty to assaulting two elderly women, again in their own homes. His victims’ disturbing statements from that previous case gave some insight into the victim’s last moments.

“He threatened to strangle one and he threatened to smother the other with a pillow,” says Smith. Both women resisted. Though Headley was initially sentenced to life, he challenged the verdict, supported by a mental health professional who stated that Headley was acting out of character. “It went from a life sentence to a shorter term,” says Smith.

Securing Justice

Smith was present at Headley’s arrest. “I knew what he looked like, I knew he was going to be 92, and I also knew how strong the evidence was,” she says. The team feared that the arrest would trigger a health crisis. “We were uncovering the most hidden truth he’d kept hidden for 60 years,” says Smith.

Yet everything was able to go ahead. The court case took place, and the victim’s living relative had been identified and approached by family liaison. “She had assumed it was never going to be resolved,” says Smith. For the family, there had also been a sense of shame about the nature of the crime.

“Rape is massively underreported now,” says Smith, “but in the 60s and 70s, how many older women would ever tell anyone this had happened?”

Headley was told at sentencing that, for all intents and purposes, he would remain incarcerated. He would spend his life behind bars.

A Profound Effect

For Smith, it has been a special case. “It just feels distinct, I don’t know why,” she says. “In a live case, the process is very responsive. With this case you’re driving the inquiry, the urgency is only from yourself. It began with me trying to get someone to take some interest of that box – and I was able to see it through right until the end.”

She is certain that it is not the last solved case. There are approximately 130 unsolved investigations in the archives. “We’ve got so much more to do,” she says. “We have a number of murders that we’re re-examining – we’re constantly sending things to forensics and pursuing other leads. We’ll be forever unlocking the past.”