The Way a Disturbing Rape and Murder Case Was Cracked – 58 Decades Later.

In the summer of 2023, an investigator, received a request by her supervisor to “take a look at” a cold case from 1967. The woman was a 75-year-old woman who had been sexually assaulted and killed in her home city home in June 1967. She was a parent of two children, a grandmother, a woman whose previous spouse had been a leading labor activist, and whose home had once been a hub of political activity. By 1967, she was living alone, twice widowed but still a recognized figure in her Easton neighbourhood.

There were no witnesses to her killing, and the initial inquiry unearthed little to go on apart from a handprint on a back window. Investigators knocked on eight thousand doors and took nineteen thousand palm prints, but no match was found. The case remained open.

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

She found three. “I opened the first and put the lid back on again immediately. Most of our unsolved investigations are in forensically sealed bags with identification codes. These were not. They just had brown cardboard luggage labels indicating what they were. It meant they’d never been subject to modern forensic examinations.”

The rest of the day was spent with a colleague (it was his first day on the job), both wearing protective gloves, securely packaging the items and listing what they had. And then there was no progress for another nearly a year. Smith hesitates and tries to be diplomatic. “I was very enthusiastic, but it did not generate a great deal of enthusiasm. It’s fair to say there was some scepticism as to the worth of submitting something so old to forensics. It was not considered a high-priority matter.”

It resembles the opening chapter of a mystery book, or the premiere of a cold case TV drama. The end result also seems the material for a story. In June, a 92-year-old man, the defendant, was found culpable of the victim’s rape and murder and given a sentence to life imprisonment.

An Unprecedented Investigation

Covering 58 years, this is believed to be the longest-running cold case closed in the UK, and possibly the world. Later that year, the investigative team won an award 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. “He thought policing was too risky,” she says, “but what could be better than solving a decades-old murder?”

Smith joined the police when she was in her twenties because, she says: “I’m inquisitive and I was fascinated by people, in assisting them when they were in crisis.” Her previous role in child protection involved demanding hours. When she saw a job advert for a crime review officer, she decided to apply. “It looked really engaging, it’s more of a standard schedule role, so here I am.”

Examining the Clues

Smith’s job is a non-uniformed position. The specialist unit is a compact team set up to look at historical crimes – homicides, rapes, disappearances – and also re-examine live cases with fresh eyes. The original team was tasked with collecting all the old case files from around the area and relocating them to a new secure storage facility.

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

Those containers, their contents now forensically bagged, returned to storage. Towards the end of 2023, a new lead detective arrived to head up the team. DI Dave Marchant took a different approach. Once an engineer, Marchant had made a drastic change on his professional journey.

“Cracking cases that are hard to solve – that’s my analytical approach – trying to think in new ways,” he says. “When Jo told me about the box, it was an absolute no-brainer. Why wouldn’t we try?”

The Breakthrough

In cold case crime dramas, once items are sent off to forensics, the results come back in days. In real life, the testing procedure and testing take many months. “The forensic team are keen, 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 complete genetic fingerprint of the rapist from the victim’s skirt. A few hours later, she got another message. “They had a hit on the DNA database – and it was someone who was living!”

The suspect was ninety-two, widowed, and living in Ipswich. “When we realised how old he was, we didn’t have the luxury of time,” says Smith. “It was all hands on deck.” In the weeks between the DNA match and Headley’s arrest, the team pored over every single one of the numerous 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 portray people. Today, it would typically be different. There are so many changes over time.”

Understanding the Victim

Smith felt she got to know the victim, too. “Louisa 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 remained social. She had a group 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 compelling television.”) The team also spoke with the doctor, now eighty-nine, who had attended the scene. “He remembered every detail 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 stays with you.’”

A Pattern of Crimes

Headley’s prior offenses seemed to leave little doubt of his guilt. After the 1967 murder, he had moved, and in 1977 he had pleaded guilty to assaulting two elderly women, again in their own homes. His victims’ harrowing statements from that earlier trial gave some idea into the victim’s last moments.

“He menaced to choke one and he threatened to suffocate the other with a pillow,” says Smith. Both women resisted. Though Headley was initially sentenced to life, he appealed, supported by a mental health professional who stated that Headley was acting out of character. “It went from a life sentence to less time,” says Smith.

Closing the Case

Smith was there for Headley’s arrest. “I knew what he looked like, I knew he was going to be 92, and I also knew how compelling the proof was,” she says. The team feared that the arrest would trigger a medical incident. “We were uncovering the most hidden truth he’d kept hidden for sixty years,” says Smith.

Yet everything was able to proceed. The court case took place, and the victim’s granddaughter had been identified and approached by family liaison. “Mary had assumed it was never going to be resolved,” says Smith. For the family, there had also been a stigma about the nature of the crime.

“Sexual assault is massively underreported now,” says Smith, “but in the 60s and 70s, how many elderly ladies would ever tell anyone this had happened?”

Headley was told at sentencing that, for all intents and purposes, he would remain incarcerated. He would die in prison.

A Profound Effect

For Smith, it has been a unique 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 proactive, 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 follow it right until the conclusion.”

She is certain that it is not the last resolution. There are approximately one hundred and thirty cold cases 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 following other lines of inquiry. We’ll be forever opening boxes.”