A 92-year-old man was charged with raping and murdering an elderly widow after police found a billion-to-one DNA match on her clothing almost 60 years later, a jury has heard.
Ryland Headley is accused of forcing entry into the home of Louisa Dunne, 75, in the Easton area of Bristol in June 1967 before sexually attacking and fatally strangling her.
Police launched an investigation after the mother of two’s body was discovered by neighbours on the morning of June 28 that year, with officers identifying a palm print on a rear window of her house.
They took the palm prints of thousands of local boys and men but none matched the one suspected to have been left by the killer.
Forensic DNA analysis had not yet been invented.
Eventually, police gathered up the material from their investigation – including clothing worn by Mrs Dunne when her body was found – and sealed it away for further work in the future.
Anna Vigars KC, prosecuting, told a jury of eight men and four women at Bristol Crown Court that police had “never given up on solving the case” and it was re-examined over the years, including in 2009 and 2014.
In 2023, officers from Avon and Somerset Police opened the evidence boxes and sent off five items for forensic analysis for the first time.
Forensic investigator Andrew Parry examined the items and found a high density of semen on Mrs Dunne’s blue skirt, the court heard.
“By 2024, scientists were able to do what was impossible nearly 60 years earlier and examine the semen for DNA,” Mrs Vigars said.
“Mr Parry discovered that the semen matched Mr Headley’s DNA with a match ratio that meant it was a billion times more likely to be Mr Headley’s DNA than that of someone else.”
Electoral roll records revealed how Headley and his wife Maggie had lived in Picton Street, Bristol, about 1.5 miles away from Mrs Dunne’s home at the time of her murder.
Despite being close to the scene, Picton Street was outside of the ring of properties where men had been asked to provide a palm print in 1967.
Headley was arrested at his home in Ipswich, Suffolk, in November last year and his palm prints were taken.
“When his palm prints were compared with the prints from the window in Britannia Road, the fingerprint experts employed by the police came to the conclusion that the palm print on the window was caused by Mr Headley’s hand,” Mrs Vigars added.
“In response to all of this, we understand that Mr Headley’s position is simply that he has no recollection of ever having had visited Mrs Dunne’s home, or of having sexual intercourse with Mrs Dunne, that he certainly did not rape her, and that he did not kill her.”
Mrs Vigars told jurors that Headley had moved to Suffolk after Mrs Dunne’s murder.
In October 1977, he broke into the homes of 84-year-old and 79-year-old widows and raped them – offences he later pleaded guilty to at Ipswich Crown Court.
Headley asked for a further 10 offences of burglary, dating between 1973 and 1978, to be taken into account by the court, jurors heard.
Mrs Vigars said: “We say that these offences demonstrate to all of us that Mr Headley has a tendency to act in exactly the same way that we say that he did back in 1967, in other words, to break into people’s homes at night and, in some cases, to target an elderly woman living alone, to have sex with her despite her attempts to fend him off, and to threaten violence.
“Behaviour that he had already used, we suggest, back in 1967 on Mrs Dunne, the difference being that in that case his violence killed her.
“Back then, of course, he cut rather a different figure from the one that he cuts today.
“The advantage of strength was all with him and these women, shocked to discover a stranger in their own homes, stood no chance to do anything other than plead unsuccessfully for him to stop.”
A post-mortem examination concluded that Mrs Dunne died overnight between June 27 and 28, with a pathologist finding that a hand had probably been forcibly held over her mouth.
She had abrasions to her face and a straight bruise across the back of her neck, believed to be from a scarf which had been “violently tightened from the front”, Mrs Vigars said.
Headley, of Clarence Road, Ipswich, has pleaded not guilty to the rape and murder of Mrs Dunne between June 26 and 29 1967.
His trial, expected to last up to three weeks, continues.
