Ryland Headley was convicted of raping and killing seventy-five-year-old Louisa Dunne in her Bristol home in June nineteen sixty-seven. For nearly six decades, the case remained unsolved.
00:00A 92-year-old man has been sentenced to life in prison for one of the most chilling crimes in British legal history,
00:09the country's oldest solved cold case murder.
00:13Ryland Headley was convicted of raping and killing 75-year-old Louisa Dunn in her Bristol home in June 1967.
00:21For merely six decades, the case remained unsolved. Despite collecting nearly 19,000 palm prints at the time, police couldn't find a match.
00:32Louisa's family was left without justice until now.
00:36In 2023, Avon and Somerset police reopened the case using modern forensic techniques.
00:43Crucial evidence, including a blue skirt, was sent for fresh DNA testing.
00:47The breakthrough came when samples matched Headley's DNA profile with near certainty,
00:54described by experts as a billion times more likely to come from him than anyone else.
01:01His palm print was also matched to one lifted from Louisa's bedroom window.
01:06Headley denied the charges, but a jury found him guilty after a two-week trial.
01:11He appeared via a video link from hospital and showed no emotion as the verdict was read.
01:18At sentencing, the judge told Headley he would die in prison.
01:22Because the crime took place under the laws of the 1960s,
01:27the judge had to apply sentencing rules from that time, setting a minimum term of 20 years.
01:33But at 92, that effectively means life.
01:37Louisa Dunn's family called the verdict bittersweet and said that the pain of her loss never left them.
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