It is the epilogue of one of the oldest “cold cases” in the United Kingdom: a 92 -year -old man was convicted this Monday, June 30, almost sixty years after the events, the rape and murder of a woman found dead in her house in 1967 in England.
Ryland Headley, who denied the facts, will be set in his sentence on Tuesday, after being convicted by the jury of the Bristol Court (southwest).
The victim, Louisa Dunne, was found dead strangled at the age of 75 at her home in Bristol on June 28, 1967. The investigation had shown that this widow, mother of two, had also been raped.
The case experienced a turn in 2023, when the police reopened the case through the use of DNA analysis technologies. The tests were carried out in particular in the blue skirt carried out by the victim. The genetic footprint found corresponded to that of Ryland Headley.
19,000 fingerprints of collected men
At 34 at the time of crime, he had entered his victim before attacking him.
Despite a vast police investigation launched at that time, during which the hands of the 19,000 men were collected, the murderer had not been found.
Ryland Headley was sentenced in 1978 for the violation of two women, a septuagenarian and an octogenarian, committed in October 1977 in Ipswich, in the southeast of England. In both cases, he entered the house of his victims during the night, he had threatened them before raping them.
This man, who had also committed a dozen robberies in the 1970s, was sentenced by the 1977 violation of life imprisonment, before his sentence was reduced to seven years in prison.
In 2012, their genetic digital footprints were recorded in a national database, after an incident disconnected from the case, according to the police.
More than ten years later, in 2023, the Police brought together the archive of Louisa Dunne, as part of an unresolved crimes review. The new methods of the scientific police allow Ryland Headley, who was accused in November 2024 and detention.
Source: BFM TV
