Cold case rapist and killer, 92, is told he’ll die in prison

A 92-year-old man who raped and murdered an elderly widow in the 1960s has been jailed for life and told he will die in prison, in what is thought to be the UK’s longest-running cold case ever to be solved.

- TARA COBHAM

“Depraved” Ryland Headley was 34 when he forced open a window at the home of Louisa Dunne, 75, in the Easton area of Bristol overnight in June 1967. A court heard the former railway worker raped the frail mother-of-two before he killed her by strangling her.

Nearly six decades later, Headley, now 92, has finally been sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 20 years after he was found guilty of both charges by a jury at Bristol Crown Court on Monday afternoon.

Dunne’s granddaughter, who sat in court for every day of the two-week trial, told the sentencing hearing yesterday how Headley’s evasion from justice had a devastating effect on her family, including her mother and aunt.

Mary Dainton, who was a 20-year-old student when her grandmother was murdered, told the court: “I don’t think my mother ever recovered from it. The anxiety caused by her mother’s brutal rape and murder clouded the rest of her life. The fact the offender wasn’t caught caused my mother to become and remain very ill.”

Mr Justice Sweeting told Headley, of Clarence Road, Ipswich: “You broke into her home, you sexually assaulted her, and in doing so, you caused her death. You may not have intended to kill, but you planned to rape her, and you brutally attacked her. When you did so, you met her screams and struggles in a force sufficient to kill.