Vile Ryland Headley, 92, has today been found guilty of the rape and murder of Louisa Dunne, 75, nearly 60 years ago. The case was finally cracked thanks to advances in DNA technology
Interview with Mary Dainton the sole surviving grandchild of Louisa Dunne
The granddaughter of tragic Louisa Dunne has told of her shock that the 1967 murder was ever solved.
In what is believed to be Britain’s longest ever cold case conviction 92-year-old Ryland Headley has been found guilty of raping and murdering Mrs Dunne, 75, at her home in Bristol – nearly 60 years ago. Evil predator Headley, who has already served prison time for two other sex attacks on vulnerable elderly women, was found guilty at Bristol Crown court today and faces spending the rest of his life behind bars
But for Mrs Dunne’s granddaughter, Mary Dainton, 78, the shock he was ever caught at all will never go away. She said: “I never thought it would be solved. I thought he would never be caught. I never believed they would be able to trace him. It was quite a shock.
“I think I was in shock for quite a long time, for quite a few weeks, I wandered around like I was living in a dream completely. This was a nightmare, you know, because I was and I still am, processing what I should have processed when I was 19.”
Mary revealed she was on a bus in Bristol going to buy some art supplies when her husband phoned to say police had arrived at their door out of the blue. They met her at the next stop and told her they finally had a suspect.
Mary explained: “I suppose I did at that point go into shock. I thought, this isn’t happening. This is not happening, this is like being in a film. I sat there completely stunned. I wasn’t gobsmacked. I was stunned, I think it is the only word stunned, after all these years, after all these years.”
Vile Headley was tracked down after samples taken from the clothing of Mrs Dunne in 1967 provided a billion-to-one DNA match to her killer. Police launched an investigation after the mum-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 also took samples from Mrs Dunne’s body and crucially kept her clothing to await advances in forensic science little knowing it would be more than half a century later before anyone would be caught. A post-mortem examination at the time 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.
During Headley’s trial Bristol Crown Court heard that in 2024 forensic scientists tested clothing and swabs from Mrs Dunne and were able to extract DNA profiles for further examination, which then matched Headley. Forensic scientist Andrew Parry said he had examined swabs and tape samples taken from Mrs Dunne’s body, pubic hairs, and items of her clothing.
The jury also heard that, despite recovering a palm print on a rear window of Mrs Dunne’s home and collecting thousands of prints from men and boys in the area at the time in a high profile search, detectives were unable to identify a suspect.
However after Headley’s arrest fingerprint experts compared his palm print to the one recovered from Mrs Dunne’s window and concluded they were a close match to his. Before the stunning forensic breakthrough Mary said she and her family had accepted the case would just never be solved and admitted it had had a lasting impact on the family as the years ticked by.
She explained: “I accepted it. I accepted that some murders just never get solved, and some people just have to live with that emptiness and that sadness. My cousin, I think, was very, very unhappy about it, and he was angry that no one had been caught.
“We weren’t a very close family in the first place, but what there was, the family fell to pieces in the wake of the murder and I didn’t realise that was what was happening at the time, but I do now. My mother wouldn’t let me (talk about it). She didn’t want me to talk about it. She told me, basically, ‘Dad and I will handle this’.
“We did what everybody did, stiff upper lip. Counsellors were never heard of. I mean, what’s that? That’s a man who’s a politician, isn’t it? You know, it didn’t have the same meaning.” And thinking about what happened to her grandmother still prays on Mary’s thoughts to this day.
She said: “I think it’s appalling, absolutely appalling, the poor woman. I mean, he was in his 30s, and he was a reasonably sized man from what I saw on the screen in the court the other day. And she was tiny, she was extremely skinny and small.
“So, you know, it must have been absolutely terrifying, and the reality of a rape I don’t like thinking about. I don’t think anybody does male or female.” She added: “I feel extremely sad, extremely sad that my grandmother had to be on her own.”
But remembering her gran in happier times Mary explained how she was a fiery left wing activist who used to love taking to the streets on marches with her late husband Teddy Parker. She was even pictured by his stretcher when, in spite of having a stroke and being in hospital, he was taken by Royal Navy personnel to vote in the 1945 election shaking the hand of Stafford Cripps who would eventually become Labour Chancellor.
Teddy subsequently died and Mrs Dunne later remarried, however her second husband also passed away and she was living alone by 1967 when Headley struck, breaking into her house, before attacking her. The court heard how neighbours heard a woman screaming on the night of Mrs Dunne’s death but the alarm was not raised until the following day when concerned neighbours found her body in a downstairs room.
The jury also heard how wicked Headley previously admitted breaking into the homes of two widows, aged 84 and 79, and raping them in Suffolk in October 1977. Talking about her gran’s killer Mary said: “Anybody who commits that kind of crime must be in a mental space which is not normal, in my opinion.
“I don’t think anybody could do that unless they had a very distorted view of what is right and what is wrong. And I think, and I think this man, I think he’s probably told himself lies in order to cope with it, and that he will never probably acknowledge the fact of what he’s done, because the enormity of what he’s done is would be just too much if you had feeling about it.”
Looking to the future she said it will take time for the wounds brought up by the trial to heal but she is relieved the nightmare is finally over. She said: “I think possibly in a year’s time, I will be at peace with it, but I’m not at peace with it at the moment, it’s still very, very troubling, and until this trial is over and the reality of what happened is very clearly in my head and in my heart, then I can deal with it properly.
“I still feel days when this isn’t real. This is not your life. The word is relief, the only word I can think of, it’s it will be a relief that that section of my life is finally closed and has reached a just conclusion because of the suffering of my mum and my my father too, I don’t think we talk about this as a cold case, yeah, but people involved are never cold. It’s not cold for you, this has been a deeply personal matter you’ve carried for nearly 60 years. “
Headley will be sentenced at a later date.