CNN
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The 92-year-old British man was convicted of murder and rape on Monday.
Ryland Headley was convicted by Bristol Crown Court in England for rape and murder of Louisa Dunn, who was 75 years old when Headley killed her.
Dan was found dead in June 1967 at his home in Easton, a suburb of Bristol. Police have decided that she was raped and killed by strangulation and choking.
Local police have launched a major investigation. They received palms from 19,000 men, collected 1,300 statements and made more than 8,000 home-to-home calls, Avon and Somerset police said in a statement Monday.
However, it didn’t lead to anywhere and the case got colder.
Since police began considering the case in 2023, investigators were able to obtain the full DNA profile of Dan’s murderer from the skirt she wore when she died.
Its DNA profile matches a sample taken from Headley after being arrested for two rapes in 1977 and was arrested in November 2024.
“For 58 years, this horrific crime has been unsolved, and Ryland Headley, the man we know now, has taken responsibility and avoided justice,” prosecutor Charlotte Ream said in a statement from the Crown Prosecutor’s Office (CPS).
Headley denied committing a crime, according to CPS.
Partial bills found at the scene were also reviewed as part of the case review, CPS said. A print of some of the palms between the wrist and the base of the pinky finger was found in the back window of Dan’s house and matched by four experts to Headley’s hands.
“Headley was not featured in the original investigation as he lived outside the area where the home-to-home enquiries were made,” Detective Dave Marcanto, a senior investigator at Avon and Somerset Police, said in a statement.
The merchant said “broad and thorough work” carried out by officers in the initial investigation paved the way for police to resolve crimes. He said 20 boxes of original material had been reviewed by police as part of a re-investigation.
CPS said all but one witness in the case have died in nearly 60 years since the crime was committed, but the old statement was read in court as part of the trial.
Headley will be declared Tuesday. Reem said he “faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison.”
CPS said other crimes in Headley were also considered during the trial. Although previous convictions have not been automatically tolerated by British courts, the CPS said the similarities between Dan’s two previous beliefs about murder and rape and rape were “too big to ignore.”
CPS said Headley was convicted after pleading guilty to breaking into and raping two elderly women in Ipswich. One of the women was in their 70s and the other was in the 80s. Their description of the attack on police at the time was read out to the court.
He was initially sentenced to life in prison, but this declined following suits for a seven-year sentence.
Ream said Monday’s verdict is “a demonstration of CPS’ commitment, even if police partners have gone on for years and decades to ruthlessly pursue justice for victims of crime —
However, advocacy groups say rape convictions remain low in the UK and the judicial process is very slow.
The National Bureau of Statistics says 71,227 rapes were recorded by police in 2024. Just 2.7% of these lawsuits were charged by the end of 2024, according to the British charity Rape Crisis.
Official government data now shows that police currently take an average of 344 days for police to file charges against suspects, 30 days for CPS to approve the charges, and 336 days for the court to complete the case.
