A 92-year-old man is on trial for murder
This blue dress is part of the evidence
This is the blue skirt that led to the arrest of a 92-year-old convicted rapist for the murder of a pensioner nearly 60 years ago.
Police released the image of the distinctive item of clothing after it was shown to the jury in the trial of Ryland Headley, over the murder of Louisa Dunne in Bristol.
The victim was wearing the skirt when an intruder broke into her house on June 27, 1967, before raping and killing her.
Her body was found by neighbours the next morning, but in the decades that followed no-one was brought to justice over her death, Bristol Crown Court heard.
Court sketch of murder accused Ryland Headley alongside an officer(Image: PA Wire/PA Images)
Her skirt, along witih other items from the scene, were kept in storage and were recently reexamined to try and make a breakthrough.
Jurors have now been told there is “extremely strong” scientific evidence to suggest samples found on the skirt in Britain’s oldest cold case review came from her alleged murderer.
Giving evidence a forensic scientist told jurors that recent direct DNA matches linking samples from Mrs Dunne and the blue skirt suggested they were “one billion times” more likely to have come from Headley than from anyone else.
Andrew Parry had been sent some head hair samples from Mrs Dunne, as well as the blue skirt and the scarf she was wearing when she died.
Louisa Dunne
He told the trial: “The chance of observing this matching profile is normally in the order of one in one billion.
“That’s the stat we use for a direct match.”
Mr Parry told the court he cut sections from the front and back of Mrs Dunne’s skirt, and found samples on the patch taken from the back.
“In the area from the back, I found numerous cells in the sample,” he continued, saying the sample found the “highest level” of cells on the scale used to measure them.
He said the DNA found matched Headley’s taken via a mouth swab, saying: “I subjected the component to DNA profiling tests and obtained a full DNA profile.
“We had two profiles, one from the skirt and one from the cheek swab.
“I compared the two profiles: the profile from Mr Headley matched the DNA profile.
“It’s estimated as one billion times more likely that they originated from Mr Headley than from an unknown, unrelated person.
An earlier statement from pathologist Dr Albert Hunt, who carried out Mrs Dunne’s autopsy revealed the cause of her death as asphyxiation due to strangulation and pressure on the mouth.
Headley, of Ipswich, Suffolk, denies raping and murdering Ms Dunne in June 1967.
The trial continues.