Judge tells 92-year-old he will die in prison after conviction in UK’s oldest solved cold case

LONDON (AP) — For more than a half-century, Ryland Headley got away with murder. When justice finally caught up to the former railway worker Tuesday in a British courtroom, he was 92 years old and using hearing aids to listen to his fate.

A judge sentenced Headley to life in prison for the rape and murder of Louisa Dunne, a 75-year-old widow and grandmother who was strangled in her home in western England in 1967. It is believed to be the longest time in the U.K. between crime and conviction.

“The violation of her home, her body and, ultimately, her life was a pitiless and cruel act by a depraved man,” Justice Derek Sweeting said in Bristol Crown Court.

Headley broke into Dunne’s home through a window and left a palm print on the glass. Police took the hand prints of 19,000 men and boys in the area to try to solve the crime, but did not find a match at the time.

Headley moved out of the area and went on to rape two older women in similar circumstances in the late 1970s and serve time in prison. But his DNA was not collected until an unrelated arrest in 2012.

Last year, semen found on the blue skirt that Dunne had been wearing when she was killed was found to match Headley’s DNA. His palm print was found to match the one on her window.