Decades later, Ted Bundy’s victim count rises with new DNA link

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Investigators have added another victim to Ted Bundy’s confirmed record, with a Utah County sheriff saying Wednesday that DNA testing links Bundy to the unsolved 1974 death of a Utah teen. Utah County sheriff’s Sgt. Mike Reynolds said investigators expect further progress on another cold case as they use the serial killer’s full DNA profile, according to the Associated Press reporting.

The update comes decades after Bundy was executed on Jan. 24, 1989, and as forensic DNA matching continues to make earlier cases solvable. The AP said the count of confirmed victims has kept growing as DNA testing has advanced, even though Bundy has been dead for nearly 40 years.

Bundy’s criminal pattern, as described in the AP account, began with violence that started in the Pacific Northwest in 1974. The reporting said many of his earliest known violent crimes occurred around Seattle after he grew up in Tacoma, Washington, and that a 1974 attack in the area left an 18-year-old University of Washington student with a fractured skull. The victim survived, but the injuries left her with permanent damage, and Bundy was believed to have been responsible because the episode fit a pattern that followed in later years.

In the next month, the AP said, another University of Washington student, Lynda Ann Healy, vanished from her home. A small amount of blood was found on Healy’s bedding, and the reporting said her remains were discovered the next year on Taylor Mountain, a remote area outside a neighboring city. The AP also said other victims’ remains were found at the same site, tying additional cases to that location.

As the deaths linked to Bundy widened beyond Washington, the AP reported that other women were abducted from Washington state and Oregon and that in some cases witnesses saw the women speaking with a man wearing an arm sling. By October, the AP said, teen girls in Utah were also vanishing, including Melissa Anne Smith, 17, whose body was found on a hillside in Summit Park with her head beaten with a crowbar.

The AP described one attack in Utah involving Carol DaRonch, 18, who the reporting said was snatched when Bundy claimed to be a police officer investigating car break-ins. She survived, the account said, by jumping out of his car after he tried to handcuff her, and DaRonch’s testimony later played a role in putting Bundy behind bars.

The reporting also laid out the law-enforcement failures that punctuated Bundy’s earlier custody. It said Bundy was arrested for the first time in connection with the disappearances in August 1975 after police pulled him over and found incriminating items in his vehicle, including rope, handcuffs and a ski mask. The AP said he was found guilty the following year of kidnapping and assaulting DaRonch and sentenced to 15 years in prison, and while imprisoned he was charged in connection with the earlier death of a nursing student.

According to the AP, Bundy escaped custody during a 1977 hearing in Aspen, Colorado, after climbing out of a second-story courthouse window, and he was caught about a week later. The reporting said he escaped again six months later by breaking through the ceiling of a jail, after which he fled across the country and ultimately reached Tallahassee, Florida.

In Florida, the AP said Bundy entered the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University on Jan. 15, 1978, and bludgeoned two women to death with a large branch while leaving two others badly injured. Less than a month later, the AP said he abducted, sexually assaulted and killed 12-year-old Kimberly Leach in Lake City, Florida, and the reporting said Bundy was arrested when pulled over in Pensacola while driving a stolen vehicle.

Even at trial, the AP account said Bundy’s self-assured demeanor and appearance drew public attention. It included a quote from a teenage spectator describing him as fascinating and saying, “He’s impressive. He just has a kind of magnetism,” while the judge, Edward Cowart, was described as calling him a “bright young man” and also recognizing the crimes as “extremely wicked, shocking evil and vile,” with Bundy sentenced to die.

The AP said DNA testing has also produced additional confirmations in other old cases, including a DNA match linking Bundy to 17-year-old Laura Ann Aime, whose body was found on the side of a highway about a month after she went missing on Halloween night in 1974. The AP said authorities believed she was kept alive after her abduction and that evidence from the case was carefully preserved until DNA forensic technology allowed investigators to extract a profile and close the case.