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DNA testing has linked the 1974 killing of 17-year-old Laura Ann Aime in Utah to serial killer Ted Bundy, the local sheriff’s office said Wednesday in Salt Lake City. Authorities said Aime disappeared after leaving a party alone on Halloween night and was later found dead on the side of a highway in American Fork Canyon about a month after her abduction.
Investigators said Aime had been bound, beaten and without clothing. Police said they long suspected Bundy was responsible, noting that he confessed to the killing without providing details before his execution in Florida in 1989, but that the case stayed open until forensic testing could confirm the connection.
At a news conference, Beau Mason, Utah’s Department of Public Safety commissioner, said investigators had preserved evidence from Aime’s case and forensic analysts were able to identify portions that seemed most likely to contain usable DNA samples. Mason said the state crime lab received new technology in 2023 that can extract DNA from samples even when the biological material is small, degraded by age or mixed with DNA from multiple people.
Using that approach, Mason said the DNA testing identified a single male DNA profile that investigators submitted to a national law enforcement database. Mason said Bundy’s DNA matched that profile, and he said the resulting profile can now be used by other law enforcement agencies that have long suspected Bundy of additional unsolved killings.
Sgt. Mike Reynolds said investigators’ work aimed to deliver healing for the family, saying they “felt the pain the family feels when she was taken” and that they had a desire to provide “some type of healing” after years of uncertainty. Reynolds described Aime as “the quintessential daughter of Utah County,” and he said investigators kept a long-running interest in the case even as it remained open for decades.
Michelle Impala said she was only 12 when her older sister died, and she said the two were close despite a five-year age gap. Impala said they shared a bedroom on the family’s farm in Fairview, Utah, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Provo, and she recalled riding horses and watching Aime feed her horse red licorice nibs. Impala said that after her sister’s death, Bundy would not eat those nibs anymore.
Authorities said Bundy was linked to the deaths of at least 30 women and girls across multiple states in the 1970s, and that his murders in places such as sorority houses and parks set off widespread fear. Investigators said that, by 1974, young women began disappearing in Washington state, with authorities still investigating those cases when Bundy moved to Salt Lake City and began killing in Utah, Idaho and Colorado.
At the time of Aime’s killing, authorities said Bundy was studying law at the University of Utah. In August 1975, he was arrested for the first time in connection with the attacks after police pulled him over and found incriminating items in his vehicle, including rope, handcuffs and a ski mask.
AP said he was found guilty the following year of kidnapping and assaulting a teen in Utah who had managed to get away, and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for that crime. Authorities said that while imprisoned, Bundy was charged in connection with the earlier death of a nursing student, and he was brought to Aspen, Colorado, for a hearing in 1977. Police said Bundy escaped from custody during the hearing by climbing out of a second-story courthouse window when he was left alone, was caught about a week later, and escaped again six months after breaking through a ceiling in a jail.
Investigators said Bundy then fled across the country, eventually reaching Tallahassee, Florida. On Jan. 15, 1978, AP said he entered the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University and bludgeoned two women to death with a large branch, leaving two more badly injured, and he then went to another nearby house and badly injured another woman. Less than a month later, authorities said Bundy abducted, sexually assaulted and killed a 12-year-old girl in Lake City, Florida, and Kimberly Leach was believed to be his last victim before his later arrest and execution by electric chair.
This story has been updated to correct that the killings at the Florida State University sorority house were in 1978, not 1977.
Boone reported from Boise, Idaho.