Utah authorities are expected Tuesday to announce that DNA evidence has linked serial killer Ted Bundy to another decades-old homicide, nearly 40 years after his execution. The Summit County Sheriff’s Office and the county attorney plan to identify the victim and detail the evidence connecting Bundy to the case during a news conference.
Officials are also expected to explain why investigators are now closing the case, which has been unsolved for decades. The identity of the victim has not yet been released, though the 1974 death of 17-year-old Melissa Ann Smith has long been listed as a cold case, according to The Associated Press.
The announcement comes about six months after authorities in Utah County used DNA evidence to tie Bundy to the 1974 killing of 17-year-old Laura Ann Aime. Aime disappeared after leaving a Halloween party to buy cigarettes on Oct. 31, 1974. Hikers later found her body near American Fork Canyon. Investigators determined she had been raped, strangled and murdered.
Bundy had long been considered the prime suspect in Aime’s death. He had enrolled to study law at the University of Utah just two months before she vanished. The case went unsolved for 51 years until the Utah County Sheriff’s Office used new DNA technology to develop a male DNA profile from bodily fluids found on Aime’s remains.
That profile was entered into the Combined DNA Index System, known as CODIS, which produced a match in Florida. Further analysis linked the DNA to Bundy.
“We bring this case to a closure and more importantly closure to the Aime family,” Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith said at an April news conference.
After identifying Bundy as Aime’s killer, the Utah County Sheriff’s Office shared the DNA profile with other law enforcement agencies in hopes of solving additional cold cases. At the time, officials said they believed the breakthrough could help resolve another case, though they did not provide further detail. Tuesday’s expected announcement in Summit County may be that case.
A Trail of Victims Across Several States
Bundy is believed to have killed at least 30 women and girls across multiple states during the 1970s, according to the AP. He has been linked to killings in Florida, Utah, Colorado, Oregon and Washington between 1974 and 1978. In his final days, he confessed to a series of killings, including some that had been unknown to police, though not all of those confessions have been confirmed.
Bundy was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1979 murders of two Florida State University students, and received a second death sentence the following year for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl. He was executed in Florida’s electric chair in 1989.
