Serial killer Ted Bundy linked by DNA to unsolved death of 17-year-old

Ted Bundy leans back in his chair as trial judge Edward Cowart speaks, in Tallahassee, Fla., April 26, 1979. (AP Photo/Mark Foley)

New DNA testing has definitively linked the unsolved death of a Utah teenager in 1974 to the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy, the local sheriff’s office said Wednesday.

Laura Ann Aime, 17, went missing Halloween night 51 years ago after she left a party alone to go to a convenience store. About a month later, her body was found by hikers on the side of a highway in American Fork Canyon. Aime was bound, beaten and without clothing. Authorities said the evidence indicated that she had likely been kept alive for several days after her abduction.

Investigators long suspected that Bundy was responsible -- police said he verbally acknowledged his culpability leading up to his execution in Florida in 1989 -- but the case remained open until they could be certain.

Bundy was one of the nation’s most prolific serial killers, with at least 30 women and girls’ deaths linked to him in several states in the 1970s. His murders -- which occurred in sorority houses, parks and elsewhere -- set the nation on edge. Bundy’s arrest drew widespread fascination, in part because many considered him to be charming and handsome.

Investigators had carefully preserved the evidence from Aime’s case, and forensic investigators were able to analyze that evidence to select the portions that seemed most likely to have usable DNA samples, Utah Department of Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason said.

The state crime lab got new technology in 2023 that allows investigators to extract DNA from samples even if they are small, degraded from age or contain DNA from multiple people, he said. That technology allowed them to identify a single male DNA profile, which they submitted to a national law enforcement database.

Bundy’s DNA was a match, Mason said.

Aime’s family described her as a free spirit who loved the outdoors and found joy in everything she did.

“Laura Aime is the quintessential daughter of Utah County,” Utah County sheriff’s Sgt. Mike Reynolds said in a news conference earlier Wednesday. “We felt the pain the family feels when she was taken. We felt the pain that you felt this whole entire time, and we’ve had the desire to deliver to you some type of healing, we can’t really say closure.”

It’s not known when Bundy first began his attacks, but by 1974, young women -- many of them college students -- began disappearing in Washington state. Authorities were still investigating those cases when Bundy moved to Salt Lake City, and began killing people in Utah, Idaho and Colorado.

At the time of Aime’s killing, Bundy was studying law at the University of Utah.

He was arrested for the first time in August 1975, when police pulled him over and found incriminating items in his vehicle including rope, handcuffs and a ski mask.

He was found guilty the following year of kidnapping and assaulting a teen in Utah who had managed to get away. Bundy was sentenced to 15 years in prison for that crime, and while imprisoned he was charged in connection with the earlier death of a nursing student.

He was brought to Aspen, Colorado for a hearing in that case in 1977, and he escaped custody by climbing out a second-story courthouse window when he was left alone for a time. He was caught about a week later, but escaped again six months later by breaking through the ceiling of a jail.

That time Bundy fled across the country, eventually making his way to Tallahassee, Florida. On Jan. 15, 1977, he entered the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University, bludgeoning two women to death with a large branch and leaving two more badly injured. He then went to another house nearby, badly injuring another woman.

Less than a month later, he abducted, sexually assaulted and killed a 12-year-old girl in Lake City, Florida. Kimberly Leach was believed to be his final victim: Bundy was pulled over in Pensacola while driving a stolen vehicle, and arrested. His DNA was later collected in Florida.

Other cold cases with recent updates:

• How DNA technology broke open the cold case in Minneapolis woman’s 1993 murder
• Montreal police used DNA, genetic genealogy to solve 2008 cold case
• Cold case breakthrough: Body found in woods nearly 20 years ago identified
• Advanced DNA testing helps solve decades-old cold case of missing Napa woman
• Advances in DNA analysis lead to breaks in cold cases in 2025
• More than 50 years after their mother’s murder, perseverance leads family to her killer

Hannah Schoenbaum And Rebecca Boone, The Associated Press