New DNA testing confirms serial killer Ted Bundy slayed a Utah teen in 1974
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Deceased Ted BundyOne of the most notorious and prolific serial killers in US history has claimed another victim.
New DNA testing confirmed that Bundy was responsible for the murder of a 17-year-old Utah girl who disappeared after leaving a party alone on Halloween night in 1974, the local sheriff’s office said Wednesday.
Laura Ann Aime was found dead on the side of a highway in American Fork Canyon about a month after she was abducted. He was bound, beaten and without clothes.
Investigators had long suspected that Bundy killed her; police previously said Bundy verbally admitted his guilt his execution in Florida in 1989 – but the case remained open until it was for sure.
“It’s really surprising that people are still interested in Laura’s case,” her sister Michelle Impala said at a news conference Wednesday. “Know that I speak on behalf of my family when I thank you, and I thank the media for your concern.”
Bundy was linked to the deaths of at least 30 women and girls in several states in the 1970s. Murders in sororities, parks and other places have unsettled the country. Bundy’s arrest attracted a lot of attention, in part because many people found him attractive and handsome.
Utah Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason said investigators carefully preserved evidence in the Aime case and forensic analysts were able to identify the parts that appeared most likely to have usable DNA samples.
He said the state crime lab gets new technology in 2023 that will allow investigators to extract DNA from samples even if they are minors, degraded or contain DNA from more than one person. This technology allowed them to identify a single male DNA profile and submit it to the national law enforcement database.
Mason said Bundy’s DNA was a match.
This profile can now be used by other law enforcement agencies who have long suspected Bundy of committing other unsolved murders, he said, adding that more families could be brought to similar closure.
“Laura Aime is Utah County’s quintessential girl,” said Sgt. Mike Reynolds said. “We felt the pain your family felt when you were kidnapped. We felt the pain you’ve been feeling all this time, and we felt the desire to give you some kind of healing.”
Impala was only 12 years old when her older sister died. He said that despite their five-year age difference, they were very close and did everything together. They shared a bedroom on the family’s ranch in Fairview, Utah, about 50 miles southeast of Provo.
Impala remembered riding with her sister on Wednesday and watching Aime feed red licorice tips to her horse.
“When he died, he wouldn’t eat these anymore,” he said.
It is unknown when Bundy first began his attacks, but by 1974 young women, most of them college students, began disappearing from Washington state. Authorities were still investigating these cases when Bundy moved to Salt Lake City and began killing in Utah, Idaho and Colorado.
At the time of Aime’s murder, Bundy was studying law at the University of Utah.
He was arrested for the first time in connection with the attacks in August 1975. Police pulled him over and found incriminating items in his vehicle, including rope, handcuffs and a ski mask.
The following year, he was convicted of kidnapping and assaulting a teenager who managed to escape in Utah. Bundy was sentenced to 15 years in prison for this crime, and while in prison he was charged in connection with the premature death of a nursing student.
In 1977, he was brought to Aspen, Colorado for the hearing of this case, and when he was left alone for a while, he escaped from custody by climbing out of the second floor window of the courthouse. He was captured about a week later, but escaped again six months later by breaking the prison ceiling.
Bundy fled across the country, eventually making his way to Tallahassee, Florida. On January 15, 1978, he entered the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University, beat two women to death with a large branch, and seriously injured two more women. He then went to another house nearby and seriously injured another woman.
Less than a month later, he kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and murdered a 12-year-old girl in Lake City, Florida. He was believed to be Kimberly Leach’s last victim before she was arrested again and executed years later.
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Boone reported from Boise, Idaho.
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This story has been updated to correct that the Florida State University sorority murders occurred in 1978, not 1977.
