SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — New DNA testing has definitively linked the 1974 death of a Utah teenager to notorious serial killer Ted Bundy, the local Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday.
On Halloween night 51 years ago, 17-year-old Laura Ann Aime disappeared after leaving a party alone to go to a convenience store. About a month later, her body was found on the side of a highway in American Fork Canyon. She was tied up, beaten, and naked. Authorities said she was likely alive for several days after her abduction.
Investigators have long suspected Bundy was responsible – police said he verbally confessed to his crimes before being executed in Florida in 1989 – but the case remains unsolved until answers are determined.
“It’s so amazing that people are still interested in Laura’s case,” her sister Michelle Impala said at a news conference Wednesday. “I know I speak for my family when I thank you, and I thank the media for their concern.”
Bundy was one of America’s most prolific serial killers, responsible for the deaths of at least 30 women and girls in multiple states during the 1970s. His murders, which took place at fraternity houses, parks and other locations, have rattled the nation. Bundy’s arrest attracted widespread attention, in part because many considered him charming and handsome.
Utah Department of Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason said investigators carefully preserved evidence in Aimee’s case and forensic analysts were able to identify the portions most likely to contain usable DNA samples.
He said the state crime lab acquired new technology in 2023 that allows investigators to extract DNA from samples even if they are small, degraded by age or contain DNA from multiple people. The technology allows them to identify individual male DNA profiles and submit them to a national law enforcement database.
Mason said Bundy’s DNA matched.
The dossier can now be used by other law enforcement agencies who have long suspected Bundy of other unsolved killings, he said, adding that more families may receive similar closure.
“Laura Aimee was the quintessential Utah County daughter,” Sgt. Mike Reynolds said. “We feel the pain that the family felt when she was taken away. We feel the pain that you have been feeling and we are eager to provide you with some type of treatment.”
Impala was only 12 years old when her older sister died. She said that despite the five-year age difference, they were very close and did everything together. They share a bedroom on the family farm in Fairview, Utah, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Provo.
“I was just a little kid following her, but we had a lot in common,” Impala said.
Impala recalled riding horses with her sister and watching Aimee feed her horse licorice pellets.
“When she died, he stopped eating those,” she said.
It’s unclear when Bundy began his attacks, but by 1974, young women in Washington state, many of them college students, began disappearing. Authorities were still investigating the cases when Bundy moved to Salt Lake City and began killing people in Utah, Idaho and Colorado.
Bundy was studying law at the University of Utah when Aimee was killed.
He was first arrested for the attack in August 1975. Police pulled him over and found incriminating items in his car, including rope, handcuffs and a ski mask.
The next year, he was convicted of kidnapping and assaulting a teenager in Utah who managed to escape. Bundy was sentenced to 15 years in prison for that crime, in which he was charged in connection with the earlier death of a nursing student.
He was taken to Aspen, Colorado, for a hearing in the case in 1977 and, while alone for a period, escaped custody by climbing out of a second-story courthouse window. He was captured about a week later, but escaped six months later by breaking through the prison ceiling.
Bundy fled across the country, eventually arriving in Tallahassee, Florida. On January 15, 1978, he entered the Chi Omega fraternity house at Florida State University and beat two women to death with a large tree branch and seriously injured two others. He then went to another house nearby and seriously injured another woman.
Less than a month later, he kidnapped, sexually assaulted and killed a 12-year-old girl in Lake City, Florida. Kimberly Leach is believed to be his last victim and he was recaptured and executed a few years later.
___
Boone reported from Boise, Idaho.
___
This story has been updated to correct that the killing at a Florida State University fraternity house occurred in 1978, not 1977.
