Ted Bundy sufferer confirmed 50 years after unresolved chilly case after DNA breakthrough
A 51-year-old cold case in Utah has been closed after new DNA testing linked the 1974 disappearance and murder of 17-year-old Laura Ann Aime to serial killer Ted Bundy
Laura Ann Aime, 17, went missing on Oct. 31, 1974(Image: Utah Department of Public Safety)
A 51-year-old cold case was finally closed after the disappearance and murder of a 17-year-old girl was officially linked via DNA technology to infamous serial killer Ted Bundy. Officials in Utah, USA, reportedly announced they were finally able to close the five decade-old cold case after new DNA analysis tied the murdered teenager Bundy.
Laura Ann Aime vanished after leaving a Halloween party in 1974. About a month later, hikers found her body in American Fork Canyon.
At a news briefing on Wednesday (April 1), the Utah County Sheriff’s Office said updated testing had provided definitive forensic confirmation. Investigators reportedly said it “confirmed irrefutably that DNA evidence recovered from Aime’s body verified the existence of DNA belonging to Bundy“.
“Laura Aime is the quintessential daughter of Utah County,” Utah County sheriff’s Sgt. Mike Reynolds said during the news conference, CNN reported. “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.” He declared: “This case is now officially closed,” according to The Salt Lake Tribune.
Aime’s sister Michelle Impala was only 12 when her older sister died. Despite being five years apart in age, she said they were inseparable and spent almost all their time together.
They even shared a bedroom at the family farm in Fairview, Utah. The mourning sister said during the press conference: “I’m a little kid just following her around, but we had a lot in common.”
Impala recalled going horse riding with her sister and seeing Aime give her horse licorice nibs as a treat. “When she died, he would not eat those anymore,” she said.
At the time of Aime’s death, Bundy was living in Salt Lake City, Utah, and studying law at the University of Utah. The sheriff’s statement described Laura as an “outgoing free spirit who enjoyed outdoor activities and shared a passion for riding horses, hunting, and caring for her several siblings”.
Bundy was known for approaching women in public, winning their trust with charm or by pretending to be injured, then taking them to secluded locations where he attacked them.
Although investigators long suspected that Bundy was responsible for the murder of Aime, and police said he later verbally admitted responsibility in the run-up to his execution in Florida in 1989, they kept the case open until they could prove it definitively, according to CNN.
Finally, a state crime lab received new technology in 2023 enabling officers to recover DNA from tiny samples, material degraded over time, or evidence containing genetic traces from more than one person. Using it, they isolated one male DNA profile and uploaded it to a national law-enforcement database.
Moreover, commissioner Beau Mason of the Utah Department of Public Safety said investigators had diligently safeguarded the evidence in Aime’s case, allowing forensic specialists to re-examine it and target the items most likely to yield viable DNA. Bundy’s DNA profile can now consequently be shared with other forces that have long believed Bundy may be linked to further unsolved murders.
While Bundy officially confessed to 30 murders across seven states shortly before his execution in 1989, the true number of his victims is widely believed to be much higher, with estimates ranging from 36 to over 100.
Names often cited by investigators and researchers include Ann Marie Burr, who vanished from her Tacoma, Washington home in 1961 when Bundy was 14; Donna Gail Manson, who disappeared from Evergreen State College in 1974 and whose remains were never found; and Susan Curtis, who went missing from a youth conference in Provo, Utah in 1975. Other cases frequently linked to him include missing teenager Nancy Wilcox in Utah (1974), Julie Cunningham in Vail, Colorado (1975) and Denise Oliverson in Grand Junction, Colorado (1975), as well as Oregon disappearances Rita Lorraine Jolly and Vicki Lynn Hollar in 1973, though Bundy denied involvement in Jolly’s case.
Bundy was convicted of three murders in Florida, later admitted to 30 killings in the days before his execution, and US authorities have positively identified around 20 of those victims; he also described further unnamed victims.
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