DNA evidence links Ted Bundy to Utah teenager’s 1974 murder

DNA evidence has linked serial killer Ted Bundy to the 1974 murder of Melissa Ann Smith, a 17-year-old Utah girl whose death remained unsolved for more than 50 years, authorities announced Tuesday.

Investigators are satisfied that Bundy killed Smith, Summit County Attorney Margaret Olson said at a news conference. In addition to the DNA evidence, the killing fit Bundy’s “pattern, motive, means and opportunity,” she said.

Smith disappeared near the end of October 1974. Deer hunters found her body days later, according to CBS News, which cited historian Linda Sillitoe in reporting that Smith had been bludgeoned. The Guardian reported that her body was found nude.

The breakthrough followed new DNA testing in the case of Laura Ann Aime, another 17-year-old Utah victim. Detectives confirmed in April that Bundy had killed Aime. The Guardian reported that Aime was last seen at a Halloween party and was found dead and severely beaten in late November 1974.

Bundy confessed to killing Aime before his execution in 1989, but DNA testing did not back his account until this year, according to The Guardian. Law enforcement officials said bodily fluid recovered from Aime’s body matched Bundy’s known DNA profile. Investigators then compared evidence from the two cases: A Y-STR DNA profile recovered from Aime’s body was a genetic match to one found in evidence from Smith’s autopsy. Utah County sheriff’s Sgt. Mike Reynolds said the profile in Smith’s case was highly similar to one linked to Bundy.

“This case demonstrates the importance of preserving evidence, even when decades have passed,” Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera said Tuesday, according to The Guardian. “We have the ability to take a look at these cases again and again.”

Officials have contacted Smith’s next of kin, none of whom still live in the area, CBS News reported.

Bundy killed at least 30 women and girls in multiple states during the 1970s. Others escaped or survived with injuries. He was executed in Florida’s electric chair in 1989 for the 1978 murders of two women at the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University.

CBS News reported that a vial of Bundy’s blood, drawn after his 1978 arrest in the death of a 12-year-old girl, was found in Florida in 2011. His full DNA profile was entered into the FBI’s national database, giving investigators a way to examine other potential cases. Bundy made a series of confessions in his final days, but not all the crimes he claimed have been confirmed.

“The voices and cherished memories of Melissa Ann Smith and Laura Ann Aime and others involved in these cases ring louder than the hate and sedition of the one that took their lives,” Reynolds said Tuesday. “With every case closure may we stomp the memory of Ted Bundy out.”