DNA links serial killer Ted Bundy to 1974 murder of Utah girl

Utah authorities announced at a news conference on Tuesday that DNA evidence shows American serial killer Ted Bundy was responsible for the 1974 murder of Melissa Ann Smith, a 17-year-old from the state. She disappeared in 1974, and her nude body was found several days later. The finding allows investigators to close a case that is more than 50 years old.

The result follows a confirmation made in April, when Utah county detectives established that Bundy also killed another 17-year-old Utah girl, Laura Ann Aime, in 1974. Bundy had admitted to that killing in a series of confessions before he was executed in 1989 for two of his murders.

Laura was last seen at a Halloween party and was found dead, severely beaten, in late November 1974. Only this year did new DNA testing support Bundy's account: bodily fluid taken from her body matched his known DNA profile, officials said at the time. That discovery set in motion the closure of the Smith investigation. A Y-STR DNA profile, a genetic marker tied to the male line, recovered from Laura's body matched one found on Melissa's body.

Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera said the case shows the importance of preserving evidence even when decades have passed, adding that investigators can look at such cases again and again. Mike Reynolds, a sergeant with the Utah County Sheriff's Office, said the voices and memories of the victims ring louder than the hate of the man who killed them, and expressed hope that each case closure would erase Bundy's memory.

Between 1974 and 1978, Bundy sexually assaulted and killed at least 30 women across the American west and Florida.