Utah authorities say new forensic testing has solved the decades-old killing of 17-year-old Laura Ann Aime, with the Ted Bundy-Laura Aime DNA link now confirmed by evidence recovered from her body. Officials say the breakthrough has allowed them to close a case that remained unresolved for more than 50 years.
Laura Ann Aime disappeared after leaving a Halloween party in 1974. A month later, hikers found her remains in American Fork Canyon. Authorities said she had been handcuffed, tortured and stripped, and the evidence suggested she may have been kept alive for several days after her abduction.
The Utah County Sheriff said on Wednesday, April 1, that new testing “confirmed irrefutably” that DNA recovered from Laura’s body belonged to Bundy. Investigators had long suspected he might be responsible, but they lacked definitive forensic evidence until now.
Bundy murdered at least 30 women between February 1974 and February 1978, and authorities have linked him to other killings across the United States. He confessed to multiple murders before his execution in Florida on January 24, 1989.
According to Utah Department of Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason, investigators had preserved evidence from Aime’s case for decades. Forensic experts later reviewed those materials and selected the samples most likely to yield usable DNA.
Officials said the state crime lab adopted new technology in 2023 that can recover DNA from tiny, degraded or mixed samples. Authorities then submitted the resulting profile to a national law enforcement database, where it matched Bundy’s DNA.
Mason said that DNA profile can now be used by other law enforcement agencies that have long suspected Bundy’s involvement in unsolved killings. That gives the finding significance beyond this one case
