Utah detectives had just gotten a major break in the cold case murder of a 17-year-old girl long suspected of being one of notorious serial killer Ted Bundy's victims
After 52 years, newly tested DNA evidence "irrefutably" connected Bundy to the 1974 murder of 17-year-old Laura Ann Aime, the Utah County Sheriff's Office announced in April. Like many of his other victims, evidence showed that Bundy had used a nylon stocking to strangle Aime and that he had kept her alive for at least several days after abducting her on Halloween night.
Though detectives had finally solved Aime's brutal murder, they weren't done. They turned their attention to another horrifying murder that happened within just days of Aime's during a frenzied killing spree: that of 17-year-old
Melissa Ann Smith.
A hunter had found Smith, the daughter of a local police chief, naked and strangled in a wooded area on Oct. 27, 1974, about 20 miles east of Salt Lake City in Summit County.
Aime and Smith didn't know each other but they were killed in the same way at nearly the same time in the same area. And just as their murders were intertwined, so was the key to solving them: 52-year-old DNA.
Detectives recently used DNA recovered from Aime's body and compared it to DNA that was found on Smith's body and preserved all these many years. The testing showed that Bundy not only killed Aime, but also Smith.
"For people who didn't have any idea that DNA was going to be a thing, the detectives sure did a great job collecting items," Salt Lake County cold case Detective Ben Pender told USA TODAY this week. "They probably had no idea why they were doing it but they did."
As the surviving loved ones of both girls close a sad chapter of their lives, USA TODAY is looking closer at just how detectives from three different sheriff's departments cracked the cases and how they're now working to tie Bundy to another teenage girl's murder that same month.
What led police to look at teens' cold case murders?
Like they so often do, cold case detectives at the Utah County Sheriff's Office were looking back at their old murders and found that Aime's appeared to be solvable. That's because of advancements in forensic science in recent years.
Detectives submitted DNA evidence from the case to the Utah Bureau of Forensic Services, and "the results were magnificent," according to the sheriff's office.
"They confirmed irrefutably that DNA evidence recovered from Laura’s body verified the existence of DNA belonging to Bundy," the office said.
After closing the case, the detectives decided to reach out to the Summit County Sheriff's Office about one of their cold cases: the murder of Melissa Smith, who was long suspected of being one of Bundy's victims.
Pender said that Summit County's cold case detective, Lt. Alan Sidaway, soon realized that he did not have any DNA evidence retained from Smith's murder. So Sidaway called Pender to ask if the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office had any.
Sure enough, Pender found they did.
When he got the call, Pender drove over to his agency's evidence warehouse, a climate-controlled facility where hundreds of boxes filled with case files sit on shelves, all holding the potential to unlock the key to solving old murders.
There, Pender pulled items for possible testing and took them to the Utah State Crime Lab, which was able to match the DNA taken from the crime scenes of both teens. And that matched Bundy's DNA profile in Florida, Summit County Attorney Margaret Olson announced during a news conference on Oct. 27.
"This DNA evidence, when considered alongside evidence related to pattern, motive, means, and opportunity, establishes that Ted Bundy was responsible for Melissa Ann Smith's murder," Olson said. "Although Ted Bundy is no longer alive to face prosecution, advances in forensic science and the continued dedication of law enforcement professionals have helped provide answers in a case that has remained unsolved for over 50 years."
Aime, Smith were part of Bundy killing spree in Utah
Aime and Smith were among at least six victims targeted by Bundy during a murder spree in October and November in 1974.
He arrived to Utah from Washington in September of that year, got an apartment, got baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and began killing within a couple weeks, Pender said.
Although they can't yet prove it, he said detectives believe Bundy began in the Salt Lake City area with the Oct. 2, 1974, abduction and murder of 16-year-old Nancy Wilcox, described in archived stories as a cheerleader who was last seen alive in Bundy's Volkswagen Beetle. Her body has never been found but Bundy confessed to her murder in 1989, Pender said.
The next girl he targeted was Smith. She was kidnapped on Oct. 18 in the Salt Lake City suburb of Midvale and her body was found on Oct. 27. Like many of his victims, detectives believe Bundy kept her alive for at least a few days to get pleasure from terrorizing and hurting her.
Four days after a hunter found Smith's naked and battered body, Bundy kidnapped Aime on Oct. 31 after she left a Halloween party in the Salt Lake City suburb of Lehi. Her body was found nearly a month later.
On Nov. 8, Bundy kidnapped Carol DaRonch from a shopping center parking lot in the Salt Lake City suburb of Murray after he posed as a police officer and told her that she needed to come with him because someone had tried to break into her car. Bundy handcuffed DaRonch but failed to notice he had put both links of the handcuffs on one of her hands, thus allowing her to jump out of his Volkswagen, according to archived news reports.
On the same day that Daronch escaped, Bundy kidnapped and murdered 17-year-old Debra Kent north of Salt Lake City in Bountiful. Kent had been with her parents at a high school play when she left during intermission to pick up her brother and was never seen again. Parts of her remains weren't found until 1989.
Bundy's Utah killing spree came after he's believed to have murdered at least a dozen women in Washington, Oregon and Idaho. After the Utah murders, he began killing women in Colorado and other states before a Utah Highway Patrolman pulled him over and arrested him in August 1975. Bundy later managed to escape custody as police were just beginning to uncover the depth and depravity of his crimes.
Bundy fled to Florida, where the killing continued when he attacked four sorority sisters in the Chi Omega house at Florida State University. Two of them were killed. Bundy's last killing was that of 12-year-old Kimberly Leach, who was kidnapped from her school in Lake City, Florida, on Feb. 9, 1978.
Bundy was convicted of three murders, including Kimberly's. He was executed by the electric chair in Florida in 1989. In the days leading up to his execution, he made tearful last-minute confessions to authorities from several states in futile hopes of winning a delay, according to archived news reports.
In all, Bundy confessed to about 30 murders. He wasn't convicted of many of them because he declined to provide any details about crime scenes and authorities suspected he was lying to gain more infamy. He's estimated to have killed anywhere between 20 and 100 women and girls in at least seven states.
Detectives try to link Bundy to other cases
Given the large number of Bundy victims and the advancements in forensic science, detectives could continue definitively linking him to many cases for years to come.
Pender is working to do just that at the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office. Though Bundy confessed to killing 16-year-old Nancy Wilcox in the Salt Lake City area in 1974, detectives need concrete evidence to consider the case closed.
Complicating matters is the fact that Wilcox's body was never found. On the eve of his execution, Bundy told a Utah detective that he killed her and only gave a vague description of where he buried her body, Pender said.
He said investigators are actively searching for Wilcox's remains based on what Bundy told them. Even after all these years, he said DNA could be extracted from her remains to prove that Bundy killed her.
"That may help piece it together," he said.
Some people ask Pender what the point is, since Bundy confessed and investigating a 52-year-old case takes time and money.
His answer is simple.
"In every case we owe it to the victims, the family, and the community to continue to do this, regardless of the age of the case," he said, adding that the toughest part of his job isn't solving the crimes, but seeing many of the victims' family members die not knowing for sure who killed their loved ones.
"They just keep wanting answers and as they get older, they want answers before they pass away," he said. "Unfortunately, it doesn't always work out that way. ... It does weigh on you."
But it also drives Pender to keep pushing for those answers.
"As long as we keep working them and keep pushing, at some point somewhere somehow, something is going to turn up and we're going to be able to get there," he said. "Forensics and genetics continue to improve, things are still coming."
He added: "They're going to continue to come."
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime and courts reporter who covers the death penalty, cold cases and breaking news for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How detectives connected Ted Bundy to more victims - 52 years later
