New DNA testing has definitively linked the unsolved death of a Utah teenager in 1974 to the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy, the local sheriff’s office said Wednesday. Laura Ann Aime, 17, went missing on Halloween night 51 years ago after she left a party alone to go to a convenience store. About a month later, her body was found by hikers on the side of a highway in American Fork Canyon.

Authorities said the evidence indicated that the teen, who was found bound, beaten and without clothing, had likely been kept alive for several days after her abduction. Investigators long suspected that Bundy was responsible, but the case remained open until they could be certain. Police said Bundy verbally acknowledged his culpability leading up to his execution in Florida in 1989.

Bundy was one of the most prolific serial killers in the United States, with at least 30 women and girls’ deaths linked to him in several states in the 1970s. His murders — which occurred in sorority houses, parks and elsewhere — set the nation on edge.

Investigators had carefully preserved the evidence from Aime’s case, and forensic investigators were able to analyse that evidence to select the portions that seemed most likely to have usable DNA samples, Utah Department of Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason said.

The state crime lab got new technology in 2023 that allows investigators to extract DNA from samples even if they are small, degraded from age or contain DNA from multiple people, he said. That technology allowed them to identify a single male DNA profile, which they submitted to a national law enforcement database.

Bundy’s DNA was a match, Mason said.

At the time of Aime’s killing, Bundy was studying law at the University of Utah. His victim was described by her family as a free spirit who loved the outdoors and found joy in everything she did.

“Laura Aime is the quintessential daughter of Utah County,” Utah County sheriff’s Sgt. Mike Reynolds said in a news conference earlier Wednesday, April 1. “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.”

It’s not known when Bundy first began his attacks, but by 1974, young women — many of them college students — began disappearing in Washington state. Authorities were still investigating those cases when Bundy moved to Salt Lake City, and began killing people in Utah, Idaho and Colorado.

Prior to his death, he confessed to killing 30 people.