DNA Evidence Links Ted Bundy to 1974 Killing of Utah Teenager
Utah authorities have linked serial killer Ted Bundy to the 1974 killing of 17-year-old Melissa Anne Smith, closing a cold case that remained unresolved for more than five decades.
Smith disappeared in October 1974, and her nude body was found days later on a hillside in Summit Park, Utah. Authorities announced Tuesday that DNA evidence connected her killing to Bundy, who was executed in 1989.
The finding followed renewed testing in the case of Laura Ann Aime, another 17-year-old Utah victim killed in 1974. Bundy had confessed to killing Aime before his execution, and investigators said this year that bodily fluid recovered from her body matched Bundy’s known DNA profile. A Y-STR DNA profile recovered in Aime’s case was also a genetic match to one obtained from evidence in Smith’s case, prompting authorities to close the Smith investigation. …