DNA Ties Ted Bundy, Executed by Florida in 1989, to 1974 Killing of a Utah Teen

Utah authorities said Tuesday, Oct. 27, that DNA evidence links Ted Bundy, the serial killer Florida executed in 1989, to the 1974 killing of 17-year-old Melissa Ann Smith, closing a case that had been listed as unsolved for more than five decades. The announcement came exactly 52 years after a hunter found her body in the woods, according to The Associated Press.

The breakthrough rests in part on Florida. Bundy's DNA was on file in the state where he was convicted and put to death, the AP reported, and a full profile of the killer exists only because a vial of his blood drawn in Florida in 1978 turned up in state records in 2011.

What Utah authorities announced

Summit County Attorney Margaret Olson told reporters that investigators are satisfied Bundy was responsible for Smith's death, according to the AP. Beyond the DNA, Olson said, the killing showed hallmarks of Bundy's "pattern, motive, means and opportunity."

Smith was the daughter of Louis Smith, then the police chief in Midvale, Utah. She disappeared in October 1974, and her body was found in the Summit Park area near the line between Summit and Salt Lake counties, according to Utah news reports of the announcement. CBS News reported that deer hunters found her body.

A highly similar DNA profile linked to Bundy was found in evidence taken during Smith's autopsy, Utah County Sgt. Mike Reynolds said, according to CBS News. Investigators closed the case by connecting DNA found on Smith with DNA from Laura Aime, another 17-year-old Bundy victim whose case was resolved in April in Utah County, the AP reported.

Smith's relatives were told of the findings but declined to attend the news conference or speak to reporters, the Summit County Sheriff's Office said, according to the AP.

The technology behind the match

Utah's state crime lab acquired new technology in 2023 that can extract usable DNA from samples that are small, degraded by age or mixed with DNA from more than one person, the AP reported.

That tool cracked the Aime case first. In April, officials announced that the lab had identified a single male DNA profile from preserved evidence in her 1974 death and submitted it to a national law enforcement database, and that it matched Bundy. Aime was found dead in American Fork Canyon in 1974.

Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera, whose department has also investigated killings linked to Bundy, said at Tuesday's news conference that the case shows the importance of preserving evidence, according to the AP. She said Utah investigators take the cases seriously and do not simply blame every unsolved killing on Bundy.

The Florida vial that made it possible

For years, investigators had no complete DNA profile of Bundy to compare against old evidence. That changed in 2011, when a homicide detective in Tacoma, Washington, working a cold case tied to Bundy, called Florida authorities. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement then found a blood sample on file, despite an order to destroy much of the biological evidence in the case, CBS News Miami reported at the time. The Columbia County clerk's office held an original sample taken from Bundy.

The blood had been drawn in 1978, when Bundy was arrested in the death of a 12-year-old girl in Columbia County, according to CBS News. FDLE's Tallahassee crime lab produced a complete profile with all 13 core markers, and it was uploaded to the FBI's national DNA database in August 2011, according to reports at the time.

Utah investigators compared their new DNA results with that full Bundy profile held in Florida, The Salt Lake Tribune reported in May.

Bundy's crimes in Florida

Bundy's killing spree ended in Florida. After escaping custody in Colorado, he made his way to Tallahassee, and on Jan. 15, 1978, he broke into Florida State University's Chi Omega sorority house, killing two women and injuring two others, then attacked another student in a nearby home, according to WFSU.

Weeks later, he kidnapped and killed 12-year-old Kimberly Leach of Lake City, days before he was arrested in Pensacola in February 1978.

Key dates in Bundy's Florida case:

The Chi Omega trial was moved to Miami, where Bundy received the first of three death sentences, according to WFSU. He was executed on Jan. 24, 1989, at Florida State Prison in Bradford County.

In his final days, Bundy gave a series of confessions, including to some crimes that police had not known about, the AP reported. Not all of those cases have been confirmed. He confessed to killing Aime before his execution but gave no details, according to an AP report in April.

A victim count that keeps growing

Bundy killed at least 30 women and girls in multiple states in the 1970s, and many more escaped or survived with injuries, the AP reported. Besides Florida and Utah, authorities said he had victims in Colorado, Idaho and Washington state.

Utah investigators said they are now focused on the 1974 disappearance of 16-year-old Nancy Wilcox, whose body was never found. Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office Det. Ben Pender, who handles that case, said solving the Smith homicide does not close the book on Bundy, and that while information points toward Bundy in the Wilcox case, investigators are not certain, according to the AP.

Bundy confessed to the Wilcox killing, but investigators have never independently confirmed it, and Pender has said he believes the confession may have been a ploy to delay the execution, The Salt Lake Tribune reported earlier this year.

What's next

Utah investigators plan to keep working the remaining Bundy-linked cases, including Wilcox's, as the state crime lab's DNA tools are applied to old evidence. Any further matches will likely run through the same Florida-held profile, a reminder that evidence preserved in a Columbia County file more than four decades ago is still closing cases across the country.