Laura Ann Aime of Fairview, Utah, was 17 when she was last seen alive at a Utah County Halloween party in 1974. Hikers found her body, which showed evidence of beating and strangulation, on Thanksgiving Day of that year. Now authorities say they have been able to prove definitively that Aime was a victim of serial killer Ted Bundy, according to ABC News.
Bundy, who died by electric chair execution in 1989, had long been suspected of killing Aime, as his M.O. seemed apparent in the nature of her death. Bundy confessed to the deaths of 30 people, including Aime, but was convicted of only three homicides. ABC News reports that Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith told the press on Wednesday that Bundy’s comment on Aime’s death “was deemed to be not enough evidence to close the case and rule out any other party having had committed this crime” at the time of his confession.
But now the sheriffs say they’ve been able to match semen swabbed from Aime’s body more than half a century ago to Bundy’s DNA, according The New York Times. The bodily fluid had been entered into a national database, which matched Bundy’s DNA kept in a Florida database.
“We can now say, without a doubt, that Theodore ‘Ted’ Bundy did in fact did murder Laura Ann Aime in the fall of 1974, and that law enforcement now has DNA testing results that are compatible with the latest DNA testing standards,” Smith said. “This will make any future DNA test comparison easier for those law enforcement agencies who still have open cases involving Bundy.”
“It’s really quite amazing that people even are still interested in Laura’s case,” Aime’s sister, Michelle Impala, said at a press conference. Impala was 12 at the time her sister died and remembered Aime as fun with a great love of animals, especially horses. She said that her sister and their parents would take solace in knowing the sheriffs had solved the murder.
“I know that she would be really happy to know that it’s been closed, and just to know that Ted Bundy is, like, gnashing his teeth in hell,” Impala said. “I hate to think of people doing that. But with him and a few other people in the world, that’s what they deserve.”
Although Bundy confessed to killing 30 women, some estimates figure the total to be closer to 100. Bundy’s first confirmed victim was Lynda Ann Healy, whom he killed in Seattle in February 1974. Bundy’s murder streak continued in Utah, Colorado, and Idaho. He escaped a Colorado jail in December 1977 while awaiting trial for murder, after which he attacked and killed more women and abducted a 12-year-old girl. He was captured again in February 1978 and convicted of killing two women the following year. In 1980, a Florida jury found him guilty of killing 12-year-old Kimberly Leach, and a judge sentenced him to death by execution.
In 2019, Kathy Kleiner Rubin told Rolling Stone about her experience of surviving an attack from Bundy. “He was, and he lived, and he breathed, and he did what he did,” she said. “And at some point he was — possibly a real person. I think it’s good for people to read books about Bundy. I really do. They need to know that there’s evil out there, but they can control it.”
