Ted Bundy “without a shadow of doubt” murdered a Utah teen more than 50 years ago, police confirmed Wednesday as they closed the cold case the womanizing serial killer confessed to before his execution.
Laura Ann Aime, 17, was last seen leaving a Halloween party in Utah County in 1974. Two college students came across her nude corpse while hiking in the American Fork Canyon less than one month later.
Her body was still bound and displayed signs of severe, repeated beatings. Deputies determined Laura’s killer used a nylon stocking to strangle her to death, though she also suffered severe blunt force trauma to the head.
The days-long abuse that Laura suffered fell in line with Bundy’s well-documented tactics. Bundy even “verbally acknowledged his culpability” for Laura’s demise before his execution, according to a news release from the Utah County Sheriff’s Office.
The sheriff’s office explained that its officers and the Utah County Attorney’s Office rejected Bundy’s confession and kept the case open “until investigators could prove, without a shadow of doubt, that Bundy was the composer of these heinous crimes to Laura.”
In 2025, near the 51st anniversary of Laura’s disappearance, the sheriff’s office sent existing evidence to the Utah Bureau of Forensic Services in hopes that its ever-evolving tech could finally reveal who killed the teen.
The sheriff’s office said that the findings “were magnificent” and “confirmed irrefutably” that DNA found on Laura’s body belonged to Bundy.
Michelle Impala, Laura’s younger sister, told The Salt Lake Tribune that Laura would be “really happy to know” her killer was finally tracked down, even if it took a few extra decades.
The rest of her surviving family remembered her as “one who found joy in everything she did” and sought to spread her “abundant compassion” with all, including using her own money to buy treats for her siblings “because she enjoyed watching the happiness in [their] eyes,” the sheriff’s office said.
Bundy moved to Salt Lake City, just one hour outside of Utah County, in the fall of 1974 to attend law school at the University of Utah.
He was later linked to five other homicides, all with female victims, in Utah — making Laura his sixth confirmed victim in the Beehive State.
Bundy was executed by electrocution in Florida in 1989. He confessed to as many as 30 murders countrywide, but officials have long speculated that he was lowballing.
In each instance, Bundy would loiter in areas frequented by high school or college students, lure his well-meaning victims to his car, knock them out, and speed off to a remote location. There, he would sexually assault his victim, sometimes over a series of days, before eventually choking them to death.
