Recommendations of the Editorial team
Laura Ann Aime of Fairview, Utah, was 17 years old when she was last seen alive at a Halloween party in Utah County in 1974. Hikers found her body on Thanksgiving Day that year – with signs of beating and strangulation. Now authorities say they have proven beyond a doubt that Aime was a victim of serial killer Ted Bundy. as ABC News reports.
Bundy, who was executed in the electric chair in 1989, had long been suspected of killing Aime – the manner of her death fit his modus operandi. He confessed to the deaths of 30 people, including Aime, but was only convicted of three murders. As ABC News reports, Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith told the press on Wednesday that Bundy’s testimony about Aime’s death was “not considered sufficient to close the case and rule out other perpetrators” at the time of the confession.
But now investigators have been able to match sperm that was recovered from Aime’s body more than half a century ago to Bundy’s DNA, the New York Times reports. The body fluid had been entered into a national database, which provided a match with Bundy’s DNA from a database in Florida.
Convicted beyond a doubt
“We can now say without a doubt that Theodore ‘Ted’ Bundy did indeed murder Laura Ann Aime in the fall of 1974 and that law enforcement now has DNA test results that meet the latest forensic standards,” Smith said. “This will make future DNA comparisons easier for those agencies that still have open files in Bundy-related cases.”
“It’s really amazing that people still care about Laura’s case,” Aime’s sister Michelle Impala said at a news conference. Impala was twelve years old when her sister died and remembers her as a cheerful person with a great love of animals, especially horses. She said her sister and parents have found comfort in knowing that investigators have solved the murder.
“I know she would be really happy to know that the case is closed – and just to know that Ted Bundy is grinding his teeth in hell,” Impala said. “I don’t like to think of people going through something like that. But with him and a few other people in this world – they deserve it.”
Bundy’s blood trail across the USA
Although Bundy confessed to killing 30 women, some experts estimate the actual number to be as high as 100. His first confirmed victim was Lynda Ann Healy, whom he killed in February 1974 in Seattle. His murder spree stretched through Utah, Colorado and Idaho. In December 1977, he escaped from a Colorado prison where he was awaiting his murder trial; He then attacked and killed more women and kidnapped a twelve-year-old girl. He was caught again in February 1978 and convicted the following year of murdering two women. In 1980, a Florida jury found him guilty of killing 12-year-old Kimberly Leach, and a judge imposed the death penalty.
In 2019, Kathy Kleiner Rubin reported to ROLLING STONE about her experience of surviving an attack by Bundy. “He was real, he was alive, he was breathing, 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. Really. They need to know that there is evil out there – but that it can be kept at bay.”
