New DNA testing has definitively linked the unsolved death of a Utah teenager in 1974 to serial killer Ted Bundy, the Utah County Sheriff's Office announced Wednesday.

Laura Ann Aime, 17, disappeared on Halloween night 1974 after leaving a party alone to go to a convenience store. Her body was discovered approximately one month later by hikers on the side of a highway in American Fork Canyon. She had been bound, beaten and found without clothing. Authorities said evidence indicated she had likely been kept alive for several days after her abduction.

Investigators had long suspected Bundy's involvement in the case. Police said he verbally acknowledged his culpability leading up to his execution in Florida in 1989, but the case remained officially unsolved until DNA confirmation could be obtained.

The breakthrough came through new technology acquired by the Utah state crime lab in 2023, which allows investigators to extract DNA from samples that are small, degraded, or contain DNA from multiple people. Utah Department of Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason said forensic investigators carefully analyzed preserved evidence to identify portions most likely to yield usable DNA samples. The testing produced a single male DNA profile that matched Bundy's DNA when submitted to a national law enforcement database.

At the time of Aime's killing, Bundy was studying law at the University of Utah. He was first arrested in August 1975 after police found incriminating items including rope, handcuffs and a ski mask in his vehicle. Bundy was convicted in 1976 of kidnapping and assaulting a Utah teenager who escaped, receiving a 15-year sentence.

Bundy is linked to at least 30 deaths of women and girls across several states during the 1970s. He escaped custody twice before his final capture in Florida, where he killed two women at a Florida State University sorority house and a 12-year-old girl. He was executed in Florida in 1989.