Utah DNA Links Ted Bundy to 1974 Murder of Melissa Ann Smith

Utah authorities have used advanced DNA testing to link executed serial killer Ted Bundy to the 1974 murder of 17-year-old Melissa Ann Smith, closing a case that sat unsolved for 52 years, according to the BBC. Smith, the daughter of a local police chief, was found by hunters on Oct. 27, 1974, with signs of rape and torture, the BBC reported.

The identification follows a similar breakthrough in April, when Utah officials used DNA evidence to name teenager Laura Ann Aime as another Bundy victim. Investigators say evidence gathered during the Aime review helped crack the Smith case months later.

How did investigators connect Bundy to the case decades later?

Utah Department of Public Safety officials credited newer DNA-matching methods for the breakthrough, without which the Smith case would likely have remained open. Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera said the pace of change in forensic science is what made the match possible now rather than in prior decades.

"Every single day forensics is changing and we have the ability to take a look at these cases again and again," Rivera said, according to the BBC.

Rivera also credited detectives for keeping physical evidence intact for half a century, saying the outcome "demonstrates the need to preserve evidence even when decades pass," the BBC reported.

What did Ted Bundy admit to doing in Utah?

Before his execution in 1989, Bundy confessed to killing two other teenage girls in Utah, according to the BBC. He has been linked to at least 30 murders across the United States, a toll that has grown as cold-case units revisit decades-old files with modern lab techniques. Utah County Sgt. Mike Reynolds said at Tuesday's press conference that additional Bundy-related cases in the state remain under review.

"With every case closure may we stomp the memory of Ted Bundy out," Reynolds said, per the BBC.

Bundy's pattern, as described in the BBC report, involved approaching women in public places, gaining their trust through charm or a feigned injury, then luring them to isolated locations. He was first arrested in 1975 on a kidnapping charge and sentenced to 15 years. He escaped custody in 1977 by jumping from a prison library window, was recaptured after eight days, escaped a second time, and continued killing until his final arrest in 1978, according to the BBC.

How many other Utah cold cases remain unsolved?

The Smith case is one piece of a larger backlog. The director of the Utah Bureau of Forensic Services told the Salt Lake Tribune in April that the state had 444 unsolved death investigations, including 258 homicides, as cited in the BBC's reporting. That figure frames the scale of cold-case work still ahead for Utah labs even as DNA technology improves.

Rivera framed the Smith resolution as a signal to families still waiting on other unsolved cases. "There is hope out there," she said, according to the BBC, pointing to the pace of forensic advances as a reason unresolved files should not be considered permanently closed.

What happens next in the Bundy-linked investigations?

Reynolds's comment that more Bundy-connected cases are being examined in Utah suggests the Smith identification will not be the last. The BBC did not specify how many additional cases are under review or a timeline for further announcements. Investigators have not detailed the specific DNA technique used beyond describing it as "advanced," and no additional forensic documentation was made public alongside the press conference, per the available reporting.

The Aime case in April established the procedural path now being repeated: DNA evidence tied to one Bundy-linked file is being used to re-examine others from the same era. Whether that process yields further identifications will depend on the condition of preserved evidence from Utah's remaining unsolved homicides, a number officials have already placed at 258.

For now, authorities have closed the book on Smith's murder, 52 years after hunters found her body. The BBC reported no additional charges are possible given Bundy's 1989 execution, leaving formal closure of the case as the primary outcome for Smith's family and investigators who worked it.