Utah Gets Full Ted Bundy DNA Profile for Cold Cases

Utah now has a full ted bundy DNA profile, giving investigators a new way to compare evidence from decades-old cold cases they have long tied to him. The profile came after state scientists used newer genotyping methods on evidence collected in the 1970s, some of which had been too degraded or mixed for earlier testing.

Ben Pender, who leads the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office cold case unit, said the profile could help with cases beyond the one that was just closed. "Maybe even cases that we’re not aware of that are Bundy cases," he said. "I think it is significant."

Aime evidence and Utah testing

The new profile was built from DNA collected from Laura Ann Aime's body, and investigators announced last week that they had closed her more than 50-year-old cold case. Aime was found dead in American Fork Canyon in 1974. Amy Newman, director of the Utah Bureau of Forensic Services, said new genotyping technology that state scientists began using in 2023 allowed investigators to reconstruct a full DNA profile that could be entered into the FBI's CODIS database.

Earlier state testing methods could produce only partial profiles from the 1970s samples, and those partial results were not strong enough for a CODIS comparison. The new profile gives Utah a complete reference point for Bundy that can be matched against evidence from other cases, instead of leaving investigators with fragments that could not be used in the national system.

Bundy in Utah in 1974

Bundy moved to Salt Lake City in September 1974, when young women were disappearing in Washington state. Investigators believe he went on to kill multiple women across Utah, Idaho, and Colorado. Before he was executed in Florida in 1989, he confessed to killing at least 30 young women, including eight in Utah.

Nancy Wilcox, a 16-year-old cheerleader from Salt Lake County, went missing in 1974 and her body was never found. Pender said Bundy confessed to killing Wilcox, but investigators have never been able to independently confirm it. Utah's cold case database and a department spokesperson currently list four known cold cases in Utah that Bundy is said to be involved in.

Utah cold cases and CODIS

The practical value of the full profile is that it lets investigators compare older Utah evidence against a single complete Bundy profile instead of partial DNA results that could not be entered into CODIS. That could matter in the four known Utah cold cases tied to Bundy, and in any other case where evidence from the 1970s still exists and can be tested against the new profile.

For investigators, the next step is straightforward: review old evidence in cases already linked to Bundy and run it against the new profile. For families tied to those cases, the new testing does not resolve every unanswered question, but it gives Utah a working forensic tool that it did not have before.