Custody escapes and Florida attacks precede the 1979 trial
Ted Bundy’s rampage of violence spanned at least four years and left dozens of victims behind, including at least 30 women and girls who were killed and several others who escaped or survived serious injuries. Associated Press reporting says Bundy targeted young women and girls in attacks across Washington state, Oregon, Utah, Colorado, Idaho and Florida. Nearly 40 years after his death, the tally of confirmed victims continues to grow as DNA testing advances.
Summit County Sheriff Kacey Bates said Tuesday that law enforcement had identified 17-year-old Melissa Anne Smith as one of Bundy’s victims, months after a nearby county used Bundy’s DNA to solve another cold case. Smith’s body was found on a hillside in Summit Park, Utah, and her head had been beaten with a crowbar. Detectives matched evidence from her body to a DNA profile recovered in the Laura Ann Aime case, according to the account.
Utah law enforcement announced in April that new DNA testing had confirmed Bundy had killed 17-year-old Laura Ann Aime more than 50 years ago. Aime went missing in Utah on Halloween night in 1974, and her body was found a month later beside a highway. Authorities believed she had been kept alive for several days after her abduction.
Bundy had long been a suspect, but investigators lacked enough evidence to charge him while he was alive. The case’s evidence was carefully preserved, and advances in DNA forensic technology later enabled them to extract a profile that matched Bundy and officially close Aime’s case. Authorities said that profile was forwarded to the Summit County Sheriff’s Office, where detectives confirmed it matched evidence found on Smith’s body.
The historical account said Bundy targeted young women and girls, although it is unknown when he began his attacks; deaths linked to him began in Washington state in 1974. He had grown up in Tacoma, and many of his earliest known violent crimes occurred around Seattle. An 18-year-old University of Washington student was sleeping in her home near the Seattle campus in January 1974 when someone broke in and attacked her, leaving her with a fractured skull.
She survived with permanent injuries, and Bundy was believed responsible. Associated Press reporting said the attack fit a pattern he established in later years, often breaking into young women’s homes, bludgeoning and sexually assaulting them, and either leaving them to die or dumping their bodies elsewhere. The next month, Lynda Ann Healy, another University of Washington student, vanished from her home. A small bit of blood was found on her bedding, and her remains were found the following year on Taylor Mountain, a remote area outside a neighboring city, where remains of some of Bundy’s other victims also lay.
Over the next few months, other women were abducted from Washington state and Oregon; in some cases, witnesses saw them talking to a man wearing an arm sling. By October, teen girls in Utah were also disappearing. Carol DaRonch, 18, was snatched by Bundy after he claimed to be a police officer investigating car break-ins. She escaped by jumping from his car when he tried to handcuff her, and her later testimony was instrumental in putting Bundy behind bars. Bundy continued killing throughout the following year in Utah, Colorado and Idaho.
Police arrested Bundy for the first time in connection with the disappearances in August 1975 after pulling him over and finding rope, handcuffs and a ski mask in his vehicle. He was found guilty the following year of kidnapping and assaulting DaRonch and received a 15-year prison sentence. While imprisoned, he was charged in connection with the earlier death of a nursing student.
Authorities brought Bundy to Aspen, Colorado, for a hearing in the nursing-student case in 1977, and he escaped custody by climbing out a second-story courthouse window. Police caught him about a week later, but he escaped again six months later by breaking through a jail ceiling. He then fled across the country and eventually reached Tallahassee, Florida. On Jan. 15, 1978, Bundy entered the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University, bludgeoning two women to death with a large branch and badly injuring two others. He then entered a nearby house and badly injured another sleeping woman.
Less than a month later, Bundy abducted, sexually assaulted and killed a 12-year-old girl in Lake City, Florida. Kimberly Leach was believed to be his final victim; Bundy was arrested after police pulled him over in Pensacola while he was driving a stolen vehicle. His case and his self-assured attitude in court drew widespread attention during his 1979 trial for the Chi Omega murders. The Associated Press account said his widespread fascination was linked in part to many people considering him charming and handsome at the trial. One teenage spectator told an Associated Press reporter covering the trial, “I don’t know what it is he has, but he’s fascinating,” and added, “He’s impressive. He just has a kind of magnetism.”
Presiding Judge Edward Cowart called Bundy a “bright young man” who would have made a good lawyer, and the Associated Press report said Cowart also recognized Bundy as a horrifically violent killer and sentenced him to die for “extremely wicked, shockingly evil and vile” crimes. Bundy was executed on Jan. 24, 1989, by electric chair in Florida. In his final days, he gave a series of confessions that included crimes previously unknown to police, although investigators had not confirmed all of those cases.
The reporting placed Bundy among the most prolific serial killers in United States history, though it said others likely had higher total victim counts. Gary Ridgway admitted killing 49 people, Samuel Little killed more than 60, and Donald Harvey pleaded guilty to killing 37 people.
Associated Press writer Rebecca Boone reported from Boise, Idaho. Associated Press writer Hannah Schoenbaum contributed from Salt Lake City, Utah.