Summit County attorney’s office clears Melissa Ann Smith’s 1974 cold case

Aime’s case closed before the July Y-STR comparison with Smith

At a Tuesday press conference in Summit County, Utah, the county sheriff’s office and attorney’s office placed the closure of Melissa Ann Smith’s cold case at the center of the announcement. The Summit County Attorney’s Office had reviewed and cleared the 1974 murder case after 52 years. The offices said the review followed a July 2026 comparison of Y-STR DNA from Smith’s remains and from 17-year-old Laura Aime’s body.

The comparison followed laboratory work completed earlier in 2026 by investigators in the Summit County Sheriff’s Office and the Utah State Crime Lab. Investigators said they had isolated STR and Y-STR DNA from a sample taken from Aime’s body. Aime was 17 when she was found dead in November 1972.

Investigators matched that DNA to Bundy’s DNA on file in Florida and closed Aime’s case. In July 2026, they compared the Y-STR DNA from Aime’s body with Y-STR DNA from Smith’s body. Summit County investigators said the profiles matched and that the pattern, means, motive and opportunity connected to Bundy supported the match.

The Summit County Sheriff’s Office and Summit County Attorney’s Office said the combined DNA and other evidence conclusively showed that serial killer Ted Bundy killed Smith. After 52 years, the attorney’s office reviewed the case and cleared it.

Smith’s remains had been found 52 years earlier by hunters in a wooded area near the county’s northwestern border. The case remained open for decades. Summit County Sheriff Kacey Bates said there had been “much speculation” at the time about a suspect, but one was never named and the case was never officially closed.

“The work began with the investigators who handled the case in 1974, and it continued through the dedication and perseverance of those who carried it forward,” Bates said. “After 50 years, we have reached a point that so many have worked toward.”

Summit County sheriff’s department officials said they had contacted Smith’s next of kin and told them of the case’s resolution. Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera said, “Today we get to remember Melissa Ann Smith, her family and all of our victims from cold cases.”

The identification of Smith also came against the documented history of Bundy’s cases. Bundy was executed in 1989. He confessed to the murders of more than 30 women in Utah, Colorado, Florida and Washington between 1974 and 1978, and he was convicted of three of those murders.

In a separate investigation announced at the same press conference, investigators said they were investigating the death of Nancy Wilcox, who was 16 when she disappeared Oct. 1, 1974, in Utah. Bundy confessed to Wilcox’s murder, but her body was never found.