Smith’s relatives declined to speak; authorities still pursue Nancy Wilcox’s case
Utah’s state crime lab got new technology in 2023 that extracts DNA from samples even if they are small, degraded from age or contain DNA from multiple people. Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera, whose department has also investigated homicides linked to Bundy, said preserving evidence remained important to applying science many years later.
Utah investigators do not simply assign old killings to Bundy, Rivera said. “Nobody is just going to walk away and just blame everything on Ted Bundy, even though many cases have been that way,” she said. “Here in the state of Utah, we take it very seriously.”
Authorities said they were especially working to solve the 1974 death of 16-year-old Nancy Wilcox of Utah. Besides Florida and Utah, authorities said Bundy had victims in Colorado, Idaho and Washington state.
Serial killer Ted Bundy has been dead since 1989, but the tally of his confirmed victims has continued to grow as DNA testing advances. He killed at least 30 women and girls in multiple states in the 1970s, and many more escaped or survived with injuries.
Utah investigators said they were satisfied Bundy was responsible for killing 17-year-old Melissa Ann Smith in 1974, a death that had long been listed as a cold case. Summit County Attorney Margaret Olson said at a Tuesday news conference that the case had been closed. The announcement came exactly 52 years after a hunter found Smith’s body in the woods.
Investigators closed the case by drawing crucial connections among DNA found on Smith and Laura Aime, another Bundy victim whose Utah County case was resolved last April, and Bundy’s DNA on file in Florida, where he was convicted and ultimately executed. Besides that evidence, Smith’s death showed hallmarks of Bundy’s “pattern, motive, means and opportunity,” Olson said.
Rivera said the closure showed why preserved evidence still matters. “This case demonstrates the importance of preserving evidence,” she said. “We have to solve these cases to the best of our ability,” she said, explaining the importance of tapping science even so many years later.
Smith’s relatives were contacted about the findings but declined to attend the news conference and declined to speak to reporters, the Summit County sheriff’s office said.
Utah County Sgt. Mike Reynolds said, “With every case closure, may we stomp the memory of Ted Bundy out.”
Bundy was executed by electric chair in Florida for the 1978 murders of two women at the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University. He gave a series of confessions in his final days, including some crimes previously unknown to police. Not all of those cases have been confirmed.
Det. Ben Pender of the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office said solving the Smith homicide “does not close the book on Ted Bundy.”