Utah authorities closed the 1974 murder case of 17-year-old Melissa Ann Smith, saying Y-STR DNA matching another Bundy victim's profile, combined with pattern and opportunity evidence, establishes Bundy killed her.

Utah law enforcement officials formally closed the 1974 homicide of Melissa Ann Smith on Tuesday, announcing that new DNA testing and decades of investigative work establish that serial killer Ted Bundy killed the 17-year-old.

The announcement came 52 years to the day after hunters found Smith's body in a wooded area near the Summit–Salt Lake county line.

The evidence that closed the case

Smith disappeared from Midvale on Oct. 18, 1974, after leaving a pizza restaurant. She was the daughter of then-Midvale Police Chief Louis Smith. Her body was discovered nine days later, on Oct. 27, in the Summit Park area near the Ridge Trailhead.

Bundy had long been suspected in the killing, but the Summit County Sheriff's Office never named a suspect and never officially closed the case.

The breakthrough followed the resolution of another Utah case. In April, the Utah State Crime Lab developed an STR DNA profile from biological evidence recovered from the body of 17-year-old Laura Ann Aime of Lehi — who vanished on Halloween 1974 and was killed weeks after Smith — and directly matched it to Bundy's known DNA profile held on file in Florida. Utah County closed Aime's case on April 1.

Investigators then used remaining evidence from the Aime case to develop a Y-STR profile, which examines DNA from the Y chromosome passed through the paternal line. The state crime lab compared that profile with a Y-STR profile developed from biological evidence recovered from Smith's body and found the two consistent. The match was finalized in July.

A match, not a standalone identification

Crime lab officials were explicit about the limits of the result. Because Y-STR DNA is inherited paternally, male relatives can share the same profile. Unlike the direct STR match in the Aime case, the Smith result was not treated as a stand-alone identification of Bundy.

Instead, prosecutors said the matching profiles, taken together with evidence of pattern, motive, means and opportunity, established responsibility.

"This DNA evidence, when considered alongside evidence related to pattern, motive, means and opportunity, establishes that Ted Bundy was responsible for Melissa Ann Smith's murder," Summit County Attorney Margaret Olson said at a press conference at the Summit County Justice Center.

How the investigation was revived

The renewed inquiry began in May 2025, when Utah County investigators contacted the Summit County Sheriff's Office about similarities between the Aime and Smith cases. The late Summit County Sheriff's Lt. Alan Siddoway, who died of cancer earlier this month, began reviewing the Smith investigation and worked with Salt Lake County Detective Ben Pender, Utah County investigators and the state crime lab.

Salt Lake County had retained the original 1974 case reports and physical evidence, allowing investigators to return to material collected after Smith's body was found. Sheriff Rosie Rivera said the agency does not destroy evidence in homicide cases.

"This case demonstrates the importance of preserving evidence even when decades have passed," Rivera said. "We owe that to the families of these cold cases."

Sheriff Kacey Bates recognized Siddoway at the announcement, recalling a line he often quoted, attributed to Voltaire: "To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth."

Smith's surviving relatives, who live out of state, were informed before the public announcement. The sheriff's office said one family member reached was "very, very gratified" the case had been resolved but did not want to participate publicly.

Why investigators pursued it

Asked why the resolution mattered when Bundy had been assumed for decades to be the killer, Rivera said establishing the facts was the point.

"It's super important for law enforcement to do its due diligence to solve a case," she said. "Nobody is just going to walk away and just blame everything on Ted Bundy."

The case is not the end of the inquiry

Bundy was living in Salt Lake City and attending law school at the University of Utah during the fall of 1974. He was executed in Florida in 1989. Accounts of the number of murders he confessed to vary between 30 and 36; law enforcement has confirmed at least 21.

He confessed to killing other Utah victims, including Aime, but never confessed to Smith's murder.

Investigators continue to work the disappearance of Nancy Wilcox, another Utah teenager long linked to Bundy whose body has never been found.

"It does not close the book on Ted Bundy," Rivera said.