Cold Case Solved: Laura Ann Aime Confirmed as Ted Bundy Victim
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On Halloween night, October 31, 1974, 17-year-old Laura Ann Aime left a party in Orem, Utah to buy a pack of cigarettes and never returned.
Laura was born on 21 August 1957 in Provo, Salem, Utah County to parents James J. and Shirlene Tolton Aime. She had one brother and four sisters and was a student at the nearby North Sanpete High School. The Aime family were members of the LDS Church.
She previously lived with her parents in Fairview; however, she had moved to Salem, Utah six weeks before her murder.
Despite several people saying they had seen her on the night she went missing, none of the sightings were ever officially confirmed. With little evidence to go on, police were unable to locate her.
Laura’s frozen, naked body was discovered on November 27 by a teenage hitchhiker on a 12-foot embankment near the Timpanogos Cave visitors center in American Fork Canyon.
Autopsy revealed she had been sexually assaulted, strangled with her own stockings, and suffered blunt force trauma to the head. She had multiple injuries to the head, including a fractured skull.
Her clothing was never located, aside from her stockings which were still around her neck.
Police believed she had been murdered elsewhere and that her body had been driven to the area afterwards.
State medical examiner Serge Moore estimated that Laura had been deceased for approximately one week before her body was discovered.
Laura's murder occurred around the same period as the murders of two additional girls. Nancy Wilcox, a seventeen-year-old cheerleader, disappeared from Holladay in central Salt Lake County, Utah, after friends saw her sitting in the passenger seat of a Volkswagen with an unidentified male.
She was later identified as a victim of the notorious serial killer Ted Bundy. Bundy had moved to the area just two weeks prior, in order to study law at the University of Utah.
A week after Laura went missing, another teenager, 19-year-old Carol DaRonch, was abducted in a separate incident.
On November 8, 1974, Carol was lured into the parking lot of Sears Mall by a man posing as a law enforcement officer with a fake badge. The man claimed her vehicle had been broken into and convinced her to get into his Volkswagen so they could go to a police station.
Once inside, Carol was handcuffed on one wrist and he began beating her and threatening to shoot her. She managed to escape the vehicle and waved down a passing motorist who took her to a nearby police station.
The man matched Bundy’s description and Carol would later go on to testify against him in court.
On August 16, 1975, Ted Bundy was arrested in Utah for traffic violations, and police discovered a ski mask and handcuffs in his vehicle. It was this arrest that led to him being identified as a serial killer. Bundy confessed to killing 30 women and has been linked to more.
For years, those following the case speculated that Bundy could have been responsible for Laura's murder because the timeline matched his whereabouts at the time. The modus operandi was similar to that of other murders in the vicinity during the same period.
DNA testing was not available to officers at the time, but they knew to preserve evidence well. Although Bundy went on to confess to Laura's murder shortly before his execution in 1989, it could not be conclusively proven at the time.
Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith said the confession did not give enough factual details to conclusively say Bundy was responsible, and no other party was involved in Laura’s murder.
Laura's sister, Michelle Impala, told ABC4 News: "Just to know that people still care is really touching to me. People think when they ask me questions about her it bothers me, it doesn’t. I feel like it's more of an honor to be able to talk about her."
The Utah County Sheriff's Office announced earlier this month that the cold case murder of Laura Ann Aime has officially been closed after identifying Ted Bundy as the killer. Evidence collected from the victim's body has been linked to the murder through DNA evidence, they said.
The evidence was gathered in 1974 and was preserved well enough by authorities at the time that it was able to be tested using modern techniques. At a press conference, Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith thanked those working on the case at the time for a job well done.
They hope they will go on to solve additional cold cases in the same way and hope closing Laura's case will allow the family to begin to heal.
