Summit County officials were scheduled to hold a news conference Tuesday about a homicide case nearly 50 years old, with plans to present findings and announce a decision to close the case. The Summit County sheriff and county attorney were expected to discuss the investigation.
According to wcjb.com, authorities in Utah were scheduled to hold the news conference Tuesday to discuss an investigation into another decades-old homicide and its possible connection to Bundy, and officials were expected to provide information about the investigation, its findings, and a planned case closure. Before the announcement, the station reported that the victim's name had not yet been released. A separate report from abc4.com similarly noted that officials had not publicly identified the cold case or the victim at the time of publication.
Multiple outlets have connected the investigation to 17-year-old Melissa Ann Smith, whose 1974 death in Utah has long been listed as a cold case, per the station's report. Utah's Department of Public Safety Bureau of Criminal Identification believes Smith is a victim of Bundy, according to abc4.com. The station reports that Smith was reported missing on October 18, 1974, and her body was later found near Toll Canyon in Summit Park. The Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification states that the Summit County Sheriff's Office was assisted in the investigation by the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office.
Decades-Old Evidence Meets New DNA Science
The broader push to close out these old cases traces back to a 2023 acquisition by Utah's state crime lab, which obtained technology capable of recovering DNA from tiny or degraded samples, according to TownLift. That technology allowed investigators to identify a single male DNA profile, which they then submitted to a national law enforcement database, per CNN. CNN reports that profile can now be used by other agencies that have long suspected Bundy in additional unsolved killings.
That same DNA technology was already credited earlier in 2026 with definitively linking Bundy to the unsolved 1974 death of another Utah teenager, Laura Ann Aime, according to the local sheriff's office as reported by CNN. Aime was 17 when she disappeared on Halloween night, and her body was found roughly a month later in American Fork Canyon, the outlet reported. The Utah County Sheriff's Office confirmed in that case that DNA evidence linked Bundy to Aime's kidnapping and murder, and Utah County formally closed the case on April 1, according to abc4.com.
A Victim Count That Keeps Climbing
Bundy killed at least 30 women and girls across multiple states during the 1970s, per the station's report. He was executed by electric chair in Florida in 1989 for the 1978 murders of two women at Florida State University's Chi Omega sorority house. The tally of his confirmed victims continues to grow because of advances in DNA testing, the station notes. Aime's case was formally closed in April, while officials had scheduled a separate Summit County cold-case announcement.
Many of Bundy's victims escaped or survived his attacks with injuries, and he gave a series of confessions in his final days, admitting to some crimes previously unknown to police. Even so, those confessions never confirmed all of the cases tied to his name.
