Utah
New DNA testing links unsolved death of teen in 1974 to serial killer Ted Bundy
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — New DNA testing has definitively linked the unsolved death of a Utah teenager in 1974 to the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy, the local sheriff’s office said Wednesday.
Laura Ann Aime, 17, went missing Halloween night 51 years ago after she left a party alone to go to a convenience store. About a month later, her body was found on the side of a highway in American Fork Canyon. She was bound, beaten and without clothing. Authorities said she had likely been kept alive for several days after her abduction.
Investigators long suspected that Bundy was responsible — police said he verbally acknowledged his culpability before his execution in Florida in 1989 — but the case remained open until they could be certain.
Bundy was one of the nation’s most prolific serial killers, with at least 30 women and girls’ deaths linked to him in several states in the 1970s. His murders — which occurred in sorority houses, parks and elsewhere — set the nation on edge. Bundy’s arrest drew widespread fascination, in part because many considered him to be charming and handsome.
Investigators had carefully preserved the evidence from Aime’s case, and forensic analysts were able to identify portions that seemed most likely to have usable DNA samples, Utah Department of Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason said.
The state crime lab got new technology in 2023 that allows investigators to extract DNA from samples even if they are small, degraded from age or contain DNA from multiple people, he said. That technology allowed them to identify a single male DNA profile, which they submitted to a national law enforcement database.
Bundy’s DNA was a match, Mason said.
That profile can now be used by other law enforcement agencies who have long suspected Bundy of additional unsolved killings, he said, adding that more families could get similar closure.
Impala was only 12 when her older sister died. Even with a five-year age gap, she said they were very close and did everything together. They shared a bedroom on the family’s farm in Fairview, Utah, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Provo.
It’s not known when Bundy first began his attacks, but by 1974, young women — many of them college students — began disappearing in Washington state. Authorities were still investigating those cases when Bundy moved to Salt Lake City and began killing people in Utah, Idaho and Colorado.
At the time of Aime’s killing, Bundy was studying law at the University of Utah.
In August 1975, he was arrested for the first time in connection with the attacks. Police pulled him over and found incriminating items in his vehicle including rope, handcuffs and a ski mask.
He was found guilty the following year of kidnapping and assaulting a teen in Utah who had managed to get away. Bundy was sentenced to 15 years in prison for that crime, and while imprisoned he was charged in connection with the earlier death of a nursing student.
He was brought to Aspen, Colorado, for a hearing in that case in 1977, and he escaped custody by climbing out a second-story courthouse window when he was left alone for a time. He was caught after about a week, but escaped again six months later by breaking through the ceiling of a jail.
Bundy fled across the country, eventually making his way to Tallahassee, Florida. On Jan. 15, 1977, he entered the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University, bludgeoning two women to death with a large branch and leaving two more badly injured. He then went to another house nearby, badly injuring another woman.
Less than a month later, he abducted, sexually assaulted and killed a 12-year-old girl in Lake City, Florida. Kimberly Leach was believed to be his last victim before he was arrested again and executed years later.
Colorado
Man sentenced in cross burning hoax to help elect Colorado Springs’ first Black mayor
A man who helped stage a cross burning which he says was intended to help elect the first Black mayor of Colorado Springs was sentenced in federal court Wednesday to nearly four years in prison.
Derrick Bernard said Mayor Yemi Mobolade knew about his plan, but U.S. District Judge Regina Rodriguez said jurors rejected that claim when they convicted Bernard and his wife in the 2023 plot last year.
Because cross burning is protected by the First Amendment, the case came down to whether the cross burning was a threat against Mobolade.
Jurors found Bernard, who is also Black, and his wife, Ashley Blackcloud, were guilty of making a threat or conveying false information about a threat. They were also found guilty of conspiring to do that together.
Rodriguez said setting the cross on fire and writing a racial slur on one of Mobolade’s campaign signs and then spreading word about it harmed Mobolade and his family and affected the city’s election. She noted Bernard, whose lawyer said he has mental health issues, has “deeply held conspiratorial views” about officials in Colorado Springs.
Mobolade, who communicated with Bernard before and after the cross burning, has denied any involvement. With Bernard sitting a few feet away, the mayor told Rodriguez that he and his wife stopped walking their children to school out of fear for their safety and purchased an escape ladder because his wife was having nightmares about their home being set on fire.
“I don’t believe any family should have to live like that,” he said.
Mobolade said Bernard, who was in contact with community leaders through his work at a local radio station, “took advantage of my openess.” Now running for re-election, Mobolade said he is more cautious. The former pastor said he is praying for God to help him forgive.
Bernard called Mobolade’s comments a “speech for his relection.”
Bernard was previously sentenced to life in state prison after being convicted in 2024 of orchestrating the killing of a rapper in Colorado Springs.
Blackcloud was sentenced to a year and a day in prison, but is appealing her conviction and sentence.
A third person indicted in the cross-burning scheme, Deanna West, pleaded guilty to one count of being part of a conspiracy to set the fire and then spread false information about it, under a plea agreement with prosecutors. According to that agreement, West’s lawyer and government prosecutors agreed that the conspiracy’s goal was to interfere in the campaign of Mobolade’s opponent and create the belief that Mobolade was being discouraged from running because of his race.
New DNA testing links unsolved death of teen in 1974 to serial killer Ted Bundy
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — New DNA testing has definitively linked the unsolved death of a Utah teenager in 1974 to the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy, the local sheriff’s office said Wednesday.
Laura Ann Aime, 17, went missing Halloween night 51 years ago after she left a party alone to go to a convenience store. About a month later, her body was found on the side of a highway in American Fork Canyon. She was bound, beaten and without clothing. Authorities said she had likely been kept alive for several days after her abduction.
Investigators long suspected that Bundy was responsible — police said he verbally acknowledged his culpability before his execution in Florida in 1989 — but the case remained open until they could be certain.
Bundy was one of the nation’s most prolific serial killers, with at least 30 women and girls’ deaths linked to him in several states in the 1970s. His murders — which occurred in sorority houses, parks and elsewhere — set the nation on edge. Bundy’s arrest drew widespread fascination, in part because many considered him to be charming and handsome.
Investigators had carefully preserved the evidence from Aime’s case, and forensic analysts were able to identify portions that seemed most likely to have usable DNA samples, Utah Department of Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason said.
The state crime lab got new technology in 2023 that allows investigators to extract DNA from samples even if they are small, degraded from age or contain DNA from multiple people, he said. That technology allowed them to identify a single male DNA profile, which they submitted to a national law enforcement database.
Bundy’s DNA was a match, Mason said.
That profile can now be used by other law enforcement agencies who have long suspected Bundy of additional unsolved killings, he said, adding that more families could get similar closure.
Impala was only 12 when her older sister died. Even with a five-year age gap, she said they were very close and did everything together. They shared a bedroom on the family’s farm in Fairview, Utah, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Provo.
It’s not known when Bundy first began his attacks, but by 1974, young women — many of them college students — began disappearing in Washington state. Authorities were still investigating those cases when Bundy moved to Salt Lake City and began killing people in Utah, Idaho and Colorado.
At the time of Aime’s killing, Bundy was studying law at the University of Utah.
In August 1975, he was arrested for the first time in connection with the attacks. Police pulled him over and found incriminating items in his vehicle including rope, handcuffs and a ski mask.
He was found guilty the following year of kidnapping and assaulting a teen in Utah who had managed to get away. Bundy was sentenced to 15 years in prison for that crime, and while imprisoned he was charged in connection with the earlier death of a nursing student.
He was brought to Aspen, Colorado, for a hearing in that case in 1977, and he escaped custody by climbing out a second-story courthouse window when he was left alone for a time. He was caught after about a week, but escaped again six months later by breaking through the ceiling of a jail.
Bundy fled across the country, eventually making his way to Tallahassee, Florida. On Jan. 15, 1977, he entered the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University, bludgeoning two women to death with a large branch and leaving two more badly injured. He then went to another house nearby, badly injuring another woman.
Less than a month later, he abducted, sexually assaulted and killed a 12-year-old girl in Lake City, Florida. Kimberly Leach was believed to be his last victim before he was arrested again and executed years later.
Colorado
Man sentenced in cross burning hoax to help elect Colorado Springs’ first Black mayor
A man who helped stage a cross burning which he says was intended to help elect the first Black mayor of Colorado Springs was sentenced in federal court Wednesday to nearly four years in prison.
Derrick Bernard said Mayor Yemi Mobolade knew about his plan, but U.S. District Judge Regina Rodriguez said jurors rejected that claim when they convicted Bernard and his wife in the 2023 plot last year.
Because cross burning is protected by the First Amendment, the case came down to whether the cross burning was a threat against Mobolade.
Jurors found Bernard, who is also Black, and his wife, Ashley Blackcloud, were guilty of making a threat or conveying false information about a threat. They were also found guilty of conspiring to do that together.
Rodriguez said setting the cross on fire and writing a racial slur on one of Mobolade’s campaign signs and then spreading word about it harmed Mobolade and his family and affected the city’s election. She noted Bernard, whose lawyer said he has mental health issues, has “deeply held conspiratorial views” about officials in Colorado Springs.
Mobolade, who communicated with Bernard before and after the cross burning, has denied any involvement. With Bernard sitting a few feet away, the mayor told Rodriguez that he and his wife stopped walking their children to school out of fear for their safety and purchased an escape ladder because his wife was having nightmares about their home being set on fire.
“I don’t believe any family should have to live like that,” he said.
Mobolade said Bernard, who was in contact with community leaders through his work at a local radio station, “took advantage of my openess.” Now running for re-election, Mobolade said he is more cautious. The former pastor said he is praying for God to help him forgive.
Bernard called Mobolade’s comments a “speech for his relection.”
Bernard was previously sentenced to life in state prison after being convicted in 2024 of orchestrating the killing of a rapper in Colorado Springs.
Blackcloud was sentenced to a year and a day in prison, but is appealing her conviction and sentence.
A third person indicted in the cross-burning scheme, Deanna West, pleaded guilty to one count of being part of a conspiracy to set the fire and then spread false information about it, under a plea agreement with prosecutors. According to that agreement, West’s lawyer and government prosecutors agreed that the conspiracy’s goal was to interfere in the campaign of Mobolade’s opponent and create the belief that Mobolade was being discouraged from running because of his race.
