PARK CITY, Utah — Utah investigators announced on Tuesday, October 27, 2026, that DNA evidence has linked serial killer Ted Bundy to the 1974 killing of a 17-year-old girl from Midvale, formally closing a cold case that had stayed open for 52 years. The announcement was made at a Summit County Sheriff's news conference attended by law enforcement officials from Summit, Utah and Salt Lake counties.
Source: Associated Press
Summit County Attorney Margaret Olson said investigators are satisfied that Bundy was responsible for the teenager's death. The case was closed by making crucial connections between DNA found in evidence from the 1974 case and DNA from another Bundy victim whose killing was resolved in Utah County last April, officials said.
Source: Associated Press
The girl disappeared in October 1974, shortly after Bundy had moved to Salt Lake City. She had left a pizza restaurant in the Midvale area, where she had gone to see a friend, and never came home. Deer hunters later found her body in a rural part of Summit County — on October 27, 1974, exactly 52 years before Tuesday's announcement.
Source: Dispatch Times
How the DNA connection was made
Investigators said evidence taken during the girl's autopsy contained a DNA profile highly similar to one linked to Bundy. The breakthrough began with a different case: earlier this year, the Utah State Crime Lab and the Utah County Sheriff's Office recovered DNA from the body of another 17-year-old victim, from Lehi, who disappeared on Halloween 1974 and was found dead in November 1974. That profile matched Bundy's known DNA, and Utah County officials confirmed in April that Bundy had killed her.
Source: Dispatch Times
After that April confirmation, Summit County officials asked Utah County to share the paternal — Y-chromosome — DNA profile it had created. When analysts built a paternal DNA profile from the Summit County evidence, it matched the Utah County profile determined to be Bundy's. Paternal DNA links a sample to a family line rather than to one individual on its own, which is why investigators weighed it together with the rest of the case file.
Source: Associated Press
Summit County Attorney Margaret Olson said: "This DNA evidence, when considered alongside evidence related to pattern, motive, means and opportunity, establishes that Ted Bundy was responsible" for the Midvale teenager's murder. She added that although Bundy is no longer alive to face prosecution, advances in forensic science and the continued dedication of law enforcement professionals have helped provide answers in a case that remained unsolved for over 50 years.
Source: Dispatch Times
What officials said at the news conference
Summit County Sheriff Kacey Bates acknowledged that detectives had long suspected Bundy, but a suspect was never officially named and the case was never officially closed until now. Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera said the result underlines the value of keeping forensic evidence intact for decades. "This case demonstrates the importance of preserving evidence," Rivera said, adding that law enforcement owes families of cold-case victims its best effort to find the truth.
Source: Dispatch Times
Utah County Sheriff's Office Sergeant Mike Reynolds made the same point about evidence retention, and added: "With every case closure, may we stomp the memory of Ted Bundy out." Officials said the girl's surviving next of kin have been told of the findings and of the case's status as solved and closed; none of her next of kin still live in the area, authorities said.
Source: Associated Press
Background: who Ted Bundy was
Bundy was one of the most notorious serial killers in American history. He killed at least 30 women and girls in multiple states during the 1970s, and many others escaped or survived with injuries, according to the Associated Press. He was executed in Florida's electric chair in 1989, at age 42, after being convicted of murder there, including the murders of two women at the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University in 1978. In the final days of his life he confessed to a number of crimes, including some previously unknown to police, although not all of those cases have been confirmed.
Source: Associated Press
His DNA profile exists today because a vial of his blood, taken after his arrest in 1978, was found in Florida in 2011 and used to create a full DNA profile for the FBI's national database. Newer DNA genotyping technology, which the Utah State Crime Lab acquired in 2023, now allows analysts to rebuild complete genetic profiles from tiny, degraded or mixed samples — the kind of evidence that sat in storage from 1974 cases. Testing on the Midvale case evidence began in mid-July, after the April breakthrough in the Lehi case.
Source: Dispatch Times
Cold-case closures do not bring a prosecution — Bundy died in 1989 — but they give a family a verified answer after decades of suspicion without proof, and they test a method Utah investigators can now use on other 1970s files. Every closure also depends on a decision made long ago: keeping autopsy evidence, intact and labelled, for half a century.
What happens next
The Summit County case is now formally closed, and no prosecution is possible because Bundy is dead. Investigators say the same paternal-DNA approach may help with at least one more Utah file: the killing of a 16-year-old girl from Holladay on October 1, 1974, which has long been attributed to Bundy. Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera said her office will continue to work on that case as well. For Utah's Punjabi and wider South Asian families — a growing community around Salt Lake City — the announcement is a reminder that in the American system, an unsolved case is never required to stay unsolved: preserved evidence plus new science can still produce an official answer two generations later.
Source: Dispatch Times