Laura Ann Aime, The 17-Year-Old Kidnapped By Ted Bundy
Find A GraveLaura Ann Aime was just 17 when she was killed by Ted Bundy.
On Oct. 31, 1974, 17-year-old Laura Ann Aime left a Halloween party in Utah. Shortly afterward, she crossed paths with the serial killer Ted Bundy.
Though the exact details of this Halloween murder are unknown, a couple of facts have been established. On that fateful night, Aime ducked out of a Halloween party to buy cigarettes, according to the Los Angeles Times. At some point, Aime met Bundy — and vanished into the night.
Almost a month later, Aime’s nude corpse was found halfway down an embankment in American Fork Canyon. The 17-year-old had been raped, bludgeoned, and strangled before her killer dumped her body.
Bettmann/Getty ImagesTed Bundy later confessed to 30 murders he’d committed across seven states.
Disturbingly, as The Daily Herald reported at the time, it appeared that Aime had died only a week before her body was found. That meant that her killer had likely kept her alive for some time after abducting her on Halloween night.
Police quickly tied Aime’s murder to a number of other crimes from around the same time, including the death of 17-year-old Melissa Smith, the daughter of a local police chief, and the abduction of 17-year-old Debra Kent (whose body remains missing, though her kneecap was identified in 2019).
Though the serial killer never confessed explicitly to killing Laura Ann Aime, investigators believe that she was one of Ted Bundy’s dozens of victims. Her murder — abducted, raped, strangled — matches with Bundy’s M.O., as do the timeframe and location of her disappearance.
