Ted Bundy was born to an unwed mother in Burlington, Vermont in 1946

by Ted Cohen

A half century after the body of a Utah girl was found, police have confirmed she was among dozens of women killed by Vermont-born Ted Bundy.

Before he was executed in Florida in 1989, Bundy, one of the country’s most notorious serial killers, confessed to killing 30 women.

One of them was Laura Ann Aime, 17, of Fairview, Utah, whose remains were found by two college students hiking in the American Fork Canyon near Salt Lake City in 1974.

Utah County detectives Wednesday said they were finally able to confirm Bundy killed her, based on DNA evidence that had been preserved for more than 50 years.

DNA extracted from semen swabbed from Aime’s body in 1974 and entered into a national criminal database was found to have matched Bundy’s.

Police said they didn’t consider Bundy’s confession sufficient evidence to close Aime’s case since he’d refused to provide details proving he killed her.

Now, they said, the case is closed.

Bundy, a one-time law student, was sentenced to death after having been connected to dozens of co-ed murders nationwide in the 1970s.

Theodore Robert Cowell was born Nov. 24, 1946, to Eleanor Louise Cowell at what was then called the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers in Burlington, Vermont.

His biological father’s identity has never been confirmed; his original birth certificate apparently assigns paternity to a salesman and U.S. Air Force veteran named Lloyd Marshall, though a copy of it listed his father as unknown.

Biographer and true crime writer Ann Rule, who knew Bundy personally, wrote that he tracked down his original birth record in Burlington in 1969.

Bundy expressed a lifelong resentment toward his mother for never telling him who his father was.

When Bundy was just four years old, his mother met Johnny Bundy, a hospital cook, at an adult singles night in Tacoma, Washington, marrying him in 1951. He adopted her son Ted, who from then on was known as Ted Bundy.