Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / DNA testing links serial killer Ted Bundy to 53-year-old unsolved case

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DNA testing links serial killer Ted Bundy to 53-year-old unsolved case · Murder Files Unsealed

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Speaker 1: I want you to just imagine for a second that
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you're standing in a freezing canyon.
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Speaker 2: In Utah, Okay, setting the scene, right, and.
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Speaker 1: It's nineteen seventy four. You've got this detective, you know,
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probably wearing one of those classic wide lapel suits, standing
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out in the cold.
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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the full nineteen seventies aesthetic exactly.
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Speaker 1: And he's looking at this horrific crime scene, right, and
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he's working with the most basic tools. I mean, we're
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talking magnifying glasses, fingerprint dust, maybe some rudimentary blood typing
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kits if they.
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Speaker 2: Were lucky, which really didn't give you much to go on.
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Speaker 1: Back, No, not at all. But here's the thing. He
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takes these microscopic fibers and like biological creases from the victim.
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He puts them carefully into an envelope, seals it up,
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and puts it in a.
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Speaker 2: Freezer, which is such a profound act of faith. Honestly,
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it really is.
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Speaker 1: He essentially locked away a secret, just sort of hoping
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that someone in the future would invent a machine capable
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of reading it. And for fifty two years, those cells
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just sat in the dark.
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Speaker 2: Wow, fifty two years.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and today we're doing a deep dive into the
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exact moment the future finally caught up to that freezer.
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Speaker 2: I love this topic because it really forces you to
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reframe how you think about history. You know, we tend
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to view historical events, especially cold cases, as static, like
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a book that's just been permanently closed and put on
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the shelf.
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Speaker 1: Right like there's nothing new that can be said exactly.
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Speaker 2: But biological evidence is incredibly patient, and the narrative we're
1:28
exploring today is really about how that microscopic patien's ultimately
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shattered a mystery that began over half a century ago.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's untack this because we are dissecting a monumental
1:39
announcement that came out of Utah County. This was April first,
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twenty twenty six, when they officially and definitively closed the
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nineteen seventy four murder case of a seventeen year old
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girl named Laura and Ame. It was a massive announcement,
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huge and to do this deep dive, we're pulling from
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a bunch of stuff for you guys. We've got the
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recent press conference, transcripts, historical records of nineteen seventies police procedures,
2:01
statements from the grieving family and some incredibly dense, cutting
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edge forensic science report.
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Speaker 2: Those reports are well, they're fascinating that they are definitely danse.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll try to translate the heavy science jargon later,
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but the core emission of this deep dive is to
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look at the evolution of proof, like what it meant
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to prove a murder in nineteen seventy four versus what
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it takes to undeniably prove it today in twenty twenty six, And.
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Speaker 2: The contrast between those two eras is just staggering. I mean,
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in the nineteen seventies, the justice system relied so heavily
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on circumstantial evidence and eyewitness testimony.
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Speaker 1: Which we now know is notoriously unreliable, oh incredibly unreliable.
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Speaker 2: That and the confessions of the accused. But today we're
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dealing with algorithms that can literally rebuild degraded genetic code
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from a single cell. So this case really illustrates how
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the silent, unyielding reality of forensic science finally outlasted the
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lifelong lives of one of America's most notorious.
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Speaker 1: Serial killers, Ted Bundy. Ted Bundy.
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Speaker 2: But before we get into the filing of a serial
3:01
killer or you know the absolute marvel of massively parallel sequencing,
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which we will get to. We really need to focus
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on the person at the center of this strgedy.
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Speaker 1: I agree completely. That's so important because in historical true crime,
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the victims are almost always flattened. They just become a
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name in a bulleted list on a Wikipedia page about
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the killer. But Laura ann Am was a very real,
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very vibrant, seventeen year old girl. She was She was
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born on August twenty first, nineteen fifty seven, in Lehigh, Utah,
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and she was the fifth of six children. So big family.
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Speaker 2: Growing up in a massive, bustling household like that in
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rural Utah in the nineteen sixties and seventies sets a
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very specific backdrop. Her family operated a close knit farm
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in Fairview that's about fifty miles southeast of Provo, right,
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and an agricultural lifestyle demands resilience. It fosters this deep,
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ingrained connection to the environment. But beyond her environment, the
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source materials highlight a very specific physical trait that really
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shaped her social experience.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is cruse to understanding her life at
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the time. By the time she was a teenager, Laura
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Stad nearly six.
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Speaker 2: Feet tall, which is significant you think.
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Speaker 1: About being a teenage girl in a relatively small high
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school in the early nineteen seventies, Standing six feet tall
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makes you a lightning rod for attention. And I mean, unfortunately,
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teenagers are not exactly known for their grace when dealing
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with anyone who stands out.
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Speaker 2: No, teenagers can be brutal.
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Speaker 1: They really can. The historical records indicate she faced intense,
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relentless bullying at North sand Pete High School because of
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her height, and it got to the point where the
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environment was so toxic she actually ended up dropping out
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at age seventeen.
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Speaker 2: You know, dropping out of high school in a rural
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community in nineteen seventy four. That wasn't just an educational shift.
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It was a profound social isolation.
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Speaker 1: How so, just because the school is the hub of
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the town exactly.
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Speaker 2: The high school is often the absolute center of community
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life in a town like Fairview. The sports, the dances,
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the social hierarchy, it's all there. When you're pushed out
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of that ecosystem by bullying, you were four to seek
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solace in an alternative identity somewhere else.
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Speaker 1: You have to find your own space.
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Speaker 2: Right you retreat to places where you feel valued, where
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your physical presence isn't an object of ridicule but perhaps
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an asset.
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Speaker 1: And for Laura, that refuge was the outdoors. Her loved
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ones described her as this quote tall, beautiful, outgoing, free spirit.
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She didn't just you know, casually like nature. She was
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totally immersed in it.
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Speaker 2: She was very capable.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, she hunted deer with her father, which, if you
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think about it, that requires a significant amount of patience, ruggedness,
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and a deep, quiet bond with him. And she was
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also incredibly close to her younger sister, Michelle im Paula.
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Speaker 2: Michelle's about twelve years old at the time, right.
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Speaker 1: Exactly five years younger than Laura. But they shared a
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bedroom on the farm, and the family described them as
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being absolutely inseparable.
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Speaker 2: The dynamic of sharing a bedroom on a family farm
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with a younger sister paints such a vivid picture. I mean,
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it's the late night conversations, the shared secrets, the creation
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of a private, safe world away from the judgment of peers.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's their own little sanctuary.
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Speaker 2: For someone who felt alienated at school. That sisterly bond
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provides a crucial emotional anchor.
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Speaker 1: There is one detail in the family's later statements that
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just it honestly stops you in your tracks. It's about
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the horses on the farm. Oh, this part is heartbreaking,
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It really is.
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Speaker 2: Laura had a deep connection with the animals, specifically this
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one favorite horse. She rode all the time with Michelle,
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and she had this daily ritual where she would feed
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this specific horse red licorice nibs as a treat. And
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after Laura was killed, the family noted that this horse
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completely refused to eat red liquorice ever. Again, Wow, it's
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just such a visceral reminder of how far the ripples
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of a violent act spread. You know, it actually altered
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the reality of the animals she cared for.
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Speaker 1: Animals are profoundly sensitive to disruptions and routine, and especially
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to the absence of their primary caretakers. The horse refusing
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the treat is this lingering, nonverbal testament to the suddenness
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of her disappearance.
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Speaker 2: It makes it so real, it does.
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Speaker 1: It strips away the clinical nature of a police report
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and grounds the story in the agonizing, day to day
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reality of a family and a farm just trying to
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comprehend a sudden void.
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Speaker 2: And it was Laura's fierce independence, her comfort navigating the
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world outside that traditional high school structure that ultimately set
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the stage for the night she disappeared. Let's talk about
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that timeline.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, we are looking at Halloween night, October thirty first,
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nineteen seventy four. Laura is seventeen years old. She attends
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a party in the Leehy area. Around ten pm. A
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friend drops her off at a local bar, but she's
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only there briefly, Okay, At eleven pm she leaves on foot,
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heading toward Robinson Park.
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Speaker 2: We really have to factor in the environmental reality of
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that exact moment. Late October in Utah County is not mild. No,
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it's cold, very The ambient temperature was hovering around forty
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five degrees. Furthermore, the distance from the bar to Robinson Park.
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It wasn't just a quick one walk around the block.
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The sources show it was a journey that would have
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taken her approximately an hour.
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Speaker 1: On foot, an hour's in the cold.
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Speaker 2: In the dark and forty five degree weather.
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Speaker 1: So a teenage girl walking alone for an hour at
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eleven pm on Halloween, when she stepped out of that
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bar into the cold air, that was the last confirmed
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sighting of Laura and aim. Now, if a typical teenager
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who always checks in at curfew suddenly goes missing on
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a cold night, the panic is usually instantaneous, right, It
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usually yes. But the sources note that her family didn't
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sound the alarm immediately.
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Speaker 2: And this is the double edged sword of her independence.
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Because she had dropped out, and because she was known
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as a free spirit who might spontaneously stay with friends
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or go off on her own, her family's threshold for
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alarm was naturally higher.
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Speaker 1: They disfigured she was doing her own thing exactly.
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Speaker 2: They operated on the assumption that she was exercising her
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usual autonomy.
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Speaker 1: They figured she crashed on a friend's couch after the party.
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The realization that something was terribly wrong only crystallized when
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Laura failed to show up for a planned hunting trip.
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Speaker 2: With her father, which was totally out of character for her.
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Speaker 1: Right missing that trip was the undeniable red flag. But
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by the time that realization hit and the police were
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finally notified, that critical initial window for a missing person
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search had completely slam shut.
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Speaker 2: The delay in reporting is one of the most agonizing
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aspects for the families of missing persons. I mean, while
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they're operating under this comforting assumption of safety. The reality
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is unfolding in the worst possible way.
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Speaker 1: It's a horrible thought.
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Speaker 2: It is because the eventual discovery of her body confirmed
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that the violence she experienced wasn't instantaneous.
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Speaker 1: No, it wasn't. We have to jump forward twenty eight days.
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It is November twenty seven, nineteen seventy four. Hikers are
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out traversing American Fork Canyon off American Fork Canyon Road,
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a very rugged area, very rugged. They happened to look
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down a steep embankment and they spot her body. Now,
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the details of the autopsy are incredibly grim, but the
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they are absolutely vital to understanding the pathology of the killer.
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She was found nude bound and had been severely beaten
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with a blunt instrument.
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Speaker 2: And the most harrowing detail from those nineteen seventy four
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autopsy findings is the timeline of her death. The medical
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examiner determined that Laura had not been killed on Halloween night.
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Speaker 1: Wait, really, she survived the initial abduction.
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Speaker 2: Yes, she had likely been kept alive for several days
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after her abduction. Oh wow, This indicates a period of
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prolonged captivity, sustained terror and evidence of sexual assault. This
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wasn't a robbery gone wrong or a sudden crime of passion.
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Highly methodical, the binding, the prolonged captivity, the severe blunt
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force trauma to the head, and the remote disposal of
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the body down a caman embankment. These are highly specific signatures.
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The indicator predator who is practicing and refining a methodology
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of control and torture.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so the authorities find her body in this canyon
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after it has been exposed to the elements for nearly
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a month. Utah in November means freeze, nights, rain, dirt, wildlife.
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The fact that the police in nineteen seventy four managed
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to preserve anything of scientific value from that scene is
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just baffling to me.
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Speaker 2: It really is.
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Speaker 1: How did they actually do it? Because, I mean, nineteen
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seventy four is basically the dark ages of forensic science.
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Compared to what we have today.
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Speaker 2: It genuinely borders on miraculous when you consider their limitations.
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In nineteen seventy four, criminal forensics was largely about physical matching. Yeah,
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you know, comparing the striations on a bullet or analyzing
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blood types.
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Speaker 1: And blood types don't really narrow it down that.
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Speaker 2: Much, right, not at all. Blood types only narrowed suspects
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down to massive percentages of the population, or they might
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match the physical tread of a shoe to a footprint
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in the mud. But DNA profiling the idea that a
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microscopic cellular fragment holds a unique identifiable human barcode that
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did not exist.
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Speaker 1: So they couldn't just swab for touch DNA like they
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do on every procedural TV show today.
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Speaker 2: Far from it. But the investigators in Utah County demonstrated
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in credibly adherenced to the core principles of crime scene preservation.
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They didn't just look at a body that had been
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outdoors for twenty eight days and declared the physical evidence ruined.
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Speaker 1: Which would have been easy to do, very easy.
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Speaker 2: But instead, the crime scene technicians meticulously combed the remains.
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They used tweezers to lift microscopic fibers, stray hairs, and
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degraded biological material. They sealed these minute samples and sterile
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paper bindles to prevent moisture build up and mold.
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Speaker 1: Because plastic would have caused condensation.
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Speaker 2: Exactly plastic would have ruined it. Then they placed those
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paper bendles into larger envelopes and loged them into a cold,
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dark evidence locker.
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Speaker 1: So they were essentially preserving biological trash without knowing what
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the future would actually do with it.
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Speaker 2: That is the essence of forensic faith. They trusted the
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scientific method Implicitly, they believed that while their nineteen seventy
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four microscopes couldn't tell them who left those fibers, the
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scientists of tomorrow might invent a way to make them speak.
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Speaker 1: It's amazing foresight.
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Speaker 2: Without that tedious, thankless work by anonymous crime scene tech
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in nineteen seventy four, the twenty twenty six breakthrough were
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discussing today is mathematically impossible. Man.
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Speaker 1: So while the police are sealing away those fibers, the
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broader context of what is happening in Utah is absolutely terrifying,
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because Laura was not an isolated tragedy, not at all.
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To understand the sheer velocity of the violence she encountered,
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we have to look at the man who was stock
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in the state that fall, Theodore Robert Kellell born November
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twenty fourth, nineteen forty six in Vermont. Of course we
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know him as Ted Bundy, right, but his origin story
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is rooted in this profound psychological fracture.
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Speaker 2: It is if you study the early development of psychotathy.
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Bundy is a textbook example of how early deception can
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warp a developing mind. For the formative years of his life,
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Bundy was raised within a massive familial.
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Speaker 1: Lie, a huge secret.
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Speaker 2: Yes, his mother was young and unmarried when she had him,
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and to avoid the social stigma of the nineteen forties,
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her parents, Bunny's grandparents raised him as their own son.
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He was explicitly taught that is biological mother was actually
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his older sister.
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Speaker 1: I mean, when a child eventually uncovers a foundational lie
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of that magnitude, the psychological whiplash must be devastating.
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Speaker 2: It shatters the concept of trust entirely. It teaches the
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child that reality is malleable and that the adults who
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are supposed to protect them use complex deception to maintain
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their social standing.
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Speaker 1: Wow.
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Speaker 2: That's a dark lesson for a young mind already predisposed
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to dark impulses. This realization is just gasoline on a fire.
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He internalized the idea that a presentable, socially acceptable facade
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can easily mask a dark truth, and he spent his
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early adulthood, perfecting that exact facade.
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Speaker 1: Because he wasn't the stereotypical socially awkward loaner lurking in
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the shadows right.
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Speaker 2: No, quite the opposite.
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Speaker 1: He was conventionally handsome, highly articulate, and politically active. He
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studied psychology at the University of Washington, and by the
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fall of nineteen seventy four he had moved to Salt
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Lake City to attend law school at the University of Utah.
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He basically weaponized societal trust.
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Speaker 2: In the early nineteen seventies, the cultural awareness of stranger
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danger was practically non existent compared to today.
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Speaker 1: People were so much more trusting.
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Speaker 2: They were people hitched rides, left doors unlocked, and inherently
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trusted authority figures or anyone who looked respectable. A handsome,
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articulate law student who politely asks for help is the
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ultimate predatory camouflage.
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Speaker 1: And he actively manufactured scenarios to exploit human empathy. The
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source materials detail his methodology. Back in Washington State, where
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victims like Linda Ann Healy, Donna Manson, Susan Raincourt, and
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Brenda Ball all went missing.
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Speaker 2: They often fit a very specific profile, didn't they.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, young college aged women with long, dark hair parted
15:40
down the middle. But his method of abduction is what
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is truly chilling. He didn't just grab them off the street.
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Speaker 2: He hacked this social contract. Bundy would frequently put his
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arm in a fake sling or wear a plaster cast
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on his leg and use crutches.
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Speaker 1: It's so manipulative.
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Speaker 2: He would drop his law books or struggle to carry
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something to his car. The infinous tan volks Wag and Beetle.
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He presented himself as injured, vulnerable, and completely non.
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Speaker 1: Threatening because he knew that women are socially conditioned to
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be polite and helpful. I mean, if a handsome guy
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on crutches asks you to help him put a box
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in his car, it goes against every social instinct to
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tell him no and walk away.
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Speaker 2: Exactly the vulnerability he preyed upon. He would lure them
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to the passenger side of the VW Beetle, and the
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moment they leaned in or let their guard down, the
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facade evaporated.
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Speaker 1: The crow bar.
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Speaker 2: Yes, he typically used a crowbar to deliver a sudden,
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incapacitating blow to the head. He would then push them
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into the car where he had actually removed the passenger
16:38
seat to make room for an unconscious body and drive away.
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Speaker 1: It's sickening. And by the time he arrived in Utah
16:43
for law school in the fall of nineteen seventy four,
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he wasn't just experimenting with this method. He had perfected it.
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And the timeline of his arrival in Salt Lake City
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triggers an immediate, terrifying escalation in violence. The pace at
16:57
which he begins operating is stacked.
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Speaker 2: The shift in his geography is a crucial component of
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how he evaded capture two. Oh so well. In ninety
17:06
seventy four, police departments operated in strict jurisdictional silos. The
17:09
police in Seattle, Washington had no computerized way to share
17:12
their unsolved missing persons reports with the police in Salt
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Lake City, Utah.
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Speaker 1: Oh right, there was no Internet, no national database.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, if a killer moved across state lines, he essentially
17:22
wiped his slate clean. Bundy exploited this blind spot to
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accelerate his killing without raising immediate multi state alarms.
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Speaker 1: Let's break down that specific window in Utah, because it's
17:32
a terrifying sprint. It starts on October eighteenth, nineteen seventy four.
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Seventeen year old Melissa Smith vanishes from a convenience store
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in Midvale, Utah. She happens to be the daughter of
17:42
a local police chief, and just nine days later her
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body is found in the Wasatch Mountains. She had been beaten, strangled,
17:49
and sexually assaulted.
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Speaker 2: So that is mid October. The level of violence is severe,
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and the geographic disposal a mountainous, rugged area perfectly matches
17:58
his growing pattern.
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Speaker 1: Then we moved. Just thirteen days later, October thirty four,
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Halloween Night, Laura Aim leaves the bar in Lehigh and
18:06
vanishes into the cold air.
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Speaker 2: Two victims in a two week span, and the acceleration continues.
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Speaker 1: Eight days after Laura disappears. November eight, nineteen seventy four,
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another seventeen year old girl, Debbie Kent, leaves a high
18:18
school play in Bountiful, Utah, to pick up her brother.
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She never makes it to her car.
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Speaker 2: It's out of control.
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Speaker 1: But this is where the camouflage starts to crack, because,
18:26
unlike the quiet Canyon Road, a high school parking lot
18:29
after a play is crowded. Witnesses and Bountiful actually report
18:32
seeing a tan Volkswagen Beetle.
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Speaker 2: In the parking lot, a major slip up.
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Speaker 1: And more importantly, they report seeing a strange man lurking
18:39
around the school who was wearing a sling on his arm.
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Speaker 2: The interval between the crimes is shrinking drastically. Here, from
18:46
October eighteen to November eight you have three distinct abductions.
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When a serial offender operates at this frenetic, almost uncontrollable pace,
18:55
they begin to lose their discipline. They get sloppy, very sloppy.
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The psychological compol overrides their tactical caution, driving the identifiable
19:04
VW beetle to a crowded high school and openly utilizing
19:08
the sling ruse in front of witnesses. That is a
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massive error born of arrogance.
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Speaker 1: And compulsion, and those errors eventually compound. His downfall in
19:17
Utah actually begins with a routine traffic stop. In August
19:20
nineteen seventy five, a highway patrol officer pulls Bundy over
19:24
in the Granger area of Utah.
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Speaker 2: Just a standard stop.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, But the officer notices things that don't add up,
19:29
searches the car and finds what is essentially a rolling
19:31
abduction kit. Handcuffs, rope, a ski mask, a Crowbar.
19:35
Speaker 2: That traffic stop was the thread that unraveled his entire life.
19:39
It led to him being placed in a lineup where
19:41
he was positively identified by Carol Darnage.
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Speaker 1: She was the one who escaped.
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Speaker 2: Yes, she was a teenager who had miraculously fought him
19:48
off and escaped his car earlier in the year when
19:50
he tried to abduct her by posing as a police officer.
19:54
Her testimony secured his first major conviction in nineteen seventy
19:57
six for aggravated kidnapping.
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Speaker 1: But the walls of a prism couldn't easily contain his notoriety.
20:03
While serving time in Utah, Colorado authorities charge him with
20:06
the murder of Karen Campbell. He's extradited to Colorado, and
20:11
this is where the mythology of Ted Bundy as some
20:13
kind of evil genius really takes root in the American media.
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Speaker 2: Which is such a harmful narrative.
20:19
Speaker 1: It is because he escapes from custody not once, but twice. First,
20:23
he jumped out of a second story courthouse window in
20:26
Aspen during a recess where he was acting as his
20:28
own attorney. He's recaptured a week later, and then the
20:31
second time, then six months later, he starves himself to
20:34
lose weight, saws a hole through the ceiling of his
20:36
cell in Glenwood Springs, crawls through the ducwork, and drops
20:40
down into the jailer's apartment to literally just walk out
20:43
the front door.
20:44
Speaker 2: Those escapes were a catastrophic failure of the penal system,
20:47
but they serve to elevate his status in the public
20:49
consciousness to that of a dark antihero.
20:52
Speaker 1: It's like something out of a movie, which just fueled
20:55
his ego exactly.
20:57
Speaker 2: He fled all the way to Florida, and that final
20:59
spree of free and resulted in the most frenzied brutal
21:02
violence of his life, the horrific attacks at the chi
21:05
Omega sorority house in January nineteen seventy eight and the
21:09
abduction and murder of twelve year old Kimberly Leech shortly after.
21:12
Speaker 1: The Florida authorities finally caught him driving a stolen car
21:15
in Pensacola, and the trials in Florida were absolute media circuses.
21:19
He was convicted, sentenced death, and after a decade of appeals,
21:22
he was finally executed by the electric chair at Florida
21:25
State Prison on January twenty fourth, nineteen eighty nine, which.
21:28
Speaker 2: Brings us to the agonizing paradox of this pacific story.
21:32
The monster is caught, he's tried, and he is executed.
21:35
Society gets its ultimate retribution. But while the nation moved
21:39
on feeling that the chapter was closed, the family of
21:42
Laura ann Aim was left in a perpetual state of limbo.
21:44
Speaker 1: Right, Bundy dies in nineteen eighty nine, but the announcement
21:47
that Laura's case is closed didn't happen until twenty twenty six.
21:51
Why the massive gap?
21:52
Speaker 2: That's a great question.
21:53
Speaker 1: If the police suspected him, and they had the fibers
21:57
and he was executed anyway, why did it remain and
22:00
an officially unsolid cold case for another thirty seven years.
22:03
Speaker 2: To understand that, you have to understand the psychology of
22:07
a narcissistic psychopath facing his own mortality, and the immense
22:11
difference between a killer's confession and objective legal proof.
22:15
Speaker 1: Okay, walk me through that.
22:16
Speaker 2: Throughout his incarceration, Bundy maintained an arrogant, impenetrable facade of innocence.
22:22
He blamed society, he blamed pornography, he blamed everything but himself.
22:26
Speaker 1: But as the clock started ticking down to his execution.
22:29
His strategy changed drastically.
22:31
Speaker 2: Once he exhausted his appeals and realized the electric chair
22:34
was an absolute certainty. He realized he had one final
22:37
currency left information.
22:39
Speaker 1: He started talking.
22:40
Speaker 2: He began dangling the details of his unsolved murders to
22:43
investigators and journalists like James Dobson and Stephn Micheau. He
22:47
believed that if he could convince the authorities he had
22:49
more bodies to reveal, more mysteries to solve, they would
22:52
be forced to stay his execution to get the information.
22:56
He was literally bartering human lives for a few more
23:00
weeks of his own.
23:01
Speaker 1: It's manipulative to the very end, and the source materials
23:04
note that during this final frantic period, on the literal
23:08
eve of his execution in nineteen eighty nine, Bundy finally
23:12
offered a verbal confession to the murder of.
23:14
Speaker 2: Laura and ame he played a cruel game with it.
23:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, he admitted he was the one who killed her,
23:19
but he refused to provide a single specific detail. He
23:22
didn't say where he took her, he didn't explain his methods,
23:25
and he offered absolutely zero remorse to the family. He
23:29
just tossed the admission.
23:30
Speaker 2: Out there, just to keep him on the hook.
23:31
Speaker 1: But wait, if you are the Utah police in nineteen
23:34
eighty nine, the guy is going to the electric chair tomorrow.
23:37
He's dead either way. He finally says, yes, I did it.
23:41
You already know he was operating in the area. Why
23:43
not stamp the file close?
23:45
Speaker 2: I know, it seems like the logical step, right.
23:47
Speaker 1: Why not drive over to the ame family farm that
23:50
night and say it's over, we got him and give
23:52
them some semblance of peace. It almost seems cruel to
23:55
make them wait another three decades.
23:57
Speaker 2: It is an incredibly powerful temptation for law enforcement to
24:01
do exactly that. There was immense pressure from the public,
24:04
from politicians, and from the media to clear cold cases
24:07
from the books. But the Utah authorities recognize a fundamental
24:12
truth about criminal psychology, which is serial killers lie even
24:15
when confessing. We really have to look at the phenomenon
24:18
of false confessions to understand their hesitation. Here.
24:21
Speaker 1: Wait, serial killers falsely confessing to murders they actually didn't commit.
24:25
Speaker 2: Why would they do that for a variety twisted reasons.
24:28
Take Henry Lee Lucas, for example, in the nineteen eighties,
24:32
Lucas confessed to hundreds of unsolved murders across the country,
24:35
hundreds hundreds, and the Texas Rangers, eager to clue with
24:38
their books, started flying him around the state, feeding a
24:41
milkshakes and letting him solve cases. It turned out to
24:44
be a massive embarrassment because Lucas was confessing to murders
24:47
in states he had never even visited.
24:49
Speaker 1: Oh wow, so why do it?
24:50
Speaker 2: He did it for the attention, to gain privileges in prison,
24:54
and to inflate his own dark mythology as the most
24:58
prolific killer in history. Narcissists want credit for the terror
25:02
they cause, and sometimes they want credit for terror they
25:04
had nothing to do with, just to feel powerful.
25:08
Speaker 1: So the Utah police are looking at Bundy, knowing he
25:10
is the ultimate manipulator. They realize that if they closed
25:13
the case based on an undocumented detail, free whisper from
25:18
a pathological liar trying to stall his execution, there will
25:21
always be a shadow of doubt.
25:23
Speaker 2: Precisely, if you close it on his word alone, a
25:26
decade later, someone might find a discrepancy. The family might
25:30
spend the rest of their lives wondering did he just
25:32
say that to mess with the police. Is the real
25:34
killer still out there walking around?
25:35
Speaker 1: That would be a nightmare.
25:37
Speaker 2: It would be ah true. Profound healing for a victim's
25:41
family requires objective, undeniable truth. Utah County Sheriff Surgeon Mike
25:46
Reynolds articulated this perfectly in the twenty twenty six press
25:49
conference addressing the family. He said, we felt the pain
25:52
the family feels when she was taken. We've had the
25:55
desire to deliver to you some type of healing. You
25:58
cannot build healing on the flimsy foundation of a psychopaths
26:01
last minute lie.
26:03
Speaker 1: So they chose the harder path. They kept the file open,
26:06
They left the evidence sitting in the cold. They decided
26:08
they were going to wait for a scientific miracle.
26:10
Speaker 2: And that miracle took a very long time to arrive
26:13
because the forensic DNA revolution didn't happen overnight.
26:16
Speaker 1: Let's track that scientific evolution, because in the late nineteen
26:19
eighties and early nineteen nineties DNA testing does start entering
26:22
the courtroom. I'm assuming the Utah authorities must have thought, Okay,
26:26
this is it, let's spaw out the evidence. Why couldn't
26:28
they solve this in say, nineteen ninety five.
26:31
Speaker 2: The DNA testing available in the nineteen nineties primarily a
26:34
method called RFLP, or restriction fragment length polymorphism. It was revolutionary,
26:39
but it was incredibly.
26:41
Speaker 1: Blunted in what way.
26:42
Speaker 2: To get a usable genetic profile With RFLP, the forensic
26:45
scientist needed a large, pristine, highly intact sample of biological material,
26:51
a large pool of fresh blood, a significant fluid sample.
26:54
Speaker 1: But Laura's body had been outside in a canyon for
26:57
twenty eight days. The evidence wasn't pristine at all. It
27:00
was battered by rain, dirt, and microscopic bacteria.
27:03
Speaker 2: Exactly our FLP fundamentally struggled with degradation. It also could
27:08
not handle mixtures.
27:09
Speaker 1: Well, what do you mean by mixtures?
27:11
Speaker 2: If a sample contained the killer's DNA mixed with the
27:13
victims DNA, or if it was contaminated by the natural environment,
27:17
the nineteen nineties equipment would just produce a muddy, unreadable smudge.
27:22
It's the equivalent of trying to read a manuscript where
27:24
half the words have been washed away by rain and
27:26
someone has written over the remaining words with a thick
27:28
black marker.
27:29
Speaker 1: So the nineteen nineties pass, the two thousands pass, the
27:32
twenty tens pass, the evidence stays locked away, and then
27:35
we hit the twenty twenties. According to the source documents,
27:38
the real turning point arrives between twenty twenty three and
27:40
twenty twenty six, when the Utah State Crime Lab acquires
27:43
next generation technology.
27:45
Speaker 2: This is where the science fiction of the nineteen seventies
27:47
becomes the reality of the twenty twenties. We are talking
27:50
about the implementation of massively parallel sequencing combined with vastly
27:55
improved STR analysis.
27:57
Speaker 1: Okay, before we talk about massively parallel anything, we need
28:01
an ELI five Explain, like I'm five, what exactly is
28:05
an STR The sources throw that acronym around a lot.
28:09
Are they looking for specific genes that dictate eye color
28:11
or something?
28:12
Speaker 2: No, and that's a common misconception. STR stands for short
28:16
tandem repeat. When scientists look at your DNA to identify you,
28:19
they aren't looking at the genes that make up your
28:21
eye color or your height.
28:23
Speaker 1: Right, because we share most of that exactly.
28:26
Speaker 2: Almost all of human DNA is identical from person to person.
28:29
That's what makes us human. But scattered throughout our genetic
28:31
code are sections of what we used to call junk
28:34
DNA junk DNA. Yeah, these are sections that don't seem
28:37
to code for any physical traits. Instead, they are just
28:39
repeating sequences of letters. For example, a sequence like atgc
28:43
might repeat four times in my DNA, but it might
28:46
repeat twelve times in your DNA.
28:48
Speaker 1: It's like a stutter in the genetic code exactly.
28:50
Speaker 2: It's a stutter. And if you look at enough of
28:53
these specific stutter locations, these SDRs across a person's entire genome,
28:58
the specific number of repat at each location creates a
29:02
mathematical barcode that is entirely unique to that one individual.
29:06
Speaker 1: Okay, so how does massively parallel sequencing read that barcode
29:10
if the DNA is totally degraded and smashed to pieces
29:14
from being outside for a month. I have an analogy.
29:17
Tell me if this works.
29:17
Speaker 2: Let's hear it.
29:18
Speaker 1: It's like having an old cassette tape that's been left
29:20
out on the dashboard of a car in the sun
29:22
for fifty years. The plastic is warped, the magnetic tape
29:25
is brittle and stretched. Old nineteen nineties RFLP science essentially
29:30
tried to just put that melted tape in a tape
29:33
deck and hit play, and all they heard was horrible
29:35
static and screeching.
29:36
Speaker 2: With the great comparison, But.
29:37
Speaker 1: This twenty twenty six next gen tech doesn't try to
29:40
blindly play the tape. It takes a microscopic laser, scans
29:44
the physical grooves of the melted plastic, digitally separates the
29:47
sound of the melting from the actual music, and computationally
29:50
rebuilds the sound waves until you hear a perfectly clear
29:53
voice singing.
29:53
Speaker 2: That is a brilliant way to visualize it. The old
29:56
tech tried to read the DNA strand linearly from start
29:59
to finish. If it hit a broken, degraded spot, the
30:02
read failed, just hit a wall, right, but massively parallel
30:06
sequencing takes that tiny shattered microscopic sample and runs millions
30:11
of tiny reeds on all the fragments simultaneously. It uses
30:14
immense computational algorithms to find the overlapping edges of those
30:18
shattered pieces, separating the environmental noise, the bacteria, the victim's
30:23
own profile from the foreign signal. It computationally stitches the
30:27
barcode back together.
30:28
Speaker 1: The analysts in Utah took those tiny fibers collected from
30:31
a freezing Canyon in nineteen seventy four. Put them through
30:34
this computational marvel, and the machine spat out a single, clear,
30:39
reconstructed male DNA profile.
30:41
Speaker 2: And once you have the barcode, the next step is undeniable.
30:44
Speaker 1: They run it through the system. I'm assuming they took
30:46
this pristine, rebuilt profile and plugged it straight into COTIS,
30:49
the FBIS combined DNA index system. But honestly, did they
30:53
actually expect the computer to spit out a match on
30:55
a fifty year old gold case.
30:57
Speaker 2: They did because COTIS is the ultimate pository of criminal genetics.
31:01
If you commit a felony, your DNA goes into that system.
31:05
And when the Utah Lab uploaded this nineteen seventy four
31:08
ghost profile, the database churned through millions of records and
31:12
hit a perfect matchow The profile belonged to Ted Bundy,
31:16
extracted from a blood sample taken during his arrest in
31:19
Florida decades earlier.
31:20
Speaker 1: The language the officials used during the twenty twenty six
31:23
press conference is what really strikes me. Utah Department of
31:26
Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason took the podium, and he
31:29
didn't mince words. He described the results from this heavily
31:32
degraded sample as magnificent and irrefutable.
31:36
Speaker 2: Irrefutable is the absolute highest bar in forensic science. It
31:40
means there is no statistical wiggle room. It wasn't a
31:43
familial match where they say, well it belongs to someone
31:45
with his last name.
31:46
Speaker 1: Or like a partial match.
31:47
Speaker 2: No, it wasn't a partial profile with a one in
31:49
a million chance. It was a complete, definitive genetic fingerprint,
31:53
tying the biological material on Laura Ann Aimes's body directly
31:57
and exclusively to Ted Bundy.
31:59
Speaker 1: And with that earr refutable piece of paper in hand.
32:02
On April first, twenty twenty six, Utah County Sheriff Mike
32:06
Smith finally stood before the cameras and more importantly, before
32:09
the family and said, this case is officially closed.
32:13
Speaker 2: The emotional weight of that moment cannot be overstated. We
32:17
spend so much time marveling at the algorithms and the sequencing,
32:21
but the technology is ultimately just a tool to service
32:24
a profoundly human need, the need for truth.
32:27
Speaker 1: Let's focus on the emotional aftermath for the family. We
32:30
talked about Laura's younger sister, Michelle and Paula. She was
32:33
twelve years old, when Laura was murdered. By the time
32:35
she steps up to the microphone at this press conference
32:38
in twenty twenty six, she is in her sixties.
32:40
Speaker 2: Yes, an entire lifetime has passed.
32:42
Speaker 1: She has lived an entire lifetime, raised her own family aged,
32:45
all while carrying this open wound.
32:47
Speaker 2: Her statement at the news conference was incredibly poignant. She
32:50
expressed genuine astonishment. She said, it's really quite amazing that
32:54
people are even still interested in Laura's case.
32:56
Speaker 1: That's so sad, though it is.
32:58
Speaker 2: That single sentence reveals so much about the silent agony
33:02
of cold case families. As the decades passed, they watched
33:05
the world move on. They assume everyone else has forgotten
33:08
their loved one, even though they wake up thinking about
33:11
them every single day.
33:12
Speaker 1: But she used that moment in the spotlight beautifully. She
33:15
didn't dwell on the killer. She talked about the horses,
33:18
she talked about the red licorice. She forced every reporter
33:21
in that room to see Laura as a vibrant teenager,
33:24
not just a piece.
33:25
Speaker 2: Of evidence exactly.
33:27
Speaker 1: The family released a broader statement, calling Laura the quintessential
33:30
daughter of Utah County, emphasizing her love for the outdoors
33:34
and the massive, permanent void her absence created.
33:38
Speaker 2: For Michelle and the rest of the Ame family, the
33:40
science provided something far more vital than just legal closure.
33:44
It provided emotional.
33:45
Speaker 1: Validation, validation that they were read all along.
33:47
Speaker 2: Yes, and more than that. Even if you strongly suspect someone,
33:51
even if that person gave a vague confession before dying,
33:55
the human brain tortures itself with doubt. What if we're wrong?
33:59
What the real killer is someone we interact with at
34:02
the grocery store. The DNA eradicates that doubt entirely. It
34:06
gives the family a solid, unshakable anchor of truth to
34:10
hold on to.
34:10
Speaker 1: The ripple effects of this case being scientifically closed extend
34:14
way beyond Utah County. Because Ted Bundy's true body count
34:18
has always been one of the darkest mysteries in American
34:20
true crime, it really has. The sources note that he
34:23
is definitively confirmed in around thirty slayings across Washington, Oregon, Utah, Colorado,
34:28
and Florida, but the estimates from law enforcement and historical
34:32
researchers suggest a much higher number.
34:34
Speaker 2: Many experts believe his total number of victims could easily
34:38
approach one hundred. Furthermore, there is strong suspicion that his
34:41
violent escalation began much earlier than his confirmed crimes in
34:44
nineteen seventy four.
34:46
Speaker 1: Like how much earlier?
34:47
Speaker 2: There are researchers looking at unsolved cases dating back to
34:50
nineteen sixty nine in different jurisdictions where his methodology might
34:53
have been in its infancy.
34:55
Speaker 1: So what does law enforcement do with this pristine next
34:58
gen DNA profile they've They don't just put it back
35:01
in the file.
35:01
Speaker 2: Cabinet, right, absolutely not. The authorities in Utah are actively
35:05
sharing this definitive genetic profile with law enforcement agencies nationwide.
35:10
They're uploading it to every interconnected database available.
35:14
Speaker 1: To solve other cases exactly.
35:16
Speaker 2: The goal is to cross reference this flawless profile against
35:20
biological evidence from dozens of other cold cases from the
35:24
late sixties and early seventies where Bundy remains a person
35:27
of interest. This single scientific victory in Utah could serve
35:31
as the genetic key to unlocking doors for dozens of
35:34
other families still waiting in the dark across the country.
35:37
Speaker 1: It feels like part of a massive paradigm shift we
35:39
are witnessing. In the twenty twenties, we saw it with
35:42
the identification of the Golden State kill using genetic genealogy.
35:46
We are seeing it with the Long Island serial killer case.
35:48
Advanced DNA sequencing is systematically tearing down the walls of
35:52
these twentieth century mysteries.
35:53
Speaker 2: It's a new era.
35:54
Speaker 1: There is a quote from a forensic expert in our
35:56
source stack that just perfectly encapsulates this era. Doors technology
36:01
catches up.
36:02
Speaker 2: That quote represents a massive shift in the balance of
36:05
power between predators and the justice system. If you analyze
36:10
the success of killers like Bundy in the nineteen seventies,
36:13
it wasn't because they were evil geniuses. They were simply
36:16
operating in a technological blind.
36:18
Speaker 1: Spot, right. They just got lucky with the time period.
36:20
Speaker 2: They exploited the fact that police departments in different states
36:23
couldn't quickly share information. They exploited the absence of surveillance cameras,
36:28
cell phone tracking, and most importantly, DNA profiling. They mistook
36:34
a lack of technology for their own intellectual superiority.
36:37
Speaker 1: They thought they were intouchable masterminds. But as DNA breakthrough
36:41
fundamentally rewrites that narrative, it strips away the mythology for
36:45
decades the true crime media complex has pumped out books, documentaries,
36:49
and blockbuster movies starring attractive Hollywood actors playing Ted Bundy,
36:52
which is very problematic. They focus on his charm, his
36:55
law school background, his daring escapes.
36:58
Speaker 2: There's a massive cultural obsession that frequently crosses the line
37:02
into glamorizing the offender, which forces us.
37:04
Speaker 1: To ask a difficult question about what we are doing
37:07
right now. Are we contributing to that problem by doing
37:10
a deep dive into Ted Bundy's methodology and his crimes.
37:14
Are we feeling into the glamorization of a monster?
37:17
Speaker 2: It is the central ethical dilemma of consuming or producing
37:20
true crime content. If the focus remains solely on the
37:24
macabre details of the violence or the perceived brilliance of
37:27
the killer's evasions, then yes, it risks glorifying the perpetrator.
37:32
Speaker 1: So how do we avoid that.
37:33
Speaker 2: Well, the consensus among victim's advocates, which we aim to uphold,
37:37
is that the antidote to glamorization is an unrelenting focus
37:40
on the facts and the science. When you highlight the science,
37:44
the killer's genius evaporates. He is reduced to exactly what
37:47
he was, an arrogant, violent, opportunist who carelessly left his
37:51
biological trash at a crime scene.
37:52
Speaker 1: It centers the narrative on the relentless pursuit of truth.
37:56
The real heroes of the story aren't the cunning criminals.
37:58
They are the anonymous crime scene technicians in nineteen seventy
38:01
four who froze the evidence, the computer scientists in twenty
38:04
twenty six who wrote the sequencing algorithms, and the families
38:07
who endured decades of agony without surrendering their hope.
38:10
Speaker 2: Exactly remembering Laura and Aim, her height, her struggles at school,
38:15
her love for her sister, the tragedy of the horses.
38:17
That is how you defeat the monster's legacy. You refuse
38:21
to let him reduce her to a footnote. You ensure
38:24
that the final word in this historical record belongs to
38:27
the victim and the scientific truth that vindicated her.
38:30
Speaker 1: And it serves as a stark reminder of why we
38:33
must continue to support and fund scientific progress within the
38:36
justice system. The technology that caught him wasn't cheap, and
38:39
it wasn't easy to develop, but its value is immeasurable
38:43
When you look at the face of a grieving sister
38:45
finally getting an answer.
38:47
Speaker 2: By definitively closing this case, the investigators affirmed a powerful principle.
38:51
No killer, regardless of how notorious they are, how charming
38:54
they appeared, or how long they have been dead, can
38:57
permanently outrun forensic truth.
39:00
Speaker 1: I'll leave you with one final, deeply chilling, but ultimately
39:02
hopeful thought to chew on. We started this journey by
39:05
looking at a detective scraping invisible fibers off a victim
39:08
in a freezing canyon in nineteen seventy four. For half
39:12
a century, that evidence sat in a freezer fifty two years.
39:15
If a few degraded, frozen cells can be pulled into
39:18
the light fifty two years later and run through a
39:21
computer to point an absolutely irrefutable finger at a killer
39:24
in twenty twenty six, it means the concept of the
39:27
perfect crime is effectively dead.
39:29
Speaker 2: Time is no longer a shield for history's monsters.
39:32
Speaker 1: It begs an incredible question for you to think about.
39:35
How many other secrets from the twentieth century are sitting
39:38
in cold, dark evidence lockers right now, all across the world,
39:42
just waiting for the right swab and the right next
39:45
gen algorithm to finally speak the truth.
39:47
Speaker 2: It is a profound comfort to those still waiting. The
39:50
truth hasn't decayed, It is simply waiting in the freezer
39:52
for the light of tomorrow.
39:53
Speaker 1: Before we sign off, we want to mention that while
39:55
the Aim family has requested privacy to process this long
39:58
awaited closure, they recognize that their story resonates deeply. If
40:03
you or someone you know has been impacted by violent
40:05
crime or is waiting for answers in a cold case,
40:08
there are resources available. Organizations like the National Center for
40:12
Victims of Crime provide vital support and advocacy. Thank you
40:16
for joining us on this complex, heart wrenching and scientifically
40:19
astounding journey. Keep questioning the world around you, keep demanding
40:23
the facts, and will catch you on the next deep dive.