Summit County closed the 1974 killing of a 17-year-old Midvale girl and said DNA links Ted Bundy.

This is an investigative closure on a man Florida executed in 1989. It is not a new charge and not a new conviction. The Associated Press, FOX 13, and Cowboy State Daily, after the announcement, describe a 1974 killing of a 17-year-old. KSL's story posted at 11:56 a.m. named Nancy Perry Baird's 1975 disappearance and did not report a DNA result.

The Associated Press reported Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, that DNA connects Ted Bundy to the death of a Utah teenager, and that authorities announced it more than 50 years after a hunter found her body. The Associated Press reported the Summit County prosecutor said investigators are satisfied Bundy was responsible for killing a 17-year-old in 1974. FOX 13 reported that detectives are closing the investigation, fifty-two years to the day her body was found, and that DNA identified Bundy as the killer. FOX 13 reported hunters found the body on Oct. 27, 1974, in a wooded area bordering Salt Lake and Summit counties. The Associated Press said a hunter. FOX 13 said hunters. Cowboy State Daily reported that at a joint press conference the Summit County Sheriff's Office and the County Attorney's Office announced that DNA evidence definitively connects Bundy to that 1974 killing. Cowboy State Daily reported she was a 17-year-old from Midvale, that she vanished on Oct. 18, 1974, after leaving a local pizza restaurant where she had been visiting a friend, and that her body was discovered more than a week later near Toll Canyon in Summit Park. Cowboy State Daily reported Tuesday is the 52nd anniversary of the Oct. 27, 1974, discovery. FOX 13 reported Summit County Sheriff Kacey Bates said developments in a Utah County case closed in April brought this investigation back, and that investigators used the same DNA profile from that April case. Cowboy State Daily reported the Utah State Crime Lab acquired technology in 2023 that can reconstruct a full profile from a small, old, or mixed sample, and that Utah County used it in April on the killing of another 17-year-old. The Associated Press also reported that April announcement was about a 17-year-old who disappeared on Halloween in 1974. Neither girl is named here.

KPCW, in a story published at 3:51 p.m. MDT Tuesday, reported 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 that 1974 killing. KPCW reported she was a police chief's daughter. It reported Olson said the state crime lab matched DNA from the body to a sample found with another 17-year-old, and it placed that comparison in July. CBS News, updated at 3:32 p.m. EDT and credited to CBS and the Associated Press, reported Olson said that besides the DNA, the death had the hallmarks of Bundy's "pattern, motive, means and opportunity," and that Utah County Sgt. Mike Reynolds said a highly similar DNA profile linked to Bundy was found in evidence from the autopsy. CBS News reported officials have been in touch with the next of kin and that none of them still live in the area. KPCW reported Summit County spokesperson Skyler Talbot said the closest relatives know the case has been resolved, live out of state, and were not at the press conference. KPCW reported Sheriff Kacey Bates said that although there had been speculation, a suspect was never named and the case was never officially closed. A closure that weighs a DNA comparison together with pattern, motive, means, and opportunity is still the sheriff's and the prosecutor's conclusion about a man Florida executed in 1989. It is not a new charge.

The accounts published before noon did not all name the same case. KSL's story, posted at 11:56 a.m. Tuesday, said a Bundy cold case would be officially closed Tuesday and identified the case as the 1975 disappearance of Nancy Perry Baird. KSL reported that disappearance had long been blamed on Bundy because he was living in Utah at the time, and KSL wrote that the story would be updated. That KSL story did not report a DNA result. ABC4, writing ahead of the noon conference, reported Sheriff Kacey Bates and County Attorney Margaret Olson would present the findings with Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera, Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith, and Utah State Crime Lab DNA analysts, and that officials had not publicly identified the victim. TownLift, on Oct. 26, reported the same advisory, reported the advisory did not name a victim or describe the evidence, and reported TownLift had not confirmed which case would be closed. TownLift described Summit County's open Bundy-linked homicide as a 17-year-old from Midvale whose body was found Oct. 27, 1974, near Toll Canyon in Summit Park. The Associated Press, FOX 13, and Cowboy State Daily, after the announcement, describe that 1974 killing. KSL's pre-noon story describes a 1975 disappearance. Those are not the same account.

What closed on Tuesday is a sheriff's and prosecutor's conclusion about a man who is dead. FOX 13 reported Bundy was executed by electric chair in Florida in 1989. Cowboy State Daily reported he was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder and other charges, sentenced to death, and executed in January 1989. The Associated Press reported the same 1989 Florida execution. FOX 13 reported he confessed to 28 murders and is believed to be responsible for hundreds of deaths. Cowboy State Daily reported he is believed to have murdered at least 30 young women between 1974 and 1978. The Associated Press reported he killed at least 30 women and girls. Those are three tallies. None of them is a new jury verdict. Cowboy State Daily quoted Utah private investigator Jason Jensen: "I'm glad to see these old cases still get attention," and, "Some of them were presumed Bundy cases and left to remain unsolved because he was executed." A closed investigative file is not a conviction entered this week. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.