Introduction: Melissa Ann Smith was born on July 4, 1957 in Midvale, Utah to Louis and Joan Smith. Louis Shirley Smith was born on March 10, 1927 in Midvale and after graduating from high school he joined the Navy and was in WWII and the Korean War. After getting out of the service he returned to his hometown and joined the police force, where he rose quickly through the ranks and earned the role of the chief of police. Joan Phyllis Levorsen was born on April 20, 1934 in Salt Lake City to Amund RC and Viola May Nokes Levorsen and moved with her family to Murray in 1937, where she graduated from Murray High School in 1952. The couple were married October 8, 1953 in the Salt Lake City Temple and had two daughters together: Melissa and her younger sister Jolene (b. August 9, 1959).

Background: According to Ann Rule’s true crime classic, ‘The Stranger Beside Me,’ at the time of Smith’s murder Midvale was ‘a quiet Mormon community made up of 5,000 people that was located just south of Salt Lake City. It’s a good place to raise kids, and Melissa, although warned, had never had a reason to be afraid.’ The family was a part of the Ninth LDS Ward in Midvale, and Melissa was very active in her faith. At the time of her death, she was seventeen and a senior at Hillcrest High School, and was also a student at Continental School of Beauty, where she was a cosmetology student.

October 18, 1974: Jolene Smith told investigators that she thinks her sister may have left home around 9:10 PM on the evening of October 18, 1974, but she wasn’t positive and stated she could have left as early as 8:10 PM. According to one of Melissa’s two best friends (and fellow HS classmate) Julie Rushton, the two spoke at around 8/8:15 PM (one report said it was 9 PM) when they discussed their plans of meeting up at a local pizza place called ‘The Pepperoni’ (which was also her POE) ‘somewhere around 9 PM, or around 9:30 PM’,** and here’s where I found something interesting: according to the missing person’s report, Julie had ‘some words’ with a friend of theirs named Sherry McClery about her boyfriend earlier in the evening, and she ‘felt low and needed someone to talk to’ (Sherry had been at the pizzeria visiting with another employee named Cindy Howell). In every other source it was reported that Rushton had been having ‘boyfriend problems’ and not friend problems, but this does not seem to be the case (I know this isn’t a major detail, it’s just something that jumped out at me).

Julie said that Melissa stayed for a while and that they chatted a bit, then she ‘left there at approximately 9:30, or between there and 10 PM’ and ‘assumed she was going home’; Sherry left The Pepperoni at roughly 9:30 as well, and had been right behind Melissa. According to the police report, ‘the reason we can say 9:30 is that Sherry M. called her mother to see if she could go to the show. Her mother looked at the clock to see what time it was, and it was 9:15. Sherry left the Pepperoni between ten and fifteen minutes after she called her mother. Also asked Sherry what way Melissa went and her first statement was towards State Street.’

Rushton was also upset that Smith was sleeping over their friend Mindy’s house and it didn’t appear that she was invited, but I wonder if it maybe had to do the fact that Manning went to a different high school (she went to Murray High School and was not a fellow student at Hillcrest). According to Melissa’s case file provided by the Midvale PD, Cindy Howell told investigators that she overheard Julie ‘talking to Melissa, she was upset with Mindy Manning because Melissa was going to stay over at her house on this particular night, but Melissa had been unable to get ahold of Mindy on the phone. She had apparently gone out with someone else and that Melissa was very upset over this. She states that when Smith left there around 9:30 or between there and 10 PM she also assumed that she was going home.’ My interpretation of this is: Melissa was trying to call Mindy to see if Rushton could come along to the sleepover, but she had ditched them both and wasn’t home at all.  

Per Ann Rule, the walk to the pizzeria meant ‘negotiating shortcuts, down a dirt road and a dirt bank, under a highway overpass and a railroad bridge, and across a school playfield.’ When she left the restaurant Melissa’s intended destination was most likely her home so she could pick up her night clothes, and the chances were pretty good that she took the same dark, poorly lit route that she used to get there. She never made it home.

At the time of her disappearance Melissa was a junior at Hillcrest High School in Midvale, Utah, and was active in her faith. According to her family, she was a very cautious girl, and Midvale itself was a small Mormon town: religious and very quiet, and even though her father worried about his girls and taught them to be safety-aware, she had little to fear in the tiny community. At the time of her disappearance Smith weighed 105 pounds, had light brown hair she wore at her shoulders, stood at 5’3″ tall, had hazel eyes, and a fair complexion. She was last seen wearing blue jeans, a blue flowered blouse, and a heavy navy-blue shirt she used for a coat; her purse, identification, and make-up were left at home. Melissa was reported missing by her mother (her father took the official report) and because of the nature of the disappearance and the type of girl Melissa was, foul play was immediately suspected. Jolene Smith said that running away was against everything her sister stood for, and it was something she would never do; she also said that Melissa was the type of person that would have eventually called home had they left suddenly. According to Midvale PD officer Ronald Baarz, the sheriff’s office and various city police departments in the county had joined in on the search.

Julie was employed at the same restaurant that Melissa was last seen at, and she was a student with her not only at Hillcrest High School but also at Continental Beauty School. During her second interview with Detectives Ben Forbes and Jerry Thompson (both with the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Department) Julie admitted that she had given Melissa $10 so they could buy pot that weekend and said that they had both smoked it before, which was a detail she had left out the first time she spoke with them, most likely because her parents had been present (that time she had been by herself at the beauty school she attended). During that interview Julie was also asked if Melissa wore a lot of makeup and ‘false eyelashes,’ and she replied that she ‘wore a lot of make up around her eyes,’ but that was it; Rushton also said that none of their other girlfriends wore false lashes either so Melissa wouldn’t have gotten them from them. She also clarified that her friend wasn’t the type of person to borrow another person’s clothes or personal items (aside from her sister).

When Rushton was questioned if Melissa had ever used any substance harder than pot, she said to the best of her knowledge no she didn’t, and she had hitchhiked ‘on occasion, if there was no other way to get where they were going.’ When asked if her friend was fearful of getting into a car with a stranger Julie replied, ‘I don’t believe she was afraid of anyone.’ She also said Smith was still a virgin (as far as she knew) and would ‘not give in all the way with any boy regardless of what.’ She also said that her friend was ‘closer to her than her own mother,’ and the only other person that she was that close with was her sister. But aside from her, no matter what came up, problems at home or school, boys or anything, the two always discussed things together. Rushton stated that Melissa left the restaurant at around 9:30 PM and that she had been walking towards State Street.

Investigators looked into multiple alleged sightings of Smith in the days following her disappearance, all the way from Brigham City to Richfield, with no luck; the FBI even stepped in and started an investigation to determine if any federal laws had been violated in relation to her disappearance. Shortly after she disappeared a $1,000 reward was listed for any information that led to the safe return of Melissa Smith. 

October 27, 1974: the remains of Melissa Smith were found by three hunters at 2:30 PM on October 27, 1974 in the Tollgate Canyon region of Summit Park (specifically the discovery was reported by Phillip D. Hughes). There were no signs of a struggle and the lack of dirt on the victims gave rise to the belief that she had been carried to the spot after her death. She had been nude aside from a necklace that had been made of wooden beads that were mostly yellow but had random blue and red ones spaced out (roughly) every three inches, which had been tangled in a man’s navy blue knit sock, which had been tied behind her neck. According to her autopsy, ‘the stocking around the neck of the victim was cut off, and it is observed that the stocking is a navy-blue knit material with a ribbed elastic top approximately 2 1/2 inches long. The knot tied at the back of the neck appears to be just a double granny knot, and several of the victim’s head hairs are interwoven through the knot.’ Smith had been found on her stomach with her left arm completely underneath her body and the right arm extended and unfolded at a 90-degree angle; both of her legs had been bent at the knees. According to investigators, roughly ‘forty-nine paces directly west of where the body was found’ they found a folding patio chair. A positive ID was made thanks to dental records and the fact that Mrs. Smith was also able to identify the necklace as belonging to her daughter.

Smith’s remains were taken to Utah Medical Center, where an autopsy was performed, and according to the ME Dr. Serge Moore, she had been sexually assaulted and ‘there were heavy predominant abrasions over the left and right shoulder blades which extend down to almost the small of the back; there are also heavy abrasions on both buttocks and large scrape marks on both buttocks, with more abrasions on the left leg from the knee extending down approximately roughly inches towards the foot. On closer examination of the head of the victim, approximately six inches above the top vertebra is what appears to be a bullet wound of contact, approximately one half inch by one inch, and this is circumference by powder burn of approximately one-eighth in diameter. There are what appears to be liver-mortis marks on the central part of the back, and as far as rigor mortis is concerned, the lower limbs are fairly rigid at this inspection, but the arms and hands are fairly limber. I would estimate the time of death anywhere from thirty to thirty-six hours.’ During the exam Dr. Moore also discovered a small, irregular, brown-colored birth mark on the lower left back of the victim that had been previously described to investigators by Mrs. Smith that had been hard to see at first because of the multiple scrapes and abrasions covering the victims’ back.

Smith sustained multiple skull fractures, and in the initial stages of the investigation it had been first believed she died from a bullet wound to the back of the head, but the autopsy later proved that wasn’t the case. According to Salt Lake County Sheriff ND ‘Pete’ Hayward (who served as captain of detectives before his twelve-year stint as county sheriff), investigators were awaiting tests to see if carbon monoxide had been found in her body, because ‘if there was, it would indicate that she was killed elsewhere and taken to the site in the trunk of a car. Determining where the murder took place is important to where legal jurisdiction will be.’ Smith’s autopsy eventually showed no CO₂ in her body, indicating she was not beaten and transported to the area while still alive in her killers trunk.

Per her autopsy report, Melissa appeared to have her hair styled and makeup done at some time immediately before she had been discovered; her fingernails had been polished as well, and according to Jolene, she had done them the night she disappeared. The younger Smith daughter also told Colorado Detective Michael Fisher that the makeup, false lashes and choice of nail polish that had been discovered on her sister did not belong to her, which helped give rise to the theory that Bundy had been applying makeup and nail polish to his victims at some point during their captivity, either pre or post mortem. It’s also worth mentioning that in the days before her remains were discovered it had snowed roughly five inches in SLC, meaning the crime scene was covered in fresh snow, which only complicated matters.

According to Ronald R. Robinson of the Summit County Sheriff’s Office, ‘about a dozen police officers conducted an intensive search of the area today (on October 28, 1974);’ he also said that investigators hoped to find where the crime had actually occurred but because of the large amount of oak brush in the deeply wooded area the search effort was slowed quite a bit. Louis Smith immediately knew that his daughter had been abducted as she never would have left of her own accord, and when her remains were discovered he turned the case over to Salt Lake County Deputy Sheriff Jerry Thompson, who would eventually be tasked with investigating most of Bundy’s suspected Utah murders.

Detectives spoke with hundreds of Smiths schoolmates, beauty school friends, church friends, family members, and boyfriends, but learned nothing of value that helped in their investigation; according to Captain Hayward, ‘we are not satisfied with some of the answers we are receiving as we try to retrace her movements.’ Per Sheriff Robinson, shortly after Melissa’s murder investigators had ‘two or three new leads,’ and said that one of them involved a Timberline Subdivision resident that picked up a young woman several days prior that resembled the victim; she had told him she had been ‘en route to Timberline to see her friends’ (nothing came of this). A similar report claimed Smith had been seen in Evansville, Wyoming on October 22, a tip that was investigated by Midvale PD but was never verified, and according to Lieutenant Darald R. Austin of the Midvale PD: ‘we received a report from a man who knows the family who said he was sure she was seen in Evansville on that day but she had kept her hands in front  of her face while in his presence.‘ Austin returned from Wyoming with some clothing for analysis, and among the items collected were three stockings that were similar to the one found around Smith’s neck. SLC deputies also searched the highway in the Little Mountain area on October 29 after they received a tip that clothing similar to what Smith was reportedly last seen wearing were spotted roughly two hundred yards from the highway; nothing was recovered.

Jolene Smith’s Interviews: sometime in the days following her sister’s murder (there was no exact date given) Jolene Smith sat down for an informal interview with Detectives Ben Forbes and Thompson with the SLC PD at Hillcrest High School. In the beginning, the investigators said she was ‘very antagonistic, very nasty towards us,’ and when asked if she could help them with her sisters’ case she replied, ‘I don’t know what I can do for you. I’ve told dad everything I’m tired of all this bull shit that’s going around.’ When asked about the evening of October 18, 1974 Jolene said the last time she saw her was around 9 PM and she had been ‘very upset because she was going to stay overnight with a friend of hers, Mindy Manning, and that Mindy had stood her up so to speak, as she was not home and Melissa couldn’t find her.’ She also said that her sister gets very upset when people stand her up and she was also mad at her because she wanted to do some typing downstairs and wouldn’t go with her to the pizzeria. Jolene also stated that her and Melissa had arguments on occasion but it was ‘nothing out of the ordinary;’ she also said Julie Rushton called their family’s home and talked her sister into going to her POE to chat ‘as Julie was having some kind of problem with a boyfriend.’

When Jolene was asked about what her sister had on when she left the house, she said she was ‘wearing a pair of hip hugger, denim dark blue pants, which is the brand name of Fox Moor and has a little fox on the pockets in the back. The two pockets are V-shaped.’ She also stated that she had an identical pair of pants at her home and believes the blouse she had been wearing had been made out of a light knit material and had been a ‘slip-over type with the kind of a V-neck short sleeves, dark blue in color with small or tiny flowers on it. Different colors, some of them pink and some of them red.’ When asked what she thought may have happened to her sister Jolene said, ‘I believe she left the pizza place and went out boogian, and that was her comment, ‘boogian,’ until about midnight. Someone must have picked her up and ripped her off, and that’s the only thing I can think of.’ Looking into this verbiage, by ‘boogiaan’ I am almost positive the detective is trying to say ‘boogieing’ but is spelling it wrong.

About Jolene Smith, Jerry Thompson (who was writing the report and had also been a good friend of Louis Smith’s) commented that: ‘in all my years being a police officer I have never talked to an individual that had an attitude like this young girl did after just having her sister brutally murdered.’ When she was asked if she or Melissa had ever ‘thumbed’ before she stated, ‘no way,’ which he knew was a lie because in an interview with Lori Conti she admitted to picking the hitchhiking sisters up in the days prior to Melissa’s disappearance. Jolene also said her sister would ‘never’ wear fake eyelashes and the only time she ever expressed any interest in them she used the ones that you individually had to stick on ‘one lash at a time, not the type you glue across your eyes.’ When she was told that Melissa was found wearing the long type of fake eyelashes she ‘essence called us a liar. She said that she doesn’t believe it.’

In a sworn statement that took place with Detective Jerry Thompson and Captain Pete Hayward at the Metropolitan Hall of Justice in SLC on April 4, 1975, Jolene said that at the time Melissa disappeared she ‘had curly hair because she had recently had a permanent, and it was kinda dark before, you know not real dark btu it was brown. But she had I streaked, so it was about the color of mine or possibly lighter. Okay, and aaah, she had a permanent, and when it got wet it would frizz out, you know, it’d go really curly.’

It was also during this interaction that Jolene was able to clarify what had happened with Mindy in relation to the evening of October 18th, and that she didn’t see Melissa because she had been ‘out with her friends messing around.’ Jolene also said that if her sister was going to smoke cigarettes (and I didn’t get the impression she did it frequently), ‘she would have bought Kools, not Marlboro’s,’ and wouldn’t have ran in real quick to buy them for a guy, she would have made him go in and buy them himself.

The following is taken directly from Jolene Smith’s sworn statement:
Det: ‘Well, what do you think actually has happened, Jolene.’
Jolene: ‘I think she was probably coming out of Pepperoni and started to go home, and aah, somebody said, hey, come here or something like or wanted to talk to her, grabbed her, and that’s what I think happened. Because she, she’d, you know, she wouldn’t be stuck up. She’d say hello.’
D: ‘She’d go over and talk to them?’
J: ‘She’s very friendly.’
D: ‘Yeah, that’s what we wanted to know.’
J: ‘But she wouldn’t go off with somebody else, ‘cuz that was, I mean, we, possibly we’d go off with people, if there were more girls than guys, but she wouldn’t do it alone.’
D: ‘She wouldn’t do it alone, now that’s the thing that I was really concerned with, if some strnger called her nd said come on over to the car, and she may walk over and see who it is or talk to him, but in your opinion she would never have gotten in tht car alone?’
J: ‘Never.’
D: ‘With somebody that she didn’t know?’
J: ‘No way. And aaahh, I don’t know, he’d have to be good looking or she wouldn’t go over either.’
D: ‘Is that right?’
J: ‘Um hum. She’d just (?), yeah, and walk off, say…’
D: ‘There’s no way that she’s just go over to anybody if he was a crum-looking guy?’
J: ‘No, she, no.’
Detective Thompson: ‘Wha would be her reaction, beings your dad’s a police officer, if someone came up to her and showed her a badge that wasn’t in uniform and things like that and said that he wanted to talk to her, or come and get in my car, or something. Do you know?’
J: ‘I don’t know what she’d do, she didn’t like cops very much.’
Captain Hayward: ‘You don’t think she would have gotten into an automobile with anybody that my have shown her a badge, or…’
J: ‘Possible, but she didn’t like cops very well, she’d say, it, she probably would because you know, most people would, but…’

In the same interview Jolene was questioned about possibly being acquainted with Laura Aime, who had disappeared on Halloween later that month, and to my great surprise, she seemed to have been familiar with her and ‘her Mexican boyfriend,’ saying ‘I’ve seen her.’ Smith was also asked if she ever recalled Melissa mentioning a man going by the name ‘Ted,’ to which she replied, ‘it doesn’t, I don’t think so.’

Lori Conti: in Smith’s case file there is a summary of an interview with a senior at Hillcrest High School named Lori Conti, who had observed her ‘thumbing a ride’ twice: once with her sister about a week before she disappeared (she picked both girls up that time) and for a second time on the evening that she disappeared on: ‘…Friday, October 18th, I had a date with a boy and we were going north on State from 7800 South and I observed Melissa alone, thumbing a ride’ while walking along State Street. It had been somewhere between 9:30 and 10 PM (as her boyfriend had picked her up at 9:30) and she had been positive it had been Smith. When Conti was asked if she recalled what she had been wearing and she replied, ‘all I can remember is that she had on dark blue Levi’s, and she thought she had on a blue kind of like, parka or windbreaker, or something to this effect, but was not sure.’ She also told investigators she didn’t know Smith very well but did remember that a few years prior at a youth conference in Logan ‘during the evening hours Melissa would take off with some boys. She stated that one evening she went with some negro boys and that the next day when she came back or during the night, she observed monkey bites and bites around her neck and around the face area;’ Conti’s mother (who had been present for the interview) was able to verify this, as her daughter had come home and told her all of this when it happened.

Judy Tueller: a senior at Hillcrest High School named Judy Tueller said where she also didn’t know Smith ‘very well’ (she said the two would on occasion say hello to each other at school and exchange small talk), on the night of October 18th she saw her at JB’s Restaurant in Murray at 10:30 PM; when Tueller  was pressed about the exact time she said she was ‘positive’ it had been 10:30 PM, as this was when her boyfriend was supposed to meet her there. Tueller also said that when she observed Smith come into the establishment she walked in with another girl in tow and clarified that she did not know if the two were together or not; the other young woman had a small build and was around 5’5” tall. After Melissa walked in, she went directly to the cigarette machine, and where Judy did not observe her buy anything almost immediately after she came in she walked right back out, and it was then that she observed a pack of Marlboro’s in her hand.

Judy also said that just after Melissa walked in the door she noticed a car parked out front directly in front of a ‘no parking zone,’ and that its driver appeared to be ‘be a cowboy with a cowboy hat on’ and as he drove away she ‘noticed the license plate on the back had a yellow horse on it.’ This stuck out to her because the Murray PD frequently patrolled the area and they loved giving out tickets over it, and she remembered thinking to herself how ‘lucky’ this man was that he didn’t get caught (although she did admit that he hadn’t been there for very long). About the car she said she didn’t know anything about it other than it was dark blue in color and was a four-door and was most likely a Ford: ‘it was something like a Torino, it was not a big car like a LTD or something in this line. She stated that it sounded like it had glass packs, not a bad muffler but kind of a lud pipe when it took off.’ Tueller also said that Melissa left by herself (without the girl that walked in with her) and although she didn’t observe her get in the car it disappeared immediately after she left. She said Smith had been wearing Levi’s, the ‘kind of blue ones possibly a little flair at the bottom. The type that most girls wear, and a shirt that’s flowered, kind of a knit material or one that kind of slips over your head but was not sure.’

JayLynn Boggess: the bartender that had been working at JB’s Restaurant on the evening of October 18, 1974 was another Hillcrest High School student named JayLynn Boggess. Described as having an overall ‘bad attitude,’ Boggess was resistant when it came to talking to investigators because she was afraid if it had somehow gotten out she would find a fate similar to Melissa’s. When detectives questioned her at her high school about Smith’s murder she said, ‘the only damn thing I’m going to tell you is that Melissa came in around 10:30 PM with another girl, long blonde hair, a hard looker, turn around and went back out and I don’t know another thing about it.’ She eventually clarified that ‘on the 18th day of October 1974, around 10:30 & 10:45 PM that Miss Smith came into JB’s and walked into the restroom and stayed approximately five minutes and walked out without saying a word to anyone.’ When asked if she was positive that the second girl was blonde Boggess responded with, ‘what the hell do you think?’ and walked out of the room. After the brief interview Boggess’ father called the school’s principal and let him know that he ‘did not want his daughter taken out of class and did not wish to have her talked to by the police department.’

LaVerne J: in the late afternoon of October 21, 1974 at roughly 5:45 PM Officer Elsby of the Midvale PD spoke with a Midvale resident named LaVerne J, who reported that she heard a female scream come from north of the junior high between 10 and 11 PM on October 18th. At this time Mrs. J was working in her backyard, which is a normal activity for her at this time of night as her husband is one of the departments dispatchers and gardening gives her something to do.

Investigators also spoke with an instructor and acquaintance of Smith’s from Continental School of Beauty named Bernadette Burnham who happened to be at a party with Melissa on one of the Saturday’s before she disappeared (either on September 25^th or October 5th); Burnham said that Melissa stayed overnight and didn’t have a lot to drink, and where she had arrived at the gathering alone she quickly noticed her chatting and dancing with a young man named Mike Christensen (he was actually twenty-two), and later that same night she also observed the pair sneaking outside together then returning about a half hour later (Melissa had twigs and leaves in her hair).

Ted Bundy: in October of 1974 Theodore Robert Bundy was enjoying his days as a recent transplant in SLC from Seattle and was in his first few months of his second attempt at law school. He was still in a (fairly) committed relationship with Elizabeth Kloepfer and had been taking a break from any ‘serious’ side relationships: in the Summer of 1974 he briefly dated Becky Gibbs and remained faithful to Liz until early 1975, when he had a fling with Marguerite Maughan (her father tried to cover up their brief affair after he was appointed to the Utah Supreme Court). At the time he was also in between jobs as well (most likely in a lame attempt to focus on law school), as he left the Department of Emergency Services in Olympia on August 28, 1974 and remained unemployed until June of 1975 when he got a position as the night manager of Baliff Hall at the University of Utah (he was fired the following month after he showed up to work drunk).

Despite a meticulous cleaning job, while going through Bundy’s car after his August 1975 arrest on October 15, 1975, forensic experts found ‘a long, spindly hair’ on the stick-shift lever that belonged to Melissa Smith. Additionally, in the trunk of the Bug, techs found a hair from the head of Caryn Campbell, hairs and fibers that belonged to Laura Aime (in the passenger area), and a hair that belonged to Carol DaRonch was found in embedded in the upholstery in the back (one report said her hairs were found on a pair of handcuffs and on the passenger’s side of the vehicle).

Bundy’s Other Utah Victims: in November 1974 detectives in SLC began piecing together the murders that were taking place across the beehive state and began searching for a common thread in the disappearances/murders of Nancy Wilcox, Melissa Smith, Deb Kent, Laura Aime and the botched kidnapping of Carol DaRonch. According to Pete Hayward, ‘we are attempting to determine if there is similarity in all the acts or if they have been committed independently.‘ First of Ted’s Utah victims is Nancy Wilcox, who had been last seen at roughly 9 PM on October 1, 1974 (some reports say it was October 2^nd) when she left her family home in Holladay after getting into an argument with her father about her boyfriend’s truck leaking oil on the driveway. She never returned home and her parents reported her as missing the following day, but because of the way she left police immediately classified her as a runaway and didn’t begin investigating her disappearance until October 29th.

On Halloween 1974 eighteen-year-old Laura Ann Aime disappeared out of Lehi, Utah after she left a Halloween party to go get cigarettes; on November 27, 1974, hikers found her remains in American Fork Canyon, northeast of Provo. Authorities determined she had been beaten, sexually assaulted, and had been strangled to death. A little over a week after the abduction of Laura Aime seventeen-year-old Debra Jean Kent disappeared from a showing of ‘The Redhead’ at Viewmont High School in Bountiful on November 8th after she left to pick up her brother from a nearby roller skating rink when the play ran long. It was later discovered that the family car was in the parking lot, but Deb was nowhere to be seen; a handcuff key was later found on the ground near the vehicle, and someone reported hearing screaming in the area at roughly the same time as Kent was last seen alive. Her case was initially investigated as a runaway, but per Bountiful Police Chief Dean O. Anderson, his office was quickly able to rule out the possibility that she had left willingly. The majority of her remains have never been recovered, aside from her patella (which has been found amongst animal bones in 1989 after Bundy’s death row confessions).

According to Hayward, ‘we are attempting to determine if there is similarity in all the acts or if they have been committed independently.’ When the plan lasted longer than they anticipated the Kents asked Deb to go get her younger brother from a nearby skating rink. According to Belva Kent, ‘we have a feeling of anxiety and sadness and wonder where she is. We are baffled at her disappearance because she has never given us any trouble. She has always been compassionate for others and is always looking for the good points in everyone. Please bring her back to us so that we might complete the family-circle.’

Shortly before Debbie Kent was abducted eighteen-year-old telephone operator Carol DaRonch was doing some shopping after work at the Fashion Place Mall in Murray when she was approached by a young man claiming to be a police officer named ‘Officer Roseland.’ He claimed her car had been broken into, but he thwarted the potential robbery and his partner had the suspect at the station and he was tasked with bringing her back to assist in a line-up. DaRonch hesitantly agreed and went back to his car with him, and during their drive to the police station he tried to attack and subdue her, but she fought back and managed to get away.

Conclusion: Louis Smith died suddenly of a heart attack on April 18, 1985 at the age of fifty-eight. According to his obituary, he was a veteran of WWII and had been police chief for twenty-one years before he retired; at the time of his death, he had been employed by Skaggs-Alpha Beta Security; he was also a graduate of the FBI Academy. ‘During his years as chief in Midvale, the department, like the city, experienced rapid growth. As new commercial and residential developments took place, he strove to keep pace. But there were also some dark times, like the kidnap-murder of his daughter Melissa in October of 1974.’ One thing I always found interesting in relation to Melissa’s murder and the Bundy case is the fact that every morning before he went into court (during Ted’s trial for the kidnapping of Carol DaRonch) officials had to frisk Mr. Smith down to make sure he didn’t bring his weapon into the building… they were that concerned he would kill Ted.

After Louis died Joan went on to marry Thomas Frederick ‘Fred’ Griffiths on May 6, 1993 in the Jordan River Temple, and the couple were married for twenty-seven years when he died at the age of ninety-two on July 12, 2020. They loved to travel together and enjoyed going out to eat, specifically at the ‘Chuck-O-Rama’ and Sizzler (where they made many good friends). Mr. Griffiths was born on April 18, 1928 in Treasureton, Idaho and per his obituary, he grew up on a farm in Idaho and joined the Merchant Marines when he was seventeen. He married Shirley Darlene Brough on February 26, 1948 and the couple had four children together; they were married for forty-five years when she passed away. Fred was employed at Union Pacific Railroad as a switchman and did maintenance for Bonded Realty Company on the side doing house repairs.

Jolene Smith died at the age of fifty-five on October 12, 2014 in Las Vegas after a long struggle with Multiple Sclerosis; she left behind her husband Tim, five children, and multiple grandchildren. Joan Smith died at the age of ninety on December 18, 2024, in Kearns, Utah; unfortunately, I was unable to find any additional details about her life.

According to the Utah Department of Public Safety, Smith’s case remains open despite the fact that she is considered one of Ted Bundy’s ‘canonical’ victims. During his last-minute interviews with Utah authorities while on death row in January 1989, Bundy would not discuss any details related to this crime and did not directly admit to being responsible for her murder: instead, he choose to limit his confessions to victims whose bodies had not been discovered, as he had planned to use the survivors of girls whose remains had not yet been recovered to pressure Bob Martinez (the then Governor of Florida) to postpone his execution so he could’ help’ locate them. In April 2026, authorities in Utah confirmed through new DNA testing that Laura Ann Aime was indeed a victim of Ted Bundy, closing the long-standing cold case. Perhaps one day the same will be done for Melissa Smith.

* I have seen Melissa’s middle name spelled as Ann, but it is most commonly spelled Anne.