Salt Lake Man to Be Charged with Murdering Missing Utah Student Mackenzie Lueck

After an exhaustive weeklong investigation, Salt Lake police somberly announced Friday that they believe a University of Utah student missing since June 17 was murdered.

Mackenzie Lueck

A man she allegedly met on June 17 in North Salt Lake was arrested in connection with her death.

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Ayoola Adisa Ajayi, 31, was arrested at 9:20 a.m. at an apartment complex at 1028 S. West Temple by a SWAT team. He was later booked into the Salt Lake County Jail for investigation of aggravated murder, aggravated kidnapping, desecration of a human body and obstruction of justice.

The Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office was expected to screen formal criminal charges sometime Friday.

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Neighbors told detectives they had observed Ajayi on June 17 and June 18 burning something in his backyard. During their search, police recovered several charred items, including “female human tissue” and personal items belonging to Lueck, Brown said.

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But the chief declined to say Friday whether Lueck’s body has been recovered.

“This investigation will continue. We are still looking for anybody that may have helped this arrested person, and any other evidence that would provide evidence for us to use in this case,” Brown said.

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Ayoola Adisa Ajayi

Lueck, 23, was last seen early on the morning of June 17 when she flew into Salt Lake City International Airport after attending a family funeral in her hometown of El Segundo, California. Surveillance video at the airport recorded Lueck making her way to baggage claim, and then getting into a Lyft vehicle.

The Lyft driver told police he dropped off Lueck at Hatch Park in North Salt Lake about 3 a.m. where another person in a car was waiting for her.

On Friday, Brown said cellphone data collected from both Lueck’s and Ajayi’s phones put them at Hatch Park at the same time on June 17.

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Outside of a few traffic tickets, Ajayi has no criminal history in Utah. He at one time lived in an apartment across the street from Hatch Park, where Lueck was last seen being dropped off by a Lyft driver and getting into another waiting vehicle. Ajayi and his two roommates were evicted from the North Salt Lake apartment in 2016 for failing to pay rent, according to court records.

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He also did a stint with the Army National Guard, being assigned to a company out of Tooele, but did not attend basic training or any advanced individual training, according to the Utah National Guard’s public affairs officer. Ajayi left the military after six months “with an uncharacterized discharge for failure to meet medical procurement standards,” the spokesman said.

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Under his Amazon author profile, Ajayi wrote that he was born and raised in Africa, and went on to become a salesman, an entrepreneur and writer. He claims to have “survived a tyrannical dictatorship, escaped a real life crime, traveled internationally, excelled professionally in several industries” and developed a marketing strategy for his book, “Forge Identity.”

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