Ayoola Ajayi charged with murder of woman
Nigeria’s Ayoola ‘AJ’ Ajayi, 31, has been accused of murdering Mackenzie Lueck and burning her body in his Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, backyard.
The man charged with murdering Utah woman Mackenzie Lueck and burning her body in his backyard had tried to have a secret sex dungeon built in his basement, a contractor says.
Meanwhile, cops said on Friday night that they had located the mattress missing from the suspect’s home and considered key evidence. They did not offer further information about the mattress, however.
Contractor Brian Wolf says that Ayoola Adisa Ajayi, 31, reached out to him in April and asked him to build a ‘soundproof’ room in the basement of his Salt Lake City home.
Ajayi first proposed that Wolf build a ‘secret door’ to a space that was about four feet by nine feet, the contractor told Fox News.
But Wolf says that Ajayi ‘slowly started sidestepping into more stuff, like wanting a thumb lock on it with a fingerprint lock, and soundproofing it, and putting hooks in the concrete – it was just weird what he was asking me.’
Pressed for an explanation, Ajayi said he wanted a secret room for alcohol to hide it from his Mormon girlfriend, and soundproof so that he could sit inside and listen to music, according to Wolf.
‘He just said that his girlfriend was coming into town and needed to get it done before she got there because she was a Mormon girl. He did say she was a white girl,’ Wolf said.
Wolf said he was ‘weirded out’ by the job offer, telling the man he was too busy to undertake the project.
‘Some people say I should have called the cops then,’ he said. ‘But how am I supposed to call the cops and be like, ‘Hey, this guy wants me to build a weird room in his basement,” Wolf said.
Ajayi, a native of Nigeria, is charged with aggravated murder, aggravated kidnapping, desecration of a corpse, and obstruction of justice. He is being held without bond in the Salt Lake County Jail.
The former Army IT specialist was pictured being taken into custody on Friday by a number of armed SWAT officers outside his 1028 S West Temple home.
Shortly afterwards, investigators charged him with the murder of Lueck, 23, who disappeared on June 17 after taking a Lyft from the airport to a park located miles away from her apartment in Salt Lake.
Investigators conducted a 19-hour search of a Ajayi’s home in a middle class neighborhood on Salt Lake City’s west side in the early hours of Thursday, identifying him as a ‘person of interest’.
Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown revealed in a press conference on Friday afternoon that an excavation of the property’s garden discovered burned ‘female human tissue’, which forensic experts later matched to Lueck’s DNA.
A number of the 23-year-old’s personal possessions were also found among the charred remains.
According to Brown, Teresa Draheim, a neighbour of Ajayi’s, had observed the suspect burning something in his backyard with gasoline on June 17 and 18, just hours after Lueck was last seen alive.
Police confirmed that Lueck’s remains and personal items were found in a ‘burned area’ in the back yard.
Ajayi was taken into custody at 9:20am on Friday morning, where he will be charged with aggravated murder, kidnapping and desecration of a body.
Police say he met with Lueck at Hatch Park in the early hours of the morning on June 17, believing them to have met online, referencing an ‘online profile’ but failing to specify which site.
Courtesy Daily MailOnline
