By Canadian Press

Tech worker pleads guilty in Utah college student’s death

Oct 7, 2020 | 4:45 PM

SALT LAKE CITY — A tech worker pleaded guilty in the death of a Utah college student Wednesday, more than a year after her disappearance sparked a large-scale search that ended with the discovery of her charred remains in his backyard.

Ayoola A. Ajayi acknowledged that he planned the death of 23-year-old Mackenzie Lueck, whom he had texted before meeting in a park. After they returned to his home, he bound and strangled her, then he burned and hid her body while police and loved ones searched for her, his lawyer said in court.

Ajayi, who also pleaded guilty Wednesday to sexually abusing a different woman he met on a dating app, is expected to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Lueck went missing in June 2019, after returning from a trip home to El Segundo, California, for her grandmother’s funeral. Lueck had exchanged text messages with Ajayi, 32, and took a Lyft to meet him in a park, apparently willingly, prosecutors have said. Her phone was turned off a minute after the last text and never turned back on, charges state.

Ajayi planned the slaying before the meeting at the park and turned off the video in his home-security system before he left to meet her, he said. When they returned to his Salt Lake City home, he tied her up and began to choke her. She tried to stop him, after which he put a belt around her neck, pushed her onto her stomach and strangled her, his attorney said.

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He then burned her body and buried it in his backyard, defence attorney Neal Hamilton said. When detectives came to his door to question him, he dug her up and buried her in a shallow grave in a canyon nearly 100 miles (161 kilometres) north of Salt Lake City.

The search for Lueck went on for nearly two weeks before some of her remains were discovered in Ajayi’s backyard and he was arrested. He later revealed the location of her body in Logan Canyon, where she was found with her arms bound behind her.

Ajayi was an information technology worker who had stints with high-profile companies and was briefly in the Army National Guard.

Authorities have not discussed a motive for the killing or how they knew each other, though court documents have shown investigators searched social media and dating sites while trying to find a link between them.

He pleaded guilty to aggravated murder and desecration of a corpse in an agreement with prosecutors that removed the possibility of the death penalty. Prosecutors dropped two charges in exchange, aggravated kidnapping and obstructing justice.

Ajayi said little at Wednesday’s hearing, though he occasionally hung his head. He appeared in an orange jail jumpsuit, glasses and blue surgical mask. He is expected to be formally sentenced Oct. 23.

Ajayi also pleaded guilty Wednesday to sexually abusing another woman he met on a dating app in March 2018, more than a year before Lueck disappeared. They went to his house for dinner, and the abuse happened while they were watching television, he acknowledged. He pleaded guilty to forcible sexual abuse in that case.

Ajay also has been charged with 19 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor after investigators said they discovered child pornography on his computer. He has pleaded not guilty in that case.

A native of Nigeria, Ajayi held a green card that allows him to legally work and live in the U.S., prosecutors have said.

Lueck has been remembered as a bubbly, nurturing person. She was a member of a sorority and a part-time senior at the University of Utah studying kinesiology and pre-nursing.

Lindsay Whitehurst, The Associated Press