The suspect accused of murdering and scorching the remains of 23-year-old University of Utah senior Mackenzie Lueck reportedly published a book that included the burning deaths of two people, according to the New York Times.
Last month, Ayoola Ajayi was arrested on suspicion of murdering Lueck, who was kidnapped after returning to Salt Lake City from a trip to California. The police have said that in the early-morning hours of June 17, Lueck took a Lyft from the airport to Hatch Park, where her driver saw her meet someone before she disappeared.
Authorities came to suspect Ajayi after it was discovered that the 31-year-old had been communicating with Lueck on June 16, the day before she went missing. Additionally, both Lueck’s and Ajayi’s phones were in the park before hers stopped receiving data. Ajayi's neighbors told authorities he had been using gasoline to burn something in his backyard on June 17 and 18. “The arrested person’s neighbors informed detectives that they observed him burning something in his backyard with the use of gasoline,” Mike Brown, chief of the Salt Lake City Police Department, said.
When police located a freshly dug plot in the suspect's backyard, a forensic excavation was conducted, and Lueck's charred DNA was found. Two weeks after Lueck went missing, Ajayi was arrested on suspicion of aggravated murder, aggravated kidnapping, obstruction of justice, and desecration of a body.
After authorities began investigating him, they found out Ajayi had published a book last year. The book was being sold on Amazon before it was taken down. In the plot description, two of the characters die after they're burned alive.
Brian Wolf, a Utah-based contractor, told the Deseret News that Ajayi reached out to him in April to build a soundproof room with anchored hooks on a concrete wall in his home. "As soon as he said he wanted the hooks above head height, I was like, 'Why do you need big hooks up there?'" Wolf told the outlet. "And he said it was to hang a wine rack. I said, 'Well, I can hang a wine rack and make it look a lot nicer than these big, gaudy hooks.'" Wolf, uncomfortable with the request, turned down the job and reached out to police months later after news reports identified Ajayi as the suspect.
In 2012, Ajayi was banned from the Utah State University campus after his student visa expired and he was arrested for allegedly stealing an iPad. He had reportedly stopped attending classes the year prior, however, he continued to sleep on residence hall couches and store items in janitor's closets, per the Associated Press. Reports now show that Ajayi has been a U.S. citizen since at the time his student visa expired he married a woman in Texas. The marriage ended in divorce in January, since according to his ex-wife Tenisha Ajayi, he became abusive and controlling. “I just stopped talking to him because I was fearing for my life,” she told KUTV.
Ajayi is being held without bail and the Salt Lake City County District Attorney’s Office is planning to formally charge the suspect sometime next week.
