Mackenzie Lueck case: Accused wanted a 'secret sex dungeon' in his home's basement with hooks in the wall, contractor reveals
The man charged of killing University of Utah student Mackenzie Lueck and burning her body in his backyard reportedly tried to have a secret sex dungeon built in his basement, according to a contractor.
Police officers, meanwhile, said on Friday night that they had located the missing mattress from the suspect's home, which is being considered key evidence in the case. The officials were reportedly looking for a mattress and spring box which the accused had disposed of last week. No more information on the mattress has been provided yet.
Police arrested the suspect, identified as 31-year-old Ayoola Adisa Ajayi, on the charges of aggravated murder, aggravated kidnapping, desecration of a corpse, and obstruction of justice. He is currently being held at the Salt Lake County Jail without a bond.
The suspect had reportedly reached out to contractor Brian Wolf in April, asking him to build a "soundproof" room in the basement of his Salt Lake City home, according to Fox News. Ajayi reportedly proposed that Wolf build a "secret door" to a space that was nearly four feet by nine feet, the 31-year-old also 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.'
When Wolf asked for an explanation, Ajayi said that he wanted to build a secret room for alcohol so that he could hide it from his Mormon girlfriend, and soundproof it so that he could sit inside and listen to music.
"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 told the outlet, adding that he was "weirded out" by the job offer and told Ajayi that he was too busy to take on 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."
The former IT specialist with the Army was pictured being taken into custody by a number of armed SWAT officers outside his 1028 S West Temple home on Friday. Investigators, shortly after, charged him with the murder of 23-year-old Lueck, who had disappeared on June 17 after taking a Lyft from the Salt Lake City airport to a park at 3 a.m. She reportedly got down at the park and got into the vehicle of an unidentified man. The park was located miles away from her apartment in Salt Lake.
Ajayi was arrested on Friday after investigators marked him as a "person of interest" and conducted a 19-hour search of his home on Salt Lake City's west side in the early hours of Thursday. Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown, in a press conference on Friday afternoon, revealed that an excavation of the property's garden discovered burned 'female human tissue', which forensic experts later matched to Lueck's DNA. Reports state that Leuck's personal possessions were also found among the charred remains.
According to police, the suspect met with Lueck at Hatch Park in the early hours of June 17. The investigators believe that they met online and Leuck's last communications were "with the arrested person" and the defendant and the victim's phones both pinged in Hatch Park at 3 a.m "within a minute" of one another.
Brown said that they will continue to investigate and determine if Ajayi acted alone in the alleged murder or if he had help. Ajayi is currently being booked in the Salt Lake City Jail. It is unclear if he has legal representation.