This article contains details of the murder of Mackenzie Lueck; please take care while reading.
Dateline NBC has been on air since 1992 and has chronicled many a story, from captivating human interest topics to celebrity tell-alls; audiences have experienced a wave of emotions while watching each episode. In recent years, Dateline has focused almost exclusively on true crime, and one of the most heart-wrenching stories we’ve heard is that of Mackenzie Lueck.
Lueck is a college student who went missing in 2019, and her absence grew more heartbreaking with each day that passed. She was reliable, she stayed in almost constant contact with friends and loved ones, and she was also experiencing a chapter of immense heartache in the time surrounding her passing. That very fact is part of why some of her closest confidants weren’t absolutely floored when a few texts began going unanswered, but within days, it was evident that something more sinister was going on.
As details in the case of Lueck began to surface, it was a shock to the system but a stark reminder that the bad guys aren’t just masked madmen in slasher films or villains in superhero films. The unfortunate truth is that evil doesn’t just exist in horror movies; it walks among us daily, hiding in plain sight and preying on the innocent and unsuspecting.
Who is Mackenzie Lueck?
Mackenzie Lueck was many things to many people: a daughter, sister, friend, granddaughter, and confidant; she was a 23-year-old student at the University of Utah at the time of her disappearance and murder, and she was just returning to campus following the death of her beloved grandmother.
Lueck was the kind of girl who found magic in the every day, with friends speaking on their favorite memories of her, sharing that she even threw a birthday party for her cat, purchasing champagne to make the occasion extra special. The Salt Lake Tribune also notes that she made her cat a special cake and asked her friends to dress up for the occasion.
A member of Alpha Chi Omega, Lueck had a slew of friends turned family when she moved to college, and some of those friends spoke about the way she smiled all the time, shared kindness with everyone she met, and was always a light in a room, hoping to share that brightness with others. Those she loved most spoke of the way she adored her brothers, Starbucks coffee, and swimming and how, even in awkward situations, she could make the best of it. Lueck had big dreams for her future, and all of that was taken away when she made the decision to open her heart once more and trust a man she’d met online.
What happened to Mackenzie Lueck in 2019?
On June 17, 2019, upon arriving at the airport in the early morning hours, Lueck met her Lyft driver outside, and he noted that her drop-off location was a little out of the ordinary. Lueck asked to be taken to North Salt Lake’s Hatch Park, and while the location itself wasn’t all that strange, it was considering the time of morning he was dropping her off there. At first, he wondered if he should have done something more, and many had questions about him taking her to a dark location and leaving her with travel bags and no one else around, but he soon confirmed that someone else was there.
A car was waiting for Lueck, and she seemed to know the person who met her there, but he also said that Lueck herself remarked on the location being a bit of a strange one, and driver Michael Canada wondered for quite some time after if he could have done something more. Canada was cleared of any involvement early on but still felt a heaviness regarding the situation:
“I was the last person to see her. I thought, ‘Could I have done something different? Or is there anything I could have done?’ I played it over and over again. I made sure she was OK, so it gave me relief to say, ‘OK, I did everything I could.’”
Those who loved Lueck soon learned that the person waiting for her in the car was a man named Ayoola Ajayi, whom she’d met on the site SeekingArrangement, a webpage devoted to a specific type of relationship that is often referred to in pop culture as a “sugar daddy/baby” bond. Lueck being on this website is something that some outlets focused on heavily regarding her disappearance, but it’s important to note that Lueck did nothing wrong, not by being on the website or by trusting the man she met on it, the only one in the wrong here is Ajayi.
Upon meeting with Lueck, Ajayi took her to his home, which had been noted as having many cameras, especially inside and in the primary bedroom, prior to her time there. When they arrived home, Ajayi had turned the cameras off as to have no proof that she’d ever been at his home; he would later reveal that he planned to murder Lueck before he even picked her up that night, lending to the idea that the cameras being off and other pieces of this story were pre-planned to help him escape suspicion and conviction.
What he did to Lueck in his home was deplorable; the New York Times reported that he took Lueck back to his home in the Fairpark neighborhood and bound her immediately. Lueck tried to tell him to stop and fight back against him, but he overpowered and strangled her before ultimately killing her by blunt force trauma to the head. The specific details are gruesome, but he’d thought out his plan several times before acting on it.
Of course, Ajayi didn’t escape arrest or conviction, and in October of 2022, he entered a guilty plea for aggravated murder and desecration of a human body; he will spend life in prison with no possibility of parole.
While justice was served, it didn’t bring back Lueck, and no apologizing can ease the pain that her friends and loved ones felt, although Ajayi tried to offer one to them at his sentencing. Lueck was beginning a new chapter of her life and deserved far more than she got, and if anything from the tragedy is remembered, it should be her name and story, not his.
