June 20th 2019 a worried father calls the Salt Lake City Police Department from his home in California yeah I'd like to get if possible have a wellness check done on my daughter and I've been trying to get a hold of her a week I was just wondering if I could have somebody maybe go byy her house and check on her McKenzie Leck a 23-year-old college student had just returned to Salt Lake City after spending a week at home for a family funeral her last text to her mother was simple landed love you Mama there was
no hint that it might be her final message when her parents dropped her off at the airport they expected to see her again when the semester ended but McKenzie never made it home after her late night flight and as days passed without contact their worst fears began to unfold last time we heard from her she got off the plane coming back from La it was 1:00 a.m. she was going to grab an Uber and go home but that's the last I've heard for her so 1:00 a.m. this morning no 1:00 a.m. Monday morning so we've
been trying to get a hold of her all week usually it's unlike her to return a call but it goes straight to voicemails McKenzie a dedicated student was now missing the investigation that followed would unravel a chilling mystery CCTV footage phone records and police interrogations revealing the brutal fate that she met in the early hours of June 17th join us at the decoder as we trace the timeline of McKenzie leck's final moments and uncover the truth behind her tragic disappearance this case takes us to Salt Lake City the capital of Utah with a violent crime
rate of 9.79 per 1,000 residents Salt Lake City has a crime rate higher than that of McKenzie's native Los Angeles by one in 1000 but no one expects that 1 in 1,000 to make a difference and no one expects to be that one Mckenzie was in Salt Lake City to finish her studies at the University of Utah just two semesters away from earning her degree living with two roommates her life seemed typical for a college student but after a flight back from California where she attended the funeral of her grandmother her communication stopped cold her
parents Diane and Greg luck had grown increasingly anxious after their last message from McKenzie Diane didn't see the text until she woke up the next morning and when she responded she noticed something strange her reply wasn't delivered through iMessage it had gone through as a regular SMS McKenzie's phone was offline at first luix brushed it off but as time stretched on and their calls continued going straight to voicemail wor crept in please record your message by June 20th after hearing from none of McKenzie's friends or roommates her parents decided to act and does anyone have
a key uh I don't know the landlord may I don't know of anybody that would be there besides your roommates that would have a key I you know what I take that back she said she dropped one behind the mailbox but she could never get it out so there may be one back there somebody can fish it out but I don't know if she ever got it out or not the police's First Step was to carry out a wellness check at McKenzie's address and Salt Lake City on the assumption that she' made it back there
from the airport you know where your landlord lives does he live on the premisis or or how we can get a hold of him to maybe get a key or something like that if we need it a key yes the key to the apartment so that we might be able to go in there just in case she is in there injured or something like that they tried to contact the landlord but received no reply I don't think University of Utah is going to give us any information like we could probably call up there and see
if she's supposed to be in a class yeah she's enrolled they could go check her classes to see if she's there but this is her car and landlord's not answering his phone so I just left him the message eventually one of McKenzie's roommates let them into the house he said that McKenzie had asked him to take care of her cat while she was in California and that she'd said she was returning to Salt Lake City that week but he didn't know exactly when on a search of the property the police didn't find the suitcase McKenzie
had traveled with her car was still in the driveway and there were no signs of Foul Play The implication was clear she'd never made it home there were other concerning signs she hadn't been seen in class all week and she was due to submit an online midterm exam by midnight that night June 20th and she hadn't yet logged into the portal alongside school McKenzie worked at a biological testing company and her colleagues there couldn't confirm that she turned up to work since going to California the police also reviewed surveillance footage from the airport at the
time her flight was scheduled to land 1:35 in the morning she was listed on the Manifest meaning that she had indeed gotten on the flight as planned which aligned with her text to her mom upon landing and the police managed to pay her out on CCTV leaving the airport and getting into a lift car at 2:40 a.m. meanwhile Greg was doing his own investigation into his daughter's life looking for any clues as to her whereabouts McKenzie shared her bank accounts with her parents and upon looking into them Greg found an unusual transaction dated June 10th
in the amount of $300 and lately she hadn't been asking her parents to assist her with tuition payments or rent and she'd recently bought new furniture Greg didn't know where this money came from if it was just her earnings from the biological testing company job or if it came from somewhere else McKenzie's brother knew that she had been seeing men through the Tinder app and that she might have a boyfriend who lived in Park City but he didn't know this possible boyfriend's name nonetheless it was a lead one of her sari sisters also corroborated that
she'd been seeing men through Tinder and said McKenzie had confessed a desire to become a stripper I think she was trying to almost gain confidence and Security in herself I think she realized she was really shy and she wanted to be more outgoing and meet people Greg contacted AT&T to look into McKenzie's phone records on June 17th between 150 and8 a.m. so after McKenzie had landed Ed in Salt Lake City she had texted one number eight times the content of these messages was not available which meant it could be a lead or just a dead
end maybe this was just McKenzie ordering her ride share the police listed McKenzie as a missing person and sent a text message to her number saying you are an adult and have the right to not communicate with whomever you want I simply need to verify your safety we will not communicate your location or anything else unless you give us permission please give me a call Kenzie luex family and friends trying to reach her on social media they posted this video hoping she might see it everyone is out looking for you around the country and they
all want you to know that we're advocating for you we're fighting for you and we're going to bring you home in cases like these with a young person reported missing it wasn't unusual for them simply to have run off needing some time away from everything McKenzie's family could only hope that this was the case you know she might be upset but come and just call somebody and say I'm fine quit looking for me one thing that we wanted to talk about is she texted her family that she landed at the airport she wouldn't have done
that if she wanted to purposely disappear on June 21st the police widened the investigation to McKenzie's known connections they uncovered an ex-boyfriend who dated McKenzie until April 2018 he told them that a few weeks after the relationship had ended she'd sent him a Snapchat video of her having sex with two other people and he blocked her one of McKenzie's sari sisters had something interesting to say that McKenzie had had a job interview lined up at exotic Kitty which was a gentleman's club the investigators also spoke to one of her male friends who said that he
and McKenzie had been casually dating on and off since September 2018 but had never been exclusive and it had plans to meet up when McKenzie got back from California this friend said that Mckenzie was a regular sugar baby meaning she connected with men sugar daddies who would give her gifts and money this was maybe her mystery source of income she used the dating app Tinder as well as the site seeking arrangement for this purpose the site's homepage reads seeking arrangement delivers a new way for relationships to form and grow sugar babies and sugar daddies or
mamas both get what they want when they want it McKenzie had last logged into this website on June 16th a few hours before her disappearance the friend also told police that she'd connected with a guy on Tinder about 3 weeks ago but didn't know any details about the mystery man I have no idea what happened to her where she is nobody does and it's it's pretty terrifying a mixed picture of McKenzie was emerging aside to her life that her parents hadn't known anything about born on March 8th 1996 in the Beachside LA suburb of El
Segundo she was the second of her parents four children and their only daughter at high school she was on the swim and water polo teams and helped to start a club for breast cancer awareness she continued her feminist thinking at the University of of Utah where she was a positive and supportive sisterly presence in her sority Alpha Kai Omega the sar's charity work focused on domestic violence awareness and prevention and on Facebook McKenzie posted to celebrate the anniversary of women's suffrage she'd had a difficult year as according to one friend she'd been sexually assaulted in
2018 and was having a hard time dealing with it seeing a therapist and taking medication for depression Mckenzie was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Salt Lake City is the Faith's headquarters McKenzie wasn't devout however and enjoyed going out to bars with her friends and apparently meeting men on Tinder she'd also recently come out to her family as bisexual though her friends and family weren't aware of any women she was seeing she came from a health care background with her dad Greg working in healthc care Logistics and administration McKenzie herself
was majoring in pre- nursing and Kinesiology the study of human movement she hoped to go to nursing or medical school after her graduation planned for May 2020 but she'd never make it to graduation over the last couple days I've spoken with Greg luak I can feel the heartache and the pain and the suffering in his voice as we spoke and my commitment to Greg was that we would do everything within our power the Salt Lake City Police Department to bring McKenzie home eventually the police managed to track down the details of the lift ride McKenzie
had taken from the airport information in her email inbox showed she'd been picked up at 2:40 a.m. on June 17th and then dropped off at 16 East Center Street North Salt Lake at 2:59 a.m. 19 minutes later this location was a Park Hatch park with several buildings nearby there was no obvious reason for McKenzie to be there confirmed that this was the location where she was last seen hatch Park here in North Salt Lake investigators now revealing she met someone else after getting dropped off detectives has spoken with the lift driver and learned that Mckenzie
was met at hatch park by an individual in a vehicle McKenzie did not appear to be in any type of distress on the 25th we learned about a disturbing problem with the cameras at hatch Park in North Salt Lake which could have filmed McKenzie getting in that car the morning of June 17th hatch Park doesn't have any cameras we have some dummy cameras meanwhile the police had opened a tip line and it was flooded with information people reported sightings of McKenzie in the company of various men including one on June 21 in a liquor store
the witness claimed to have seen her buying alcohol with a white man and described her as wearing a white shirt with jeans and having a tattoo on her arms above each elbow one with words and the other with an arrow McKenzie did indeed have tattoos but not these tattoos rather she had a tattoo of a star on her back these false Sightings muddied The Waters and made it difficult to determine when the last sighting of mckenzi actually was had she been wandering around Salt Lake City all week or was that fateful lift ride to the
park in North Salt Lake the last moment before something terrible the only one who could meaningfully answer this question was the Lyft driver lyft's privacy policies meant that investigators had to get a search warrant to access McKenzie's Account Details and by the time they spoke to the person who had driven her that fateful night it was June 22nd and she had been Officially Missing for 2 days when they questioned the driver he said he dropped McKenzie as planned at the park in North Salt Lake where she'd been picked up by a friend in a car
that looked like a Subaru I remember I was actually going to turn off my um my app and go home but right then I got a um another order to go pick somebody up downtown um so I just went to to go pick up that person they seem to know each other um really well cuz I I I think all I heard was how are you doing how are you trip just kind of basic greetings the situation seemed very safe she uh obviously knew the person that she was um getting in um into the car
with none of McKenzie's friends had come forward to say they'd picked her up that night though her status as missing was widely reported her other friends were speaking on the news where could she have gone her car has not been moved things are adding up meanwhile time since McKenzie's disappearance was stretching on she'd been booked on a flight back to LA on June 23rd for a family wedding and the police met the plane to determine if she was on it but she wasn't and when her bank records were produced under subpoena they discovered she hadn't
made any transactions since the lift payment in the early hours of June 17th so whatever had happened to her had likely happened that very same night possibly at hatch Park the investigators set up a Geo fence for the area of hatch Park in the early hours of June 17th which registered six devices entering that vicinity in the time frame one device pinged several times in the area a device belonging neither to McKenzie nor the lift driver it belonged instead to a man named aula AI ayula's phone had pinged in the same area as McKenzie's right
before 3:00 a.m. when McKenzie's phone was turned off between 258 and 259 a.m. more damningly phone records showed that McKenzie and iula had been having conversations over the text me app this was enough for the police to apply for a search warrant of ayula's residence on June 25th the police made contact with him though his lawyer advised him not to he sat down willingly with the police he claimed he only wanted to clear up a mistake not under arrest you're not being detained you can leave anytime you want to okay it just doesn't make I
just want to I want get to the roote of it too because when you said my IP is shin that means something is wrong AJ worked in it meaning he understood the significance of his geolocation and the way they triangulated his proximity to McKenzie on the night she disappeared he claimed he wanted to clear up any confusion and he mentioned his Alibi right out of the Starting Gate so I have security camera in my in front of the house mhm and then I have one uh inside the house so that's my baby Mar R she
was with me on that day so according to the video she was with me he said his baby Mama's first name was Michelle and that he didn't know her last name she was 8 months pregnant with his child but they weren't together AJ seemed to feel guilt however about using the seeking Arrangement site so I have ttz and anxiety I just need to talk to someone whenever I'm alone and I'm freaking out so this is the seeking Arrangement website yes okay so and I go through the whole everything I can't see anyone that match that
Prof and that match that picture okay but if you see you can see most of them are in Seattle o everywhere around the world okay so I never even try to meet them I just need someone to talk to whenever I'm freaking out so to come down so even some of them are in Washington DC mhm and one in log in so all of them all we just do is to talk and more met her from there I'm positive that I probably don't want to meet her because all this is not revealed to my baby
mama and I don't want her to know about it I never meet any of them he couldn't deny that he'd been using the website since the investigators had concrete evidence he did however deny meeting McKenzie through the site but why had they texted outside of the site on June 16th only 9 hours before she went missing AJ claimed that she must have found his phone number on his profile and texted him the question mark to ask if he was interested so you're still saying that that's the only text that's the only messages you got from
her right that I can remember so but for her to just send me a question Mac so there's a possibility that I've talked to her in the past and don't get me wrong I'm not saying you did this or you were involved in it all I'm just saying that someone at your house or someone was using your IP address that's all yeah just trying to get the bottom of it I would like to do that because I'm freaking out already I have anxiety and I have P so that's why I've been calling you like please
let me have if anyway I can help even my lawyer don't want me to come here right now he claimed he didn't save numbers in his phone and so he didn't recall if he' talked to McKenzie before when she asked for a photo he sent her a selfie and she never responded to it so earlier you said we could have to take your phone and download it are you still willing to do that or no I just need to call my lawyer and see if it's okay because I want to help as much as I
can but she is saying that some police just want to pin it on someone that they can pin it on me AJ said he downloaded all the online evidence the police wanted including the footage from his home security camera which he claimed placed him at home all the early hours of June 17th but wasn't willing to hand it over AJ there are reason you know you can understand if this was your sister or something or your mom we'd be working just as hard to to find her for you okay this family is in the same
in in that same boat we just want to do everything we can and just because you've chatted with you've text back and forth twice or however many times and it's bouncing off your IP address you know we just want to cross every every Avenue make sure that people aren't invied people who are staying with you people might be parked outside of your house using your Wi-Fi we just want to make sure AJ excused the coincidences as best he could he wasn't under arrest however at the end of The Interview police confiscated his cell phones before
allowing him to leave and on the following day they executed a search warrant at his house have the search warrant can I follow your phone to come a lawyer he was broadly Cooperative but he questioned Why They confiscated his phone as evidence they then proceeded to sech the house hello s please can you come out please they found another occupant of the house a guest who was staying in AJ's spare bedroom through an Airbnb booking hi it's the police department um are you renting this room yes okay um we are going to be serving a
warrant on this house so we need is there anyone else here just me if you want to just grab your wallet I got my wallet my okay we'll need you to come out then okay only arrived from the airport that morning and had no idea why the police were suddenly conducting a search on his host's house other than this guest there was no one in the house and there was no sign of McKenzie house clear just the one Airbnb guy in the whole place the police told AJ he was free to leave you're free to
leave I'm not detain you so you can leave whenever you want you want to check me fighting I mean no I just don't want you guys to use anything when I'm going because I gave them my phone and they use that against me before so I just want to make sure that you guys approve everything before I do it you're free to leave when you want any idea where you want to go just I don't even know I don't have my phone on my hat so I have no destination okay um again and I don't
have a time frame right like I don't know if could be 10 minutes could be a little bit longer yeah I would assume youd want to be here yeah so I mean you don't have you're sitting right there I have no problem with you sitting in the shade on the porch if you want to like that looks miserable yeah if you guys have my phone without my permission and if you guys they give it to you guys when you are here and I can see what you guys are doing with it that make more sense
but it took it with them I didn't know what's going on and I don't either so that I guess think that no fear AJ left he said to go to the local library undercover officers followed him and learned that he didn't go to the library he went to a Smith's Grocery and the Bank inside it there he bought a pay as you go cell phone a few hours later after having gathered the evidence at the house the police came to detain him what's going on man detectives are ready to talk to you about everything it's
going on real fast so if you want to come I'll give you right back to the house real quick but there Fox News I know I'm going to drive you back in my car it's a Camry so we'll stay we'll stay away from the news yeah we're not going to go by the news I don't want my face on the news I will do that so it doesn't Okay so stand up real quick goad we're just going to are youting me or something no no no stand up then why you you're going to be the
10 for a little bit you're being detained but just for a second okay I got to put you in handcuffs just while we're driving her policy we're going to just going to go talk to detectives for a little bit the police confiscated his new cell phone as evidence it was 7 days after Mckenzie was reported missing and 10 days after the last sighting of her alive so what did the police find at AJ's residence that was damning enough for them to detain him they found multiple knives a hammer and a gun in his car they
found dirt and debris they also discovered a lot of electronics including a router and a Wi-Fi mesh system all these electronic items including AJ's phones and computer would be forensically examined our detectives collected multiple items of evidence throughout the night that are in the process of being tested and analyzed this will take some time but the most telling evidence wasn't technological at all the investigators found a freshly dug patch of Earth in the back of AJ's yard and heard from his neighbors that on June 17th he'd been burning something there that had given off a
foul smell the smell of gas was outrageous and I thought maybe I was in my bedroom and I smelled it through my window and I thought maybe it was my motor home and so I came outside to make sure and there was the smell in the air that was just almost rancid it was just really disgusting smelling a canine unit was brought in to search for human remains and the dog detected something Tara Chatterton says she was hired to clean the house but quit after after just one day after discovering it bristled with cameras how
many cameras did he have in the house and where were they placed I figured around 8 to 10 wow um but there was one in every single room for sure but there was several in the master bedroom and where were the cameras facing in the master bedroom Towards the bed she says the accused killer specifically asked her to bring her 12-year-old daughter cherish with her when she cleaned the house Tara says AJ had a certain charm but reminded her of notorious serial killer Ted Bundy I just knew in my gut that I should not go
back I could just feel it I just knew that there was something wrong with it so they interviewed AJ a second time and this time they stopped being so empathetic the police pushed him on the limits of coincidence the locations of his phone and McKenzie's was an accident he argued or a mistake he kept his WiFi open without password protection for the sake of his Airbnb guests this was why there was confus confusion around his IP address being used so he said AJ I just told you that your phone records and the location put you
up at the meet do you think honestly and expect me to believe that you ended that conversation and somehow you and her and her location end up in the exact same spot oh I'm not doubting you if I see that too if I'm in your case I would be asking myself what are you asking me right now it's not a miraculous question yeah I I agree with you stuff doesn't just happen no yes I agree with you I'm telling you to explain that and so far you have not well how do I explain something I
don't know are you saying you don't know or you don't remember because those are two different things AJ he had no answer on this supposed coincidence and he wasn't convincing when the interview ended the police had confirmed some things that AJ had used the seeking Arrangement site and that he talked to McKenzie over text but AJ hadn't confessed to anything more incriminating he insisted he'd been home on the night of the 16th and the morning of the 17th and he claimed he'd never met McKenzie in person he did confess to having lit a fire in
his backyard on the 17th but said he'd put it out as soon as a neighbor told him he wasn't allowed Ed to be burning things because of pollution restrictions and that he needed to call the fire department this same neighbor told the police that the fire had smelled like nothing she'd ever smelled before and that she' told him to call the fire department or she would AJ said he'd only been burning some trash and maybe some clothes but he insisted the clothes were his own he explained the dirt and debris in the Floor of his
car as the result of recent work on his yard saying he'd recently planted 20 or so flowers and the debris was from the fertilizer apparently he was also in the habit of killing goats for food and burning them instead of skinning them but he hadn't done that for a while this according to AJ was the explanation for any blood they might find in the bottom of the fridge in his garage but it was not goat remains they found in his backyard no instead they found a human bone charred muscle tissue and part of a human
scalp with hair there was also a cell phone AJ's fire had not been a simple exercise in burning trash it had been disposal of evidence this is one of the most difficult phone calls I've ever made as both Greg and his wife Diana were devastated and heartbroken by this news AJ's Car smelled strongly of gas and they discovered a red gas can that looked Iden identical to the one he'd been seen purchasing at 9:00 a.m. on June 17th the morning after McKenzie's disappearance there was also surveillance evidence of AJ's Car in those fateful early hours
in this footage AJ's Kia can be seen heading towards hatch park at 2:48 a.m. at 2:59 a.m. the white lift vehicle drives away from the park and about 10 seconds later so does AJ's Kia only now Mckenzie was in it following the interview the police had released AJ and he went to stay with a friend but it wouldn't be for long the physical evidence against him was mounting and early on June 28th the samples from his backyard were confirmed to match McKenzie Luck's DNA and the police were prepared to detain aula aayi on suspicion of
murder a SWAT team was deployed to the friend's apartment where aj was staying meanwhile one of the officers called him to encourage him to surrender hey you're being a little bit unreasonable dude I'm a man you're a man or grown man if you want to arrest me I would come down and you can arrest me I will be dead I can see your car I would come down okay down not trying to to arrest me will you come down please no only if you tell me that you want to arrest I not arresting you no
I'm not I'm not you just come down if you're not trying to arrest me then I don't want to talk to you if I'm not trying to arrest you then you don't want to talk to me yes what if I was trying to arrest you do you want to come down and talk to me sure okay I'm trying to arest you come down and talk to me you have your arrest with you yep okay thanks the officer called AJ's Bluff AJ came downstairs and the SWAT team arrested him without incident we are filing charges of
aggravated murder aggravated kidnapping and desecration of a b body in the homicide of McKenzie L the man charged is aola ad aaya I will not be saying the killer's name again so who actually was aula aayi and what did he have to do with McKenzie luck born in 1988 AJ was raised in Nigeria but had lived in Utah since at least 2009 when he' started at Utah State University on a student visa he'd returned to the University three separate times but never earned his degree he'd also been with the Utah National Guard from 2014 to
2015 when he was discharged with an entry-level separation he did not complete basic training and didn't receive any certificates leaving him ineligible to be employed on any tours of Duty he was discharged from medical reasons potentially glaucoma however his LinkedIn page which has since been taken down listed that he was an IT specialist for the US Army from 2014 to 2016 and that he had experience working in it for Dell Goldman Sachs and Microsoft he had attempted to start a modeling career describing himself on his Model Management page as tall buffed funny I am a
victim romantic violent and character actor Eevee Keener owns a modeling and talent agency in Salt Lake City that represents dozens of beautiful young women eeve says she met the accused killer here in Salt Lake City Utah at a networking event for models and their agents Last Summer She says the suspect approached her about signing with her modeling agency but she says there was something about him that creeped her out on the surface he seemed perfect he seemed very smart very good-looking but after attending several networking parties 31-year-old auli aayi began reaching out to Eevee on
social media she instinctively sensed danger he wanted to sign on with my agency and I did not feel comfortable having him in the same room with my young models so I just listened to my gut and I didn't have anything further to do with him AJ self-published a book on Amazon in 2018 called Forge identity it was a fictional story about a boy witnessing a friend and neighbor be burned alive by a violent mob it was suggested that this book was based on a true story he was also married to a woman named Tanisha aay
who lived in Dallas Texas I first met him he was a sweet person he was a good person he used to send me money down here for my kids they'd met through a family friend and got married when he was 23 and she was 27 they'd never lived together and she hadn't spoken to him in years I just stopped talking to him because he that was like for real from my life the stuff that he was doing it was changing my life according to Tanisha AJ had lost his temper when she refused to come to
Utah to live with him and threatened to kill her if she wouldn't because he threatened me and I have kids to live for he got aggressive and he was saying that he was going to kidnap me I just left him alone she said he once tried to tie her up with a phone cord and she had to jump through a window to escape I was trying to get out the window we was at his friend house and he closed the window down and I jumped through the window and he had a bushy knife was trying
to stab me with the knife I was trying to grab the knife out his hand cuz he was trying to stab me in my hand but I had to like tried to grab the knife out his hand and it cut me like I had all these CL AJ refused to sign divorce papers and as a result they remained married this wasn't the only violent blip in AJ's past though he had no convictions on his record he'd been investigated for a sex offense in 2014 and again in March 2018 just over a year before McKenzie's disappearance
when he was accused of sexually assaulting a woman he met on a dating app this is the back door leading down to the basement where a contractor says the suspect asked him to build a soundproof room complete with a secret door hooks on the concrete wall and also a fingerprint lock investigations in the Mackenzie phone show Brian wolf could only sit in and watch as police announced the end of the search for Mackenzie Leck holy crap all week on the news he kept seeing pictures of a house that he was just inside a couple months
ago now he sees the mug shot of the man he met inside I've never ever had anybody ask me anything like this 100% that man that they arrested is the man I met guaranteed I'm shaking right now I'm my heart's pounding it's I'm almost about to cry it's scary I feel sorry for that girl he says murder suspect aula aay we just had to put his name down as AJ wanted him to build a secret soundproof room in the basement right here with a thumb print lock and hooks hanging from the walls 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 she didn't know he drank so he wanted to hide her alcohol from her and I was like well why did he need it to be soundproof I told a lot of people that I thought something weird was going on over there and it turns out they obvious was he was adamant about getting it done really fast and Money Was No Object and he just he needed to get it done before his girlfriend came into
town he says he still isn't sure what AJ actually wanted the room for I could totally do it but I never would have done it there's no way but whatever it was he refused to be a part of it I just had a gut feeling that the room he wanted built wasn't appropriate for anything it wasn't something where somebody would want to be in that room alone with them and even my nephew when we got out to the truck he was we both looked at each other and was like that was weird right and he
was like yeah that was hella weird we're not doing this job right and I was like hell no AJ's history only heightened suspicion and further searches of his property uncovered damning evidence the police found clothing with bleach and blood stains on it as well as a bloodied shower curtain AJ was already under arrest for her murder but they still had to find her body and once again it would be AJ's phone records that proved to the key placing him at Logan Canyon on June 25th a Scenic location popular with hikers climbers and skiers it was
an hour and 20 minutes drive from Salt Lake City and remote enough that it registered as a likely place for AJ to have disposed of McKenzie's remains on July 2nd the investigators began a search of this area it was on July 3rd just after midday that they made a breakthrough the horrifying discovery of human remains it was McKenzie's body just as they'd feared she was buried in a shallow grave covered with some brush her hands had been zip tied behind her back and her body was partially burned there was blunt force trauma to the head
and her killer had made an attempt to bury her body but not well enough finally on July 10th iula was formally charged with aggravated murder aggravated kidnapping obstructing justice and desecration of a human body what he done to McKenzie lck was both awful and awfully simple he'd arranged to meet with her after connecting on the seeking Arrangement site back in 2018 they agreed to meet up after McKenzie got back from California and she had her lift driver drop her off at hatch Park she even acknowledged the strangeness of this to her lift driver making Small
Talk they commented on something being strange and she said not as strange as where you were dropping me off in the middle of a park so late at night but this was according to her plan with AJ who would pick her up there and take her to his house and that's what he did but she couldn't have known what he really planned when they got to his house he tied her hands behind her back with zip ties and started to choke her with his hands when this wasn't enough to kill her he used a belt
and hit her on the side of the head according to the autopsy it was this blow that ultimately killed her on June 17th he attempted to burn her body in his backyard but was prevented by his neighbor who questioned the smell instead he buried McKenzie there and threw some of her belongings into the Jordan River they were later recovered on the bank of the river these included her student ID for the University of Utah and some items of her clothing such as her bra which had burn marks on it the police visited him for the
first time on June 24th on the next day June 25th he dug her body up and moved it to Logan Canyon in the hope it wouldn't be found there but even this it worker had underestimated the digital traces he would leave and he had indeed been trying to cover his tracks even from the beginning because this wasn't a sexual counter turned suddenly sour this was premeditated AJ's home was full of security cameras but he turned them off before leaving to meet McKenzie he wasn't shy about recording his sexual encounters no he turned them off because
he had a far darker purpose in mind he did the same when he moved McKenzie's body turning his home security cameras off for the duration of the time his cell phone was triangulated heading to Logan Canyon and back on June 25th between 2:30 and 4:30 p.m. he also tried to give away a mattress on a resale website presumably the mattress on which he'd murdered McKenzie eventually giving it to a woman who later recognized AJ on the news as the man who'd given it to her his digital footprint had caught up with him and he'd have
to face the consequences during the search of his electronic devices the police had alleged ly discovered pornographic imagery of minors Salt Lake County district attorney Sim Gill says 31-year-old aula aay sexually assaulted another woman in March of 2018 a court document States a invited the woman over for dinner after the 28 while watching TV the woman alleges a sexually assaulted her causing significant pain he was charged with 19 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor but these charges were later dropped on October 7th 2020 AJ pleaded guilty to first-degree aggravated murder and third degree desecration
of a human body are you entering your guilty pleas today of your own free will and choice in exchange the prosecutors took the death penalty off the table he was instead sentence to life in prison without possibility of parole he was also charged with the 20 2018 kidnapping and assault of the woman he'd met on Tinder who'd come forward when his name was released in the news in connection with McKenzie's death for this he was sentenced to a further 1 to 15 years in prison the man accused of killing University of Utah student McKenzie luck
last year is now selling his home this house has gone up for sale and after what happened last summer they'll always look at this house differently every time I come by you can't help but remember what happened there and even though the neighborhood has quieted down in the 8 months since this house became a crime scene for murder for Neighbors this home will always be different there's a black mark in your mind uh when you look at the house that kind of just reminds you that something horrible happened I was really surprised that it was
for sale because I was under the understanding that they wanted to keep it rented to make funds to help pay the defense the listing online shows AI wants $349,000 for the ,800 Ft house investment opportunity the description says cutest house on the Block the listing realtor declined to comment for Neighbors this home will always be different but Scott hopes the next owner will help change that some new life some positive energy and positive activity going on there that would that would make you know the change I did talk with a man who is currently renting
the home he said that he rented it from someone who's managing the property for aula AI he did say that they disclosed to him what had happened there before he rented the home what happened was awful I mean it's a terrible case I chose to not look at police reports even though they said I could look at them if I wanted to but it was hard to miss today's news Mr aay Burns Miss Lu's body her clothing and her belongings in an attempt to dispose of evidence of her murder why Kenzie what what did she
do to deserve this why burn half of her body I think we're all still in extreme shock even right now I feel like I can call her and text her and she'll answer me we didn't get to say goodbye to our friend this person stole our friend from us so I don't know if we'll ever have closures McKenzie's father Greg said my daughter McKenzie luck was a sweet amazing young lady with the World ahead of her she was a kindhearted person that cared about others now I will not have the opportunity to see her blossom
in life the prosecutor said this was murder for murder's sake that aula aayi had only wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone my life has been changed due to the selfish premeditated decision you made on June 17th 2019 instead of planning my daughter's graduation part I plann for Memorial breaks my heart knowing that she died alone in such a scary place tragically she won't be among the graduates next spring this feels like a nightmare that I can't wake up from but unfortunately it's reality today he remains in prison and the luix will
never forget the bright daughter they lost what do you think about this chilling story let us know your thoughts in the comments below until next time stay safe keep up with our Channel and we will see you very soon on the decoder [Music]
