320: Utah Student Abducted By Sugar Daddy to Be Held Captive in His Torture Chamber?! | Mackenzie Lueck

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yeah i'd like to get if possible have a wellness check done on my daughter i've been trying to get a hold of her all week last time i heard from her she got off the plane the police listed mckenzie as a missing person mckenzie luek's family and friends trying to reach her on social media

We just immediately lost our breath.

I think we were holding hands and I was in complete shock.

Are you saying you don't know or you don't remember?

Because those are two different things, AJ.

Hey, True Crime Besties.

Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serial Asleep.

Yeah, I'd like to get, if possible have a wellness check done on my daughter.

She flew in from California Sunday night.

She got in about one and it was the last time I've heard from her and I've been trying to get a hold of her all week.

And her phone just tends to go to voicemail.

I was just wondering if I could have somebody maybe go by her house and check on her.

And when did you say you heard from her last?

Last time we heard from her, she got a hold of her all week.

In the middle of the night in June of 2019, 23-year-old Mackenzie Lueck hopped off a plane in Salt Lake City and texted her mom to let her know that she had landed safely.

Mackenzie was returning to Utah after being in California for the past few days attending her grandmother's funeral.

For the last several days, she had been with friends, family members, just really celebrating her grandmother's life with the people that she loved the most.

But what McKenzie did next took everyone who knew her by surprise.

Because just hours after getting off of that plane, McKenzie was on the move again.

See, around 3 a.m., she was now stepping out of a Lyft rideshare car and stepping into a pitch black park in the middle of the night.

She was doing that to meet with somebody that she had been talking to online.

So this rideshare driver just watched as McKenzie stepped out of the car and stepped into another vehicle that was waiting nearby.

And that...

was the last time that anyone saw McKenzie alive.

Hey guys, I'm Annie Elise.

Welcome back to an all-new episode of Seriously.

We are going to jump right in.

Now today's case is one of the more disturbing ones that I have covered lately, and it's definitely not an easy one to forget.

Not just because of the brutality of it all, but also because of just how fast an online connection can turn into something straight ripped out of a nightmare.

One minute, a college student is landing at the airport after a trip home for a family funeral, and then the next minute, she vanishes.

Vanishes after meeting somebody who had been fantasizing about building a personal torture chamber.

We have got a lot to unpack today, so I'm going to jump right into the case of Mackenzie Lewak.

In 2019, Mackenzie was attending the University of Utah.

She was majoring in pre-nursing and kinesiology, which is the study of human movement.

She had told her advisors that she was planning on going to nursing or medical school, and because she was a senior in college, she was gearing up to take that next big step into the real world, and it was something that she was really excited about.

Now, as for Mackenzie, she had these big brown eyes, this long blonde hair, and if you're watching this episode on YouTube, you'll see some of the photos of her on the screen.

But she was smart, driven, and just genuinely caring.

The kind of friend who always showed up, always checked in, and just made time for the people that she cared about.

She was also very social and very outgoing.

She had this big circle of friends.

She was also in a sorority.

She was always involved in campus life, community projects, just kind of immersed herself in the community, in the world, right?

People genuinely liked being around her.

Friends also described her as just being warm and funny and the kind of person who went out of her way to make others feel included.

For example, one time she threw this like full-on birthday party for her cat, full-on with like a cake that was made out of special food.

She had champagne for all of her friends and just wanted everybody to participate in celebrating her cat.

Now, although she lived in Utah, Mackenzie was originally from El Segundo, California, which is a very small beach city near Los Angeles.

It's right over by LAX.

And it's also worth noting that Mackenzie was raised in a very close-knit Mormon family.

Even though she had started to pull away a little bit from that religion after moving to college, her family ties were still very strong.

And she was especially close with her parents and her siblings.

However, there was one part of her life that she really didn't share with her family.

See, McKenzie had recently started exploring something called sugar dating.

Now, if you're not familiar with that term, let me just kind of break it down for you.

If you are into sugar dating, you either are a sugar daddy or sugar person, and then a sugar baby.

It basically means somebody is financially assisting you, taking care of you in exchange for your companionship, maybe in exchange for just attention,

physical affection.

The list goes on and on, right?

It's up to the two people who are in this arrangement.

And McKenzie had set up a profile on a site called Seeking Arrangements, which is a site primarily where younger women and older men connect in, just like I said, kind of this like mutually beneficial relationship.

And I know there have also been some documentaries recently about this site, and it doesn't really have the best reputation, I'll just be quite honest.

But to be clear, not every interaction on there is transactional or shady or reliant on sex and things like that.

that there are all kinds of people on this platform.

Still, it definitely is a place where people primarily go to look for a specific kind of situation or relationship.

And Mackenzie had recently begun to explore it and see if it was right for her.

And let me just touch on the fact that while primarily it can be for financial support, that's not how all of the relationships are set up.

For some people, it can be about companionship or even just somebody to talk to.

Maybe somebody who's recently widowed and just wants another person to lean on or someone to go to dinner with.

There's all sorts of people on there looking for all sorts of different things.

Everybody has their own reasons, right?

However, there definitely is a stigma around it, but it's really not as uncommon as people think, especially among college students who are dealing with tuition costs, not being able to work because they're in school full time, all sorts of things.

It's almost as though it can be an easy solve to a lot of their financial burdens.

Now, take that how you want, whether morally that would sit right with you or not, but again, different strokes for different folks and different types of situationships on this site.

Now, Now, one of McKenzie's sorority sisters had also said that at some point McKenzie also expressed interest in stripping.

It's not said if she ever gave it a shot or even tested the waters with this, but I also want to make mention before we go any further that McKenzie was not reckless.

She was thoughtful, she was independent, but there were these things that she wanted to explore.

And overall, McKenzie was just clearly somebody who wanted to maintain control over her time, her choices, and I guess you could say, maybe even her financial situation.

Now, some reports say that McKenzie got the idea to do sugar dating from the podcast Call Her Daddy.

That's a show, I'm sure many of you listeners have heard of it.

Alex Cooper is the host.

It's very focused on female empowerment, dating, sex, relationships, all sorts of things.

And McKenzie not only listened to this podcast, but she was also an active participant in a private Facebook group that was tied to the podcast.

In this group, sometimes the discussions would revolve around sugar dating, online dating, personal relationships.

And she was such a fan of the podcast that she even had a Call Her Daddy sticker on the back of her car, just a true fan through and through.

Now, in addition to seeking arrangements, Mackenzie was also on other dating apps.

And she definitely wasn't shy about posting advice for other women online based on her experiences.

For example, here's a comment that she left on Facebook at one point during all of her dating and posting, and I'm going to read it exactly as it was written by her because it sounds like she was giving some advice to somebody who was interested in sugar dating as well.

So Mackenzie wrote, quote, try Tinder and be blunt about it.

Mine says, quote, I want a sugar daddy-sugar baby relationship with a real connection.

If they don't know what a sugar daddy-sugar baby is, tell them bluntly.

But if they don't know, they aren't really worth your time.

Set your age preferences from 35 and up.

You'll have the most luck there.

Private message me if you have any more questions.

I have experience on seeking arrangements, online only, Tinder, and I currently have two.

End quote.

Which to me, the I currently have two means she currently has two sugar daddies.

Maybe it means two Tinder profiles.

I don't really think so.

I think it means like you could try all of these sites.

I currently have two, meaning two sugar daddies, but then again, maybe it means I have two sites.

Who knows?

But anyway, by the summer of 2019, Mackenzie's life definitely seemed to be on track.

She was super close to graduation, which was supposed to happen in 2020, and really seemed to have her eye on the ball.

However, unexpectedly, her grandmother passed away in mid-June, and family was everything to Mackenzie.

So naturally, she flew back to California to be with all of her family, her loved ones, her close friends, and of course, go to the funeral.

Now, this trip was obviously bittersweet.

While it was great to be back with family and friends, it also was to grieve her grandmother, who she was extremely close with.

And it was also a sudden interruption to her college routine.

She had been juggling midterms, sorority events, her part-time job at a biological testing lab, and it really just made her put her life on pause.

But family came first.

Those who saw McKenzie at the funeral said she definitely appeared sad, but also composed.

She was still the kind of person who wanted to lighten the mood too and make sure that everybody else was doing okay, given how heavy of a situation it was.

But even while she was at home and spending that important time with her family, there was something else on McKenzie's mind that not everybody knew about.

She secretly was looking forward to getting back to Utah a couple of days later because she was planning to meet up with somebody that she had been talking to online for the past several months.

So on June 16th, 2019, McKenzie hugged her family goodbye and she hopped on a plane to fly back to her life in Utah.

She had a later flight out of LA, so by the time she landed in Salt Lake City, it was just after 1 a.m.

And technically now, it was June 17th.

So when she landed, she texted her mom.

She said she made it back safely.

She was going to be heading home and everything was fine.

Then from the airport, Mackenzie ordered a Lyft to come pick her up, which Lyft is just like an Uber.

It's a rideshare service.

Now, it was around 2.40 a.m.

when the driver pulled up to pick Mackenzie up.

Now, I'm not sure why there was a 90-minute gap from when she landed to when the Lyft driver came and picked her up, but ultimately, she was picked up around 2.40 a.m.

Now there was nothing odd about her trip.

Not yet anyway, not until she put in where she wanted to be taken.

And instead of heading back to her off-campus apartment, which would be the most expected move at that time of night, Mackenzie asked to be dropped off at Hatch Park, which is in North Salt Lake City.

Now the Lyft driver later stated that it struck him as odd and a little strange for that time of night.

Why would you want to go to this park in the middle of the night?

But he said McKenzie seemed totally normal, composed, just told him she was going there to meet a friend.

In fact, she was the one who commented how it was odd that she was being dropped off there, kind of saying like, hey, I know this isn't like a normal place to be dropped off, but I'm meeting my friend.

She's the one who brought it up.

Now here's another strange detail.

Hatch Park had these little things up that looked exactly like security cameras, but they were actually just dummy cameras.

They weren't real.

And I guess that they were used to discourage anyone from doing any sort of illegal things in the park, but they couldn't ever actually film anything.

They were just props, just there for show.

Which kind of makes you wonder and ask the question, right?

Did the person who Mackenzie was meeting that night know that these cameras weren't real and didn't work?

Was this park chosen specifically because it was dark and it was a quiet place without surveillance?

Possibly.

Now let's talk about the person that she was on her way to meet there.

It was a guy that she had been talking to for the last several months on seeking arrangements.

His name was Ayula Unjayi, and this is where the story really begins to take a turn for the worse.

Ayula was born in Nigeria in 1988 and he came to the US on a student visa as a teenager.

Eventually, he got a green card, which allowed him to live and work here.

And on the surface, he seemed like the kind of guy who really did have his life together.

He was well-dressed, wore these like thick black glasses, had this very polished look sort of vibe about him in photos, and on paper, he also looked successful.

Online, he listed that he worked in IT for various companies like Dell, Goldman Sachs, even that he had self-published a novel at one point.

And his LinkedIn made it seem like he was thriving.

It listed experience in tech, in writing, and even listed some time in the Army National Guard.

But then, if you dug just a little deeper, things started to fall apart.

For starters, those military claims, they didn't hold up.

Official records show that he was actually kicked out of the National Guard after just six months for not meeting medical standards.

He also had a pretty big history at Utah State University.

He just floated in and out of the computer science classes from 2009 all the way to 2016.

And while he was there, he also got caught stealing.

He stole like an iPad or something.

So not exactly a life-altering crime, but still a red flag, nonetheless, right?

And according to campus police, he used that stolen iPad to browse different dating sites.

His search history even included phrases like, quote, marry to avoid deportation.

And this is all despite the fact that he was actually married at the time.

He was married to a woman named Tanisha Jenkins.

They had met over in Dallas and they got married in 2011.

So, at that point, what, eight years being married to this woman.

But by all accounts, this did not appear to be a very happy marriage, and it seemed like it was toxic from the very start.

At one point, after breaking up, Tanisha said that he was just incredibly controlling and abusive, both emotionally and physically.

Things ended up getting so bad that she did leave him, and by January 2019, the divorce was finalized.

So, divorced when he was on the online dating site and met met Mackenzie, but was making searches about getting married to avoid deportation while he was already married.

Now, around that same time, he did self-publish the book that I mentioned earlier.

But before we give him any credit for that, let me just tell you what was actually inside of it.

Because the book was called Forge Identity, and it was about a 15-year-old boy who witnesses some very horrific murders and then gets pulled into this like life of crime.

The story gets into all of these deeper themes of violence, control, just very suspenseful, kind of a thriller, too.

And I'll say this, writing about crime and violence certainly doesn't mean anything.

It's not indicative that you are going to lead a life down that path, not at all.

But we have seen when it comes to self-publishing and when there are very graphic or psychological details that sometimes that can be indicative of a red flag, right?

Now, Iula also had a roommate named Sakari Moore.

Sakari rented a room in his house in Salt Lake City, and the two of them actually went way back.

They knew each other from training in the army.

Sakari said that Iula sometimes did have a temper, but he was also the kind of person who loved hosting dinners, hanging out with friends, and just being very warm and welcoming.

However, ultimately, Iula's temper just became too much for Sakiri to handle, and living there became uncomfortable due to the constant mood swings of Iula, saying he could quickly just go from being his normal, chill guy self to then just this seriously intense and downright scary person, someone he didn't even recognize.

So, Sakari ends up moving out.

He's just like, I'm not even going to deal with this.

This is way too much drama, like your temper tantrums.

No, I'm out.

And after he moved out, Iula decided he wanted to make some renovations to the house.

So, he had a contractor come over and give him an estimate, talk about the project, and he wanted to show him everything that he wanted to have done.

But when the contractor got to his home, he couldn't really believe what he was being asked to do.

Ayula said that he wanted to build a secret, soundproof room under his front porch.

And Iula even got very specific about this secret room, saying he wanted it to have features like a fingerprint activated lock, hooks installed high up on the walls, which he claimed were for a wine rack, and some other very disturbing things.

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So Ayula's roommate moved out.

He couldn't deal with the Jekyll and Hyde mood swings that were happening and just felt like it was too unpredictable, too too toxic.

And now Ayula is trying to renovate his house, build this secret room.

And he told the contractor that the secret room was only going to be used to hide alcohol from his visiting Mormon girlfriend because he knew that she would be pissed off if she knew that he drank.

However, the contractor found the whole thing really weird.

Like, why do you need a soundproof room?

Why do you need fingerprint access?

What do you need these hooks on these high ceilings for?

Something just doesn't sit right.

And it made this contractor feel so uncomfortable that that he ended up declining the job and saying like, look, I'm not going to do this.

And that wasn't the only weird interaction that Iula had with somebody that he was trying to hire during all of this.

Because on a different occasion, he had asked a house cleaner to come over and to clean his home.

But he also made a very like super creepy request asking her to bring her 12-year-old daughter with her.

And it's not clear if this woman did ever bring her daughter with her or not, but she did go herself.

And she noticed that when she got there, there were a bunch of cameras set up around the inside of the house.

So she was like super spooked by the whole thing, left, and never came back, which great.

I mean, thank God, how disturbing is all of that period, but especially asking her to bring her 12-year-old daughter with her?

Like, what kind of freak are you?

Now, earlier, I touched on the fact that his ex-wife said that he could be abusive, right?

But it turns out, things were even more disturbing than that.

In November of 2014, a woman who worked with Ayula at a financial company in Logan, Utah had reported to the police that he had non-consensual sex with her at his home.

She said that they had started off by, you know, doing stuff with one another, but when she wanted to stop, he didn't listen.

He just continued anyway.

She felt like it was her fault for not being assertive enough, but the officer, of course, assured her that by saying no, that should have been enough.

No is a complete sentence.

So the woman ended up not wanting to press charges.

She just wanted the incident to be documented in case he did the same thing to somebody else down the road.

So because of that, the case really didn't go any further than that.

He was actually never even interviewed by the police.

Which I know that that was a lot to go through, but trust me, to really understand this case, we needed to cover everything in his background, just so that you have a full visual of who this guy is.

Especially because remember, Mackenzie agreed to meet up with him in the middle of the night.

in this pitch black park with no cameras and she likely had no clue what kind of history he had.

So that's what makes this whole thing feel even scarier, right?

Because he had spent years crafting his image, just carefully crafting and curating this image of success and stability, even though in reality, he was hiding a much darker and much more disturbing side of himself.

So let's get back to the night, or early morning, I should say, that McKenzie was meeting up with him, June 17th, 2019.

Like I said before, Mackenzie took a lift to Hatch Park, and when she got out of the car, she walked directly over to a car that was parked right nearby, and that's when she got inside of the vehicle.

Mackenzie's phone last pinged in Hatch Park just before 3 a.m.

But after that, her phone was suddenly off, and there were no more records or interactions with her cell phone available.

However, Ayula's phone pinged just eight minutes later at 3.07 a.m.

at his house.

So it looked like maybe he and McKenzie had planned to hang out over at his place, that he would meet her in the park, pick her up, and then drive her over to his place.

which begs the question if she was going to go over there and that was the plan all along why would they need to meet in this pitch black park in the middle of the night why not just have her lift take her directly to his house right doesn't really make sense i mean he also could have picked her up from the airport to where she wouldn't even need a lift my guess is there was some sort of excuse along the way to where there wouldn't be any sort of digital or paper trail linking them together, right?

If he had picked her up from the airport, certainly cameras probably probably would have shown that.

If she had the lift drop her off at his house, certainly her lift history would show where her destination was.

So I don't know what that excuse was.

We'll get into more of that, but I would imagine, once more, like his image, this was just very carefully crafted.

So the following morning, Mackenzie was nowhere to be found.

In fact, a couple of days even passed and no one had heard from her.

Her parents, Greg and Diana, knew that something was off because this kind of behavior, it wasn't like Mackenzie at at all.

She was super diligent about checking in with them all the time.

So, on June 20th, 2019, after 48 hours of just complete radio silence, her father called the Salt Lake City Police Department and he reported his daughter as missing.

It possible have a wellness check done on my daughter.

She flew in from California Sunday night.

She got in about one, and it was the last time I've heard from her.

And I've been trying to get a hold of her all week.

And her phone just tends to go to voicemail.

I was just wondering if I could have somebody maybe go by her house and check on her.

Okay, what is that address?

And is that a house or an apartment?

It should be, it's kind of like a house, but

she's on the bottom floor.

So it would be her door is on 600

and it's kind of like a driveway right there on the corner.

She's right on the corner.

Is there a unit number?

There isn't a unit number.

It's the first door on the 600 side.

There's an entry door down there.

So there's three rooms in there, and she rents one of the rooms.

My name is Greg Lewick.

Can you spell the last name for me?

L-U-E-C-K.

Okay, and what is your daughter's name?

Mackenzie.

She has a roommate.

She has two roommates.

When did you say you heard from her last?

Last time we heard from her, she got off the plane coming back from L.A.

It was 1 a.m.

She was going to grab an Uber and go home, but that's the last I've heard for her.

So 1 a.m.

this morning?

No, 1 a.m.

Monday morning.

So we've been trying to get a hold of her all week and she hasn't, usually it's unlike her to return a call, not return her calls, but it goes straight to voicemail.

So I don't know if she's lost her phone, she's unable to communicate, but she should have a laptop or something.

So

just a little concerned, that's all.

As far as anything with her situation goes, has there been any mention of any weapons being involved?

Yeah, no, she doesn't have any weapons at her house.

And anything else that would help her stand out?

Tattoos, piercings, anything like that?

She has a she has a tattoo on her back.

It's a star.

Like I said, it's unusual not to hear for so many days.

Right.

Okay.

All right, I've got this in.

We will get officers out as soon as possible.

And then what I'll do is I'll have them give you a call.

Now, at first, and we've seen this many times in many cases, the police department wanted to treat McKenzie as a voluntary missing adult, which thankfully her family pushed them to do more.

Plus, there were a lot of red flags that were piling up fast.

So, luckily, it actually was taken seriously, pretty quickly, from the get-go.

Now, not only had McKenzie gone completely radio silent, but it turned out that after June 17th, there was also zero activity on McKenzie's bank accounts, not even on her Venmo.

She also missed a scheduled midterm exam.

So, this set people off right away.

There were way too many red flags that were stacking up to make this not something more,

you know, serious or foul play possibly involved.

So the investigators pulled the airport surveillance footage.

And sure enough, in that footage, they saw her leaving the airport and getting into that lift.

So then they started combing through all of the lift records.

And that was actually the big red flag that the police zeroed in on pretty quickly.

The red flag being that Mackenzie hadn't gone home after she landed at the airport that day.

Instead, she took the lift to Hatch Park, which was nowhere near her apartment.

Not to mention, it was the middle of the night.

So, meanwhile, as the police are starting their investigation, McKenzie's dad started doing some digging of his own, going through her bank accounts, looking at past transactions, just hoping to find any clue to help figure out where she was.

And McKenzie actually shared a bank account with her parents, so he had easy access to pulling everything up.

And sure enough, as he was doing some digging, he noticed that there was a kind of odd transaction on June 10th, and this was flagged to McKenzie's account.

This would have been about a week before she went missing, and it was a deposit for $300.

Which, yeah, sure, McKenzie did have a job, but something about this deposit just did not sit right with her dad.

Lately, she hadn't needed to ask for help with rent or tuition, which was very out of the ordinary.

He also noticed that she had recently bought new furniture, so now also seeing this extra money just pop and plug into her account, it was definitely suspicious to him.

But still, it didn't give any concrete answers.

Mackenzie's sorority sisters, family, and community members all started looking for her, just truly hoping for the best.

They plastered Salt Lake City with all sorts of missing persons' posters, and they did everything that they could possibly do to get her name and image out there, thinking, you know, maybe someone would see her face and they would be able to call in a tip or offer some kind of lead that would help locate her.

But there weren't a ton of tips rolling in at first.

However, one lead that actually helped crack things open came from a guy named Rob Joseph.

Rob was a private investigator and also a former cop, and he happened to recognize Mackenzie's face when her disappearance hit the news.

It turns out he had met her at a bar just a few weeks earlier.

Apparently, they had chatted for a little bit, and during their conversation, she mentioned to him that she was using seeking arrangements.

So after hearing that she was missing, Rob was like, wait, I recognize that girl.

I talked to her.

So he did a a little digging of his own and he ended up finding her profile on the website.

So he took a screenshot of it and passed it directly along to the police.

He was never treated as a suspect or anything sketchy.

He truly was just trying to help.

And that small tip ended up being a pretty big deal because it opened up a whole bunch of conversations that Mackenzie had been having on the site, which that then led the investigators to start digging into her phone records.

And when they did, they noticed that on the day that she vanished, she she exchanged messages with a burner number, one that wasn't tied to anyone by name.

However, it was connected to a Wi-Fi router, and that Wi-Fi router was registered to the home of none other than Ayula.

Now take a listen to Rob's initial theory on why McKenzie may have met Ayula at the park in the first place.

The guy that owns the house, the guy that's the person of interest, lived across the street from that park in 2016 and was evicted from that residence.

And that's public record.

If he was premeditated in his interest to do this, he would have picked that park, had her meet him there, and then he would have drove to his house with her.

So that way, there was no way to trace him from the drop-off point at the park to his home.

So the cops had decided that they were going to set up a geofence around Hatch Park for around the hours that McKenzie was there and then vanished.

And my understanding of a geofence is that it's kind of like, almost like a reverse warrant, where you basically are setting up the perimeter of an area, and you can see phone pings, activity, things like that.

So this allowed them to see what devices entered the area and if anything was weird about it.

And sure enough, the geofence not only picked up McKenzie's phone, but it also picked up the Lyft driver's phone and four other devices.

And one of those devices stood out.

It pinged multiple times, including at the exact time and location of McKenzie's last known signal.

And that device was also registered to none other than Iula.

So that was enough for the investigators to request a search warrant for his home.

But before they showed up at his house, the police decided that they wanted to make contact with Iula.

And on June 25th, Iula willingly went to the police station and spoke with them, claiming he had absolutely no clue what was going on.

He was just there to clear his name.

He just wanted to be helpful.

Not under arrest.

You're not being detained.

You can leave anytime you want to, okay?

It just doesn't make sense.

I just want to get to the root of the issue.

Yeah.

Because when you said my IP is showing, that means something is wrong.

Now, after that initial conversation with Iula, the police apparently were not feeling great about it because they decided to execute a search warrant on his house the very next day.

Specifically, June 26th.

Now, when the police went to Iula's house, he totally played it cool.

Said, you know, no, I rent out rooms on Airbnb, so the burner number that's registered here, it could have belonged to any guest.

People were in and out of here all the time, trying trying to make excuses for the burner phone, for the Wi-Fi router, for everything, being like, it's not me.

It could have belonged to anybody.

He also said he had an alibi as well, and that he could prove it.

So the police were like, okay, great, prove it.

And sure enough, he pulled up some home security footage from his ring camera system, and he showed the cops a video of himself and a different woman at his house.

He also claimed that he had last communicated with McKenzie via text message on June 16th.

He denied ever meeting her in person.

But obviously, the police weren't really buying it because investigators had already dug into McKenzie's seeking arrangement profile.

They had discovered messages that had been exchanged between her and Ayula dating all the way back to 2018.

So now they were like, this doesn't make any sense.

We don't believe what you're saying.

And that is when things really started to unravel.

Because now, as they were pushing him, his demeanor was changing and it was changing fast.

Suddenly, he seemed a lot more concerned about what was happening.

And take a listen to Ayula's reaction when the officers took his phone.

But he questioned why they confiscated his phone as evidence.

They then proceeded to search the house.

Hello?

Salt police, can you come out, please?

The police told AJ he was free to leave.

You're free to leave, but I'm not detaining this.

You can leave whenever you want.

Do you want to check every Friday?

I mean,

check it for whatever you got to go to crazy.

No, I just don't want you guys to use anything when I'm gone because I gave them my phone and they used 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 if you want.

Any idea where you want to go?

I don't even know.

I don't have my phone or my cat.

So I have no destination.

Okay.

Again, and I don't have a time frame, right?

Like, I don't know if some...

It could be 10 minutes, could be a little bit longer.

Yeah, so I would assume you'd 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'd make more sense.

But if you took it with them, I didn't know what would happen.

And I don't either.

So that I just think there's no fear.

Now, since the cops told him that he was free to go for the time being while they were continuing to search his home, Iula left and said he was going to go to the library.

However, they secretly followed him, followed him undercover just to see what he was doing, where would he go?

And big shocker, or not so big shocker, he didn't end up going to the library.

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When Iula left his house that day, while the cops were still there searching the property, he didn't go to the library as he said he was going to.

Instead, he went to a grocery store.

Which, I know, that's not the most crazy twist in this case.

Okay, so what?

He went to a grocery store, Annie, big deal.

But he wasn't there to buy groceries.

And the undercover officers actually actually saw him go into this grocery store and buy another burner phone.

Then they got a hold of his Google searches.

And like we always say, the Google searches, they will get you every time.

Because it turns out he had been searching things such as how to clean blood from a carpet and what does a decomposing body smell like.

Now when the authorities talked to some of Iula's neighbors, a few of them reported seeing Iula burning something in his backyard, saying he had been burning something in the fire pit in the back of his house on June 17th and 18th, the same days that McKenzie was missing.

One of the neighbors even said that whatever he was burning smelled so bad that they nearly called the fire department.

The neighbor went on to say that they told him he needed to stop because of the local pollution restrictions, but that Iula apparently told them that he was just burning goats, which apparently, I don't know, that was something that was pretty regular for him.

I've never heard of anybody burning a goat, the animal, but maybe I'm just sheltered.

I don't know.

I get everybody has different beliefs, different diets, but burning goats in your backyard with your neighbors nearby, maybe not the most neighborly thing to do.

Just my opinion, take it for what it's worth.

But regardless what he was doing and what goats he may or may not have been burning, now the police heard firsthand from the neighbors that he had a fire pit in his backyard and that he was burning something super smelly.

So authorities brought in canine units and cadaver dogs to search the property thoroughly.

And when the dogs got into the backyard, they immediately picked up the scent of human remains.

And sure enough, that scent was right near the fire pit.

So they started digging through everything in the pit.

And the investigators ended up uncovering charred fragments of clothing, a toothbrush, and most horrifying of all, pieces of human tissue.

The smoking gun was a piece of scalp with blonde hair still attached.

Hair that matched McKenzie's.

And the human tissue would later be matched to McKenzie as well.

It matched her DNA through dental records.

Other evidence was found at the house too.

Several knives, a gun, some dirt, even debris in Iula's car that seemed like he had been somewhere rugged.

Investigators also learned that Iula had recently given away a mattress on the app Let Go.

That's basically an app that is used by people who have items that they want to sell or get rid of, kind of like Facebook Marketplace or OfferUp, and you can post like for free, for five bucks, whatever you want to post.

So, anyway, cops now believed that the mattress that he gave away likely had evidence on it, and that that's why he wanted to get rid of it.

Even more so, that it might have had some of Mackenzie's DNA on it.

And by the way, remember how I said earlier that Iula would rent his place out on Airbnb from time to time, and that's why he said, you know, the burner phone could have belonged to anybody.

People are in and out of here all the time.

Well, when the cops came over that day to search his house and yard, there was actually an Airbnb guest staying there at his house.

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.

Hey, are you renting this room?

Yes, okay.

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 out of my wallet.

Okay, we'll need you to come out then.

Okay.

He'd 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 cleared just the one airbnb guy in the whole place can you imagine that just for a moment imagine you're traveling and you're staying at an airbnb i've stayed at a ton of airbnbs in my life i don't know if you have but imagine you're staying there and all of a sudden police start banging on the door they're executing executing a search warrant, they're searching the yard, and they bring in cadaver dogs and get a hit on human remains.

I mean, how terrifying would that be?

First and foremost, I hope that person got a refund.

But also, if it were me, I'd probably never go on Airbnb again.

Never again.

Honestly, the evidence was just overwhelming.

And investigators knew that they had more than enough to make a case.

And they actually detained Iula that same day.

And during his first interrogation, they started shifting the conversation towards some some very explicit messages that they had found on his phone.

Very graphic in detail, very just explicit conversations.

Earlier you said we could have to take your phone and download it.

Are you still willing to do that or not?

I just need to call my lawyer and see if it's okay.

Because I want to help as much as I can.

Sure.

But she's saying that...

Some police just want to pin it on someone that they can pin it on me.

But I actually, I have the hard drive in my car.

I downloaded the OR drive, I have the old security camera, I even downloaded my own, the whole text and all my text messages from my phone provider.

I brought everything with me.

But on my way here, she was like, you are going to shoot yourself in the foot.

According to Iula, Mackenzie apparently rejected him and sort of just stopped talking to him initially after he sent a picture.

He went on to describe how he wasn't out doing anything the night that McKenzie was killed.

According to him, he was was asleep.

He also told the cops that he had a girlfriend by the name of Michelle and that his girlfriend, Michelle, was eight months pregnant.

But as he was telling them all this, he apparently didn't even know her last name.

So eventually the cops got tired of this, like, I don't know what happened kind of story that he was clearly trying to push, and they pressed him a little harder on how McKenzie's phone could have possibly pinged in the same place that he was that night in the park.

You forget one point.

You're talking about your information that you can hide and that you can delete as much as you think you can because I believe you are very skilled in IT and technology.

No, I'm not sure.

But there's the one thing that you forget.

You forget that there's another person

that didn't delete their stuff, didn't delete their conversations.

And that's why I can tell you that I know that there was conversations going past the screenshot that you showed me.

You don't have access to her stuff.

I studied the last one that I sent to you.

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 agree with you.

Okay, 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?

Now, I gotta just say, he obviously thought that he was incredibly smart, but he didn't realize that if another person's phone is involved, he has no control over what is in that data, what can be recovered, what's found.

He can't wipe it.

So clearly he's either stupid or sloppy or both.

And sure enough, later he was officially arrested and charged with aggravated murder, aggravated kidnapping, desecration of a body, and obstruction of justice.

And Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown announced the charges in a press conference.

Now at the time, Ayula was still claiming that he was innocent.

But here's the twist.

Once his face hit the local news, someone recognized him, and this person decided it was time to come forward to the police.

And sure enough, it was that contractor that he had tried to hire to build that secret torture room on his property.

The contractor called the police and told them all about that disturbing visit, and it just gave the authorities even more evidence to build their case.

But even though Iula had been arrested and some of the body parts of McKenzie and also her DNA had been found, most of her body was still missing.

So they continued to question him, continued to press him, just hoping that he would talk.

And days after his arrest, the full scope of what he had done finally came out.

On July 3rd, 2019, search teams could be seen combing through an area of Utah called Logan Canyon.

It's a beautiful but very rugged and remote spot about 85 miles north of Salt Lake City.

And it was there that the investigators made a truly heartbreaking discovery.

Sure enough, in a shallow grave just off of a main road, they found the burned remains of Mackenzie.

And when her body was found, her arms were tied behind her back with with zip ties.

Now, the investigators were finally able to locate McKenzie's burial site because Iula had come forward with a partial confession.

On July 2nd, he had admitted the truth to his attorneys, who then worked with the prosecutors to help the authorities recover the body, just striking a deal, right?

Like, all right, if you reduce the sentence or pull these charges off, we'll tell you where her body is.

The grave where McKenzie was found was barely 18 inches deep, and her body was so badly burned that dental records were the only way to officially confirm that it was her.

Forensic experts later determined that Iula had probably poured gasoline all over her body and then set her on fire behind his house, then moved her remains to that very shallow grave in Logan Canyon.

In the canyon, cops also found some of Mackenzie's belongings.

They found her melted clothing, some of her jewelry that she had been wearing the night that she was killed.

They even found her iPhone.

But honestly, even before his confession, police had already started putting all the pieces together thanks to those cell phone records that I mentioned earlier.

They knew that he had traveled to Logan Canyon on June 25th, shortly after the police first questioned him.

Their theory was that after burning McKenzie's body in his backyard, he probably panicked and then tried to hide the evidence deeper in the wilderness, you know, where nobody would ever find it.

After her body was recovered, McKenzie's body was sent for an autopsy, which then, that revealed the absolute devastating extent of the violence that she was put through.

The Utah State Medical Examiner's Office determined that McKenzie died from blunt force trauma to the left side of her skull.

The blunt force trauma led to a massive brain bleed.

The autopsy also pointed out that there was a five centimeter hole in her skull.

Also, that part of her left scalp was missing, which that was consistent with that piece of scalp that was found in Iula's fire pit.

So all of this, not only does it show the brutality of it and just the graphic nature of it, but it begs the question, what actually went down that night?

Sure enough, before leaving to meet McKenzie that night, he had turned off his home security cameras, a move that prosecutors later described as a deliberate attempt to erase any digital trace of her visit.

He was covering his tracks before anything had even happened, proving that this was definitely premeditated.

And what he did to McKenzie after that, it was unspeakably gruesome.

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After picking McKenzie up from Hatch Park, the two of them went back to his house as planned.

But once they were inside, things took a very dark and terrifying turn.

Iula tied McKenzie's hands behind her back with those zip ties and he began choking her with his bare hands.

Allegedly, she tried telling him to stop, but he didn't.

Instead, Ayula forced McKenzie onto her stomach and he used a belt to strangle her until she stopped moving.

That was it.

That was how quickly this all unfolded.

Now the act itself was brutal, but what's even more disturbing is just how deliberate it was.

There was no hesitation, no panic, just cold, calculated murder.

A young life just taken out in a matter of seconds.

And after he killed her, he already had a full cover story in the works.

When the police came knocking, he tried showing them that alibi video, which I mentioned earlier, you know, footage from his ring doorbell showing him supposedly with another woman at his home that same night that McKenzie went missing.

But as it turns out, that whole thing was staged.

Investigators determined that the video wasn't even from the time that he claimed it was.

It was just another manipulative move that he had planned in advance so that he could throw the investigators off his trail.

So it seems as though he carefully planned things.

Not only what his alibi would be, but removing the surveillance cameras before he even left to pick Mackenzie up from the park that night, which in my opinion, absolutely illustrates premeditation.

He seems like he was very thoughtful, very very strategic, or at least to himself.

But we still don't know the why, or we don't know the why yet, I should say.

What was he thinking, and what was going on inside that sick and twisted brain of his?

Well, after news broke that Mackenzie's body had been found, the people who loved her were, of course, extremely devastated, just distraught.

While they had held on to hope, the reality was heartbreaking.

And now they were left to grieve a loss that felt just impossible to process.

Yet still, her friends knew that they wanted to honor her.

They had to honor her.

So a vigil was held at the University of Utah, where Mackenzie's friends, classmates, and her sorority sisters all came together to mourn and remember her, to just support one another, showing up for her in the most meaningful way that they could.

McKenzie's friend Kennedy spoke out about her too, saying that Iula quote, took my best friend away from me, her family, her sisters.

She also said something that I'm sure everybody else was thinking, quote, it breaks my heart knowing she died alone in such a scary place.

Ashley Fine, another close friend, said that Mackenzie had this gift, that she always made people feel loved and always knew what to say, adding, quote, everyone that knew McKenzie loved her, and she is so greatly missed.

Now, one thing that McKenzie's friends made clear at the vigil was this.

Although Iula had taken her from them in the cruelest way possible, he was not going to take their strength or their voices.

They were determined to keep saying her name.

Her friend Ashley shared that they hoped to start a foundation in McKenzie's honor, using her story to advocate for others and fight for those who might one day find themselves in a similar situation.

So then fast forward to October of 2020, Anayula finally found himself in front of a judge, and there he pleaded guilty to aggravated murder and desecration of a human body.

He also officially admitted that he strangled Mackenzie, that he burned her body, and that he later buried her remains.

He ended up accepting accepting a plea deal in exchange for not having to go through a lengthy trial.

And I think also he had to tell them, of course, where her remains were.

And honestly, that's something that benefits McKenzie's family as well, because now they have where her remains were.

They can have her as a whole and grieve her and lay her to rest.

And also, it spares them of having to go through a lengthy trial and hear all the grotesque, disgusting, sort of details.

It also helped ensure that nothing would drag drag out and they would get the justice that they deserved.

But as part of this plea deal, Ayula was going to also avoid the death penalty.

The guy thought he had a good thing going, a good job, and two lovers.

That is, until this triangle got complicated.

And somebody had to go.

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So on October 23rd, 2020, Iula was officially sentenced for the murder of McKenzie.

Now, because this was all going down during the pandemic, there were still courtroom precautions in place and in-person attendance was limited.

So, because of that, only quote, essential parties were allowed to attend.

The whole thing was actually live-streamed for the public to watch, though, since it really was a high-profile case at the time.

And there he stood right before the judge, just very emotionless as his sentence was read.

Life in prison without the possibility of parole.

On top of that, he also got additional time, up to five years for the abuse of the desecration of a human body, and then another 1 to 15 years for forcible sexual assault relating to a different case where a woman actually came forward and said that he had sexually assaulted her years earlier.

The judge made sure that these sentences would run consecutively, guaranteeing that he would never walk free again.

Now, during this hearing, Mackenzie's mom addressed Iula directly.

And when it was finally Iula's turn to speak, he just stood and gave a very short, very flat apology, saying, I'm sorry for what I did.

I know this won't bring her back.

And it was 30 seconds of just monotone words that I'm sure felt hollow to everyone in the room.

And then the judge actually responded by highlighting the severity of his crimes, saying that his actions went beyond just wrongdoing, basically kind of calling complete bullshit on his apology.

So he's currently serving his sentence at the Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah, which is about 20 miles southeast of Salt Lake City.

However, what I can't seem to wrap my head around is that he had absolutely no rational motive.

Like none.

No money to gain, no revenge plot.

He didn't even know Mackenzie in person beyond that meeting.

It was strictly a crime of passion.

It also wasn't spur of the moment rage.

It was literally murder for the sake of murder.

Apparently, just wanting to know what killing somebody felt like.

And that's what makes this so terrifying, because how do you wrap your brain around somebody doing something so brutal just to see how it makes them feel.

And remember, he wanted that whole torture chamber built at his house as well.

So had he not gotten caught for McKenzie's murder and had that contractor built this torture den, would he have been a serial killer?

Would he have lured a ton of women online into this chamber and kept them alive for days on end, sexually assaulting them, torturing them, and then ultimately killing them?

It seems as though because he was caught for McKenzie's murder that his crime spree was cut short.

That's my opinion.

We also know he did sexually assault a woman in the past, so I would imagine that that was partially his motive, was sexual in nature, but I just can't help but think like the possibilities of what else he could have done had he not been caught, right?

He was also super methodical in this whole thing.

He disabled his own security cameras, he had McKenzie meet him somewhere that didn't have cameras in the middle of the night, pitch black.

He bound her, he burned her in his own backyard.

And I just keep thinking, if he was on seeking arrangements and other apps, I bet that he was talking to a bunch of other people too, or at least trying to.

And I can't imagine what they might have felt after they saw his face everywhere and learned what he did.

Were any of them scheduled to meet up with him at any point?

Oh, and just one more thing before we move on and never talk about this piece of filth dirtbag freak ever again, because honestly, he doesn't deserve another word spoken about him.

I did read that he has a profile on meetaninmate.com.

This guy is actively still trying to make friends and talk to people.

He's also written a pretty bizarre bio and it ends with this.

If you are interested in knowing more about me and my world now or about the world I lived in before my arrest, I would like to hear from you.

I promise to open all letters and respond to you even though my past is in my rear view.

Which, I'm sorry, who the hell do you think you are?

Who wants to like ask questions about your past, you freak?

He thinks he's like some kind of celebrity or something.

I don't get it.

He doesn't even matter.

The person who matters is Mackenzie.

She was smart.

She cared about her future.

She usually, and I don't want to, I want to be careful with what I say, she wasn't reckless.

And I'm not saying she was reckless this night, but there may have been, hopefully this serves as a precautionary tale for anybody who's doing middle of the night meetups, but she also did her homework on sugar dating.

She was cautious.

She knew the risks and she still tried to protect herself.

She was doing what a lot of women do, trying to take control of her life, trying to survive in college, trying to carve out some freedom in a system that makes everything from tuition to housing to job prospects just way harder than it should be.

And I've also got to say, while I was researching this case, I came across a lot of comments victim blaming McKenzie, saying, you know, well, she shouldn't have been on seeking arrangements.

She shouldn't have met up with him in the middle of the night.

She put herself in danger.

All of these things, which let's just be clear, okay?

Nobody deserves what happened to her.

Somebody meeting somebody off an app is not an invitation to be murdered or to be sexually assaulted.

Not that it was shown that she was, but you get what I mean.

Being a sugar baby isn't some sort of like moral failing.

Plenty of people are sugar babies and sugar daddies and those kinds of situationships work for them.

My point is, safety isn't something that people should have to earn.

It's something that everybody deserves from the get-go.

Now, as for Mackenzie's family, her sorority sisters, and the many friends who loved her, they're now left to live with the weight of what she went through every single day.

It's something that they will never fully get over or forget.

Truly, it is just like an image that is embedded in your mind.

However, I do hope that they can find some sort of peace knowing that her killer is behind bars for good.

Thank you guys so much for listening to Mackenzie's story today.

The reason we share these cases, although very heavy and difficult to hear, is to not only generate awareness about the dangers of online dating, of predators, of what people can be, because maybe now if you've heard this, you'll think twice before meeting somebody in the middle of the night, or you'll think twice before going on seeking arrangements and meeting up with a random person in person.

I mean, it's to do that, but it's also to make sure that Mackenzie's voice and her legacy carries on.

So I would appreciate it if you would share a link to this episode, whether it's on your social media pages, in your group chat, wherever it is, because I think the more people, especially young women and, you know, millennial women, young women, women who are dating, the more people who know about the dangers of these kinds of situations, the more armed they are with knowledge and can possibly protect themselves from becoming a future victim.

So thank you for hearing Mackenzie's story, for allowing her voice to continue, and I'm just thankful that this freak, creep, douche canoe, little twerp is behind bars for the rest of his sick, deranged life.

So.

Audio, Sayula, nobody's going to miss you.

All right, thanks again for tuning in to another episode of Serialessly.

I will be back with you on Thursday with headline highlights, where we are breaking down everything happening this week in True Crime.

All right, guys, thanks again.

And until the next one, be nice.

Don't kill people.

Don't do any middle-of-the-night meetups in dark parks.

Maybe don't go on seeking arrangements and don't go out with anyone named Ayula.

Sorry, I know that's general.

I know that's general, but just, you know, err on the side of caution.

All right, bye.

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