The phone rang at 2:29 in the morning, and Kenzie Luick answered it with a sleepy kind of trust that most people her age still carried. She had just landed at Salt Lake City International Airport after flying in from California, where she had spent the past several days at her grandmother’s funeral. The grief was still heavy on her, a dull weight that followed her through the airport terminal and into the ride she booked to take her the rest of the way home. She told the driver she was meeting a friend, and she believed that was true.
She had been texting with a man named Ayoola Ajayi for a while, a man she had met on Seeking Arrangement back in 2018, a website that connected wealthy older partners with younger people looking for financial support or mentorship in exchange for companionship. Kenzie was a smart, ambitious 23-year-old, a kinesiology and pre-nursing student at the University of Utah, due to graduate in May of 2020. She had joined the Alpha Chi Omega sorority and thrived there, known for being the kind of person who cooked for her friends, who made sure everyone was fed, who was like a mother to her younger sorority sisters. She had a deep love for animals and kept hedgehogs, guinea pigs, and a cat.
She loved riding her bike near Manhattan Beach Pier back home in El Segundo, California, where she had grown up with one older brother and two younger ones. She was vibrant, outgoing, the kind of person who made everyone around her feel special. Her friend Cara Barbie said that everybody gravitated toward her, and she honestly didn’t know anyone who didn’t like her. Ayoola was 31 years old, a Nigerian immigrant originally born on April 22nd, 1988, who held a green card allowing him to live and work in the United States.
He had briefly studied computer science at the University of Utah but never graduated, having been kicked out due to problems with his visa and the theft of an iPad. He had enlisted in the Army National Guard for a short time and worked in IT. But there were darker shadows around him. Back in 2014, he had been investigated as a suspect in a sexual assault case out of North Logan, Utah, but the victim never pressed charges.
His ex-wife, Tanisha Jenkins, claimed that he became aggressive when she didn’t follow his demands, and she alleged that he threatened to have someone kidnap and kill her if she didn’t move to Utah. They ended their eight-year marriage in January of 2019. Tanisha later said that when she first met him, he was a sweet person, a good person, but she stopped talking to him because she was scared for her life. She described how he would get real aggressive and threaten to have somebody come and kidnap and kill her.
It was scary to her. In March of 2018, Ayoola met a woman on a dating app and invited her back to his home. They sat on the couch and watched some TV together, but then he became intensely physical without her consent, reportedly pinning her down when she tried to flee and biting her at least three times, causing significant pain and leaving her bruised and covered in bite marks. That woman never pressed charges, and Ayoola’s record remained clean on that front.
In April of 2019, he tried to hire a contractor to build a secret soundproof room beneath his porch, telling the contractor he wanted to hide alcohol from his Mormon girlfriend. But he also asked for hooks to be installed head-high on the walls and wanted a fingerprint scanner at the door. The contractor was disturbed by the request and turned down the job. A housekeeper later reported seeing surveillance cameras throughout his home, particularly in the master bedroom.
None of this was known to Kenzie when she met him. They had connected online in 2018 on Seeking Arrangement, a dating platform that matched sugar daddies with sugar babies, offering free premium memberships to students who registered with their university emails. Kenzie had a profile there, something she had casually mentioned to a man she had gone on a date with just three weeks earlier. That man was Robert Joseph, a private investigator and former police officer, who would later become a key figure in her case.
In the early morning hours of June 17th, 2019, Kenzie’s lift driver dropped her off at Hatch Park in North Salt Lake, an athletic field, around 3:00 a. m. She told the driver she was meeting a friend. Ayoola was already there waiting, his phone having pinged at the same location less than a minute after hers.
They left the park together, and Kenzie got into his vehicle. No one saw her alive again after that moment. Ayoola drove her back to his home in the Fair Park neighborhood. He had turned off all of the surveillance cameras inside his house that morning, so there would be no record of her presence.
He had also purchased a gas can full of gasoline. Inside his home, he bound Kenzie’s hands behind her back with zip ties and a length of rope while she screamed in protest. He placed her on her stomach and strangled her with a belt until she went still. Kenzie was just 23 years old.
But the autopsy would later reveal a different cause of death. Kenzie had suffered a blow to the left side of her head, a blow so violent that it split her scalp and punched a two-inch hole in her skull. The resulting hemorrhaging killed her. The strangulation came after, or alongside, but it was the head wound that took her life.
What happened in that house in the Fair Park neighborhood will never be fully known, but the evidence suggested that Ayoola murdered her to see what it felt like to kill. After she was gone, Ayoola buried her body in his backyard, along with some of her possessions. Some of her other belongings were tossed into the nearby Jordan River. The next day, he dug up her remains and burned them, just like the characters in his self-published book, Forge Identity, in which two people were killed and burned.
Neighbors on June 17th and 18th reported seeing bonfires behind his garage and described a horrible smell coming from the property. After burning her body, he recovered the remains and reburied them in a shallow grave in a wooded area within Logan Canyon, nearly 100 miles north of his home. Kenzie’s family had no idea where she was. She had been active on social media while she was in California, posting about her grandmother’s funeral and even celebrating the anniversary of women’s suffrage in one of her final posts.
But after she landed back in Utah on June 17th, all of her communication ceased at approximately 3:00 a. m. Her family tried to reach her, sending texts and messages that went unanswered. When no one had heard from her, her father, Greg Luick, contacted the Salt Lake City Police Department and filed a missing person’s report.
Her sorority sister and close friend Kennedy Stoner spoke to Fox News about her disappearance, visibly shaken and worried. Kennedy described Kenzie as a vibrant, fun, outgoing person who loved to be social and had so many friends. She said she was confused about why Kenzie would be meeting someone in the middle of the night at a park, and she couldn’t understand what had happened. Kennedy had texted Kenzie during the weekend of her grandmother’s funeral, letting her know she was there for her, but Kenzie hadn’t texted back because she was likely receiving many similar messages.
Kenzie had still been on social media the entire time she was in California, so there had been no reason to worry at that point. The private investigator Robert Joseph came forward after learning that Kenzie was missing. He told police that he had been on a date with Kenzie three weeks earlier, and during that date, she had confessed to him that she had a profile on Seeking Arrangement. He sent a screenshot of her profile to law enforcement, which led detectives to examine her phone records more closely.
They discovered a series of text messages exchanged between Kenzie and Ayoola in the early morning hours of June 17th, with the final one sent at 2:29 a. m. Phone records placed both of them at Hatch Park at 2:59 a. m.
All of Kenzie’s communications ceased at 3:00 a. m. that morning. Ayoola was arrested on June 28th, 2019, and charged with aggravated murder, kidnapping, and desecration of a body.
Days after his arrest, he confessed and revealed the location of Kenzie’s makeshift grave in Logan Canyon. On July 3rd, her remains were recovered there, charred and with her hands still bound behind her back. On July 5th, it was announced that the charred remains belonged to Kenzie. The Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill reported that Ayoola’s phone records placed him in Logan Canyon on June 25th between 2:30 and 4:30 p.
m. , when he had indeed moved or visited the grave. Charred muscle tissue and bone were also recovered from his backyard, along with charred fabric and other items found in a nearby alleyway. A red gas can was located in his vehicle.
When police first questioned Ayoola about Kenzie’s disappearance, he lied. He admitted to having text conversations with Kenzie on June 16th at approximately 6:00 p. m. , but claimed nothing had been exchanged after that time.
He said he did not know what Kenzie looked like and denied having seen a photo or online profile of her, despite having several photos of her, including her profile photo, sitting on his device. He denied any personal contact with her or meeting with her at any time. But the phone records contradicted every word. Both his phone and Kenzie’s phone were located at Hatch Park within less than a minute of each other, at the same time her phone stopped receiving any further data or location services.
During a search warrant executed on his residence on June 26th, his neighbors told detectives that they had observed him burning something in his backyard with gasoline on June 17th and June 18th. The search warrant revealed a freshly dug area on his property, the same area where he had been seen burning something. A forensic excavation of the burn area uncovered several charred items consistent with Kenzie’s personal items, along with charred material that was later forensically determined to be female human tissue. A DNA profile was obtained and compared to Kenzie’s DNA, matching perfectly.
Police Chief Mike Brown described the arrest as one of the most difficult phone calls he had ever made. He called Greg and Diana Luick after taking Ayoola into custody at 9:20 a. m. , and they were devastated and heartbroken by the news.
They expressed gratitude to the officers and staff of the police department and to those across the nation who had shown compassion and helped in the search for Kenzie. Chief Brown stated that investigators would continue to look into whether Ayoola acted alone or if he had help. Acting FBI Special Agent Bob Mechum of the Salt Lake City Field Office offered condolences to the family and friends of Kenzie, saying that the FBI had been assisting in the investigation and would continue to do so until it was completed. He emphasized the importance of partnerships between local law enforcement agencies and the FBI, especially in tragedies like this one, and stressed the need for the community to come together and support one another.
District Attorney Sim Gill also expressed his sympathies and condolences to Kenzie’s family and friends, acknowledging the hard work of Chief Brown and the law enforcement community. He noted that the case was moving forward in the criminal justice process and would continue to unfold. At the press conference, a member of the Luick family, Kenzie’s uncle, read a prepared statement on the family’s behalf. He thanked the Salt Lake City Police Department and all partnering agencies for their efforts, as well as the people who provided tips on the case.
He expressed gratitude to Kenzie’s community, her friends, and others around the nation who had supported the investigation. He requested privacy for the family during their time of grief and said that no interviews would be held, with all media requests directed to the police department. Ayoola’s trial was initially set for March 12th, 2020, but was postponed to October 28th. However, on October 7th, he pleaded guilty to first-degree aggravated murder and third-degree desecration of a human body.
In exchange for his guilty plea, prosecutors dropped the charges of aggravated kidnapping and obstruction of justice and removed the possibility of the death penalty. This plea spared the Luick family the trauma of a lengthy trial, allowing them some measure of closure and the ability to start the healing process. At his sentencing on October 23rd before Judge Verice Triace, Ayoola was given life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus five additional years for desecrating Kenzie’s body. When given the chance to speak, Ayoola addressed Kenzie’s family directly, saying, “Mr.
and Mrs. Luick, I’m sorry for what I did. I deserve what I’m going to get. I know this won’t bring her back.
”
But Greg Luick was not moved by his words. He fired back at the man who had killed his daughter, telling him that he wasn’t even sure Ayoola had anything to look forward to in the afterlife if he believed in that. He described his daughter as a sweet, amazing young lady with the world ahead of her, a kind-hearted person who cared about others. He ended by saying that he would not have the opportunity to see her blossom in life.
Kenzie’s cousin Carly Stevens also spoke through tears, telling Ayoola, “This is a nightmare you can’t wake up from. I will never be able to forgive what happened to her. I will never forgive the monster who took her life. Never in my life have I felt anger the way I have the last 16 months.
Never have I been so fearful for my life because I know how real evil is in this world. ”
Ayoola’s legal troubles did not end with Kenzie’s case. After hearing about her murder, the woman he had attacked in 2018 came forward. She had been the one covered in bruises and bite marks after he pinned her down and bit her.
On October 7th, he was sentenced to 1 to 15 years for second-degree forcible sexual abuse. Additionally, he was charged with 19 counts of exploitation of a minor in August of 2019 after police found numerous images of children between the ages of four and eight on his computer. He pleaded not guilty on October 1st, 2020, and these charges were later dismissed, though the reason for the dismissal remains unclear. Even while serving a life sentence in prison, Ayoola seemingly couldn’t stay off dating apps.
He currently has a profile on a prison pen-pal site, where he wrote a letter describing his loneliness and his regret about not reading the mail he once received from people around the world who wanted to know him. He wrote about his adjustment to prison life and invited people to write to him, promising to open all letters and respond. He described a world where inmates microwave eggs and blow up the microwaves, where they chase down geese and try to cook them in the microwave, where they try to escape while wearing flip flops. His letter gave no impression of deep remorse for his actions; it sounded more like a man trying to make connections and pass the time in his new living situation.
In the wake of Kenzie’s death, her friends and family worked to ensure her memory would live on in a positive way. On July 1st, 2019, the University of Utah held a vigil for Kenzie on the Union lawn, inviting everyone to attend. At the vigil, she was remembered as an animal lover and the first person to lend a helping hand. Kennedy Stoner spoke to the crowd, saying that Kenzie had a way of making you feel special, that she loved helping people and always had a smile on her face, and that she always put others before herself.
Kennedy later said that Kenzie would light up with joy knowing there were so many people there to support her. Kennedy also launched a GoFundMe on behalf of Kenzie’s family after her death. As of 2025, the fundraiser had managed to raise $27,430 of its $10,000 goal, a testament to the community’s support for the family. Another friend named Ashley Fine highlighted that while Kenzie’s story was tragic, it was also a story of friendship and the strong bonds of women.
She said, “This person took away our friend, but he will not take away our strength. We will continue to advocate for victims of violence in our community and will continue to use McKenzie’s voice for good in the future. ”
Ashley shared that she hoped to give a voice to victims and offer help to families through a new nonprofit foundation called McKenzie’s Voice. The organization was started by the same sorority sisters who had initially launched the search for Kenzie when she went missing.
Their goal was to provide a toolkit for friends and family members when their loved ones go missing, with resources such as media lists and guidelines for statements. They wanted to help families with grief and trauma counseling and advocated for victims. McKenzie’s Voice also aimed to provide educational opportunities for young men and women about safe online dating practices. Her friends said that they learned there isn’t really a handbook or a manual for when someone goes missing, and they wanted to create that resource for others.
They acknowledged that they were fortunate in a way that Kenzie’s case received a lot of attention, and they weren’t sure they would have found her or her killer if it hadn’t. So they were paying it forward for her. They knew that Kenzie, who had wanted to be a nurse and was very service-oriented, would have wanted them to do this. It gave them an outlet to help the community and use their grief in a positive way.
Kenzie’s cousin Khloe Stevens shared one of her fondest memories of her cousin: the summers they spent together in California playing in their grandmother’s backyard pool. That was where they last hugged before Kenzie returned to Utah, where she was ultimately murdered. Through tears, Khloe shared, “I replayed those final moments together in my head over and over, stricken with grief that I cannot somehow keep her with us just a little bit longer. The pain of Kenzie’s loss and the permanent fracture it has left in our family is indescribable.
It haunts me daily that I was not able to protect her. ”
Kenzie was passionate about domestic violence awareness and prevention, and her friends emphasized that there is no excuse for domestic violence in any form. They urged anyone in that situation to seek help, noting that resources are available through hotlines and other support services. They also warned about the dangers of online dating, noting that meeting people through apps can lull people into a false sense of security.
They reminded everyone how important it is to let someone know where you are going and who you are meeting. Kenzie’s story remains a painful reminder of how quickly trust can be betrayed, and how even the brightest, most loving people can fall victim to those who hide their darkness behind a friendly smile.
