Mackenzie Lueck Killing: Cell Phone Photos And Rideshare Helped Lead To Arrest

Mackenzie Lueck/Facebook

 BY MADELINE HOLCOMBE, SCOTT MCLEAN

SALT LAKE CITY (CNN) -- Cell phones and social media were at the heart of the investigation that led to an arrest in the case of a University of Utah student who vanished two weeks ago.

Investigators tracking her cell phone discovered that 23-year-old Mackenzie Lueck and the man expected to be charged with her murder were both in the park where she was last seen on June 17 within a minute of one another.

That was around the time Lueck's phone stopped receiving data or location services, police said

Ayoola Ajayi, 31, was arrested Friday and is expected to be charged with aggravated murder. He also faces charges of aggravated kidnapping, obstruction of justice and desecration of a body, according to Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown.

Police find her pictures on his phone

After Lueck disappeared, the suspect originally denied knowing what she looked like, Brown said. But several pictures of her were found on his phone, and the "digital footprint" has continued even after the arrest, police said.

An Instagram account that Lueck's sorority sister confirmed belongs to the missing student followed another user on or about Wednesday, CNN verified.

Brown confirmed that investigators are looking into the activity on the account.

"This is a digital forensic investigation," he said. "This is covering computers, cell phones, IP addresses, URLs, texting apps."

Forensic evidence is also discovered

But the investigation is not just limited to digital footprints.

Investigators also found forensic evidence after they searched Ajayi's home and property Wednesday, police said. As they did, his neighbors told police they saw him using gasoline to burn something in his backyard on June 17 and 18, Brown said.

Police said the search yielded multiple items of evidence.

"A forensic excavation of the burn area was conducted, which resulted in the finding of several charred items that were consistent with personal items of Mackenzie Lueck," Brown told reporters.

Police also discovered charred material that was determined to be female human tissue consistent with Lueck's DNA profile, he said. A mattress investigators have been trying to find has been located, police tweeted Friday night, without providing additional details.

She stopped communicating about 3 a.m.

Lueck texted her parents at 1 a.m. on June 17 when she landed at Salt Lake City International Airport, police said. She was seen on airport surveillance walking through baggage claim before taking Lyft to Hatch Park.

The Lyft driver said she did not appear to be in distress, according to Salt Lake City police assistant chief Tim Doubt.

Police said Friday that all communications with Lueck's phone ceased around 3 a.m. that morning -- the same time they said she left the park with the suspect.

Phone records showed her last communication was with the suspect, Brown said. Her family and friends did not see or hear from her after that morning. Her sorority sister told CNN affiliate KSL that Lueck had also missed exams.

"She's extremely dedicated," Ashley Fine told the TV station. "She would never miss her midterms or anything like that. She hasn't been home. She didn't show up to work, or anything."

A suspect is arrested

After the suspect's arrest Friday, Brown contacted her parents to tell them the news. They were "devastated and heartbroken by this news," he said.

"This is one of the most difficult phone calls I've ever made," he said.

The suspect lived about five miles from the park where Lueck was last seen.

According to his LinkedIn page, he is a former information technology specialist for the US Army and recently worked for Dell and Goldman Sachs. CNN has reached out to the US Army and Dell for comment.

States Weigh Bans On Shackling Jailed Moms During Childbirth

In this Feb. 27, 2019, photo, Michelle Aldana is shown at the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City. Utah is one of at least four states considering bans this year on the shackling of incarcerated women during childbirth. The Utah measure has passed the state House and is being considered by the Senate. The measure is a relief for mothers like Aldana, who was shackled when she gave birth while incarcerated on a drug charge in 2001. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

BY LINDSAY WHITEHURST

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Michelle Aldana gave birth to her first child chained to a hospital bed.

Then serving time at the Utah state prison on a drug charge, she says she labored through the difficult 2001 birth for nearly 30 hours, her ankles bleeding as the shackles on both her legs and one arm dug in. “I felt like a farm animal,” she says.

The practice of keeping inmates shackled during childbirth was once common around the United States, but that’s gradually been changing after women began speaking out, with 22 states passing laws against it over the past two decades.

Utah and at least three other states are considering joining them this year, after the federal government recently banned the practice with a sweeping criminal justice reform law. Many other states have policies against shackling, but advocates say that without a law it’s harder to stop a practice they condemn as dangerous and inhumane.

Women are America’s fast-growing segment of prisoners. The American Civil Liberties Union estimates about 12,000 pregnant women are incarcerated in U.S. jails or prisons each year.

“For me, it’s just a fundamental issue of dignity,” said Democratic state Rep. Stephanie Pitcher, who is sponsoring the Utah measure. “A woman deserves dignity in childbirth.”

Though the state prison changed its official policy to prohibit shackling in 2015, Pitcher has heard from a number of Utah doctors who have treated incarcerated women having babies in shackles, some as recently as this year. Her bill, which would apply to both the prison and local jails, passed the state House and is being considered by the Senate.

The practice is an outgrowth of policies requiring all prisoners to be restrained during medical treatment for safety, said Amy Fettig, deputy director of the National Prison Project at the ACLU.

But childbirth is different, she said. Preventing a woman from moving during labor increases the risk of potentially life-threatening health risks inherent in childbirth, like blood clots. It also makes it harder to move her if there is an emergency, or feed the baby after it’s born.

Meanwhile, the physical conditions of labor make escape attempts unlikely, and there are no documented cases of a woman getting away while having a child, Fettig said.

Still, some have raised safety concerns. In Utah, Republican Rep. Eric Hutchins has pointed out that violent incidents happen often in state prisons, and hospitals have far less built-in security.

He ultimately voted in favor of the bill, which does allow some shackling during transportation and the use of soft restraints if an inmate is documented to be dangerous. Prison officials are also in support, and say their policy change means women like Aldana are treated differently today.

Most other states without laws against shackling do have policies in place, but without strict controls, the practice is hard to stamp out, said Lauryn King, a public-policy Ph.D. student at The George Washington University who completed a state-by-state analysis of laws on the topic.

“What are the odds that without specific training, your average corrections officer knows every policy?” she said. In New York, for example, a report found the practice continued even after a law was passed.

In Wisconsin, a woman said in a lawsuit she was shackled with a chain so short that she couldn’t reach the stirrups during labor in February 2014. Tennessee and Arkansas have faced similar lawsuits and are weighing bans on the practice this year, along with South Carolina.

In Utah, Aldana’s tough 2001 labor left her with a fracture to her pelvis, but she has recovered and is now a substance abuse counselor pregnant with her third child. She still suffers with anxiety about childbirth but said a law against shackling would be a relief.

“I just don’t think any woman, when they’re that vulnerable, should ever be treated that way,” she said. “It’s just wrong.”

FG Defends Search For Oklahoma City Bombing Video

APJannie Coverdale leans on the chair of one of her grandchildren in the Field of Chairs at the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial in Oklahoma City, Friday, July 25, 2014. Coverdale, who lost two grandchildren in the bombing, said she is hopeful that an upcoming trial in Utah will shed light on the bombing.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The FBI thoroughly searched its archives and found no evidence that more videos of the Oklahoma City bombing exist, agency employees told a judge Monday in a trial that has rekindled questions about whether any others were involved in the 1995 attack.

Additional searches for videos that Salt Lake City lawyer Jesse Trentadue believes are being withheld would be burdensome and fruitless, FBI attorney Kathryn Wyer argued during the first day of a bench trial.

Trentadue says the agency is refusing to release videos that show a second person was with Timothy McVeigh when he parked a truck outside the Oklahoma City federal building and detonated a bomb that killed 168 people. The government says McVeigh was alone.

The 30 video recordings the FBI has released don't show the explosion or McVeigh's arrival in a rental truck. "The plaintiff has refused to accept that the 30 tapes he got are the only tapes," Wyer said.

The FBI already has provided videos and paper documents that correspond with Trentadue's Freedom of Information Act request, she said. But unsatisfied by the FBI's previous explanations and citing the public importance of the tapes, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups has ordered the agency to explain why it can't find videos that are mentioned in evidence logs.

Linda Vernon, a longtime FBI employee who became the point person for the collection of evidence after the bombing, said she is "completely confident" the agency has found every video of the bombing that exists.

The trial continues Tuesday and will run at least through Wednesday before the judge makes a ruling. He could wait until a later date to decide. Trentadue believes the presence of a second suspect explains why his brother, Kenneth Trentadue, was flown to Oklahoma several months after the bombing, where he died in a federal holding cell. Kenneth Trentadue bore a striking resemblance to a police sketch based on witness descriptions of the enigmatic suspect "John Doe No. 2," who was never identified.

Trentadue is acting as his own attorney and tried to show that the FBI has not adequately followed up on information that could lead to the discovery of other videos. He asked Monica Mitchell of the FBI about why the agency had not done more to search for a tape mentioned in a Secret Service log. It describes security video footage of suspects — in plural — exiting the truck three minutes before the bomb went off.

"Didn't it come to your mind that that tape may exist?" Trentadue asked. Mitchell said she didn't know the authenticity of the Secret Service document and that Vernon told her she didn't know of the existence of such a tape.

Trentadue asked if Mitchell had asked FBI headquarters about the tape, citing documents that show it had one tape and 300 pages of documents. She acknowledged she had not asked headquarters about those items as part of the FOIA request.

A Secret Service agent testified in 2004 that the log does exist, but its information was pulled from reports that were never verified, said Stacy A. Bauerschmidt, who was then the assistant to the special agent in charge of the FBI's intelligence division.

Several investigators and prosecutors who worked the case told The Associated Press in 2004 they had never seen video like that described in the Secret Service log. Mitchell and Vernon described how employees searched automated systems and by hand. Vernon said she spent 85 hours searching three computer databases created to track all the evidence.

Trentadue wasn't the only one asking tough questions of FBI witnesses. The judge at one point asked Mitchell why the FBI never responded to a letter from Trentadue asking about a video that seemed to be incomplete.

"You basically did nothing?" Waddoups asked. "We did nothing because we were confident in our search and what we located," Mitchell said. Later, he questioned why Vernon neglected to send several documents to Trentadue that mentioned videos, despite her previous claim that she erred on the side of inclusivity if she wasn't sure whether something fell under his request.

Trentadue's 44-year-old brother, who was a convicted bank robber and construction worker, was brought to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons' Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City after being picked up for probation violations while coming back to the U.S. at the Mexican border, Jesse Trentadue said.

Kenneth Trentadue's death was officially labeled a suicide. But his body had 41 wounds and bruises that his brother believes were the result of a beating. In 2008, a federal judge awarded the family $1.1 million for extreme emotional distress in the government's handling of the death. The amount was reduced to $900,000 after an appeal.

Talley reported from Oklahoma City. Follow Brady McCombs at https://twitter.com/BradyMcCombs