THE man accused of the “Sugar Baby” death of student Mackenzie Lueck asked a contractor to build a secret soundproof room with hooks installed “above head height”.

Construction worker Brian Wolf says the primary suspect in the killing of the University of Utah student approached him in April about building a secretive room under his home’s front porch, accessible with a thumb scanner.

But Wolf told Deseret News that the “weird” request from homeowner Ayoola Ajayi made him uneasy as the plan included hooks mounted high on a concrete wall for reasons that didn't make sense.

Wolf turned the job down and reported the encounter to Salt Lake City police after seeing news reports on Friday of Ajayi's arrest in Lueck's death.

The Utah college student missing for 11 days was abducted and killed and her remains burned in the yard of the man now facing aggravated murder and other charges, authorities said on Friday.

Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown said that Ajayi will be charged with aggravated murder, kidnapping, obstruction of justice and desecration of a body in the death of the 23-year-old student, who was expected to graduate in Spring 2020.

He was arrested without incident on Friday morning by a SWAT team.

"IT GOT WEIRDER"

Ajayi, 31, is an information technology worker who attended college on and off but never earned a degree and was briefly in the Army National Guard – yet he didn't complete basic training.

Lueck disappeared on June 17 after she returned from a trip home for her grandmother's funeral and took a Lyft ride from the airport to a park north of Salt Lake City.

Self-employed contractor Brian Wolf told Deseret News that the man arrested for killing Lueck asked if he could anchor hooks high on an internal wall.

Wolf said: "I was like, 'why do you need big hooks up there? And he said it was to hang a wine rack."

Ajayi wanted him to customise a "hollowed out area under the front porch" by building a soundproof room, accessible via a thumb lock.

Wolf added: "It just got weirder and weirder, the more he was talking to me.

"He wanted me to build a weird room."

Salt Lake City Police spokeswoman Christina Judd confirmed on Saturday that Wolf had recounted the story to detectives.

SUGAR DADDIES

"We don't have any reason to discount his story. We actually really appreciate it," she said.

Lueck, a part-time senior studying kinesiology and pre-nursing, was last seen apparently willingly meeting someone at a park north of Salt Lake City at about 3am.

The sorority member boasted about having two Tinder "sugar daddies" just weeks before she vanished.

Lueck reportedly looked for men aged over 35 online, and posted advice on how she found sugar daddies.

Her text conversation with Ajayi was her last communication and phone location data shows them both at the park within a minute of each other, Police Chief Mike Brown said.

"This was the same time as Mackenzie's phone stopped receiving any further data or location services," he told reporters.

After discovering that Ajayi was the last person Lueck communicated with, police searched his home on Wednesday and Thursday.

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In his back garden, cops said they found a "fresh dig area" and charred items that belonged to Lueck. They also found burned human remains that matched her DNA profile, Brown said.

Lueck's uncle, who did not provide his name at the police press conference, held back tears as he read a statement from her family thanking the investigators for their work.

She was a bubbly, nurturing person who helped others and took care of animals like guinea pigs, hedgehogs and cats, friends have said.

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