'So many emotions:' Krista Lueth's father discusses the death of his daughter, and the conviction of her killer

LANSING — Roy Lueth doesn't have to go far on his St. Clair County property to find reminders of his daughter, Krista, who disappeared more than 15 years ago after ditching a boyfriend who eventually killed her.

There are the gardens inspired by Krista, who was living in Lansing and studying horticulture at Michigan State University when she went missing in 2008. And there is the backwoods setting where she liked to camp as a child.

"I have a couple of cacti I got from her back in 2001 or 2002," Roy Lueth said. "They're still alive. I've got flower gardens that she absolutely demanded I put in. They're perennials, so they are still there."

Lueth stayed involved during the 13-year police investigation that resulted in criminal charges against Brad Cournaya in connection with Krista's disappearance. And he sat through the lengthy court proceedings that ended with Cournaya's conviction on a first-degree murder charge in late June.

But there can be no real closure without her remains being found.

"I had been working on this case for so long that, yes, it was a relief that we actually got him," Lueth, 80, said following the trial. "But it was 15 years ago, and Krista is not coming back. There's the satisfaction of knowing he's never going to hurt anybody else. That was something I could do. I couldn't bring her back, but I could keep him from hurting more people."

Lueth plans to hold a reception in September at MSU's Horticulture Gardens in memory of his daughter after Cournaya is sentenced. He's inviting everyone who worked on the case, including all the Michigan State Police detectives who were involved over the years, and people at the university who knew Krista. He's also extending an open invitation to the jurors who decided the criminal case, even though he can't contact them directly.

"I want to express my gratitude to them," he said. "I have all of Krista's awards, her diplomas and photos. I want to go through her life from the time she was little through the time she was murdered, just so people know who she was."

The investigation and trial

Krista, 34, vanished on the night of Nov. 11, 2008, never to be seen again. She attended her classes at MSU that day but never made it to her urban gardening class that evening at Hunter Park, within easy walking distance of her apartment on Eureka Street in Lansing.

A breakthrough came in 2009, when a detective ran Cournaya's license plate and learned that an Ingham County Sheriff's Office sergeant had come upon Cournaya's disabled truck on the shoulder of southbound U.S. 127 on the night of Lueth's disappearance and logged it as a motorist assist. The truck was later towed to where Cournaya was living in Mason.

Months after she had disappeared, state police searched that area and found important evidence.

Lueth's disappearance was declared a homicide in 2009, and state police announced in 2014 that Cournaya was the only suspect in her death. But he wasn't charged until January 2021, after a fourth team of detectives had taken up the case and resubmitted evidence for testing.

By that time, Cournaya was serving a 16- to 40-year sentence stemming from a 2017 human trafficking and commercial sex case in Ingham County. Authorities said he showed a child an obscene photo of himself and a sex video, and also showed her messages on his phone asking if she wanted to make money.

At sentencing, a prosecutor said Cournaya had a history of violent sexual crimes against women and children and "has almost no rehabilitative potential."

Cournaya had already served prison terms for a rape he committed while still a teenager and later for assaulting a female relative, according to court records.

The key evidence against Cournaya was the discovery of Lueth's state ID card, debit card and broken cellphone along the shoulder and median of southbound U.S. 127 at College Road, the spot where his truck had broken down on the night of Aug. 11, 2018.

Prosecutors also introduced cell phone data indicating Lueth vanished over a three-hour period on the night of Nov. 11. She had broken things off with Cournaya five days earlier after discovering he had used her credit card to pay more than $200 in charges for a telephone sex line call or calls, according to testimony.

The data showed numerous contacts between Cournaya and Lueth on the day she went missing, including a dozen contacts between 3:57 p.m. and 5:11 p.m. And it also showed Cournaya was at or near her home around the time she vanished. It didn't help Cournaya's case that he never tried to call Lueth after that night.

Deputy Chief Assistant Ingham County Prosecutor Bill Crino argued the evidence showed an angry Cournaya was "relentlessly" contacting Lueth, writing her messages professing his undying love and begging her to give him another chance.

The jury deliberated only a few hours after a two-week trial before convicting Cournaya as charged.

'He is just really bad news'

Roy recalled meeting Cournaya for the first time after he and Krista showed up at his home on the east side of the state in October 2008. It was not a good first impression.

"This guy walks up, and he's wearing shorts and a muscle shirt," Roy Lueth said. "He's covered with tatoos from head to foot," with the tattoos "depicting violence against women and Nazi symbols."

State corrections department records show Cournaya has 17 tattoos on his body.

During that visit, Lueth said, he asked his daughter what she was doing with Cournaya. He asked her again when he visited Krista in Lansing not long before she disappeared and saw Cournaya leaving on a motorcycle as he pulled up to her house, he said.

"I told her again, 'Get rid of this guy,'" said Lueth, who did not realize Cournaya was living with her at the time. "He is just really bad news."

Krista "was not totally innocent, sometimes," said her father, who posed the possibility she was using Cournaya for rides because she didn't have a driver's license.

Lueth said he didn't know Cournaya's last name until he drove to her Lansing apartment after she disappeared. As he was leaving, he decided to check the mailbox and found two letters − one to Krista from Cournaya and one to Cournaya from the Secretary of State, which contained his truck driving license, Lueth said.

It was at that point he realized Krista had been kidnapped and killed, and he knew who did it, Lueth said.

"I knew why he did it, because he knew she was going to break up with him," Lueth said.

Roy Lueth was the first witness called in Cournaya's trial and sat through the remainder of the proceedings. He was relieved by the verdict but knew it wasn't going to bring Krista back, he said.

"I've gone through so many emotions over those 15 years," he said. "You eventually get a little wrung out, and that trial brought it back."

A 'complicated' person

Krista was a "complicated," "interesting" person who had friends from a wide spectrum of society, Charles Parker Jr., a longtime friend who lived with her for a time in Lansing, testified during Cournaya's trial. Some of those friends were "fairly crude" or "maybe unsophisticated, but not bad" and some shared her academic values, he said.

"Those groups would rarely see each other," he testified. "She was comfortable with anyone in that spectrum, which I thought was kind of amazing."

Krista struggled at times with substance abuse, according to testimony. But she was motivated and driven and carried a 3.75 grade-point average when she vanished, Crino noted in his closing argument.

Lueth had a full load of classes and worked as a project manager and administrator for a company that contracted with the Ingham County Drain Commission, putting in rain gardens, according to testimony. She also volunteered at Hunter Park and attended a weekly urban gardening class. She was enrolled in fall classes at MSU and had scholarship money lined up for 2009.

"This is not a person who is going to pick up and disappear off the face of the earth without telling anybody," Crino argued.

Roy Lueth said his daughter had her struggles and successes. He agreed she was highly motivated and doing well before she was killed. Krista had already earned a botany degree and planned to attend graduate school in botanical garden management, he said.

"Krista was totally into plants; that was her whole life," he said.

His property in St. Clair County has rolling hills, a pond stocked with fish and a creek running through it, Lueth said.

"When she was 12 or so, she used to take a tent and would sleep out there," he said. "That was her favorite spot. She had tiki lamps out there at the table. She was totally into nature."

Also among her personality traits: Krista was very strong-minded, he said.

"When she decided to do something, you had two choices: You can either get out of the way or get run over," he said. "I think that's part of what cost her her life. She was totally done with the guy and she was moving on and he just couldn't handle it."

The reception at MSU in Krista's memory is set for mid-September. Anybody who served on Cournaya's jury and would like to attend can contact the State Journal at the email address listed below to get details.

Contact Ken Palmer at kpalmer@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @KBPalm_lsj.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Krista's Lueth's father reflects after her killer Brad Cournaya is convicted