Running Out Of Time (Rebroadcast)

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But there's something inside that I need to release.

Which way is right?

Which way is wrong?

I don't say that I need to move on.

Move on.

University police, watch your emergency.

This is Lauren.

I am not dealing with the situation.

I think they're trying to lure me somewhere.

In 2018, University of Utah senior Lauren McCluskey repeatedly asked for help.

He was deceptive.

He was dangerous.

Every woman I came across, I used my manipulation tactics to get what I wanted.

I'm pissed.

That could have changed everything.

The people and institutions that were supposed to listen and protect her did not.

The justice system failed her in so many different ways.

Looking like this might be kidnapping.

You have a powerful institution that is trying to protect his image.

She did everything right.

She said,

no, no, no, no, no, no.

And I knew something was wrong.

This is the story of Lauren's life, her murder, and her parents' quest for answers.

Good evening and welcome to 2020.

You're about to witness right here tonight the results of a four-year ESBN investigation into the death of Lauren McCluskey, a beloved daughter, a cherished friend, a senior at the University of Utah.

This investigation led by reporters TJ Quinn and Nicole Norin, and what it uncovers is surveillance video never seen before tonight, police interviews, documents, photographs.

And at the end, you'll likely be asking what these two journalists asked and often, could Lauren's life have been saved?

Lauren McCleskey grew up in Pullman, Washington.

Lauren was just athletic from the very beginning.

She could climb trees at two years old and she had no fear.

She was pure determination.

She was a very sensitive girl, and so the athletics really gave her a way to channel that.

It just helped her be a more confident person.

I put her in three events at eight years old and she broke the record for each event.

400, high jump, and long jump.

I told her, well, if you qualify for nationals, I'll take you.

When she was 10, it was in Los Angeles, and she got second place in high jump in Junior Olympic nationals.

She was competitive with anyone in the country as a young child.

I remember meeting Lauren in dance class.

I was about 13.

She was awesome.

It was fun to be around her.

Whatever she did, she was amazing at.

She really loved to sing.

She always participated in things that was either new or challenging for her that made her a better person.

Me and Lauren are going to do a conversation with you because we said, I'm like, they're just fine.

3.14159-2653589-793-2384-6260538.

Anyway.

She was pretty famous at the high school.

Oh, Lauren McCluskey, you're her dad.

Oh, okay.

She was the kind of friend that you could rely on.

It wouldn't matter the time or the day.

If you needed someone to talk to, Lauren would be there for you.

I would talk to Lauren every single day.

The University of Utah, she really loved the athletic program.

She liked the academics.

She liked the coaches.

She She liked the girls on the team.

She just enjoyed the whole experience.

And I think she did want to experience living away from home.

We first met August 2015.

It was our freshman year.

Her eyes lit up when she talked.

Super smart, super intense, very dedicated to, you know, her family, her church.

She was such a multidimensional person.

Like, you didn't just see her as an athlete.

She was Lauren, who was an athlete, but she was also a comedian.

She was also a dancer.

She was a communication major.

She did extremely well.

She was very excited about graduating.

It was the beginning of their senior year, and Lauren and her friend Alex were heading to downtown Salt Lake City to a bar to have a good time.

Alex requested that we only use her first name.

I think it was a Saturday night in September.

Our first encounter with him was outside.

He was the bouncer.

Lauren and her friend Alex were going out.

They liked to dance.

I remember him being very huge, very big muscles.

Throughout the night, he would come back and pass through and stop and talk to us a few times.

Probably around midnight, we got up to leave.

It was very crowded because people were dancing at this point.

I was behind her and then all of a sudden I look up and then he has like his hands on her shoulders.

So she gave him her number and they made plans to go on a date.

She told me right away that she was dating him and I think he came in and tried to sweep her off her feet.

He said his name was Sean.

He was 28 years old.

He was enrolled currently at Salt Lake Community College.

He also said that he worked at a call center.

center.

It started off really, really good, like

a fairy tale, where it was just like, it's too good to be true, but it's like you're happy for that person because they're happy.

He took her out for dinner and bought her flowers and asked her to be his girlfriend.

I think she liked the attention.

He was very charming.

She said, Sean said I could invite a few friends to go out on Thursday Thursday and meet him but I found it weird how she phrased it he said I could invite

she said he told me to wear a t-shirt and jeans so that's why I'm wearing this she seemed very nervous around him

he called her while we were at Target he sounded very mad like where are you who are you with and I found that very concerning

I remember, you know, being like, why do you have to answer your phone when that person calls?

And she's like, you know, they really want me to answer my phone right away because they have some insecurities from the past and they just want to make sure, you know, where I'm at, what I'm doing, and if I'm okay.

At the end of the conversation, this person would manipulate it.

You know, just as she's about to hang up, this individual would say, you know, I love you.

You don't even want to say his name, do you?

No.

No.

I'm not going to say that person's name.

they don't deserve to have their name mentioned

He got her pepper spray at one point.

He's like, oh, I think you need pepper spray to protect yourself from other men.

Then

he

invited her to go shooting before she went.

She told me he wants me to get a gun.

And when I found that out, that's when I told a few other friends.

They started outlining Lauren's seeing this new guy.

He's not really a good guy.

She's not hanging out with us as much.

And he's talking about getting her a gun.

And then that's when, you know, it had passed the point of, oh, this is harmless gossip to this is actually something that could be detrimental to, you know, her academic career.

And then I had to switch into professional mode.

This was the moment when Lauren McCluskey's friends first alerted University of Utah officials of their concerns about her month-old relationship.

I called my first supervisor and asked her, Hey, what some steps did you want me to take?

Do you want me to call the police and have them go?

Do you want me to try to contact Lauren and see if she can meet me somewhere?

But my direct supervisor was new, so she didn't want to

take the wrong steps and asked me to call our direct supervisor.

Lauren's housing advisor and friend Diamond Jackson emailed her supervisor on October 2nd.

The email that you sent says,

maybe in a potentially harmful relationship, non-resident boyfriend staying with her at her roommate, boyfriend may be getting a gun to keep with her, concerned the boyfriend had been tracking Lauren.

Also that Lauren is not taking care of herself, and these two friends are both worried about Lauren.

I felt like there were multiple points in that that were grounds for us to act.

A couple of days later, Lauren made her own alarming discovery.

She and a friend

found a picture that looked like him that was a sex offender.

I was like, you know, are you 100%

sure?

Her voice seemed very hushed, and she seemed very scared.

I think they're trying to lure me somewhere.

Laura McCleskey had been dating her boyfriend Sean Fields since the beginning of her senior year at University of Utah.

She thought she knew her boyfriend until she found his ID, which had a different age and a different name.

She and a friend found a picture that looked like him that was a sex offender.

And I was like, you know, are you 100% sure it could be this person?

Because based on what I was reading online, it's like that was a really hard offense.

It turns out Sean Fields was not his real name.

He was Melvin Sean Rowland.

He was 37.

And he pleaded guilty to two sex crimes crimes in 2004.

Lauren had gone home to Pullman, Washington for a few days to visit her parents for fall break.

She told me that she had found out that he was a sex offender and that he'd lied about his age and that she was going to break up with him and I said, yes, that's exactly the right thing to do.

We were coming up with like a plan for how

she should break up with him and I didn't want her to do it on campus because since it was fall break, a lot of people were out of town.

Adding to Lauren's problems was that she'd loaned him her car when she was home visiting her parents.

He had her car while she was gone, and

she needed to get her car back.

Lauren met Roland at her dorm that night.

I get a message from her saying, I'll call you tomorrow.

And yes, I'm home.

I was scared.

I remember not sleeping that night.

That next morning, Her voice seemed very hushed and she seemed very scared.

And

I was like, Warren, are you alone?

And she's like, no, I'll call you later.

I finally get a call from her and he spent the night.

He was still denying anything happened.

It was years ago.

He was at like a college fraternity party.

The girl lied about her age.

He was still making excuses of how that's not true.

And then the next day after she broke up with him and he had her car, I was worried about her safety.

And that's when I called the police.

University Police.

I would like to request some help from my daughter who's a student at University of Utah and she started dating this guy there who's like a bad person and she found out he's a bad person and she broke up with him and he has her car.

If he was lying to her and he's actually a sexual offender.

I don't want her to go there by herself and have like something bad happen to her.

After the campus police dispatcher spoke to Jill, she called Lauren.

Hello?

Hi, this is Lauren.

Yeah,

hi, this is University Police.

Your ex-boyfriend's dropping off your car.

Do you feel comfortable with him doing that?

I know your mom was really concerned about it.

I think it's okay.

We have

a security officer that's just in charge of escorts tonight.

Do you want him to wait wait with you as well when the car's getting dropped off?

That would be great.

The car was there, so she had her car back.

Then she started getting a lot of texts.

I've been getting these texts

from these numbers of different people.

They were saying that he was in the hospital and then saying that like that he passed away.

But then I got texts from him and he seems to be alive.

I got a text about, you know, asking if I wanted to to go to

a funeral, his funeral, and I think they're trying to lure me somewhere.

He was very good at manipulating

phones and social media.

He could

make

spoofed numbers.

So it looked like a bunch of different people were texting her.

And they were very

mean

text to her saying that he got in a car accident and it's her fault.

Okay, have you asked them to stop texting you?

I have not, but

I've blocked a few of the numbers already.

All right.

I'll send a certain officer to give you a call again.

Is that okay?

Yeah, I sound good.

The next day, Saturday, six weeks after she met Roland, she called University police again.

So I'm

dealing with a situation

where I'm being blackmailed for money.

A photo of my

me and my ex.

They're

threatening to send it out to everyone.

Lauren suspected Roland might be involved, but he lied to her that morning and said he was also being blackmailed.

She sent $1,000 through Venmo.

A dispatcher made radio contact with patrol officer Miguel Darris at 9, 12 a.m.

The caller says her ex-boyfriend is texting her messages, threatening to expose an explicit photo in exchange for money over email and text.

Email was received around 6 or 7 a.m.

Text was received around 8 a.m.

Sean Rowland around age 37.

I see all these messages from her about the extortion.

At that point, she had already contacted campus police.

It was like, you have to go in person.

Saturday, October 13th,

her practice ended, and then we headed to the police department.

We went inside.

The entire thing was conducted in the reception area of the police department.

Miguel Darris was an officer with the University of Utah Police.

When he sat down with us, it was the first time he'd spoken publicly about the case.

She was with a friend.

We walked in the lobby and I asked her about the payment she had sent.

She gave me his full name, date of birth, and she had a picture of his driver's license.

They showed us what they found on Google.

He's a sex offender.

He went to jail, and I actually had to Google it myself and hand my phone over to him.

Was it a sex offender registry?

It showed on his criminal history that he was on that list.

I felt like they weren't taking it seriously because we had told them, like, she lives on the first floor, maybe she should move housing.

Those charges that Roland had been convicted of were, I mean, those

are serious charges.

That didn't give you concerns.

Yeah, there's concern there,

but we weren't sure if it was him.

Anyone could have been extorting her.

That's why there was random phone numbers, unknown emails that they wanted to blackmail her.

She showed them one of the numbers that was sending her messages was the same number Roland had had when they were in a relationship together.

She writes the report.

I do remember them saying it's a scam, it's probably a scam.

She gives them the report and then they give her the case number and then

they tell her that the detective was currently not in the office and that Warren will hear an update by Tuesday.

What did you think at that point you were dealing with?

What an extortion case?

The case was assigned to the on-call detective, Kayla Dalliff, who was not in the office that Saturday.

But according to official reports, she had conversations about Lauren that day with other officers.

Dallif then contacted her supervisor, Sergeant Corey Newbold.

Newbold told Dallif not to come in.

She was working on several other cases that week.

That evening, Lauren called 911 to tell the Salt Lake City police about the blackmail and how she'd reported it to campus police earlier that day.

I've been blackmailed for money.

Let me go ahead and get you over.

University of Police will probably take the case then, just one sec.

I've talked to them already,

but I just wanted to call you as well.

Usually we just take it where you live, and then that agency does a case.

Yeah, I was just concerned because I wasn't sure how long they were going to take.

Okay, let me get you up to them so they can see what's going on with it just one moment.

Do you know when an arrest would be made?

You can talk to an officer if you want.

I can arrange that if you want that.

Okay.

Yeah, that sounds good.

She was still being harassed and she was still getting messages.

She was still in constant contact, though, with the University Police, specifically Miguel Darris.

So anytime she was getting messages, she would just forward them on to him.

She had his personal number.

I know she was nervous and she was still waiting to hear from the detective.

Throughout that whole process, I remember saying, call the cops, and she said that she did.

She said, you know, I don't want to talk about it.

The police have it under control.

I shouldn't have to worry about it anymore.

Lauren didn't realize it, but her problems were just starting.

It's unbelievable.

The amount of times that she called the police.

University police.

As alarming as this already was, Lauren McCluskey likely had no idea the awful turn this was about to take.

Someone is lurking in the parking lot of her dorm, dressed as the movie assassin Deadpool.

University of Utah senior Lauren McCluskey was worried about strange texts she was getting after she broke up with her boyfriend Melvin Roland, so she alerted campus police.

This video is from Friday, October 19th, 10 days after they broke up and seven weeks after they first met.

Roland is dressed up as the comic book character Deadpool and walking around outside of Lauren's dorm.

At 4.02 p.m., here she is walking in the west entrance.

And then a minute later, see Roland walking around outside the north entrance.

Lauren and her parents didn't know that Roland was stalking her.

They also didn't know that he had access to her email because she had once logged into her account on his phone.

So he knew about her communications with campus police.

She got a message saying, I know everything.

Why didn't you go to the police?

I said, stop speaking to campus police because we went a week ago and they still haven't contacted you yet.

And so I went up to her apartment and that's what she called Salt Lake City Police.

I'm worried because I've been working with the campus police at the U.

And last Saturday I reported and I haven't gotten an update.

Okay, but but someone contacted me today, someone who was correct and said that they know everything about the police.

Okay.

So you already spoke to the campus police department?

Yes, and they haven't updated or done anything.

What prompted you to call Salt Lake City police?

Well, I thought it was weird that there are people who know about the entire case, and the harassers seem to know about it more than me.

And I'm concerned there might be an insider who's letting them know about

the case.

Okay.

So with something.

Because I haven't gotten updates.

Yeah.

It's been a week.

With something like that, you would want to contact the campus police back and ask to speak to your detective.

So she calls Daris.

The first thing she says is,

can I speak to the detective?

And he wants to know why.

And she's like, because my family is concerned that nothing's being done.

And he's like, oh, what?

You told your family.

I'll contact her now.

A few minutes later, the detective finally contacts Lauren.

According to official reports, Detective Kayla Dalla first spoke to Lauren on Friday, October 19th at about 5 p.m.

Lauren had to relay a lot of information to the detective that I felt like the detective should have already known.

So either information wasn't passed along to the detective, or if it was passed along, the detective hadn't read it at that point.

They were on the phone for a while and then the detective tells Lauren to send her an email of everything and so Warren actually does it that night.

She told me I think I'm annoying them that I'm calling so much.

She specifically told me that and then I said it's their job.

They're supposed to listen to you and help you.

That's their job.

She went to the necessary people that could have taken an extra step to take him away.

She did everything right.

It's unbelievable.

The amount of times that she called the police,

how long it took for them to look into

her case.

I remember her saying, hopefully in a few years when I'm in a better place and married to someone else, we can look back on this and laugh.

Early on the morning of October 22nd, 12 days after Lauren and her mother first spoke to police, Melvin Rowland left his apartment, headed to campus in a silver Buick borrowed from his neighbor, and parked in the lot outside of Lauren's building.

Surveillance video shows him outside at 6.26 a.m.

Lauren received a text message that morning from someone claiming to be Deputy Chief Rick McLennan of the Campus Police Department.

Lauren calls me and

She tells me that she got a message from a deputy chief saying that she had to come to the department now.

She noticed that there are certain like grammatical errors that were consistent that she had seen in the past and she we figured that was probably not a real deputy chief.

She was very scared and she was concerned.

She's like, what do I do?

She said she was going to tell Miguel Darris.

According to Lauren's phone records, she called campus police officer Miguel Darris at 10 a.m.

She said,

I've been receiving these messages.

It claims to be your deputy chief.

And I was like, oh, what's the phone number that he's texting you?

And I told her, no, that's not him.

Here's Lauren six minutes later entering Heritage Hall.

A minute after that, she's walking across campus.

And here's Roland nine minutes later.

He walks into the same building, looks around for a few minutes, then leaves.

He goes back to her dorm.

Lauren's phone calendar shows that she had an 11 a.m.

appointment with her on-campus counselor.

She saw the counselor twice in the time that she broke up with him.

and I encouraged her to do that because I know that she wasn't telling me everything and I hope that she could tell it to the counselor you know and get some guidance on what to do.

After seeing her counselor she calls Miguel Darris again at 1155.

She tries again at 1208.

He calls her back at 1214.

Then I was at the Union

center.

on campus and she happened to be there.

So she showed me those messages and I told her personally.

So you actually saw her that morning?

Yeah.

How'd you end up connecting with her in person?

I told her that I'm at the Union Center.

And somehow we both said, oh, we're here.

I'm here too.

She let me look at those text messages.

I told her as well, screenshot those and forward them to the detective.

And we both left.

I went back to my car and

she left.

I had texted her soon before 2 p.m.

asking her if she had told Daris and she said she had.

That was the last I ever talked to her.

Melvin Rowland walked in and out of campus buildings all day, narrowly missing Lauren.

The incredible thing is with all of the security cameras on campus, you can see that he was roaming around campus carrying this small black bag.

He's like, if you guys knew what I had in here, you'd be tripping.

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On Monday, October 22nd, Lauren McCluskey went about her day.

She had a counseling appointment and then later went to study in the student union.

Meanwhile, Melvin Roland walked in and out of campus buildings all day, narrowly missing Lauren.

Security video captures Roland inside Lauren's dorm carrying a small black bag.

A student let him in the locked door multiple times.

They're fist bumping in the hallway.

Campus police later interviewed that student.

He was one of Lauren McCluskey's neighbors.

We obtained this recording through public records requests.

The university blurred his image and altered his voice.

As I'm walking up, he's like, what's your name, by the way?

So like, I'm Apollo.

Nice to meet you.

And I go back to my room.

About two or three minutes after that, I hear a knock.

I open the door.

It's him.

Roland, calling himself Apollo, asks if he can hang out with that student and others in their rooms.

He says he's a student here.

He says he's a senior with a 3.7 GPA majoring in software engineering and that he was an ex-Marine and that the Marines are paying his whole tuition.

Then Roland shows him the black bag he'd been carrying around campus.

And he's like, if you guys knew what I had in here, you'd be tripping.

You'd be like, well, and we're like, what is it?

He showed me, and it was a gun.

He said it was a military issue Beretta.

He showed you that in your room?

So he shows you the gun

and then you look at it, hold it.

Yeah, hold it, I'll look at it, and I put it in the light, and I'm like, okay, cool.

And I hand it back to him in like 10 seconds.

Right.

And then what happens?

And then

we're hanging out for a little bit more.

And then around that time, it's probably

7.30-ish, 8.

And then I'm like, okay, man, sorry, but I got to go study at the library.

And, you know, then I go head to the library.

He walks off the opposite direction of the way I go.

Roland left Lauren's dorm for the last time at 8.10 p.m.

Around the same time Lauren was leaving her class.

The class had gotten out a little bit early.

As she was going home, she called me.

I was in this room right where I'm sitting right now,

and Jill was right behind me, over here.

And she was talking to Lauren on the speaker phone.

So I could hear their conversation.

It was very lively, very happy.

Lauren was looking forward to things.

She was proud that she was making progress on an assignment that was not due for a few days.

So it was a wonderful conversation.

She was so happy and

I

and then and then

she said no no no no no no

and I knew something was wrong.

I hear her yell, no, no, no.

And then I sort of hear her being dragged away and her phone fell and then no one answered the phone

we were yelling into the phone Lauren Lauren

I knew that her life was in danger at that time

oh units attempt to locate a suspect involved in possible kidnapping the victim is a Lauren McCluskey when you saw her name What went through?

I was in shock, like, oh my God.

She just started saying, no, no, no, no, no.

no and it sounded

like someone might have been grabbing her or something we were scrambling trying to figure out where she might be

i was sitting in the newsroom at the salty tribune all of a sudden you could hear this crackle on the police radio kidnapping university of utah kidnapping you know just kind of kept repeating that

oh yeah it's attempt to locate a suspect involved in possible kidnapping.

The victim is a Lauren McCluskey.

Hi, my daughter, Lauren McCluskey, was talking to her mom, and then she just started saying, No, no, no, no, no.

And it sounded

like someone might have been grabbing her or something.

We were scrambling, trying to figure out where she might be.

All right, and you said she was walking to her car from one building

from

the DC, which is the

Gardner Commons.

Oh, someone's been talking on her phone.

Hello.

Hi.

I have a bath club, and I know you and I.

Okay.

Um, could you just uh stay there?

Uh,

I think she was mugged.

I'm trying to get a good location.

All right, where exactly where does that back back out?

Can you get a location for me?

Hi, I just found a whole bunch of stuff spread out all over the ground and a phone that had an asset call.

I picked it up.

Okay.

Um, this in and says...

Yes, I was just on the phone with her parents.

Okay.

I'm having officers responding up that way.

I had a X-box 7 who was possibly making threats with us.

East, south, east of the South Pedro Tower in the parking lot.

It's looking like this might be kidnapping.

I got up to the dorms and it was chilly.

It was a cold night.

And everything was just caution taped off.

I mean, this huge perimeter.

Okay, we do have witnesses that heard a couple shots and they found a showcase.

Information was not being shared readily.

All we knew there was an active manhunt.

Very limited details were pouring in at that time.

There was a lot of focus on this one particular parking lot and there were police everywhere.

I mean from multiple agencies, there were police dogs.

There was really this atmosphere of fear and no answers.

You know, what were they looking for?

What was going on?

They're getting multiple calls from students, wondering what we want students to do, do we have any searches for them?

Yeah, we want them to secure a place,

They lock down to place.

Hello, this is Matt.

Hi, Matt.

This is Belle with the University of Utah

Police.

And have you guys heard from her or anything?

No, we have not.

Okay.

Officials issued a campus-wide shelter-in-place alert and soon followed with a suspect description at 1010.

The manhunt was on for 37-year-old Melvin Rowland.

We're heading westbound from the North Medical Medical Tower.

The city has a group of

six officers in a K-9 heading northbound.

I'm talking about my daughter, Lauren.

We do have officers on scene handling right now.

We're actively looking for her.

We're doing everything we can to track her down.

I would look out the window, and as long as I didn't see any police cars coming to our house, I thought we were okay.

Okay, Sergeant,

It was actually her coach that told me that they found her.

And I said, Is she okay?

And he said, I'm sorry, she's not.

She's gone.

And

that was when I just started crying.

And Matt knew

what he had said by my response.

It's hard to even describe.

I didn't cry.

I was totally shocked.

It was like trauma, like getting hit by a baseball bat.

It was that physical.

I remember getting a text

from Mrs.

McCluskey and

she said that we lost her.

And I was like, what do you mean that we lost her?

And I remember calling her, and she said that

Lauren had been shot.

And that she was murdered.

And I just remember going outside and just looking up,

looking up in the stars and just hoping, I just hope you didn't suffer, Lauren, and that when you left this world,

that you weren't in pain.

Lauren McCluskey had been shot, and police are scouring the campus and beyond for her killer.

All units on the shooting, the suspect is going to be a male black, white hoodie, black jacket with white stripes, wear gray beanie, and white shoes.

It was just an awful discovery.

They find Lauren has been shot and killed in that car and now police are frantically searching the campus and the community looking for the killer.

The manhunt was on for 37-year-old Melvin Rowland.

Melvin Rowland was last seen getting into a car with another woman.

New details about a college athlete that is murdered in Utah.

A mother's horror.

She was on the phone with her daughter, authorities say, as she was about to be shot and and killed by her boyfriend.

New questions about whether authorities did enough to help her with chilling 911 calls to police days before her murder.

Lauren McCluskey had no idea that on that Monday evening, back in October of 2018, as she was walking across campus, her normal routine, that her former boyfriend, Melvin Rowland, was actually stalking her, waiting for her outside her dorm at the University of Utah.

According to the police report, surveillance video shows Lauren as she was about to enter her dorm, and Melvin Rowland's feet can be seen standing several feet behind her.

He steps toward McCluskey and grabs her.

At 8:18, he can be seen carrying her north away from the door.

This video was never released by the university.

Roland carried her to this nearby parking lot, forced her into the back seat of his neighbor's car, and shot her seven times.

He's seen here three minutes later, making his way south through campus parking lots and across this bridge, ending up at a light rail station on campus.

All units on the shooting, the suspect is going to be a male black, white hoodie, black jacket with white stripes, wearing a gray beanie and white shoes.

He was picked up at the station by a driver in a silver Hyundai Sonata.

Within minutes of shooting her, of shooting Lauren, he went out on a date with a woman that he arranged on a dating app.

They went out to dinner.

They hung out at her place.

He took a shower.

It really seemed like he was just having another normal night afterward with another woman.

The woman contacted police that night.

The police blurred her image and altered her voice.

When I got home,

I saw the picture of this guy, and then I

that he may have been picked up in the silver sonata which is like a description of my car.

I saw the picture but the name isn't the same or the age.

I just really am just like all around just

nervous for my safety.

I don't know what like I need to do.

100% safe in here.

You are fine.

I have officers chasing your suspect on the shooting.

He is in foot pursuit right now.

Around 1 a.m., Salt Lake City police officers spotted him in the area of 200 East and 500 South downtown.

They were chasing him on foot and they chased him to this location where they found a hidden forced entry to this building.

We have the suspect inside the church.

It looks like he had the gunshot wound self-inflicted.

In clearing the building, they found our suspect deceased in a room in the church.

It turns out that Melvin Rowland died by suicide.

Police say using the same gun he used to kill Lauren McCluskey.

So many of us won't forget those images on campus that day.

All of those young students who had gathered, you could see the tears

coming down their faces, those who knew her, those who loved Lauren.

Suddenly, the nation knew the story of this young woman with so much promise whose life was stolen.

We gather today to honor the memory of Lauren McCluskey,

a remarkable, talented young woman whose bright life was ended on Monday in a senseless act of violence.

She was a joy to coach.

It is

an immense and deep pain that my team and that all of our student athletes are feeling.

She was an amazing, genuine, and caring person.

And she was

really missed.

It made national headlines.

We knew there was going to be accountability issues.

We wondered, could this have been prevented?

And then there was also the focus on Roland as kind of the villain in this case.

Looking at his past, his criminal history.

He was like a con man, a sweet talker.

He had used various aliases.

We talked to two or three other women that had dated him that said, you know, he did the same thing to us and we could have been Lauren.

Women that he had dated for short periods of time that he just became kind of obsessive with.

There were just so many pieces of information that we realized that the you didn't have and never found out that we were starting to find out in the first couple of days.

I would say within a week or two at most, the focus shifted.

It became how the university made mistakes, how the institution failed Lauren.

You have a powerful institution that is trying to protect his image.

that is promising transparency.

We know Lauren had called, she had complained that she was being harassed by an ex-boyfriend.

There's only two things that could have occurred.

One, the writing on the wall was there and it was simply ignored, or those who were looking at the wall couldn't read.

He was deceptive, he was dangerous, and in my mind thinking, how could we have not known?

The facts that they uncovered were shocking.

Police learned that 22-year-old Roland had sexually assaulted a 17-year-old high school student.

I just felt sick sick to my stomach when I heard that.

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The murder of Laura McCleskey now sets into motion two investigations into her death in Utah.

While the state's Department of Public Safety focused on Melvin Rowland's history with the criminal justice system, the University of Utah commissioned its own independent review.

They presented this report that showed all of these ways that the university mishandled it, how the officers mishandled it.

They had all these recommendations for things that should be fixed.

And then President Ruth Watkins made the kind of infamous statement.

This report does not offer us a reason to believe that this tragedy could have been prevented, but instead I was shocked that she would say that.

I just felt sick to my stomach.

I think the statement defies logic.

It defies facts.

It was written by a lawyer.

Everyone was really trying to avoid it.

Well, we didn't do anything wrong.

We didn't do anything wrong.

I'm like, these parents lost our kid.

She is gone.

And you have the audacity to try to cover your ass.

What did your journalistic instinct tell you about that approach that they were taking?

That they would protect the integrity, the reputation of the university at all costs.

The facts that they uncovered were shocking.

The sheer number of times that she was trying

to get help from the police, when in fact it should have just been one phone call.

But the most shocking thing was the large number of

flaws in the system.

In June 2019, Jill and Matt McCleskey filed a $56 million lawsuit against the University of Utah and several staffers, including members of the campus police department, alleging deliberate indifference and failure to intervene to protect their daughter, Lauren.

I do not want to be in this world without Lauren, but Being stuck here,

I have no choice but to try to make this world better.

Women must be believed and taken seriously when they ask for help.

The state's investigative report gave a bit of Roland's background.

He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and said he was adopted by an older couple who died when he was young.

Utah officials say they found no juvenile criminal record for Roland, but he attended a high school for troubled youth in Colorado.

He moved to Utah when he was about 20 years old.

A summary of the report stated that Roland was sentenced in 2004 to 1 to 15 years in prison on charges of enticing a minor over the internet and attempted forcible sexual abuse.

I first heard about him because I represented the Internet Crimes Against Children task force, a bunch of different people working together from a bunch of different law enforcement entities.

One agent on that task force was assigned to pose as a teenager in online chat rooms.

He was acting as a 13-year-old girl and Melvin asked him if he wanted to meet for wild sex.

They make the arrangement to meet and met in downtown Salt Lake.

And when Roland arrived, who was waiting for him?

The Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

Police learned that two nights before, 22-year-old Roland had sexually assaulted a 17-year-old high school student.

So they had met online.

It had been a period of about a month.

He went out to her home.

She indicated she was really tired and she wanted him to leave.

He would not.

When he began to rape her, she put a pillow over her face and

covered herself up.

After he finished, he left and said,

you won't have to hear from me again and I won't take anything on my way out.

The 17-year-old went to the hospital for a rape exam and to be treated for her injuries.

He was a one-man sex crime wave that was just looking to commit sex crime.

The initial charge was rape because of the crime against the actual victim and then enticement of a minor over the internet.

Two serious felonies.

Roland lied to officers and FBI agents at the time and told them he was a football player at the University of Utah.

Although he was enrolled at the school from the fall of 2003 until spring 2004.

You just seem like the consummate manipulator.

Someone who is very smooth and engaging and convincing, compelling,

but

who you shouldn't believe a word of what they say.

As those cases were proceeding, Roland was on supervised release.

He wore a monitoring device on his ankle while he attended classes.

He dropped out as he reached a deal to plead guilty.

He was sentenced to 1 to 15 years in prison.

There was a strong likelihood that the victim in this case was not going to be able to withstand trial.

And so that was a strong motivation for me to reach a plea bargain.

What was the next thing you ever heard about him?

When I saw the report on TV that he had killed Lauren and himself, it hit me like a ton of bricks.

He was a predator.

We did the right thing by stopping him.

How did he get out?

Why was he out?

And, oh my God.

One of the most heartbreaking things about this case is that Melvin Rowland has this stunning criminal history and so many questions about could he have been stopped long before this?

And so much of this has not been made public until now.

So we hear him say flat out he rapes two other women.

What's your reaction to hearing that?

I am just appalled that I didn't know.

Megan Thompson was Melbourne Rowland's final parole agent.

She was assigned to his case in 2018.

When you were signed, Melbourne Rowland, how many other cases did you have?

Maybe 70 or 80

people on my caseload.

There was a parole hearing he had had years earlier.

where he essentially admitted to committing two rapes that he had not been charged with.

Had you ever heard that?

No.

Is it the first time you're hearing it?

Yes.

All right, so this was from 2012.

They didn't tell me how many victims you have.

So I'd like you to give me kind of an

idea of what we're looking at victim-wise.

Is that including the women I dated in college or just

I would say every female that I came across dating or met on the internet, I'd say, I used my manipulation taxes to get what I wanted.

How many did you out and out rape like the one young lady?

Well, not like that.

But me being a womanizer, you know, I use other taxes to get what I wanted with them.

I'd say

some similarities, I'd say

two.

Two others.

But I see it in general, which is how I

manipulated and used women in general.

How many women in general did you convince to have sex with you by manipulation?

I got locked up at 22, and my sexual experience, I'd say about 50.

Okay.

So we hear him say flat out he raped two other women.

What's your reaction to hearing that?

I am just appalled that I didn't.

No.

It should have been investigated because there's no statute of limitations.

Have you heard of situations like that where someone essentially admits to two violent felonies in a hearing and nothing happens?

No.

We asked the Board of Pardons and Parole why Roland's admission to two additional rapes wasn't investigated.

The board replied, the individual retains their right against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment.

The board's role is to ask questions and respond to the information provided, but it cannot be a fair venue if we are also involved in investigatory or prosecutorial actions.

He got away with other crimes, and it makes me feel horrible that I wasn't able to do anything about that, because I was unaware of it.

Hopefully when you get out, you'll have learned from

this experience.

Only time's going to tell.

Yeah, I know I have that capability of reoffending, but again, it's something I'll have to prove.

Roland had been denied parole in his first three attempts, but a month after that hearing, in July 2012, he was released.

Within a few months, he was sent back to prison for failing to participate in sex offender therapy and for having links to pornography on his phone.

In 2013, he was paroled again and out of prison for two and a half years.

During that time, he fathered a son.

He also briefly dated Kara Stroppel.

I feel like it's important that people understand that he was just very skilled at

getting what he wanted.

I didn't hear from him or see him at all for a couple of months.

And then 25 missed phone calls and just like, just a slew of text messages.

He said that his parole officer stopped by and I'm like,

you have a parole officer?

Like, what's

he knows that his parole officer is going to take him away for whatever was on his cell phone.

He takes his cell phone and throws it under the oven in his kitchen.

And then he books it out the door and runs from his parole officer.

Stroplaw says she persuaded Roland to turn himself in, and he was sent back to prison for four parole violations, including absconding from parole agents and using social media.

During his parole violation hearing, Roland's public defender addressed a threat Roland had made against a parole agent.

We played audio from the hearing for Paul Amon, the man who first prosecuted Roland.

It is rather disconcerting, the comment that he made that he did not wish to parole again and if an agent were to come conduct a field visit, he might become violent.

Mr.

Rowland expressed to me that he was mad at the time and

that

he was just making that statement and that he didn't mean it.

That was just a wake-up call to the Board of Pardons.

He sends up all these flares that I'm a problem.

If I get out, I'm going to hurt people.

I mean, his probation officer is an armed, trained law enforcement officer, and he's threatening violence to that person.

Lauren McCluskey didn't stand a chance.

Melvin Rowland was in prison for nearly two years, then had another parole hearing in January 2018.

The board faced a choice, keep him in prison until the end of his sentence 16 months later, or release him on parole so he'd be supervised in the community.

I understand I haven't been

the best model citizen when I release and it shows by two paroles that

you know I I just hope taking consideration they've given me this chance so I can redeem myself.

I wish you the best of luck.

Thank you.

Okay.

In April 2018, Roland was paroled for the third time.

Megan Thompson was assigned to be his parole agent.

What were your impressions of him?

Arrogant, entitled.

I knew that he had a history with women, so I was very

overly, I guess you could say, assertive and rigid

to where he knew

and saw me as an officer, not as a woman.

He

would clearly say he didn't like the rules, but he knew he had to follow them.

He was just kind of more focused on his life after parole.

During a search, you found that he'd been accessing a dating site.

What did you discover?

On his phone, he had...

Some meetup apps he was socializing with women on

and

there were several women on.

As far as violating him on that and him going back to prison, there's no way the supervisor or the Board of Pardons would have approved that he go back to prison on just that.

In August, he tested positive for marijuana.

Yes.

There had been no previous concerns about drug use in his history or in

my encounters with him.

I came down on him pretty hard, if I remember right, during that visit with him.

This would be a verbal warning.

People, after the fact, after he killed Lauren, after he died, look back and think, oh my God, there's a chance right there they could have violated him.

When you look back at it, what do you think?

Oh, there's no way

I would never have gotten it.

I warrant

what I did was what

would have was appropriate.

How do you feel you handled all the information that you got about him?

I handled things very appropriately.

I was told

I handled things very appropriately.

We contacted the Utah Department of Corrections about Roland's behavior and potential parole violations.

Officials responded that the type of violations APNP was aware of during Roland's parole would not have typically returned someone to prison, and responses were consistent with state guidelines.

One of the really difficult things about this case, and there are so many difficult questions to this day, but had Melvin Rowland served his entire prison term, had he not been released until May of 2019, that would have been seven months after he murdered Lauren McCluskey.

Instead, he's paroled in 2018, the year before.

He gets a job at that downtown bar in Salt Lake City, and that's where they meet.

This is a girl who has come to us with a problem.

We need to take it seriously.

There was just a lot of shock that this had happened.

Every system that Lauren tried to get help through failed.

So amid all of these questions about whether or not campus police could have been doing more to help Lauren, if anything at all, now there's this brand new question.

What had they done with the intimate photos that Lauren had shared with them, trusting them?

We now know it was one week after Lauren McCluskey met Melvin Rowland at that bar where he worked at Salt Lake City that his fellow bouncer at the bar, Nathan Vogel, asks a friend to help Nathan buy a Beretta handgun at a gun store.

And the incredible thing is it was just later that month Melvin Rowland borrows this new handgun to take Lauren McCluskey's shooting.

And authorities would later learn it was the same gun he used to kill Lauren.

Vogel pleaded guilty to making a false statement to obtain the weapon.

When Lauren's friends learned that her new boyfriend wanted to take her shooting and get her a gun, they became concerned and told housing advisor Diamond Jackson.

Jackson sent an email to her supervisor on October 2nd with a list of concerns.

During that period of time from the 2nd to the 22nd,

how much were you hearing about Lauren and what was going on with her?

It was never brought up unless I brought it up.

What's being done?

Have y'all changed rooms for her yet?

What's going on?

And there was just like, oh, you know, we're going to handle it.

And, you know, the director of conduct is going to look into it.

And just very nonchalant kind of, it's going to get done.

Nothing happened.

In the hours before Lauren's murder, campus housing officials at the University of Utah discussed the concerns that resident advisor Diamond Jackson had first raised by email three weeks before.

She spoke to Jill McCluskey after Lauren's death.

I was able to call her mom and tell her exactly what I did on my end.

I told her that I was sorry and I thought, I wish I could change.

I wish I could go back.

And I told her exactly what I did,

who I spoke to.

I laid it all out and I really told her that I really wish I would have went and helped her.

And

she was just being so kind to me.

And I'm like, why are you being kind to me?

Your daughter, like, is gone.

And I could have helped her.

She's like, Damn, there's nothing you could have done.

We contacted campus housing officials who were named in the McCluskey lawsuit.

None of them would speak with us on the record.

Lauren's friends had spoken with her housing advisor, and Lauren McCluskey had repeatedly contacted campus police.

I'm

dealing with a situation

where I'm being blackmailed for money.

The University of Utah sent a statement to us saying in part, Lauren's death forced the university to reckon with its dysfunctional police department, siloed campus operations, and incomplete employee training and communication.

The detective in charge of Lauren's extortion case was Kayla Dalliff, who had been on the job for less than a year.

Her supervisor was Sergeant Corey Newbold, who died in 2021.

School officials told us there is no record that Newbold ever instructed her to follow up on Lauren's case.

Dallif is now a deputy sheriff for a county in Utah.

She declined our interview request.

Miguel Darris is the officer who took Lauren's initial police report.

What sort of threat did you think Melbourne Rowland might be to her?

We weren't 100%

sure that it was him.

Lauren didn't think it was him.

She kept saying it was Roland's friends,

an unknown, or

possibly Roland.

Why didn't somebody at that point just go interview Melvin Roland?

Because we were not sure if it was him.

But why not ask him?

That's when,

that's where I needed more experience on these type of cases,

doing follow-ups, but

we were trained as

first line officers to document everything and pass it over to the detective.

They

wanted detectives to do the follow-up.

You gave a very long pause when I asked you about contacting him.

I mean, sitting here today, what do you wish you had done?

Contact him or told someone to.

When I had dispatched run his criminal history, that's where

I

saw that he was, he had convictions.

What did it show about his parole status?

We weren't trained to look at that, so I had no idea to even check for that.

Had you ever run someone's parole status before?

No.

According to the university's review, no one in the campus police department checked Roland's offender status to see if he was on parole, and no policies or procedures were in place to require such a check.

Had they seen it and saw that he was on parole and contacted you, what would have happened next?

My next step would be contacting him, locating him.

Did you ever hear from campus police at any point?

No.

What concerns did you have for her safety at that point?

None, because she

not

report any fear or

concerns of domestic violence.

Were your supervisors aware of what was going on?

Everything.

What should have happened that week?

There's a lot, what is.

There should have been a lot more emphasis placed on the fact that this is a girl who has come to us with a problem.

We need to take it seriously.

We can't brush her off and say, we'll get to you next week when Detective so-and-so comes in.

We need to take a hard look at this now.

When Lauren reported the blackmailing, campus police requested that she send the intimate images to Officer Daris.

He forwarded them to Detective Daloff as instructed, but two days later, he allegedly showed them to other officers.

A public records request the ESPN submitted in October 2019 prompted the university to open an internal investigation into what Daris did with the photos.

The Salt Lake Tribune, which also submitted public records requests, published a story in 2020.

How did the community respond?

There was just a lot of shock that this had happened.

The U either said they didn't know about it or that they didn't have records on it until two years after Lauren was killed.

According to a Utah Department of Public Safety investigation released in August 2020, multiple officers said under oath that Darris showed the explicit photos for non-law enforcement reasons.

Two officers told DPS investigators that Darris made an unprofessional comment about the photos.

Another officer admitted making a similar comment, while a third said he might have but didn't recall.

It hit me very hard.

If she'd asked me for advice, I would have told her, Absolutely, share embarrassing, compromising pictures with the police because they are professionals and it would have been very bad advice looking back on it.

It's just really a betrayal of trust.

She went to the police expecting to get help.

There was no way

I was

bragging or sharing these photos.

I wouldn't do that to her.

There were two officers who reported they remember hearing some unprofessional comments being made when you showed the pictures.

I don't remember any unprofessional comments.

Did you ever say to anyone that you could look at those pictures anytime you wanted?

I never said that.

It wasn't just this one officer.

Keep in mind, he showed it to several officers who obviously were partaking in the fun.

The ripple effect of Lauren's case was felt throughout the campus police department.

In 2020, Deputy Chief Rick McLennan resigned, and two campus police officers were fired.

And Miguel Darris was fired from a job he had taken with another police department.

McClennan, Darris, and three other members of the campus police department filed a notice of claim against the University of Utah with the Attorney General's office.

They alleged that they were scapegoated by the university during the Lauren McCluskey investigation.

The Utah Peace Officer Standards and Training Division investigated Darris' handling of Lauren's photos and found there was not sufficient evidence to take disciplinary action against him.

Campus police weren't the only ones who knew about the harassment of Lauren.

It turns out, Roland confessed to coworkers about what he'd done.

He said that

he had access to her email.

How many violations did you just hear described?

Well, I didn't hear violence.

There were crimes, actually.

He would have gone back to prison.

Mother's dead.

He shot two men.

I had no idea how deep this would go.

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From the prosecutor to the parole board to even his coworkers, convicted felon Melvin Rowland had numerous encounters with people to whom he confessed his crimes.

Some that stood out were conversations that he had with his coworkers at General Dynamics Information Technology.

He worked in one of its call centers.

I'm familiar with that employer.

What expectations are there of them to take any sort of action if they see something in the workplace that you'd want to know about?

Well, obviously anything that's involving a crime.

On October 16th, six days before Roland murdered Lauren, he told his co-workers that he had extorted money from her.

Melvin Rowland told two colleagues, including the supervisor, on October 16th that he had been sextorting Lauren McCluskey.

Did you ever hear the interviews that police did with those employees?

No.

Within a few days of Lauren's murder, General Dynamics Information Technology hired a local criminal defense attorney, and all of these interviews were done in that attorney's office.

The University of Utah altered the voices on these recordings.

It's a supervisor who

basically lays out the whole story.

He just told me that he had gotten into some trouble over the weekend and that he was dating a girl from university and he had lied to her about his age.

She had recently found out that he lied and she broke up with him.

And so he got angry.

And over the weekend, he had sent her messages from another phone telling her that he had

and that he wanted money so that he wouldn't release them so he said that she sent him money through Venmo he sent a thousand dollars is what he said she sent him and then she sent him another thousand dollars and the second time he said he kind of freaked out He knew that he was going to be in trouble, so he tried to send the money back to her.

He said that he had access to her email, his phone, because she had logged into her email from his phone before.

And he said that he could see that she sent messages to the campus police of screenshots of the conversation.

So he knew that she had contacted authorities about it.

And so he said he was afraid he didn't want to go back to jail.

And he knew we couldn't run forever.

Melvin said, yeah, I don't want to go.

I don't want to resign.

Can I just just go on a league with vaccines?

And I said, I'm okay with that.

How many violations did you just hear described?

Well, I didn't hear by there was crimes, actually.

He is

entrapping someone.

When you heard what that supervisor just described, what's your reaction to that?

I'm pissed.

That's just another thing that could have been brought to my attention.

That could have changed so many, changed everything.

I guess I didn't really realize that there was a supervisor who had the whole story

and

didn't do anything.

Yeah, I'm just surprised that no one, it seems like no one is willing to step up and do the right thing.

A General Dynamics spokesperson declined comment.

If somebody had called you and told you, what he had said, what would have happened?

Right then I would have gone out to to pick him up.

I would put him in handcuffs and take him to my office and

interview him.

Based on what he said and what we know happened, what would have happened to him?

He would have gone back to prison.

What do you think people need to know about this entire case?

It was a lot of misses.

a lot of opportunities where interventions could have been made.

What are some of the examples that stand out to you?

His supervisor at General Dynamics.

That one really got to you, didn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah, it did.

Well, first and foremost, you have to blame Melvin Sean Rowland.

But systemically, as far as the system goes,

I place the lion's share of responsibility for her death with the Board of Pardons because

Melvin Sean Rowland had given so many signs that he was not capable of surviving in society without putting others at risk.

The justice system failed her in so many different ways.

She did everything right.

We let her down.

The system let her down.

There were processes in place that didn't function the way they were intended.

There was communication that should have taken place that didn't, all combined.

We failed Lauren in that sense.

What goes through your heads about the number of people whose lives were touched by this?

We've heard about people who actually.

I can remember our conversations talking about us being 90 years old and still running.

And I'd be like, do you still plan on running?

And she's like, of course, you're going to be running with me, remember?

There's just this terrible gap in our lives that won't be filled.

So it's the absence that hurts.

The memories are actually good to hold on to, I think.

And we do have wonderful memories of her, but we're

still.

You know, we just still miss her terribly.

Your daughter goes off to college and you never think something like that's gonna happen.

What would you say to them if you could?

I have always just wanted to be able to

just look at them and tell them that

I'm sorry I couldn't protect their daughter.

There's so many things that I would have known I would have.

They sent their daughter to where they thought she would have an ideal education and she's gone.

Accountability is very important.

That allows them to truly move forward, make things better, and make real change.

It's not a good strategy to try to keep secrets.

It's not the right thing to do and it's not very smart either.

Lauren's family filed suit against the University of Utah in 2019.

We had to file a lawsuit because otherwise we're powerless.

The university acknowledges and deeply regrets that it did not handle Lauren's case as it should have and that at the time its employees failed to fully understand and respond appropriately to Lauren's situation.

The University of Utah settled with the McCluskey family for $13.5 million.

All the money from the settlement will go to support the Lauren McCluskey Foundation missions,

which include campus safety, animal welfare, and amateur athletics.

In addition, the university created a campus center for violence prevention and agreed to build an athletic facility with an indoor track, both bearing Lauren's name.

There is a Lauren McCluskey cat wing at the County Humane Society.

Lauren used to volunteer there and just really cared about them.

And so she would be happy about that.

Yes.

I think people really remember her and want to honor her memory as much as possible.

Not only how she died, but how she lived, too.

What goes through your heads about the number of people whose lives were touched by this one way or another?

We've heard about people who actually.

got closer together because

of what happened.

Yeah, I just hope it makes...

makes a change so it doesn't happen in the future to other for other parents.

I mean, I feel like that's what

helps me to

keep going each day.

There are girls who are as precious to their parents as our daughter is to us, and they do not receive this level of attention.

I think people should really think about that.

I certainly do.

There are lots of Laurens out there who you don't hear about.

Those parents honoring their daughter's legacy.

To learn more about their journey, you can go to the Lauren McCluskey Foundation and you can watch the ESBN documentary, Listen, streaming now on ESBN Plus.

I'm David Muir from All of Us here at 2020 ABC News and ESBN.

Thank you for watching.

Good night.

I'm Dennis Cooper, host of Culpable, and I want to tell you about this case I've been following in a small Ohio town.

When 17-year-old Danny Violet stormed out of his house one afternoon in 1998, his family thought it was just another episode of Teenage Angst.

But their worst fears materialized when his lifeless, asphyxiated body was later found in a nearby cornfield.

The question remains: what happened to Danny?

From Tenderfoot TV, an all-new season of Culpable is available now.