In 2018, Lauren McClusky was a 21-year-old woman who was a senior, attending the University of Utah after she’d been recruited to be a member of the women’s track & field team. Lauren was a Washington State champion in the high jump & ranked 10th in the heptathlon which consists of seven events at the USATF Outdoor Junior Championships. She was so accomplished that she had the task of choosing between multiple college scholarships but ultimately chose the University of Utah & started there in 2015 with a major in communications.
Lauren was born to parents Matt & Jill McClusky who described their daughter as a star athlete since she was a child, climbing trees at age two. She participated in her first track meet at 8-years-old & set a record in the three events she was entered in. She was pure determination & a sensitive person & athletics was the perfect channel for Lauren which allowed her confidence to grow. Not only was she an amazing athlete but she also maintained a high GPA & was a kind & caring person who cherished her friendships. She loved to sing karaoke & dance with her friends. Lauren grew up in Pullman, Washington & had a brother named Ryan. She was also a member of the Capital Church in downtown Salt Lake City while attending college & she would frequently invite others to come along & encouraged them to sing.
On Saturday, September 1, 2018, Lauren met a man at a popular downtown bar where he worked as a bouncer. He told Lauren that he was 28-years-old, his name was Sean Fields, he was enrolled at Salt Lake Community College & had been in the military & trained as a security officer. Melvin often visited Lauren at her dorm & got to know the other students. He also took her out for dinners & frequently bought her flowers; he was very charming & Lauren loved the attention.
In the meantime, Lauren’s friends were feeling hints of concern by comments Lauren made & things they overheard that led them to believe that he was a very controlling person. He had a strong opinion about who she spent her time with & what she wore. If she didn’t answer her phone when he called, he would get very angry. Lauren’s friends were also surprised when he gave her pepper spray to protect herself from other men & took her to a shooting range on a date & mentioned buying her a gun. It was clear this man was compromising a lot of Lauren’s time as they began seeing her less & less.
On October 2, Lauren’s friend & housing advisor, Diamond Jackson, emailed her supervisor about a potentially dangerous relationship between a student & indicated that Lauren had been allowing her non-resident boyfriend to stay with her & her roommate. She wasn’t sure if the roommate was okay with the situation & expressed concern that the boyfriend voiced purchasing a gun & the fact that he had been tracking Lauren. Her friends were worried about Lauren & indicated that she wasn’t taking care of herself & wanted someone to reach out to Lauren to assess her wellbeing.
Days after this email was sent, Lauren happened upon her boyfriend’s Utah driver’s license & was shocked when she saw that he had a different name & age, seeing that he was born in 1981, making him 37-years-old. In the meantime, Lauren went home over break on October 5-6 to Pullman, Washington & looked up his real name, Melvin Shawn Rowland & found that he had a sinister past. He was a sexual offender who was out on parole. In 2004 he was convicted of attempted forcible sex abuse & enticing a minor over the internet, according to court records. He was released from Utah State Prison in 2013 after serving nine years behind bars, going back to prison multiple times after for various parole violations.
The next day, Lauren went back to Salt Lake City & told her mom what she’d discovered & that she planned on breaking up with Melvin. She also spoke with her friends & tried to come up with a plan. One of Lauren’s friends worried for her safety & didn’t want her to break up with Melvin on campus since it was fall break & the campus was fairly empty. While Lauren went back home to Washington, Melvin had borrowed her car. On October 9, 2018, Lauren got in touch with Melvin to get her car back & to confront him about what she discovered.
While in her dorm room, Lauren spoke with Melvin about his past which he admitted, but said that it was years ago & he had been at a college fraternity party & the girl lied about her age, trying to downplay the seriousness of his offenses. That night, he spent the night at Lauren’s dorm & the next day, October 10, he again borrowed her car, this time to run errands. Lauren’s mom Jill was concerned for her daughter’s safety so she contacted campus security at 3:01 pm & requested that they escort Lauren to get her car back from Melvin. When university police contacted Lauren at 3:04 pm, she initially told them that she was comfortable having him just come to her dorm to return the car. She was told that campus security would be nearby if she needed any help.
At 5 pm, Lauren called campus security back & told them that Melvin had dropped her car off at the parking lot for Rice-Eccles Stadium & that she needed a ride to retrieve it. A security escort came by & drove her to her car. Lauren also ended their relationship.
Two days later, on October 12, Lauren contacted campus police & told them she had been getting messages from various phone numbers, telling her that Melvin was in the hospital & had died. Then she got a text from Melvin saying he was alive. She also got a text asking if she wanted to go to his funeral. It was her belief that someone was trying to lure her somewhere. What she didn’t know for sure at the time was that Melvin was able to manipulate the electronic devices so that it appeared that the messages were coming from different numbers. The texts indicated that Melvin had gotten into a car accident & it was all Lauren’s fault. Lauren told the dispatcher that she had blocked a few of the numbers & was told that her reports would be sent to an officer who would then give her a call, but no one ever did.
The next day, Saturday, October 13, Lauren contacted the university police again at 8:57 am & said she’d received both an email & a text from either Melvin or his friends. They demanded that she pay $1,000 in exchange for not posting explicit photos of Lauren & Melvin together, on social media. Lauren reached out to Melvin & he lied & said that he too was being blackmailed. She told police that she’d paid the $1,000 via Venmo to avoid having these photos shared. The dispatcher made radio contact with officer Miguel Deras at 9:12 am. She was told that the case would be assigned to a detective who would follow up. After practice that day, Lauren & her friend went down to the station & two officers, one being Miguel Deras, came out & interviewed Lauren in the reception area of the department. Lauren’s friend expressed concern for Lauren’s safety, telling them that she lived on the first floor & wondered if she should relocate. They explained the whole situation & informed them of what they’d found about Melvin’s past criminal record. Lauren & her friend got the feeling that they weren’t taking the concerns seriously & told Lauren it was likely a scam. She wrote out a report & was told that the detective wasn’t currently in the office & she should expect to hear an update by Tuesday.
The case was assigned to the on-call detective, Kayla Dallof who wasn’t in office that day & her commanding officer told her not to come in. No one in the campus police department checked Melvin’s parole status. That evening, Lauren contacted the Salt Lake City Police Department & they directed her to the campus police. She explained that she’d already contacted them & wanted to be sure that something was being done. They transferred the call to the campus police & Lauren asked when an arrest would be made. In the meantime, she forwarded the continued messages she was receiving to Miguel Deras’ personal number.
Six days later, on October 19, University of Utah Campus police started an investigation on the extortion charges. A detective contacted Lauren to gather information to help identify the possible suspects involved in order to get an arrest warrant for Melvin & his friends. Lauren was worried that there was a possible ‘insider’ within the campus police since Melvin knew all about her contact with police. It was later discovered that Lauren had logged into her email account on his device & he was able to view all of her emails.
That same day, Lauren called Salt Lake City police for a second time at 4:48 pm voicing her concern that she had no update from campus police despite filing the report nearly a week earlier. She also voiced her suspicion of the possibility of an insider within the campus department. She was again advised to just follow-up with campus police. She did & this was when she spoke with detective Kayla Dallof for the first time. She apologized for not getting back to Lauren sooner & told her she had been busy. In the conversation, it was clear to Lauren that Detective Dallof knew little to nothing about her case. She was told to send her an email with all the facts which she did at 7:16 pm. She spoke with her mom & told her that she got the sense that she was annoying the campus police with her frequent follow-up calls & Jill assured her that that was their job.
On October 22, surveillance video showed that Melvin left his apartment at 6:06 am. He drove to campus in a silver Buick he’d borrowed from his neighbor & parked in the lot next to Lauren’s building. At 6:26 am, he could be seen outside her building’s entrance. Lauren left at 9:11 am. That morning, she emailed campus police & reported additional texts from an unknown number that she’d received at 8:54 am, claiming to be Deputy Chief Rick McLenon, requesting that she come to the station. There were obvious spelling & grammatical errors & she assumed it was not legit. She called her friend at 9:57 am who advised her to call police & at 10 am, she contacted Officer Deras who confirmed that the message was not from the deputy’s real number. She called Officer Deras again at 11:55 am but he didn’t answer so she tried again at 12:08 pm. He returned her calls at 12:14 pm & told Lauren he was at the Union Center so she met him there to show him the texts which were forwarded to the detective. Impersonating law enforcement was a crime & would have been a parole violation, causing him to go back to prison.
That morning, Lauren had a counseling appointment, followed by practice & then a night class. She’d seen the counselor twice since her break-up with Melvin which was something her mom had encouraged to allow her to voice her feelings about the situation. What no one knew at this point & didn’t discover until it was too late, but when campus police accessed security videos it showed Melvin in various areas of the campus between October 19-22. On the 19th, video showed Melvin dressed as Deadpool, walking outside Lauren’s dorm at 3:16 pm. At 4:02 pm, she can be seen entering her building & one minute later, Melvin is seen right outside her building. Lauren was completely unaware that he was stalking her. Melvin was seen entering the building where Lauren had her counseling appointment only 9 minutes after she’d left. On the 22nd, Melvin headed to Lauren’s dorm while she was out; he was invited inside by a resident & he spent time with the man & other residents who had seen Lauren with him before. They said they didn’t know Lauren very well. Melvin told them he was waiting for her practice to finish. At some point, he brought out a black drawstring bag & asked them to guess what was inside; one guessed it was a gun & he said “yes.” They weren’t concerned by this since he wasn’t showing it off in a threatening way & told them he was a Marine who had been deployed to Afghanistan. Melvin was last seen leaving the building at 8:10 pm which was just about the time Lauren would have been leaving her night class.
The class released a little early & as Lauren headed home, she called her mom. At 8:20 pm, Jill was talking to Lauren on speaker phone as her dad sat nearby. They were having a happy, lively conversation & Lauren told her parents that she was proud about making progress on an assignment she was working on that was due in a few days. Suddenly, Jill & Matt heard Lauren shout, “No, no, no!” & they immediately knew that something was wrong. They could hear her phone fall & go silent.
Using their landline, Matt dialed 911 at 8:23 pm & told them that it sounded as if someone had grabbed their daughter as they spoke to her on the phone. They explained that she was walking to her car from Gardner Commons. At 8:32 pm, an officer responded to the location & in the meantime, a student found Lauren’s backpack, ID & phone; the call with Jill was still active. Police believed they were dealing with a kidnapping until witnesses came forward & told police they had heard gunshots & police found a shell casing.
Lauren’s dorm room & the parking lot & surrounding area was searched. Students were instructed to secure-in-place & alerted that an on-campus shooting had occurred. Another alert was sent with Melvin’s information: Black male, 37-years-old, 6’3”, 250#, wearing a gray beanie, black pants, white shoes & a white hoodie.
In the meantime, Matt & Jill held their breath, waiting at home for any information, praying they wouldn’t see a police officer responding to their home with bad news.
Tragically, at 9:55 pm, Lauren’s body was found in the back of the silver Buick Lancer that Melvin had been seen driving that morning. When the phone rang at the McCluskey home & Jill answered, it was Lauren’s coach on the other end. She asked if Lauren was okay & she was told the devastating news that she was gone. When Jill began hysterically crying, Matt immediately knew that their daughter was gone. He remembers feeling as if he was hit by a baseball bat; he said he was too stunned to even cry in that moment.
After the fact, through review of surveillance video, it was discovered that at 8:17 pm, Lauren was approaching the west entrance to her building & Melvin could be seen standing several feet behind her as she neared the card reader of her building. After 25 seconds, he stepped toward Lauren, grabbed her & was seen carrying her away from the door at 8:18 pm. He carried her to the nearby Buick he’d borrowed from his neighbor & forced Lauren into the backseat where he shot her seven times. Three minutes later, he could be seen making his way on foot through campus parking lots & then crossed a bridge toward a rail station on campus. He was picked up by a Hyundai Sonata.
Only minutes after murdering Lauren, Melvin had gone out on a date with a woman he’d met on the dating site Bumble just days earlier. They’d gone out to dinner at Zao Asian Cafe, drove to the Capitol & talked. They went back to her house where he convinced her to allow him to shower & wash his clothes, saying he’d just been working out. While Melvin was still at her house, the woman began seeing campus alerts & Twitter notifications about the shooting; he kept looking over her shoulder, asking her what she was looking at. He asked to be dropped off at a coffee shop & once he was inside, she looked at her Twitter notifications & contacted police later that night. An alert mentioned that the shooter had been picked up in a silver Sonata which was what she drove. She said that his name & age didn’t match what was being broadcasted.
At 12:46 am, campus police noticed him & chased him on foot, following him into Trinity AME Church where he’d broken in through the back door. Once inside, he committed suicide by a self-inflicted gunshot wound. At 1:47 am on October 23, a campus-wide alert indicated that Melvin had been found & was no longer a threat.
Two investigations were conducted; one by the state’s department of public safety & an independent review by the University of Utah. Recordings of complaints dated as far back as two weeks before Lauren was murdered & results from an independent review team indicated that the University of Utah’s police department was understaffed. It was very clear that this institution had failed Lauren. The system that had been used to check Melvin’s offender status failed because it didn’t recognize his driver’s license number & therefore, parole agents were never notified that he was breaking parole.
On December 19, 2018, the university’s president, Ruth Watkins made the statement that the tragedy of Lauren’s murder could not have been prevented. Lauren’s parents felt sick to their stomachs when they heard this statement which clearly defied facts & logic & had obviously been written by a lawyer to protect their image. In April of 2021, Ruth Watkins stepped down from her position after eight years at the university.
It was later discovered by talking to several other women that Melvin had dated for short-periods of time that he had treated them similarly, becoming obsessed with them. He’d grown up in Brooklyn, New York & was adopted by an older couple who died when he was fifteen. He had no juvenile record, but attended a private high school for troubled youths in Colorado & moved to Utah when he was twenty.
In September 2003, an agent from the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force was assigned to pose as a 13-year-old girl online & began chatting with Melvin, who asked who he thought was the child, if they wanted to meet up & “have wild sex.” Arrangements were made to meet in downtown Salt Lake City. Police learned that two nights earlier, Melvin, who was 22 at the time, had raped a 17-year-old high school student. In March 2003, he had also attempted to rape a woman who managed to fight him off. In early 2004, a woman filed a restraining order while he was out on bail & awaiting trial for the two previous felonies.
During a parole hearing in 2012, Melvin admitted that he manipulated every woman he’d ever come into contact with both online & in person. When he was asked how many women he’d raped that he’d not been charged for, he said two. Despite admitting this, nothing occurred & in July 2012, he was released. He was sent back to prison in October 2012 when he failed to complete counseling & was found to have pornography on his phone. He was released in 2013. In February 2016, he was sent back to prison for violating parole & had threatened violence toward his parole officer. On April 17, 2018, he was released which was less than five months before Lauren had her fateful meeting with him. In August he was given a verbal warning for testing positive for marijuana; during that time he was working at a call center for General Dynamics & worked nights as a bouncer in downtown Salt Lake City where Lauren met him.
After speaking with Melvin’s supervisor at General Dynamics Information Technology, investigators learned that he didn’t show up to his shift on October 15. The next day, October 16th, Melvin told his work supervisor that he planned to resign because he expected to be in trouble due to extorting Lauren & the fact that she had told the police this information. Had they notified his parole officer, Megan Thompson, he would have immediately been picked up & put in handcuffs.The following day, Melvin gave his co-worker, Nathan Vogel, $200 to borrow his 40-caliber Beretta PX4, telling him that he planned to take Lauren out shooting. Because of his role in the case, Nathan Vogel was sentenced to three years of supervised release after making false statements during the purchase of the gun on September 8, 2018. He’d gotten someone else to buy the gun for him, fearing he wouldn’t be able to buy the gun that same day due to his military background.
On March 5, 2019, Matt McClusky, Lauren’s dad, traveled to Utah from Washington to testify in favor of Senate Bill 134 that would require universities to develop safety plans & safety training. It would also mandate a statewide system for sharing information about domestic violence, stalking & sexual assault. On June 27, Lauren’s parents filed a $56 million lawsuit against the University of Utah for failing to properly respond to Lauren’s repeated reports against Melvin. Throughout this time, other women came forward to share their experience with campus police & the lack of help provided when they were in need & in fear for their safety.
In October of 2020, for the first time, the university acknowledged that Lauren’s murder was “preventable” & agreed to pay out $13.5 million to Lauren’s parents. The settlement announcement came on the two-year anniversary of her death. This was in contrast to the university’s insistence that there was no reason to believe that her death could have been prevented, shortly after the murder. $10.5 million would be paid to Jill & Matt from the state while the additional $3 million would be paid from the university & go to the Lauren McCluskey Foundation which was created to improve campus safety across the nation. Matt McCluskey indicated that all of the settlement funds would be going to the foundation because they wanted to be sure that the money was well spent & would help save lives.
Jill McCluskey felt that the settlement was important for many reasons & addressed how Lauren was killed while honoring how she lived.
Lauren’s friend & teammate, Brooke Martin was in shock over her friend’s death & as time went by, she noticed that nothing was changing or improving in terms of campus security or policy. She created a mural in Lauren’s honor & helped build a student-led coalition called “UnsafeU.” On the first anniversary of Lauren’s murder, UnsafeU came together & 100 students walked out of their classes in protest of how the university handled Lauren’s case.
On May 17, 2020, an article was published by the Salt Lake Tribune that claimed that when Lauren reported that she was extorted $1,000, she was asked to share the questionable explicit photos. When she sent the photos to Officer Miguel Deras, he saved the photos to his personal phone. Days before Lauren was murdered, on October 15, he showed off at least one of the images to a male co-worker & bragged about the fact that he could view the photo any time he wanted, according to two fellow officers. He referred to Lauren as a “cute girl” & said he was lucky that he got to work on the case. After Lauren was shot, Deras was at the crime scene & his supervisor officer said, “I wonder what she looked like” & Deras shared one of the intimate photos with him despite the fact that he had a photo of Lauren’s driver’s license on his phone.
Neither officer reported the incident at the time & Deras was never disciplined for it. The university was said to have no information about the inappropriate behavior & abuse of evidence until after Deras left the department in September of 2019 to work for the Logan police in northern Utah. The university claimed to have no physical evidence of his conduct & in July of 2019, the university conducted a download of Deras’ cellphone to collect any data from Lauren’s case, but by that time, he’d gotten a new phone & most of what came back was corrupted.
The officer who reported that Deras shared the photos of Lauren said that he was sitting next to him during a between shift briefing when Deras leaned over & began flipping through the images on his phone. Another person confirmed this story. Officer Deras had been assigned to Lauren’s case & an independent review found that he did little to look into Lauren’s reports or take her concerns seriously. Officers never checked Melvin’s background & made no attempts to contact him or his parole officer. When Lauren called Deras on the morning of October 22nd to tell him that Melvin was trying to lure her from her dorm, he never passed this information along to anyone else within the department. It was only hours later that she was shot & killed. Deras claimed that the officer who reported his misconduct was just “misremembering” what happened & maintained that he never showed off the photos without valid purpose or to boast about them.
After the report was released, Logan police fired Deras in August of 2020 & the three officers who were shown the photo but never alerted their supervisors, were also fired by the university.
University of Utah Police Chief, 46-year-old Dale Brophy retired in October 2019 after criticism for his department’s handling of Lauren’s case & he received a full year’s salary of $151,000 plus benefits & had a $6,000 party thrown for him when he retired. He was able to begin collecting a full retirement paid for by the state after 25 years in law enforcement. Both he & Officer Deras felt they were treated unfairly & claimed to deserve millions of dollars. Three other former officers have joined them, demanding at least $10 million from the university, indicating that the school is at fault for retaliation & harm to their reputations by publicly pointing a finger at them for the mistakes they made in the case. The judge has dismissed his claims of retaliation.
The University of Utah plans to build an indoor track that will be named for Lauren & used by the track & field team since they had to previously travel 45 minutes to utilize an indoor track for winter practices. The facility will be complete by 2030 & Jill feels that it will allow Lauren to always have a presence on the campus. She knows that the track was a very special place for Lauren & the indoor facility will also allow the students to stay safe by running inside at night.
The new Center for Violence Prevention at the U was created, in part, in response to Lauren’s death & focuses on primary prevention of relationship & sexual violence on college campuses. Lauren’s death has resulted in considerable improvements in campus safety by investing in research, implementing new training, hiring of a new chief safety officer as well as an overhaul of the police department. More lights have been placed throughout the campus as well as a ride service for students to call at night.
ESPN’s documentary, “Listen” covers Lauren’s case in great detail & interviews many people, including Miguel Deras. When asked what he would say to Lauren if he could, he responded that he was “sorry for how we handled the case. I didn’t push the detective to move, but I wasn’t in that position to do so.” He admits that he could have done more & never told his supervisor about the text from an unknown number of a person pretending to be the deputy chief.
Lauren’s family acknowledge that nothing will close the terrible gap in their lives since losing their beloved daughter. They know that there’s nothing they can do to bring her back, but they can work to prevent something so tragic happening to someone else. With that, they formed the Lauren McCluskey Foundation that has the mission to bring awareness, funding research & to provide resources to change the culture of dating violence & stalking on college campuses. Lauren’s Promise is a vow that anyone, including faculty, staff, students, parents & the community members will listen & believe those who are being threatened or experiencing sexual assault, dating violence or stalking. They’ve also donated money from the lawsuit to the University of Idaho which is where Lauren spent many hours to become a better athlete. The track has since been named after Lauren. A wing at the Whitman County Humane Society in Pullman, Washington was opened in Lauren’s honor since she used to volunteer there. Lauren adored cats & her parents knew she would be so happy that the cats have the extra room.
Lauren’s track & field coach at the university said that her kindness, positive attitude & work ethic were always on display regardless of who she was with or what activities she was involved in. She was always present & in the moment with her teammates & friends.`
References:
- The Salt Lake Tribune: University of Utah police officer showed off explicit photos of Lauren McCluskey to his co-worker
- The Salt Lake Tribune: University of Utah agrees Lauren McCluskey’s murder was ‘preventable,’ will pay her parents $13.5 million
- Kuer: ESPN’s Lauren McCluskey documentary unveils new information
- Daily Mail: Ex-University of Utah police chief officer who showed explicit photos of Lauren McCluskey seek $10 million
- Salt Lake Magazine: Lauren McCluskey: The tragic & unnecessary tale
- ESPN: “Listen” documentary
- The Salt Lake Tribune: Former police chief & officer who showed explicit photos of Lauren McCluskey seek $10M from University of Utah
- Lauren McCluskey Foundation
- Kuer: University of Utah President Ruth Watkins stepping down, leaving mixed legacy behind
- Desert News: Man who loaned gun to to Lauren McCluskey’s killer sentenced to 3 years supervision
- Desert News: Reports reveal web of lies woven by Lauren McCluskey’s killer
