The After Show: Running Out of Time

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“towns that might look a lot like your own.”

Every week uncover shocking stories of murder and betrayal, from a suspicious hunting accident to a college student who disappears after her shift at the local bar. Here from investigators, witnesses, and family members as they share the chilling details behind each case. If you're interested in true crime with a small town twist, you might love this podcast. Listen to Murder in the Heartland wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi everybody, it's Deborah Roberts here with a special episode of 2020 The After Show. As many people know, often when we report these stories on 2020, we have spent years, sometimes even decades, digging into these stories.

And at the heart of them, of course, are investigative journalists.

Today, we are revisiting a case that left so many of us stunned. And we're going to talk to one of the journalists about his reporting in this process, but a little recap here of the story. 21-year-old Lauren McClusky was a student athlete at the University of Utah. She was a standout and tracking field, and many described her as a devoted friend,

a young woman who just had her life ahead of her. But when she tries to get help from campus police after discovering that a man that she had dated had lied about his identity, little action seemed to be taken or documented. Lauren's loved once alleged that authorities did not do enough to protect her. And tragically, she was later found murdered on campus, and police would determine that

that man she had met named Melvin Roland, actually killed her. Journalist TJ Quinn and Nicole Norris went four years. That's right, four years following this case. They combed through records. They talked to Lauren's family and friends, unpacked the many questions that were raised in this case. And their investigation is featured on the ESPN

plus documentary called Listen, as well as our 2020 report with my co-aker, David Muir, called Running Out of Time. I am really delighted to have investigative report of TJ Quinn here today. Hey TJ. That's great to be with you, Deborah. Yeah, you know, you and I haven't had a chance to bump into each other.

I know you're reporting very well. Yeah, exactly. It's a big company, but now we're in the same building. And what I've enjoyed, of course, in getting ready for this interview with you, is learning a little bit about your background. Like me, you made your way through local news, although unlike me, you started as a print reporter. You've covered all kinds of stories, like Brittany Griner's detention in Russia and MLB player Tyler Skag's death,

“clearly investigative journalism is in your blood. I think anybody in this business,”

it's kind of funny. Sometimes we talk about investigative journalists like their wizards. We all do the same thing in this business just some of us get more time to do it. We had, like you said, when you have four years until just follow the story wherever it goes, we took every minute that we could, because it really was unbelievable, even if when you're a veteran in this business, just how many mistakes there were. Yeah, well, when you talk about following the story and digging

deeply, you obviously kind of cut your teeth in print, doing that, talk to us a little bit about you, making that transition from local print reporting to national broadcast television. Oh, well, by accident, mostly. Like a lot of things in this business. Like a lot of things. I mean, I started as a news reporter, the South Side of Chicago cops, courts, school boards, the basics, things that a lot of young journalists don't get to do today. Unfortunately, a little time at the

Salt Lake Tribune, which was a good background for this story. Yeah, because it was in Utah. It was in Utah and I knew a bit about the people and the places and the culture of it, which was not typical for a New York journalist. And spent most of my newspaper career at the New York Daily News. I mean, I started there. I spent seven years as a major league baseball

beatwriter with the white socks and the mats, but you're right. That investigative itch is always

kind of there. I got to be part of the Daily News as investigative team and that led to an accidental meeting with the SPN and all of a sudden I'm talking to you. The rest is history. Well, you get to touch on sports as well as investigative journalism for this story on Lauren McClusky. And I got to tell you it's really impressive stuff. And by the way, it's called Listen. It's streaming on ESPN Plus. It's kind of I guess you could say part true crime and part accountability journalism. And it's

the result of, as you said, four years of reporting. So let's talk about what brought this to your radar. Because I remember when you all were working on this story and I heard about it and I was just

“so captivated and I hadn't heard of it. How did it? How did you learn about Lauren's story?”

Well, I think we all saw it once. And what was funny was our initial reaction was

white girl who had been killed on a campus. Had she been a young woman of color with anybody

“be talking about this story and we thought we want to really feed into that trope. And the perpetrator”

was a black dot. And the perpetrator was a black man. Yes. And so we thought, all right, well, that's what this had been a story otherwise. When we looked at it, try to take those factors out of it. You thought the institutional failures. One, they were so stark in this particular case in Lauren's case. But the other thing that to us made it worth pursuing was this could happen on any campus. This really, this was not just something that was unique to the University of Utah. There are problems

across the country with campus police departments, police departments in general. The idea, I mean, there was a reason we ended up with the title Listen for it. A young woman who wanted someone to listen, that is hardly restricted. Yeah, it's exactly what happened. It's hardly restricted to the University of Utah. And so many of us can relate to that, especially if you have college age kids, which is one of the reasons this just resonated. Let's first understand a little

bit more about Lauren. She was a tracking field star or just didn't athlete anyway. Star from where she grew up, her parents are both professors at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington.

She was a bit of a prodigy in track. She was, everything we gathered, she was this amazing combination

of she could be so quiet and she'd walk across campus to sort of looking at the ground.

“It kind of tried to disappear, I think, in plain sight, but when you engaged her, everyone who knew”

her said that she had this fierceness about her, that you would see it for anybody who watched the documentary or even read the online story that we did, the photos of her when she competed, like there was something in there. She loved singing. She was passionate about that. She was passionate about animals. She had some goals for her life. Yeah, and it was cut short. And she obviously had to be fierce if she was going to compete in sports. What about her parents, her heartbroken parents,

Jill and Matt McCluskey, because you had a chance to speak with them as well. Oh, for years. Yeah. I mean, they're extraordinary people. You know, like I said, they're both college professors. They met while they were in grad school. And Matt is a physicist. Jill is a professor of agricultural economics. These are two people who are

“very serious about what they do. And they're also, they're used to dealing with any university system.”

They are used to the bureaucracy and to what it takes to communicate between departments. They live in that world and tried to guide Lauren to, okay, let's trust people to do their jobs until the point where those people would fail them. But Matt and Jill are obviously very, very bright, very educated people. They were just as lost and confused in this system as anybody else. And so part of our investigation, you can't, anybody who does this for a living, you can't help

it feel connected to them. And we had this sort of walk this line of, you want to do right by them, you want to do right by Lauren, but you also need to understand it's not our job to represent them, advocate for them. We need to know what the story was. They were so open throughout. And there were some painful moments over those four years where we had to come back to them and say certain things, but they were, you know, you can't spend any time with them and not,

you know, be deeply drawn into them, which is exceptional people. And have your heart broken too when you think about what they've been through, because nobody expects to send a child off to school and not have them come home. We see moments with Lauren on the field, which you show so skillfully,

but you also featured Lauren's last phone calls. And it was particularly powerful and, of course,

heartbreaking. We have a clip from the 2020 episode with Lauren's parents. They remembered her calling them after she had finished class, walking to her dorm, saying she was particularly upbeat. The last time they spoke to her daughter before her murder, let's listen. 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 speakerphone. 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 a assignment that was not due for a few days. So it was a wonderful conversation. She was so happy. And then, and then,

I hear her yell, "No, no, no." And then, I sort of hear her being dragged away in her fun 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. Just so shattering, hearing them talk about actually hearing this moment, describing this moment, when she's being abducted, I'm a parent, your parent. And, you know, we both cover these kinds of

“stories where you have to hear very traumatic difficult things and kind of get you in the gut sometimes, right?”

Well, completely. I mean, I don't think you have to be a parent to get it, but yeah, my daughter's a year younger than Lauren, and was a college student at the time. And I think anybody listening,

just that idea, to hear your daughter in that terror. And just, you know, as Matt describes in that clip,

she was coming off of one of the most stressful months of her life. They thought they were on the other side of this. And obviously, she was even, she was moving away from track and field. She had less interest in that. She was, this is a young woman who was ready for the rest of her life, and the joy that she felt in that moment. And then when you look back and realize the randomness, how many opportunities there were along the way to prevent that moment from happening?

I mean, that it just adds to it. The moment on its own is absolutely seconding to know two parents are listening as the daughters and fear for her life, and then she's killed moments. Oh, and as you said, she was just finding herself, well, TJ, we're going to take a quick break. And when we're back, we're going to dive into the case files. How TJ and his producers sorted through a mountain of information to build out this investigation. Stay with us.

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Go to Chime.com/disclosures for details. I'm back now with ESPN investigative reporter TJ Quinn and we're diving into your work as an investigative reporter across four years in this story involving Lauren McClusky. And also along the way, you say you were digging and talking to folks who interviewed Lauren's

college friends. Some were there when she first met Melvin at this bar and it was only about a

month into her relationship with him that they started to notice a change in her behavior and you talk about that in the piece she wasn't hanging out with them as much. What was that like talking to them about what they saw in their friend? Oh, that was painful. They not only saw things they spoke up, right? They saw that suddenly, you know, Lauren was an independent, you know, strong young woman. She could be kind of quiet, but that determination that we talked about.

All of a sudden she's, there was one time where she's at a target with a friend and Roland's trying to call her and she is desperate to find a place to get a good reception because she has to call him back right away. And her friends are thinking, this makes no sense. Why does she so panicked? And Lauren controlled. They can see that. Being controlled and that it jumped up another notch when all of a sudden he said he was going to take her shooting at a range

He said she was not someone who she didn't like guns, but now Roland is talking to her.

Yeah, she knew him at the time is Sean Fields. So to her, it's Sean. But he wanted her to get pepper spray. He wanted her to buy a gun and they're thinking, who is this? This is not the Lauren we know. And so they went to campus housing officials to say something is not right here. Yeah, they were really, really quite impressive in their stories. I remember 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, we're on what I'm doing and if I'm okay. At the end of the conversation, this person wouldn't 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 there. No, I'm not, 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. There were other narratives, you know, the public reaction to Lauren was how could, how could she have been so stupid? How could she have been taken in by this? Laming the victim. Laming the victim.

And as you looked into the story, what you realized was the level of confusion that she had in why it made sense. People would say, well, how could she be taken in by this guy? That was part, well, in the written version, we really thought about and spent some time that when the world heard about this case. And it became international news. It really did. Much bigger in the United States.

But what they saw was this, you know, young woman. And this guy, the first thing they knew about

him was that he was a murderer. And so that colors how they look at him and think, how can you not how could she not see that? Yeah. Well, we listened to his voice in his parole hearing. We talked to people who knew him. We talked to woman who dated him. We talked to his parole officer. We talked to a prosecutor who put him away the first time. This was a bright charming soft spoken, very manipulative young man. This was when they met him. He was when Lauren met him. He was a

“bouncer at a bar who was a part-time student. Said all these things about himself. Why would she doubt it?”

But as soon as questions did come up, her confusion was was compounded by the fact that when she tried to break up with him, now he's sending her texts, masking the phone number, making her think it's from other people. She doesn't know what she's hearing from him. If she's hearing from others, and the people who were supposed to sort this out, the university officials campus police, they're the ones who failed. Yeah, because as you say, she was young. She was also very young.

She was young and she hadn't dated much. She really hadn't. She had been so focused on school and track. She decides to end the relationship and she gets campus police involved or at least tries to. But along the way, she's getting an extorted for money. She's desperately trying to get help. This was a woman who was really feeling a sense of desperation. It was what she had no idea. Nobody had any idea about. It was someone's a full-time job for him trying to hook up with women

that he had met on the internet. We spoke to in that piece, a young woman named Cara Stropel, who had dated him briefly. She found out that he was on parole. When he called her and said,

"I had to flee my parole officer last night." First, she heard that he had ever spent time in prison.

And he had thrown his phone underneath a burner phone through an underneath his stove and his apartment. He wanted her to go get it. And when she got it, it opened it. All she saw was text between him and she thought hundreds of women. And Lauren was just one more in that list. So she had no

“idea. What made her different? Well, the fact that he tried to extort her. This, that was really the key”

to why she was a threat to him. As opposed to all these other women that he, in his words, tried to manipulate, he had these photos for that they had taken together. And she had done so, you know, nude photos with consent. And now suddenly she gets this threat that if you don't pay a thousand

What did you learn about Melvin Rowland? Because he told her his name was Sean, as you said,

but then he's got this criminal record. When he was originally sentenced for sexual assault, the recommendation was that he would spend three and a half years in prison of a 15-year sentence. He ended up through violations, both while he was incarcerated, and then the couple times he was

“parole. He did, I think, almost about 12 years of that 15 years. And at the time he killed Lauren,”

he was on parole, but he was 13 months away from being free and clear at the end of his sentence. End up doing almost that whole 15 years. And you reported that he had been on, he had been parole three times. You actually spoke with his final parole officer, Megan Thompson. You played recordings for her of Roland's co-worker saying he had admitted to an extorting. And this was really pretty compelling in your story. What was that like speaking with her and also

revealing to her of things she didn't know? She was very reluctant to talk to us. It was about

two and a half years from when I first reached out. Because one of the questions, and I think she was

very aware. This is something we were going to ask her. She had, for example, when she was his PO, he told her, he had smoked marijuana and violation of his terms. One of the questions of why didn't you turn him into violating for that? He could have been back in prison for that. But she had, frankly, a very good answer for that, saying the sort of violations, if I had turned him in, they would not have approved that and sent him back to prison. And we check with parole officials

who said, no, she's correct. That would have been a warning a reprimand. What really got to her was that Roland told co-workers, I basically am facing going back to prison. I can

commit an extortion against this woman. He told co-workers. And we got the audio of police interviews

after Lauren's death, where co-workers said, yeah, well, I told her, so he was terrified of going back to prison. He didn't want to do it. He admitted that crime to them. She broke up with them. And so he got angry. And over the weekend, he had sent her messages from another phone, telling her that he had, and he wanted money so that he wouldn't release them. How many violations did you just hear described? I didn't hear, there was crimes, actually. He is

“entraping 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. If somebody had called you and told you, what he had said, what would have happened? Right, right then then I would have gone 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 went to a combat prison. Now, if somebody, if one person had picked up a phone and said, you know, this guy just told me this, that would have been enough for her to come put the handcuffs on him and that would have been it. And saved Lauren's life. We're going to be right back and we're going to hear more about the response to what the recording has uncovered. So don't go anywhere. There's so much more to

discuss. In a sunny California in summer, one family's home is unusually quiet. When detectives walked into that house, they said that it was like time just stood still. It's 2010, and the mixed day family is nowhere to be found. Inside the home, no clear answer where the family could have gone. Has been wife and two children gone, like, puff disappeared. The search for the mixed days

quickly captures the nation. But for years, the search for answers only brings more questions. Who's ever heard of an entire family going missing? A family of four doesn't just drop off the

“face of the earth with no contact. Is this a family on the run? Or is the truth far more sinister?”

For maybe see audio in 2020, this is what happened to the mixed days. Coming August 11th, wherever you get your podcast, or subscribe to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts for ad free episodes, early access to new episodes, and so much more. I'm back now with TJ Quinn, talking about his investigation featured on 2020's report called Running Out of Time. TJ, this story has just been so captivating and officer Miguel

48 hours before he sat down. We were actually getting ready to pack up and leave when all of a

“sudden his lawyer called and said, "We're on our way." He made sense that there was so much”

attention on him because he was the responding officer. The more you looked into it, you realized Miguel Deris is actually the one person who did try to do something. He was kind of an easy target because he was the frontline person. When you sit down and talk to him, that interview we did with him. That was, he was in the chair for a good four hours. I think it's the long hours. Four hours. Wow. That's an interview. Yeah, yeah. Two and a half are usually pretty long for me,

but that's a long time. He sat there and continued to just give you all these details. He sat there

the whole time. His lawyer was in the room the whole time and never interrupted. It became clear

that no Miguel Deris actually did try to do his job. He was responsive to Lauren. Once he takes the initial report, it becomes the detective's job. He's not a detective, the detective, Kayla Dallow, who did not sit down with us. She had only been on the job for months. There were so many people who knew what they did, what really felt clear was that Miguel Deris was just completely over his head and that the systems that should have accounted for his lack

“of experience, for Kayla Dallow's lack of experience, that's what failed. It was the department.”

And so what you found in the school found this in its own investigation was that nobody was communicating from one shift to the next, from one department to the next about what was going on. When Miguel Deris is hearing about Lauren Mikleski, he knew nothing about previous encounters with Melvin Rowan when Kayla Dallow, the detective, assigned to it. She's given none of the previous information. They don't know how many times Lauren and her mother had tried to call at that point.

And we also have to point out that campus police typically don't have to deal with this on campus. Yeah, you're dealing usually with a bunch of drunk kids. Doing something stupid, maybe vandalism, maybe theft, not something like this. They're not prepared for it. Again, it's not just a matter of experience. It was creative system where there's at least communication, where somebody knows this young woman has been afraid for a long time. And asking for help. Well, this reporting has left

“such an impact on, I think, so many people. It was, we were a little surprised at just how”

how much impacted it had, how much reach that it had. I mean, a really interesting part of this is when Lauren's parents met and Jill sued the school. They were very clear from the start. We're not looking for a big settlement for them, so we can make money. Every penny that they got went into the foundation they created, which is to spread the word about campus safety. They're goal at the time, and they set it from the beginning. We want a big judgment against

the school, so that the insurance companies go to their universities and say, there's this huge liability now. Our school needs to get its act together and create best practices so that we don't have the kind of risk the University of Utah did. Lauren's family filed sued against the University of Utah in 2019. We had to file a lawsuit because of the ways 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, it's employees failed to fully understand and respond appropriately

to Lauren's situation. The University of Utah settled with Macleski family for 13.5 million dollars.

All the money from the settlement will go to support the Lauren Macleski 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. How are the Macleski's doing as far as you know? We're in touch with them here and there.

We're all connected on social media. They're doing extremely well. They have a son who's doing very well. Matt and Jill, professionally, are doing extremely well. They're incredibly active people.

I mean, it's something that they carry. They will always carry.

But they're never the same. They're never the same. Of course, they don't try to forget. But they do try to live their lives. And, you know, they have committed themselves to make sure that there aren't cases like this, that young women like Lauren are listened to, that the universities have the systems in place, that you don't have the mistakes and housing that you taught, that you don't have the mistakes and the police that you taught did.

forward. Another thing that is growing is our Lauren's promise campaign. Lauren's promise is

I will listen and believe you if someone is threatening you and we just continue to get more and

“more schools and faculty members to sign up for that. I think we have about 200 schools all over”

the world. Before we say goodbye, I would imagine because we're talking about a college campus, a lot of young journalists probably follow you in this story and campus newspapers are still

alive and well. Any thoughts on how they can actually kind of make a difference on their

campuses when there's something that's going on? Oh, that's a terrific question. I mean, part of it is, look, not everybody gets four years to do it, right? If we were a student journalist, we would have graduated. Yeah. Exactly. And move on to something else. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So not everyone gets that time. But the benefit of the time and the support and the resources that we had is that we were able to push past a lot of narratives that simply were

not true. And that's the one thing we always try to tell young journalists is, don't take

what the police say at face value. Don't take what officials say at face value. Don't take what the people in Lauren's life say it at face value. I mean, it sounds like a minor thing, but they talked about the constant terror, Lauren was in when she was breaking up with Roland. The video we showed showed, well, no, actually she wasn't. She greeted him with a kiss and a smile. You're reluctant to say that almost because it sounds like, oh, well, she's, you know,

again, blaming the victim. No, it just speaks to her confusion. She had no idea what was going on. And the people who should have provided clarity failed to do it. Yeah. Well, the the piece is just

“so powerful and so important. TJ, such a great documentary. It's called Listen. It's dreaming”

on ESPN Plus. And of course, the reporting that's also featured on 2020's report called Running Out of Time. TJ, such pleasure to get to talk to you. Come back again. Pleasure is mine. Thanks for bringing the story back to light. Thank you. In 2023, a source sent me a tip. It tied baseball's biggest star to a vast, illegal sports betting operation. But then someone surprising confessed to me, his best friend. From 30 for 30 podcasts,

this is the betrayal of Shohail Otani. Listen, now wherever you get your podcasts. Anything to do with Shohail Tropez III. One, two, three, go! All ran the house because you're too drunk already. This Friday. No new info on a guy who did it.

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Enough. Shohail Tropez III. Own in fear to try and rate it up under 17, not admit it without pepper.