The mother of a 21-year-old University of Utah senior killed by her ex-boyfriend is still discovering the dark truth behind her murder nearly six years after her death.
Speaking after what would have been her daughter Lauren’s 28th birthday, Jill McCluskey told DailyMail.com she is still haunted by a discovery she made about killer Melvin Rowland two years ago.
Lauren was gunned down by Rowland, 37, after she discovered he had lied to her and was actually a convicted sex offender out on parole. She had repeatedly tried to get campus police to protect her as he stalked and tried to extort her for cash.
Jill said she later discovered that Rowland had confessed to a work supervisor at General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) that he was extorting and stalking Lauren.
The female supervisor, who was not named, never reported Rowland to police. She also allowed Rowland to take a leave of absence which he used to murder Lauren.
Jill said: ‘I was shocked and saddened that the supervisor didn’t care about the victim. There was another person who could have prevented Lauren’s murder if they had done the right thing.’
‘They knew Rowland was on parole. They could have reported him to the parole officer who would have incarcerated him.’
When she found out the company had hired a criminal defense attorney within hours of her daughter’s death, she believed they were ‘trying to cover it up’.
‘I was shocked what General Dynamics did and how they’ve just tried to deny it or just ignore it,’ she said.
Lauren McCluskey, 21, was a gifted track and field star with a promising future. She also loved to sing, loved animals, including her cat, and hoped one day to become an academic advisor and help other students, her mom shared
Jill and Matt McCluskey listening to Rowland speaking with his supervisor at the call center he worked at during the documentary. The supervisor never reported his confession of extortion and stalking to his parole officer
‘So many people dropped the ball in Lauren’s case. No one lifted a finger to help her,’ Jill said. ‘Any one of those people had done their jobs Lauren would still be with us.’
Six days before Lauren’s murder, an ESPN documentary LISTEN revealed that Rowland told a supervisor and two co-workers of the stalking and extortion, but the supervisor never reported his confession to the crime to his parole officer. She also allowed Rowland to take a personal leave of absence.
After Lauren’s murder, Jill and Matt McCluskey, filed two civil rights lawsuits against the school. One suit was filed in state court and the other in federal court.
In the suit, they alleged that the university could have done more to keep their daughter safe, and asked for $56million in each, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.
On the second anniversary of Lauren’s death, Jill and Matt McCluskey and the University of Utah announced during a press conference that a legal settlement had been made, one of the largest legal settlements in Utah history, as per the news outlet.
The total amount of the legal settlement was $13.5million. A charitable donation went towards The Lauren McCluskey Foundation created to honor Lauren and improve campus safety on campuses nationwide.
In a statement, The University of Utah acknowledged that they failed Lauren. They stated, in part that her death was ‘preventable’. University President Ruth Watkins said she was ‘sincerely sorry,’ as per The Tribune.
In an interview with police obtained by DailyMail.com the supervisor revealed that Rowland worked at the GDIT call center in the Sandy, Utah offices.
The center takes inbound calls from people interested in purchasing health insurance. She told detectives that he first worked at the company in 2016, but went back to jail after he violated parole, though she said she was not sure if that was true.
In August 2018, she said Rowland was rehired at GDIT – just weeks before meeting Lauren.
In the documentary, the supervisor recounted what Rowland told her as he confesses to the extortion crime days before the young athlete and honor student was killed.
‘He told me he had gotten into some trouble over the weekend. That he was dating a girl from the university and he lied to her about his age and when she recently found out he lied she broke up with him,’ the supervisor said.
‘He got angry and over the weekend he had sent her messages from another phone telling her that he (redacted) wanted money so that he wouldn’t release them.’
‘She sent him money through Venmo. He said she sent him $1,000 and sent him another $1,000 and the second time he said he kind of freaked out. He knew he was going to be in trouble so he tried to send the money back to her.’
‘He said he had access to her email on his phone because she had logged into her email from his phone before and he said that he could see that she had sent messages to the campus police of screen shots of the conversations 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 he couldn’t run forever,’ the supervisor said.
Rowland said: ‘Yeah, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to resign can I just go on a leave of absence?’
The supervisor said. ‘I am okay with that.’
A second co-worker at GDIT let Rowland use his cell phone number that was used for Lauren to send over the $2,000 Venmo.
The co-worker, that was not named, came forward to campus police eight days after Lauren’s murder, but would not fill out a witness statement form or allow police to forensically download his phone.
He also refused to give police the contact information of a mutual friend that he and Rowland shared. No criminal charges were ever made against this co-worker.
Jill said: ‘That was shocking that the police were not able to get his phone. I felt like they weren’t even trying. I felt frustrated by that too.’
The police audio also highlighted the third co-worker at GDIT, a former supervisor and friend of Rowland’s, who was at the office the day he admitted to the sextortion.
This friend told police that Rowland stayed at his home when he had visitation with his four-year-old son. Rowland, who is not with the child’s mother, went to his co-worker’s home twice and stayed the night, weeks before Lauren’s murder.
Megan Thomson, Rowland’s parole officer was featured in the ESPN documentary, Listen. She said she ‘was pissed’ and had no idea about the confession Rowland made to the supervisor
Megan Thomson was Rowland’s parole officer. She said that she was never contacted by the supervisor, according to the documentary.
‘I am pissed it was just another thing brought to my attention that could have changed everything,’ she said.
Thomson said if she knew what she knows now she would have picked up Rowland, put him in handcuffs, interviewed him and he most likely would have gone back to prison.
‘There were a lot of misses…a lot of opportunities where interventions could have been made,’ she said.
Through tears Thomson said said she wanted to tell Lauren’s parents, ‘I am sorry I could not protect their daughter, and claimed that ‘everyone dropped the ball.’
She said in part, ‘I can’t imagine the amount of pain no matter how many lawsuits or how many things are found out or faults it doesn’t take away what happened and what they lost.’
Jill, who said she never spoke with Rowland’s parole officer, told DailyMail.com, ‘it was good to hear from her that she did apologize to us’.
‘She probably could have done better too, but I understand that she can only act based on the information she has, so I feel like people did not provide the information to her.’
Thomson, who worked in the adult probation and parole division for the Department of Corrections, later resigned from her position sometime after Lauren’s murder.
Rowland worked as a bouncer at the bar where he first met Lauren. He had used different aliases and was out on parole when the pair started dating
The gray Buick is the car where Lauren’s murder took place in the campus parking lot
Melvin Rowland, 37, was a registered sex offender
Rowland, 37, had a history of sex assaults with at least three women, including a minor. A registered sex offender, he was in and out of prison for years.
At a parole hearing in 2018, he was released but required to be supervised by a parole officer. In April 2018, he was paroled for a third time, five months before he met Lauren.
A report showed that Rowland had violated his parole twice in the months leading up to McCluskey’s death.
One of the violations was from May 2018 when his parole officer discovered a lot of messages from women Rowland was trying to date. Another time was when he went on a dating site considered another violation, KSL News reported.
Thomson who described Rowland as a bit arrogant said in the documentary that she was told that she ‘handled everything appropriately.’
The night Lauren first met Rowland when she was out with a few girlfriends at an off campus bar where he worked as a bouncer.
He told her that his name was Sean Fields and that he was studying computer engineering at a nearby college.
The pair dated for about a month until she found his state-issued-identification card and discovered her boyfriend was a criminal who lied about his age and name. After she broke it off with him he extorted and stalked her.
Rowland was able to access Lauren’s emails and saw that she had reported him to campus police and had sent them screenshots of their conversation that showed that he was asking her for money in exchange for the images he had.
Within twelve hours after Lauren’s murder, GDIT hired Salt Lake City, Utah criminal defense attorney Jim Bradshaw of Brown, Bradshaw and Moffa. The supervisor and two co-workers were interviewed by police at Bradshaw’s office.
During the interview, the supervisor confirmed with detectives that on October 14, 2018, Rowland saw the emails Lauren was sending to the University of Utah Police.
The following day, she said, he called out of work. On October 16, he returned to work and told the supervisor about the sextortion.
The supervisor told detectives that Rowland was ‘very panicked’ about going back to jail.
The supervisor said: ‘When he was talking about the Venmo he said that is how he knew he would be linked back to the whole sextortion because the Venmo was linked to his bank account.’
The supervisor is then heard on the audio telling Rowland, ‘your best option is probably to go to the police. I can’t tell you what to do though’.
Rowland initially wanted to resign but instead asked to take a personal leave of absence in which the supervisor granted.
Lauren, a track and field start, pictured in blue jeans and short-sleeved-knit, would have graduated the University of Utah in Spring 2019
Lauren pictured with multi-Olympic gold medal winner Allyson Felix who she met at track camp
On the night of October 22, 2018, Rowland was lying in wait for Lauren to return to her dorm. She has been on the phone with her parents when suddenly he ambushed her.
Her terrified parents heard their daughter’s phone drop to the floor and her screaming ‘No… no… no….’ Rowland dragged Lauren to a parked car on campus and shot her seven times at close-range.
After fleeing and taking public transportation, Rowland went on a date and then later that night went to a church and killed himself from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The woman he went on a date with had no idea that Rowland had just murdered someone and only found out when she put on the news. She then went to campus police.
Despite Lauren’s pleas for help, campus police never helped.
Jill told DailyMail.com that Lauren gave campus police Rowland’s state ID but they never checked to see if he was on parole or probation which would have shown that he was out on parole.
An investigation revealed that the campus officers had not been trained in domestic violence and to check whether Rowland was on active parole, as per Insider Higher Ed.
‘She gave them all the evidence and there was a picture of her without clothes on that he was using to extort her and the police were looking at the private evidence for a non-police reason,’ said Jill.
Miguel Deras was the campus police officer who shared explicit photos to at least three co-workers while he was employed at the university.
An internal investigation found he ‘mishandled sensitive evidence.’ Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said there was no statute that would allow for an indictment.
Gill’s decision not to charge Deras was criticized by Lauren’s parents.
University of Utah Police Chief Dale Brophy retired months after Lauren’s murder. The university said he was not forced out and he was given a severance package, and later claimed he wasn’t treated unfairly, as per The Salt Lake Tribune and Fox 13 News Utah.
Officer Deras quit his job at the university before he was investigated regarding the explicit photos he showed off to his co-workers. He was later terminated from the local police department he was hired due to Lauren’s case.
Officer Kayla Dallof was terminated from her position at the university. Her attorney claimed she was ‘wrongly fired.’ She is now employed at a different sheriff’s office, as per the news outlet.
‘At first they tried to deny responsibility and that is why I felt like we had to file a lawsuit because they weren’t doing anything to admit the wrongdoing and it was so blatant everything that happened,’ Jill said.
Jill also recalled how Ruth Watkins, the President of the University at the time, claimed that there was no way that Lauren’s murder could have been prevented.
‘I was just sick to my stomach and shocked that she said that Lauren’s murder could not have been prevented,’ she said.
‘She also said that no officers would be disciplined. That just seemed so unjust and just wrong.’
Watkins resigned a year later.
Jill told DailyMail.com that ‘institutions can’t get better unless they admit their mistakes.’
The letter that Jill sent to General Dynamics December 15, 2023 and never got a response
General Dynamics based in Reston- Virginia, is a massive global aerospace and defense company that also offers technology products and services.
The company employs more than 110,000 people worldwide and in 2024 generated $47.7 billion in revenue.
During the time of Lauren’s murder, GDIT was in the final stages of selling off all their call centers in a $400million cash sale to another company, according to a report in Washington Technology.
After the documentary aired Jill said she sent a letter to General Dynamics CEO Phebe Nokavovic where she told him about the agonizing murder of her daughter at the hand of Melvin Rowland, a man out on parole, who worked at the GDIT call center.
In the letter, she wrote: ‘Lauren’s murderer reported the crimes of extortion of Lauren to his General Dynamics supervisor days before he murdered Lauren.’
‘Even though this man was on parole, the supervisor did not report this information to anyone. Further, one of Melvin Rowland’s coworkers at General Dynamics aided and abetted the extortion by the use of his phone and accounts.’
She also addressed the sale of the call center and the timeline that was taking place around the time of her daughter’s murder.
Jill further stated, in part: ‘Given this history and the terrible damage by employees of General Dynamic,s which culminated with the loss of my daughter. I am asking General Dynamics to donate $4 million to the Lauren McCluskey Foundation.’
She told DailyMail.com: ‘I received no acknowledgement or response of any kind from General Dynamics.’
She added: ‘I just wish they could say, ‘Oh we realized it was not the right thing and we would like to donate to Lauren’s foundation.’
She said she has considered legal action against the company explaining it is ‘still a possibility.’
But said: ‘I’m not really litigious. The reason I had that lawsuit to begin with against the school is that they were going to do nothing and (University President) Ruth Watkins said no one would be disciplined so I felt like that was a last resort.’
When DailyMaill.com reached out to General Dynamics they said ‘we decline to comment.’
Ayoola A. Ajayi acknowledged he planned the death of 23-year-old Mackenzie Lueck, whom he met on a dating app and arranged to meet in a park in June 2019
Zhifan Dong, 19, was killed by her 26-year-old boyfriend, Haoyu Wang, who was a graduate student at the University of Utah in 2019
Two years after Lauren’s murder, 23-year-old Mackenzie Lueck, a kinesiology and pre-nursing student at the University of Utah was killed by Nigerian-born Ayoola Ajayi, 31, a information technology worker.
Lueck was first reported missing on June 17, 2019 and was later found strangled, burned and buried in a shallow grave. The pair had met a year prior on the website Seeking Arrangement, a platform for those seeking ‘Sugar Daddies.’
Chilling details reveal that Ajayi attempted to build a secret soundproof room in his home before kidnapping Lueck. After he pleaded guilty he confessed that he planned Lueck’s death. He is currently, serving a life sentence without the chance of parole.
Lueck’s parents filed a lawsuit against the university claiming campus police could have done more to prevent her murder, but it is unclear what their settlement was.
Four years after Lauren’s murder and three years after Lueck’s slaying, Zhifan Dong, 19, was killed by her 26-year-old boyfriend, Haoyu Wang, who was a graduate student at the University of Utah.
Both were international students from China studying at the university. Dong feared Wang would kill her and had a restraining order against him.
On February 11, 2022, Dong died in a hotel room when her boyfriend allegedly injected her with a fatal cocktail of heroin and fentanyl. Wang is now serving a life sentence behind bars.
In July 2023, an internal review by the university showed that school housing staff members failed multiple times to recognize Dong was in danger in the weeks leading up to her death, NBC News reported.
Dong’s family was awarded a $5million settlement from the university, as per the news outlet.
Lauren would have turned 28 on February 12
Lauren pictured with her mother Jill and her father Matt
Jill McCluskey speaking about her daughter’s foundation and campus safety
Lauren’s parents created The Lauren McCluskey Foundation to promote best practices in response to relationship violence and stalking on college campuses.
Jill explained the mission of the foundation is to make campuses across the country safer and more supportive environments where students can thrive.
‘We have now at least one professor at more than 400 universities around the country that have made Lauren’s Promise.’
The promise is vow taken by faculty, staff, students, parents, and community members that represents a safe haven for sharing incidents of sexual assault, domestic violence, or stalking, Jill explained.
The words: ‘I WILL LISTEN AND BELIEVE YOU IF SOMEONE IS THREATENING YOU,’ are printed on a sticker.
The foundation has distributed more than 1,500 Lauren’s Promise stickers. For those who want to make a donation to the foundation can use the QR code
A QR code for anyone who would like to donate to The Lauren McCluskey Foundation
Jill, who is the Director of The School of Economic Sciences at Washington State University, said: ‘I feel like its just really powerful and it invites people to come. It changes the culture and shows that we care about these issues and we will not ignore them.’
The foundation holds events all over the country and to date, the foundation has distributed more than 1,500 ‘free’ Lauren’s Promise stickers. Donations to the foundation are always welcome.
The part of the money from the settlement was donated to the University of Idaho to improve their indoor track, since it was a special place where Lauren would often train. The track is now named The Lauren McCluskey Track.
Lauren was on the Utah Cross Country – Track and Field. She is pictured on August 21, 2018 nearly three months before her murder
Lauren competing in the long jump
Lauren, a gifted athlete competed in hurdles, a form of obstacle racing for the university
Kevin Squires, is the new chief safety officer at the University of Utah. Jill said that he came out of retirement to take the position after her daughter’s murder.
‘He was on the external review panel that looked at Lauren’s case and he just wanted to make things better and I believe him,’ she said.
The University of Utah renamed the Center for Violence Prevention as the ‘McCluskey Center for Violence Prevention,’ and a bronze plaque with Lauren’s name on it.
‘All the officers see that everyday when they come in. It’s to remember,’ she said.
Jill explained that the important work that she is doing with the foundation helps to keep her going each day.
‘I hope it makes a change,’ she said, ‘so this won’t happen again.’
