20/20 - The After Show: Running Out Of Time

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

Journalist T.J. Quinn takes us inside ESPN's four-year investigation of student-athlete Lauren McCluskey's murder. Quinn unpacks the many questions raised in the case and the changes universities made after McCluskey's tragic death. Originally broadcast in March 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 McCluskey was a student athlete at the University of Utah. She was a standout in track and 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. Lawrence loved ones 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 Rowland actually killed her. Journalist T.J. Quinn and Nicole Noren spent four years. That's right, four years following this case. They combed through records. They talked to Lawrence 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-anchor, David Muir, called Running Out of Time. I am really delighted to have investigative report of T.J. Quinn here today. Hey, T.J. It's great to be with you, Debra. Yeah. You know, you and I haven't had a chance to bump into each other. I know you're reporting very well. 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, you know, 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 Britney Griners, detention in Russia, and MLB player Tyler Skaggs' death. Clearly, investigative journalism is in your blood.

It is. It's, I think anybody in this business, it's kind of funny, sometimes we talk about investigative journalists like they're wizards. It's, we all do the same thing. in this business, just some of us get more time to do it. And we had, like you said, when you have four years and told, just follow the story wherever it goes, we took every minute that we could because there was, 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, it was by accident mostly. Like a lot of things in this business. Like a lot of things. I mean, I started as a news reporter on 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 Sox and the Mets,

but you're right. That investigative itch is always kind of there. I got to be part of the Daily News's investigative team, and that led to an accidental meeting with ESPN, 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 McCluskey. 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 we're 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 at once. And what was funny was our initial reaction was let's not pursue this because it seemed like part of the attention was that this was an attractive white girl who had been killed on a campus. Had she been a young woman of color, would anybody be talking about this story? And we thought Do we want to really feed into that trope?

And the perpetrator was a black guy. Perpetrator was a black man. Yes. And so we thought, all right, well, that's, you know, would this have 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 have happened on any campus. this really good, 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, you know, 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, you know, so many of us can relate to that, especially if you have a 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 track and field star, or just an athlete anyway. A 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, from 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, kind of try 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. 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, 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, you know, 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, look, 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. They're just 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 an assignment that was not due for a few days. So it was a wonderful conversation. She was so happy.

And I, I, um, and then, and then, uh, and then she, she's, she's, She said, no, 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. just so shattering hearing them talk about actually hearing this moment describing this moment when she's being abducted i'm a parent you're a 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 to get it but yeah my daughter is a year younger than 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 than 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. You know, 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 just adds to it. The moment on its own is absolutely sickening to know two parents are listening as their daughter is in fear for her life and then she's killed moments later. And as you say, she was just finding herself. Well, T.J., we're going to take a quick break. And when we're back, we're going to dive into the case files, how T.J. and his

producers sort it through a mountain of information to build out this investigation. Stay with us. For the first time ever, you can get all of ESPN in the new ESPN app, along with Disney Plus and Hulu, with one incredible offer. The most live sports, biggest blockbusters, and most talked about shows. Get it all in one bundle for 2999 a month for 12 months. Visit Disney Plus Hulu ESPN Bumble.com for details. At supported plan auto renews at regular price. Currently 3599 a month, subject to change. Unless canceled, ends 1526 term to apply. I'm back now with ESPN investigative reporter T.J. Quinn, and we're diving into your work as an investigative reporter across four years in this story involving Lauren McCluskey. And also along the way, you say you were digging and talking to folks. You interviewed Lawrence College friends.

Some were there when she first met Melvin at this bar, and it was only about a month in her relationship with him that she, 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 is a, it was, 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, this makes no sense. Why is she so panicked? And being controlled, they can see that. Being controlled. And it jumped up another notch when all of a sudden he said he was going to take her shooting at a range, which was when you look at it, it's the gun that actually killed her. She had fired that gun.

He said she was not someone who she didn't like guns. But now Roland is talking to her. She knew him at the time as Sean Fields. So to her, it's Sean. but he's talking 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 law and we know and so they went to campus housing officials to say something is not right here yeah they they were really really quite impressive in their stories 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 they have some insecurities from the past and I 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 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, do you? No. No. I'm not going to say that person's name. They don't deserve to have their name mention.

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.

The public reaction to Lauren was, how could she have been so stupid? How could she have been taken in by this guy? Blaming the victim. Blaming the victim. And as you looked into the story, what you realized was the level of confusion that she had and why it made sense. People would say, well, how could she be taken in by this guy? That was part 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, that the first thing they knew about him was that he was a murderer. And so that color is how they look at him and think, how can you not, how could she not see that? Yeah. Well, we listened to his voice and his parole hearings. We talked to people who knew him. We talked to a 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? Yeah. You know, but as soon as questions did come up, her confusion 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 as she's hearing from him, if she's hearing from others. And the people who are supposed to sort this out, the university officials, campus police, they're the ones who failed. Yeah. And 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'd 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 extorted for money. And, you know, desperately trying to get help. I mean, this was a woman who was really feeling a sense of desperation. It was. What she had no idea, what nobody had any idea about, was that Roland, it was almost a full-time job for him trying to hook up with women that he'd met on the internet. We spoke to in that piece a young woman named Kara Stropel, who had dated him briefly. And when he, 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, threw it underneath his stove in his apartment. He wanted her to go get it. And when she got it and opened it, all she saw was text between him and she thought hundreds of women.

Oh, wow. 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'd in his words tried to manipulate he had these photos of her that they'd taken together and she had done so you know nude photos nude photos with consent um and now suddenly she gets this threat that uh if you

don't pay a thousand dollars i'm gonna i'm gonna spread this everywhere well she didn't even know who the threat was from what did you learn about melvin roland because he told her his name 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 paroled. 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.

Wow. He ended up doing almost that whole 15 years. And you reported that he had been on, he had been paroled 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 extorting, Lauren. And this was really pretty compelling in your story. What was that like speaking with her and also revealing to her 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 in violation of his terms. One of the questions of why didn't you turn him in to violate him for that? He could have been back in prison for that. And 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 checked with parole officials who said, no, she's correct. That would have been a warning of reprimand. What really got to her was that Roland told coworkers, I basically am facing going back to prison. I've committed extortion against this woman. He told coworkers.

And we got the audio of police interviews was after Lauren's death where coworkers said, yeah, well, he told us 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, and he wanted money so that he wouldn't release them. How many violations did you just hear described? Well, I didn't hear violence, 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. If somebody had called you and told you what he had said, what would have happened? 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 would have gone back to 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 reporting has uncovered. So don't go anywhere. There's so much more to discuss. To you, my darling. No, to you. The roses were living the dream.

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It's the ultimate fan experience. Level up for more on the ESPN app or at stream.esPN.com. Sign up now. I'm back now with T.J. 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 Derris, you actually got him to sit down and talk with you. We did. He canceled three times.

in 48 hours before he actually 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. It 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 Derris is actually the one person

who did try to do something. He was kind of an easy target because he was the frontline person. And when you sit down and talk to him, that interview we did with him, we were, he was in the chair for a good four hours. I think it's the longest. Four hours. Four hours. Wow. I think, yeah. That's a long interview. Yeah. Yeah. Two, two and a half are usually pretty long for me, but that's a long time. And he, he, 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. Um, it became clear that, no, Miguel Daris 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 Dalloff, who did not sit down with us, she had only been on the job for months. There were so many people who knew at what they did. What really felt clear was that Miguel Darius was just completely over his head and that the systems that should have accounted for his lack of experience, for Kayla Dahlif's lack of experience, that's what failed. It was the department. And so what you found,

and 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 Daris is hearing about Lauren McCluskey, he knew nothing about previous encounters with Melvin Rowland. When Kayla Dahlif, the detective, is 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. You know, you're dealing usually with a bunch of drunk kids doing something stupid, maybe vandalism, maybe, you know, maybe theft, not something like this. They're not prepared for it.

Again, it's not just a matter of experience. It was create a 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 impact it had, how much reach that it had. I mean, a really interesting part of this is when Lauren's parents, Matt and Jill, sued the school. They were very clear from the start. We're not looking for a big settlement from 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.

Their goal at the time, and they said 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.

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 a center for violence prevention and agreed to build an athletic facility with an indoor track, both bearing Lauren's name. How are the McCluskey's doing, as far as you know?

They're doing, well, 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 or listen to, that the universities have the systems in place, that you don't have the mistakes in housing that Utah did, that you don't have the mistakes in the police that Utah did. Because it really could have been anywhere. Yeah, yeah, and making a difference as they go 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, you know, 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, like, not everybody gets four years to do it, right? If we were student journalists, we would have graduated. Yeah, exactly, and moved on to something else, unfortunately. Exactly. So not everyone gets. 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 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, 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 piece is just so powerful. and so important. T.J., 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 a pleasure to get to talk to you. Come back again. Pleasure is mine. Thanks for bringing this story back to light. Thank you. The 2020 After Show is produced by Amira Williams, Susie Lou, and Sasha Uslanian with Joseph Diaz, Brian Mizorski, and Alex Berenfeld of 2020. Theme music by Evan Viola. Janice Johnston is the executive producer of 2020. Josh Cohen is the director of podcasting at ABC Audio. Laura Mayer is the executive producer.

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 Tinderfoot TV, an all-new season of Culpable is available now. Talk about stepping up.

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