This Feels Criminal: A True Crime Podcast (Formerly Killer Queens)

Lauren McCluskey: Can We Tell Which Relationships Will Turn Deadly? (Part 1)

August 19, 2026

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5 min read

Lauren McCluskey: Can We Tell Which Relationships Will Turn Deadly? (Part 1)

On October 13, 2018, a 21-year-old University of Utah track star named Lauren McCluskey walked into a campus police station and did nearly everything a person is supposed to do. She reported that a man she'd been dating—who she now knew was a convicted felon and registered sex offender—was extorting her with compromising photos, had already taken a thousand dollars from her via Venmo that morning, and was demanding another thousand. She brought text messages, payment receipts, and the results of her own Google search showing his criminal history. The officer told her to focus only on the extortion, leave out the rest, and said they'd follow up by October 16. Nine days later, she was dead.

The question the hosts, Nikita and Terrella, set out to explore is whether anyone can tell, in real time, which relationship is going to turn deadly—not in hindsight, not with a documentary and a court file, but while it's happening. Lauren's story is the test case, because she did everything wrong. She saw the red flags. She told her friends. She told her mom. She told campus police more than twenty times. And the systems that were supposed to protect her failed at every level.

The Man She Didn't Know

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What you'll learn

1 (00:58) **Can We Predict a Deadly Relationship?** - The hosts introduce the central question of the episode: can you tell in real time which relationship will turn deadly, using the case of Lauren McCluskey.
2 (02:40) **Lauren McCluskey: A Driven Student** - Background on Lauren, a 21-year-old track star at the University of Utah, and the early, intense relationship with a man she knew as Sean Fields.
3 (05:55) **Who "Sean Fields" Really Was** - The reveal that Sean Fields is actually Melvin Shawn Roland, a 37-year-old convicted felon with a history of sexual abuse and manipulation.
4 (12:42) **The Parole Board's Failure** - The hosts critique the parole board's decision to release Roland despite his documented pattern of predatory behavior and his own admissions.
5 (19:57) **The Danger Assessment Checklist** - The hosts introduce the Danger Assessment, a clinical tool developed by Dr. Jacqueline Campbell, and apply it to Lauren's relationship to see how many risk factors were present.
6 (27:26) **Visible Warning Signs** - The physical and behavioral changes in Lauren that her friends noticed independently, indicating the relationship's toll.
7 (31:10) **Friends Report to Campus Housing** - On September 30, Lauren's friend Alejandra Sanchez reports the concerning relationship to the dorm's graduate assistant, Diamond Jackson, who escalates it up the chain.

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Show Notes

When 21-year-old University of Utah student Lauren McCluskey ended a brief relationship, she had good reason to believe she'd caught the warning signs early.

The man she'd been dating had lied about his name, his age, and his criminal history. Lauren ended the relationship immediately.

But he didn't leave her alone.

What followed was a terrifying escalation of stalking, harassment, extortion, and repeated attempts to get help — ending less than three weeks later with Lauren's murder on the campus where she lived and went to school.

Lauren's case leaves behind an agonizing question: when we look back after someone has been killed, the warning signs can seem painfully obvious. But are they actually obvious before the violence happens?

In Part 1, we begin Lauren's story and ask a much bigger question: Can we tell which abusive relationships are most likely to turn deadly?

Because if we can identify danger before someone is killed, that changes the question of what we should be doing about it.

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