She thought she was dating a fellow college student. He was actually a 37-year-old convicted sex offender using a fake name.

In this episode of Murder U, we investigate the heartbreaking case of Lauren McCluskey, a 21-year-old track star at the University of Utah who tried everything she could to stay safe—reporting threats, breaking off the relationship, even calling campus police more than 20 times. But when her cries for help went unanswered, it ended in tragedy.

We walk through Lauren’s final weeks, the system failures that led to her death, and the shocking revelations that surfaced in the aftermath. From the university’s botched response to the civil lawsuits that followed, we explore how a campus tragedy exposed deeper flaws in institutional accountability, victim protection, and law enforcement response.

This is the story of a student who did everything right... and still lost her life to a predator hiding in plain sight.

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