Rowland, 37, had been lurking on campus for days trying to confront the woman who had broken up with him weeks earlier when she discovered his criminal background, university police chief Dale Brophy said.  In the wake of the fatal shooting of student-athlete Lauren McCluskey on campus Monday evening, the University of Utah will initiate a pair of separate reviews into campus safety and how the university police department responded to a complaint from McCluskey about her killer earlier this month. In the days following the breakup, Rowland attempted to extort McCluskey and stalked her residence before assaulting her in a parking lot and shooting her several times in the back seat of a car, Brophy said. Rowland killed himself hours later in a church as police closed in. The killing of McCluskey, a track athlete at the school, came weeks after she broke off her month-long relationship with Rowland and filed a complaint with campus police alleging he had demanded money in exchange for not posting compromising pictures of the couple online. Then, on Oct. 13, she received a demand for money in order to prevent compromising photos of her and Rowland from being published on the internet, and she met the demand by depositing $1,000 in an account, Brophy said. Melvin Rowland, 37, a convicted sex offender who was free on parole, dated McCluskey, a member of the Utah track and field team, for about a month after they met at a bar where he worked as a bouncer, University of Utah police chief Dale Brophy said Thursday at a news conference. NEW in @UUtah student death 
 
 Police say... 
 
 -Lauren McCluskey paid Melvin Rowland $1000 to keep compromising photos private 
 
 -He was on campus Fri to Mon, looking for McCluskey 
 
 -He texted her, posing as cop Monday AM to lure her outside 
 
 -He went on date (dinner, shower) after murder — Michael Locklear (@MichaelLocklear) October 25, 2018 
 
 McCluskey reported receiving numerous emails and messages using different names trying to lure her to locations. Investigators now believe the messages all came from Rowland, who Brophy called a master manipulator. After shooting McCluskey, Rowland was picked up by a woman he had recently met on a dating website, Brophy said. They went to dinner, visited the state Capitol and went to her apartment where Rowland took a shower. Later that night, after the woman dropped Rowland at a coffee shop, police tracked him to the church where he killed himself. The woman later called police when she saw photos of the man being sought for the campus shooting. According to Brophy, Rowland obtained the gun from an acquaintance, whom he told his girlfriend wanted to learn how to shoot. Brophy said it appears the woman who picked up Rowland on campus and the person who loaned him the gun had been duped and are not expected to face charges. "If his lips were moving, he was lying," Brophy said of Rowland. "I don't think he told the truth to anybody based on our investigation." Rowland's address was available on the sex offender database and he was required to check in monthly, according to Kaitlin Felsted, a public information officer for the Utah Department of Corrections. University Police Chief Dale Brophy told reporters that Lauren McCluskey, 21, reported the extortion to his officers on Oct. 13, nine days before she was found shot dead outside an on-campus dormitory. In the early stages of the investigation, the police did not have enough information to pass on to any other law enforcement agency, Brophy said, adding that there were no indications from McCluskey that Rowland was threatening physical violence. University of Utah president Ruth Watkins said outside investigations are being launched to assess campus security and police protocols to determine if improvements can be made to prevent future shootings. The external, independent reviews of campus safety measures and the police department's handling of the case will begin as soon as possible, Watkins said. As of Thursday evening, the university had not announced who would lead those reviews. UNIVERSITY OF UTAH STUDENT WAS ON PHONE WITH PARENTS BEFORE DEADLY SHOOTING 
 
 Earlier in the day, Gov. Gary Herbert said corrections and parole officials had approved independent investigations into the handling of Rowland's parole. "Clearly in hindsight, we're going to say, 'You should have done this, you should have done that,'" Herbert said during his monthly televised news conference at KUED-TV 
 
 He noted, however, "You never know when these things are going to occur." Rowland was paroled in April when he told the parole board that he was a changed man after being a peer leader in prison had helped him tap into his empathy and learn to follow the rules. He spent nearly a decade in prison after pleading guilty in 2004 to trying to lure an underage girl online and attempted sex abuse charges, according to court records. After he was charged, a woman came forward to report he had sexually assaulted her after a separate online meeting a few days earlier. Rowland, a native of New York, was twice sent back to prison for parole violations that included possessing pornography and failure to complete therapy. MARRIED COUPLE FOUND DEAD AT INDIANA HOME IDENTIFIED AS TEACHERS 
 
 He blamed his "thinking errors" for the actions that kept sending him back in prison, according to recordings of parole hearings from 2010 to 2018 released this week by the Utah Board of Parole and Pardons. During one parole hearing, he described himself as a womanizer who manipulated women to get what he wanted and said he was attracted to teenage girls and vulnerable women, and sought to manipulate those he met in person or online, according to a recording of the 2012 hearing released by Utah state authorities. Brophy offered the same assessment. He said McCluskey met Rowland last month at a bar where he was working security and started dating him. He visited her often in her dorm and made friends with other students in the building. "He was very, very good at getting people to trust him," Brophy said. "Lauren was no different."
– Lauren McCluskey's killer was a master manipulator who penned messages under various names—even posed as a police officer—in an effort to lure and extort the 21-year-old University of Utah student before her death, according to police. Nine days before she was fatally shot on campus by an ex-boyfriend later found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, McCluskey told university police she'd wired $1,000 to an account to prevent the release of "compromising" photos of her and the killer, 37-year-old Melvin Rowland, says University Police Chief Dale Brophy, per Fox News and ESPN. McCluskey had ended her relationship with the registered sex offender days earlier after discovering he'd lied about his background. "If his lips were moving, he was lying," Brophy says of Rowland, who described himself as a manipulator of women at a 2012 parole hearing. Rowland told an acquaintance, for example, that he needed a gun because his girlfriend wanted to learn to shoot, reports CBS News. After shooting McCluskey multiple times in the backseat of a car he’d driven to campus, Rowland was picked up by a woman he'd met online. Before she recognized him as the murder suspect and called police, the pair went to dinner and back to the woman's apartment where Rowland showered before leaving, Brophy says. Meanwhile, the investigation into McCluskey's extortion complaint had been delayed by workload issues, and the Utah Department of Corrections had yet to be notified. Gov. Gary Herbert announced an investigation into the handling of the case on Thursday. Hindsight is 20/20, but "you never know when these things are going to occur," he said. (McCluskey was on the phone with her mom at the time.)