Episode 143: Lauren Charles – Bite-Sized Crime

When a woman is brutally attacked in her home, the investigation reveals a history of violence and abuse. What happened to Lauren Charles?

Episode Media

Lauren Charles and Reggie Dunlap on their wedding day in 2019 *(NBC4)*

Lauren with her father John *(FOX 5 DC)*

Reginald Dunlap, Jr. *(Montgomery County PD)*

Episode Sources

Episode Transcript

Welcome back to Bite-Sized Crime. This week I’m bringing you a case you may not have heard of, but one that is heartbreakingly familiar. This episode discusses sensitive topics and includes graphic descriptions, so listener discretion is advised.

On the afternoon of Sunday, March 7, 2021, a call came into the Montgomery County Police dispatch center. With a slight tremor in his voice, the man who had dialed 911 told the dispatcher, “I just got in from church, and I think my wife is dead.”

When officers arrived at the scene – a small brick home in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. – they were met by 43-year-old Reginald Dunlap, Jr., who told them that when he had arrived home after church around 1:30 that afternoon, he had discovered his wife Lauren dead in the downstairs bedroom.

At first, officers didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary in the home. But as they moved further inside, an overwhelming stench of bleach permeated the air. They approached the primary bedroom, and there, lying in the doorway, was the body of 40-year-old Lauren Charles. It was clear that she had been badly beaten, the location of her body indicating that she had tried to get away from her attacker before succumbing to her injuries.

Behind Lauren, the bedroom was in a state of disarray. The bed frame had been turned on its side, the blood-stained mattress leaning up against the wall. The dresser drawers had been yanked out and overturned, and their contents were scattered across the floor. Bloody handprints smeared the walls and the doorframe. In the middle of it all, an empty bottle of bleach lay discarded.

Lauren’s body was transported to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore, Maryland, while forensic technicians processed the scene. In the house, outside of the ransacked bedroom, they found evidence that there had been an attempt to clean prior to Lauren’s body being discovered. In addition to the bleach, investigators found plastic packaging from a six-pack of paper towels in the trash and a scrub brush in the backyard, sitting on top of a retaining wall, still wet from use.

Meanwhile, detectives were interviewing Reggie Dunlap, the last person to see Lauren alive. Reggie told them that he and Lauren had been having some trouble in their marriage lately. She was upset that he was changing jobs and had talked about leaving him. Reggie didn’t want to separate, he wanted to work things out, so he had been sleeping in an upstairs bedroom for the last few months to give Lauren space.

According to Reggie, he and Lauren had watched a movie together on Saturday night before going to sleep in their separate rooms around 1:00am. When he woke the next morning, Reggie made himself some breakfast and took the dogs for a walk, then came back and got ready for church. He left sometime after 11 and returned around 1:30 that afternoon. When he got home, he went upstairs to change his clothes before coming back down to check on Lauren. That’s when he found the horrific scene in her bedroom. He went out to the porch and dialed 911.

Investigators weren’t convinced that Reggie was telling them the whole story. When they asked him if anyone else had been at the house since Saturday, Reggie said no. He didn’t have any explanation for what may have happened to his wife.

At the scene, investigators noticed that all of the doors in the house had been locked, and Reggie confirmed that when he arrived home from church, he’d had to unlock the deadbolt to get in. There was no sign of a break-in, and it seemed unlikely that Lauren would have let someone into the house while Reggie was at church. Even if she had, the perpetrator would have needed time to attack Lauren and clean up after themselves. In the police report, investigators wrote, “Investigation thus far would indicate that the subject(s) responsible for this crime took a significant amount of time to attempt to clean the scene and destroy evidence on [Lauren’s] body.”

Of course, there was the possibility that Lauren had been killed while Reggie slept upstairs, unaware of what had happened to his wife when he left for church later that morning. But the state of the crime scene suggested that Lauren had fought for her life. The attack had been violent and loud – surely Reggie would have heard something.

On March 8th, the day after Lauren was found dead, police arrested Reggie for her murder. A Montgomery County judge ordered that he be held without bond, citing the potential danger to the community.

But although Reggie Dunlap was behind bars, detectives and prosecutors still had a long road ahead of them. Everything they had against Reggie was circumstantial; they would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he had murdered his wife. They needed to go back to the beginning.

Lauren Elizabeth Charles grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, and graduated from Ben Franklin High School, a magnet school for gifted children. Her friends described her as magnetic, someone who drew people in. One friend told Fox 5 DC, “She was so good at loving everyone she encountered.”

Lauren was also a go-getter – she knew what she wanted out of life and was determined to get it. After high school, she attended Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where she studied public health and sociology. She then moved to New York to attend the Pratt Institute before eventually earning her law degree from the University of Oregon. After graduation, she stayed on as an assistant director of admissions. Lauren then landed a job in Washington, D.C. as a contractor for the Department of Justice. Soon, she was managing a team and making a name for herself in her field.

While she was thriving in her professional life, Lauren also wanted to move forward in her personal life. She had a tight circle of friends across the country who loved and supported her, but she wanted to get married and start a family, too.

In 2016, Lauren met Reggie Dunlap through an online dating site. Reggie quickly charmed her, promising her everything she wanted. But while Lauren was falling in love, her friends and family were not. They found Reggie to be distant and aloof, not at all interested in making a good impression. Lauren would often show up to parties and events alone with an excuse for why Reggie couldn’t attend.

But it wasn’t just that Reggie didn’t want to engage with Lauren’s loved ones – he didn’t seem to want her to meet his family and friends either. According to Lauren’s friends, Reggie lived with his mother, but he didn’t want to introduce her to Lauren. When he and Lauren hung out, it always had to be at Lauren’s place, never his own. And the friends he claimed to have never actually materialized. Reggie convinced Lauren that he was a lone wolf; he didn’t need anyone but her.

As the relationship progressed, Lauren’s friends began noticing more and more red flags when it came to Reggie. His employment always seemed to be in a state of transition, and he relied on Lauren to pay his bills. Lauren’s best friend Melissa recounted a time when Lauren tried to surprise Reggie at work, but the address he had given her turned out to be a vacant lot.

In spite of all this, Lauren and Reggie’s relationship moved forward, and in May of 2019, they got married. But even the wedding was an indication that things weren’t quite right. The guest list was made up entirely of Lauren’s family and friends – there was no one there for Reggie. It was clear that Lauren was Reggie’s whole world, and he liked it that way.

A few months into their marriage, Lauren and Reggie purchased a house in Silver Spring, Maryland. The location was perfect for Lauren’s daily commute into D.C., and the neighborhood was quiet and peaceful. Unfortunately, life inside the home was anything but.

Throughout the course of their relationship, Reggie had slowly been chipping away at Lauren’s strength and confidence. He belittled her, gaslighting her into believing that he was the only reason she had the life she did. When she talked to her friends, he would use her own words against her, to the point that she had to leave the house or sit in her car to have a conversation on the phone. Lauren’s friends and family did what they could to support her, but Lauren seemed determined to stay.

Then, in December of 2019, Lauren got a message from a woman on LinkedIn who claimed that she had been in a relationship with Reggie for the past five years. Shocked, Lauren wasn’t sure what to do with this information. The entire time she and Reggie had been together, he had also been with someone else.

Unfortunately, over the next few months, more women would reach out to Lauren with stories of Reggie’s cheating. These revelations, all piled together, were enough to bring Lauren to her breaking point. She knew she had to get out of this relationship.

In October of 2020, Lauren told her friends that she wanted to leave Reggie. She had kept her troubles to herself for so long, but now that she was reaching out for help, her friends were ready to jump in and support her however they could. Melissa decided to do her own background check on Reggie, and when she did, she discovered that he had two children he’d never told Lauren about. This news solidified Lauren’s decision to leave.

Of course, leaving an abusive relationship is rarely easy, and Lauren’s situation was no exception. When she told Reggie she wanted a divorce, he was angry, declaring that he wouldn’t leave. The house was in Lauren’s name; she should have been able to kick Reggie out. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a moratorium on evictions, and Lauren was concerned that Reggie could take legal action against her if she tried to force him to leave. She was also hesitant to file for a protective order against him, since that could complicate the issue even more. Finally, Lauren decided to give Reggie a deadline: She was filing for divorce, and he had to be out of the house by the end of March. Lauren texted a friend, “I’m hoping he’ll leave the house quietly but I’m not counting on it.”

Reggie moved into the upstairs bedroom, but Lauren still didn’t feel safe. At the urging of her friends, she purchased a can of mace and began sleeping with a knife under her pillow. As the days ticked by and the deadline grew closer and closer, Reggie became increasingly desperate. All of their property and assets were in Lauren’s name; if she really kicked him out, he would have nothing. He kept telling Lauren over and over that they could work it out, they could still be together. But Lauren held firm, counting the days until she would be free.

Sadly, that day would never come. By March 7, 2021, Lauren was dead.

When Reggie’s case finally went to trial two years later, prosecutors laid out a damning case against him, painting a picture of a relationship marked by abuse and control. When faced with the reality of losing Lauren and her financial support, Reggie had attacked, taking back control the only way he knew how.

Lauren’s autopsy revealed that she had suffered blunt force trauma to the back of her head as well as to her face, neck, and hands, “consistent with being hit with a heavy object.” There was also evidence that she had been asphyxiated with a piece of fabric shoved down her throat. Prosecutors argued that Reggie had slipped into Lauren’s room while she slept, picked up a marble statue from the shelf, and hit her on the back of the head. Lauren woke up and began to fight back, but Reggie continued to beat her until she couldn’t fight anymore. He took a pillowcase and forced it into her mouth, suffocating her.

Once he was sure Lauren was dead, Reggie staged a break-in, turning over furniture and dumping out dresser drawers. He poured bleach on Lauren’s body to cover up any evidence, then cleaned himself up and went to church to set up his alibi. When he returned hours later, he dialed 911 and played the part of the grieving husband.

But when investigators had arrived at the scene, they noticed that there was blood caked on Reggie’s hands, not consistent with his story. They also discovered that Lauren’s Apple watch had been smashed and ripped apart in the struggle. It had stopped recording her health data in the middle of the night at a time when Reggie claimed he was asleep upstairs. Reggie’s own devices had been turned off as well from 2:00am to 11:00am, a convenient window of time for someone wanting to cover their tracks.

In the end, a jury found Reginald Dunlap, Jr., guilty of the murder of Lauren Charles. He was sentenced to life in prison. At the sentencing, Lauren’s friends and family members filled the gallery, ready to share their statements. Joining them was Reggie’s college girlfriend who told the court about the abuse and violence she had suffered during their time together. She had managed to escape with her life, but just barely. At the time, she was too ashamed to report it, but when she learned of Lauren’s death, she knew she had to come forward. She told the court, “Although it was over 20 years ago, Reggie was a liar, a cheater, and a gaslighter even then. I realize now how lucky I am to be alive. Unfortunately and so very tragically, [Lauren’s] kindness to this dangerous man who did not deserve her took [her] away from her family, friends, and colleagues who loved her.”

After the sentencing, Lauren’s father John spoke to the press about his daughter’s legacy. “Lauren is living within us, she’s still with us. She has an essence that will never disappear. The physical taking of her life was an incident that galvanized love and I guess a commitment to us sharing her light with others.”

Lauren was just weeks away from freedom when her life was taken from her in a violent act of rage. In the years since her death, her family has thrown themselves into advocacy work, making it their mission to protect other women from this same fate. John Charles told WDSU, “From this evil, something good has to happen. I don’t want it to be a cautionary tale. I want it to be a revelation.”

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse, please contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788 for free and confidential help. You deserve to be safe.