Lauren Ise knew she was going to die.
The twenty-nine-year-old had broken up with her boyfriend of two years, Michael Marrapese, a month earlier. She was getting ready to move out of the apartment they once shared in Cranston’ s Edgewood neighborhood.
The relationship, like so many, started off benign. Ise and Marrapese met through a mutual friend and knew each other for a couple years before they started dating in March 2017. In the beginning, there were no red flags, according to Ise’ s mother, Cheryl Palazzo. Marrapese could be charming, she says, and never raised his voice or swore at her daughter. It was only later that Palazzo began to hear rumors about his behavior in a previous relationship. She shared her concerns with her daughter, but Lauren, she says, didn’ t want to believe her.
“ She always thought it was the one. I think she wanted the right one. She wanted to get married and have a family,” Palazzo says.
The relationship had its challenges. Both Ise and Marrapese had a history of drug use, and Ise— who grew up in Warwick and Cranston and graduated from Johnson & Wales University— was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. In March 2019, she had recently gotten clean and was looking forward to making a fresh start, according to Palazzo. She was working long hours for her stepfather’ s business managing concession stands and could afford the apartment on her own. Her mother had moved to Pennsylvania a year earlier, and Ise was preparing to join her. Palazzo planned to come up to Rhode Island that weekend to help her daughter pack for the move.
“ She was saving money, getting ready. And I think all of that, with him being unemployed, hanging around all day, his anger just built. And when she finally threw him out, I think that was the last nail,” Palazzo says.
Marrapese had a lengthy criminal history. Court records indicate he had at least a dozen previous charges, including breaking-and-entering and drug charges. After their breakup in February, he was arrested twice— once when he refused to allow her into the apartment, and again after an altercation with the landlord. He was held until March 5, when he was released on probation.
Lauren Ise was twenty-nine when her ex-boyfriend murdered her in 2019. Items kept by her mother record the details of her life. Palazzo says the murder had a significant impact on Lauren ' s brother, Ryan( pictured here in photos with Lauren), who lost his only sibling that day. RIGHT: Cheryl Palazzo tries to keep her daughter ' s memory alive.
102 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY I OCTOBER 2026