name had come up but not as a suspect. no notes of any conversation with her? no paper trail. reporter: she seemed to be someone above suspicion. stephanie eileen lazarus had grown up in southern, california, a tom boy of sorts and loved sports. she attended ucla where she played basketball p.m. it was during her college days that she met and dated john ruetten, long before he and sherri got married. after graduating in 1982, lazarus surprised her family by joining the lapd. this when only a handful of women entered the force. i don t think i knew that she was applying. reporter: stephanie s brother steven. i was very proud of steph. i thought it was a cool thing. reporter: stephanie lazarus quickly rose through the ranks of lapd from patrol officer to detective and she was popular, friendly, and well-regarded. her assignments also included project d.a.r.e., a drug
they could close the deal by somehow secretly obtaining lazarus dna. she was tailed for days, as undercover cops waited for her to leave some small piece of herself behind. finally at a retail store, it happened. lazarus ordered a soft drink and drank it. a traipse of her saliva was on the straw which she then tossed in the trash. it was more than enough for testing. two dna samples separated by two decades. 48 hours later, jim nutall got call from his supervisor. it was real simple. he just said, it s a match. reporter: good feeling, bad feeling? surreal. that moment, that call, never forget it. reporter: but stephanie lazarus was still free and no klee after 23 years her department was on her tail for murder.
perhaps at least some of them may have had a motive to harm her. three of them we eliminated almost immediately for insufficient motive. reporter: but there were still two names left. one of them was a coworker. a woman named debra that worked with sherri rasmussen in the hospital. this person of interest was later placed by sherri rasmussen in an official capacity and problems followed almost immediately after that. reporter: so there was bad blood wean them? there was a motive. reporter: debra had moved to northern california. nutall asked local law enforcement to watch her and secretly try to snag a sample of her dna for comparison testing. in the meantime, nutall learned more about the second woman. he contacted john ruetten, sherri s former husband and now living in san diego. john involved he had been involved in a dating relationship with stephanie
reporter: a composite sketch was released. the dna connected at the crime scene was useless, at least right now. police collected it any way. why? at crime scenes if you know is there possible evidence on anything you re not going to leave it behind so it was great forethought on their behalf actually to recover it. reporter: detectives scoured the condo and the entire complex. the only thing apparently stolen was from the garage, sherri s car, and that was recovered just a mile away from the crime scene with the keys still in it. the only other thing missing, sherri and her husband s marriage license. it seemed an odd thing to steal. cash, computers, and jewelry were not touched. but that wasn t the only thing that struck sherri s family and colleagues as strange. crime was especially violent for
lazarus. reporter: that was the other name on the short list of suspects. nut consist all pressed ruetten for more on their relationship which had started when they were both students at ucla. they dated on and off until john got engaged to sherri. even though you re convinces the relationship that john had with stephanie lazarus overlapped with the relationship he had with his wife? we know from john that there was at least on one occasion where he was engaged that he was intimate with stephanie lazarus. there was a love triangle and stephanie lazarus had deep feelings for john ruetten and may have had a motive to harm sherri rasmussen. reporter: was sherri s killer a scorned lover or a jealous coworker? we had two women on the list who, in our opinion, had a motive to harm her. reporter: debra, the nurse, and stephanie lazarus? correct. reporter: a few weeks later