least some of them may have had a motive to harm her. three of them we eliminated for insufficient motive. reporter: two names were left. one was a co-worker. a woman named debra, she was replaced by sherry rasmussen in an official capacity and problems followed after that. reporter: there was bad blood between them. there was a motive. debra moved to northern california and he asked law enforcement to watch her and secretly try to snag a sample of dna for testing. he learned about the second woman. he contacted sherry a s sherry s former husband and stephanie lazarus, that was the other name still on the short list of suspects.
folks were right. and i apologize that it took us over two decades to give them that closure. reporter: you feel better? the most gratifying moment of my career. i was extremely happy. i said, i feel like i knew it all along. back in l.a., the lazarus family also got the news. well, it was numbing. i am guessing one of the things you said or thought was, they got it wrong somehow, this is a mistake. absolutely. some error was made. it will be cleared up by the end of the day. right. didn t happen. didn t happen. stephanie lazarus did not go home that day after her arrest. bail was set at $10 million. much higher a than most murder cases. the judge considered her a flight risk. citing the strong case against her. and for the l.a.p.d., it was a bitter sweet day.
he pressed for more on their relationship which had started when they were students at ucla, they dated on and off until john got engaged to sherry and even then you are convinced that the relationship that john had with stephanie lazarus overlapped with his wife. we know he was engaged and he was intimate with stephanie lazarus, there was a love triangle and stephanie lazarus had deep feelings for john rutten and may have had a motive to harm sherry rasmussen. reporter: was sherry s killer a scorned lover or a jealous co-worker. we had two women on the list that had a motive. debra the nurse and stephanie lazarus. correct. a few weeks later, cops tracked down debra and secretly
rasmussen had waited longer than that. did you feel confident? as confident as you can feel with a jury. you never know what they will do. we the jury in the above entitled action, find stephanie eline lazarus guilty of the murder of sherry rasmussen and we find it was of the murder of the first degree. the day the rasmussen family thought would never come finally did, as their attorney explained. the family is overwhelmingly relieved that again, their suspicions and today s verdict reflects and confirms the identity of the person who killed their daughter, and the intent with which she did it. it s a tremendous relief. reporter: for the lazarus family, their wife, daughter, sister, and once decorated detective was now a convicted killer. we really did not expect this
the prime of her career. reporter: althea kennedy was sherry s boss at the hospital and had originally hired her. we couldn t believe it, first of all. it was like how could someone do this? people crying, people upset. i mean the hospital was like a tomb, you know, so the loss was really palpable sn. reporter: sherry had just been married three months earlier. were sherry and john happily married? unusually so. reporter: just months after the wedding, john found sherry sprawled dead on the floor of their home. he may seem a likely suspect, but john was clearly almost immediately t the l.a.p.d. focused instead on evidence that this was aburg la hadry that turned violent. this was no accident. reporter: yolanda is a