the initial theory of this crime that it was a burglary. and there was a woman involved in the burglary? that there was a woman involved in the burglary. in hindsight, it was an opportunity that may have slipped through our hands as an organization. now, nutall took a closer look at the crime scene photos and began to develop his own very different theory. remember, sherri rasmussen was shot at pointblank range after a violent struggle, and despite the stereo equipment stacked by the front door, very little was actually stolen. the suspect made it appear to look like a burglary. they staged it to mislead the initial investigation in 1986. she was executed. in other words, someone had wanted sherri rasmussen dead. now nutall dug deeper through the file looking for names, female names. we had five women that would have had access to sherri and perhaps at least some of them may have had a motive to harm her. three of them we eliminated
l.a. for analysis, and 72 hours later came an answer. she was not the donor of the dna profile from the bite. that left just one possible suspect number five on the list, john ruetten s ex-girlfriend, stephanie lazarus. nutall called the rasmussens. we came home, and there was a message on our phone from a detective that they wanted to talk to us. i thought, oh, yeah, right. i thought it was just another false hope. this is detective nutall? right. she said that they were opening the investigation. he was upset with me. it was sort of like, detective, where have you been for the last two decades? and now nels rasmussen explained it all, how he told detectives in 1986 that someone was talking his daughter, sherri. a woman with crazy eyes. the ex-girlfriend of sherri s husband.