investigators may have followed the initial theory of this crime, that, in fact, it was a burglary. reporter: and that there was a woman involved in the burglary? that there was a woman involved in the burglary. looking back now in hindsight, it was an opportunity that may have slipped through our hands as an organization. reporter: but 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 point blank 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 investigation in 1986. she was executed. reporter: in other words, someone had wanted sherri rasmussen dead. so now nutall dug deeper through the file looking for names, female names. we had five women that would have had access to sherri and
he just said it s a match. a person no one would have ever suspected of murder. we were going to end this. was suddenly suspect number one. perfect murder. almost. hello. welcome to dateline she was. a new bride married just three months and she was found murdered. what happened to her remained a mystery for decades because police us thatfo theft mistaken killed during a break-in gone bad. they discovered it wasn t a murderd but a suspect whose trl led right to their own front door. here is josh mankiewicz with p the smoking gun. february 1st, 2009, the detective arrived before dawn at
would appear she is trying to go out the door or make it to that alarm box where there is a panic button. at that point, we believe that sherri went down in this foy area due to the fact that you could see marks in this, as well as broken fingernails from her hands. reporter: so there is a tremendous fight going on? well, yes. the killer is actually dragging her back into this area and then the killeris takes a vase and hs her in the head with it, knocking herwi out, then grabs blanket, muzzles the gun and does a t contact shot into the victim. reporter: so that is an accusation? that would be correct. reporter: as for a motive? it seemed to be in plain sight. just a few feet from sherri s body. they found vcr and a disk player stacked one on top of the other in the frontn door. reporter: as if somebody was about to steal them? yeah, giving the indication this was a burglary or home invasion gone wrong. reporter: sherri s purse was