work after hours. we would never leave a paper trail of what we were doing. they even gave lazarus a code name number 5. and contrary to police procedure, they decided not to tell lapd headquarters that their new suspect was a fellow detective. you re doing that to protect her or to protect your investigation from her? dual purpose. it would protect the integrity of the investigation, and if she was not involved, then nobody would ever know about it. four cops knowingly skirted department rules to investigate one of their own. it was a difficult phase of her careers. she was one of us. she worked our unit. had worked side-by-side with the people around us. but nuttall and his three fellow detectives didn t waiver. they methodically built a case by exhaustingly reviewing the original files and interviewing sherri s friends and family. it became clear to them that stephanie
up a sample of her trash which contained dna. it was sent to the crime lab in 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. nuttall 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 nuttall? right. he said that they were opening the investigation. nels was upset with me. it was like, detective, where have you been for the last two decades. now nels rasmussen explained it all. how he told detectives back in 1986 that someone was stalking his daughter, sherri. a woman with crazy eyes. the ex-girlfriend of sherri s
her assignments also included project d. a. r. e., a drug prevention program aimed at kids. she was twice named detective of the year. later, she worked at internal affairs investigating other officers accused of wrongdoing or corruption, and then promoted to the lapd s art theft unit. her personal life was good, too. in 1996, lazarus got married to another lapd detective. together, they adopted a baby daughter. life both at home and on the job never seemed better. she was a happy person. she loved what she did for work. she loved her husband. loved their life. but in 2009, this high achieving cop became the focus of a homicide investigation. jim nuttall and his team of three detectives had to be mindful that lazarus had many friends on the force. her husband worked at the same station as nuttall did. we were going to work behind closed doors. we were going to
northern california tracked down debra and secretly scooped up a sample of her trash which contained dna. it was sent to the crime lab in 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. nuttall 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 nuttall? right. he said that they were opening the investigation. nels was upset with me. it was like, detective, where have you been for the last two decades. now nels rasmussen explained it all. how he told detectives back in 1986 that someone was stalking his daughter, sherri.
perhaps at least some of them may have had a motive to harm her. three of them we eliminated almost immediately for insufficient motive. but there were still two names left. one of them was a coworker. a woman named debra that worked with sherri rasmussen in the glendale hospital. this person of interest was later placed by sherri rasmussen in an official capacity and problems followed almost immediately after that. so, there was bad blood between them? there was a motive. debra had moved to northern california. nuttall asked local law enforcement to watch her and secretly try to snag a sample of her dna for comparison testing. in the meantime, nuttall learned more about the second woman. he contacted john ruetten, sherri s former husband and now remarried and living in san diego. john involved he had been involved in a dating