stories. joe biden leads the pack in a new des moines register poll of likely caucusgoers in the first of the nation 2020 presidential contest. he has 24% followed by bernie sanders at 16, elizabeth warren at 15 and pete buttigieg at 14. the new york times reports that president trump s deal to avert taxes consists largely of actions mexico had already promised to take in prior discussions with u.s. officials. now back to dateline. welcome back, i m natalie morales. sherri rasmussen had been murdered in los angeles back in the 1980s. from the outset, her parents told investigators about several run-ins sherri had with her husband s ex. now decades later, a cold case detective was focusing his attention on that very same woman who also happened to be a member of the lapd.
lazarus didn t realize she was going recorded by an undercover camera. i don t know if you know pmy partner hi. hi, you guys. that s when detectives revealed that this conversation wasn t about art. do you know john ruetten? john ruetten? john ruetten? you said you dated john, how long did you guys date? i mean are you guys is this something i mean, you said i was going to interview somebody about art detective lazarus seemed uncomfortable and vague in her answers, especially when detectives asked about sherri rasmussen. you know, i may have talked to her. i you know we mentioned a hospital maybe. you may have talked to her at a hospital? yeah. yeah, i may have you know, i m thinking back now, you guys are bringing up all these old memories. detectives turned up the
sherri never mentioned the woman s name to her parents. instead, she told them not to worry. she told me, i want to see if i can t work this out myself. that conversation happened during a dinner celebrating sherri s 29th birthday. afterward, her parents took sherri to the airport. as she walked away, she turned and gave me a big smile. and i ve relived that smile for years. less than three weeks later, sherri rasmussen lay dead. the rasmussens insist that early in the investigation they told the lead lapd detective about sherri s troubling encounters with john s ex-girlfriend. i told the detective not once but probably 15 to 20 times. and he said, the trouble with you is you ve been watching too much tv. coming up, old evidence offers new clues. the suspect made it appear to
on the relationship which started when they were students at ucla. they dated nouf until john got en on and off until john dated sh sherri, but then you believe the relationship overlapped with the relationship with his wife? we know from john that there was at least 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. was sherri s killer a scorned lover or a jealous co-worker? we had two women on the list who in our opinion had a motive to harm her. debra, the nurse correct. and stephanie lazarus? correct. a few weeks later, cops in 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
wrong. sherri s bmw was gone, a present from john. there was no sign of the weapon, but detectives recovered t two .38-caliber slugs. and there was something else that caught detectives attention. on the inside of her left arm they found a bite mark. a crime scene analyst at the time went ahead and swabbed the mark for any possible saliva that could possibly belong to the killer. saliva that would contain dna from whoever bit sherri. remember, this was 1986. years before dna testing technology would arrive which could link a suspect to a sample like this one. so back then the dna wasn t much help. but the swab was carefully packaged and bundled with all the other evidence. for now, detectives didn t have much else to work with. no eyewitnesses, no usable fingerprints, no clear motive except the theory that this was