lazarus. reporter: that was the other name on the short list of suspects. nut consist all pressed ruetten for more on their relationship which had started when they were both students at ucla. they dated on and off until john got engaged to sherri. even though you re convinces the relationship that john had with stephanie lazarus overlapped with the relationship he had with his wife? we know from john that there was at least on 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. reporter: was sherri s killer a scorned lover or a jealous coworker? we had two women on the list who, in our opinion, had a motive to harm her. reporter: debra, the nurse, and stephanie lazarus? correct. reporter: a few weeks later
the los angeles police department s van nuys station. i was tired. i was tired. he had hosted a super bowl party the night before and the beer had flowed freely. that seemed to be a good day to have a cup of coffee and caught up on my reading. a couple of aspirin? maybe. reporter: he reached for a file sitting on his desk for months.hi of sherri rasmussen shot to death in her condo a few miles prosecute where he worked. up with of the worst most horrific crimet scenes i ve se is this guy met a horrible ending. reporter: just asrr troublin sherri rasmussen was murdered a generation ago, february 1986, meaning the odds of catching her killer weref slim to none. memories fade. evidence has to be relocated.
missing, as with her new bmw, an engagement gift from john. there was noge sign of the murd weapon t but detectives did recover two 38 caliber slugs and something else that caught the detective s tension. on the inside of sherri err left arm then found a bite mark and she swabbed that for a is a line va that could obtain to the killer. reporter: saliva that contained dna for anyone who bit sherri. remember, this was 1986, years before dna technology testing could arrive which could link a suspect to a w sample like this one so back then the dna wasn t much nahelp. but the swab was carefully packaged c and bundled with allf the other evidence. for now, detectives didn t have much elseec to work with. no eyewitnesses. no usable fingerprints. no cleare motive, except for
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