look at an old lead. he just said it s a match a person no one would hav 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 marrie just three months, then she wa found murdered what happened to her remained mystery for decades partly because police told us the thief must have killed her during a break-in gone bad they discovered it wasn t murder, but a suspect whos trail right to their own front door here is josh mankiewicz with the smoking gun. february 1st, 2009. the detective arrived before dawn at the los angeles police department s van nuys station. i was tired i was tired. he had hosted a super bow party the night before and the beer had flowed freely that seemed to be a good da to have a cup of coffee an caught up on my reading. a couple of aspirin maybe he reached for a file sitting on his desk for months the file of sherri rasmu
lapd. here is josh mankiewic with more of the smoking gun. for two decades, the lapd had but one narrative fo sherri rasmussen s murder. tha she was killed by a botche burglary. as science rewrote the script, this cold case suddenly was almost too hot to handle. the prime suspect was lapd detective stephanie lazarus. but as jim nuttal went through the murder book he found almost nothing on lazarus, even though she was the ex-girlfriend of the husband of sherri rasmussen. there was only one notation in the criminology in 1986. a detective had written stephani lazarus, p. o., police officer as if her name had come up, bu not as a suspect. no notes o any conversation with her? no paper trail. she seemed to be someon above suspicion. stephanie ilene lazarus had grown up i southern, california, a tomboy of sorts and loved sports. she attended u.c.l.a. where sh played basketball. it wa during her college days that
with a jury. you never kno what a jury is going to do we the jury, in the above entitled action, find stephani ilene lazarus guilty of th crime of murder of sherr rasmussen. we further find the murder was of the first-degree the day the rasmussen famil thought would never come finally did. as their attorney john taylor explained the family is overwhelmingl relieved that, again, thei suspicions and today s verdict reflects and confirms th identity of the person who killed their daughter, and the intent with which she did it it s a tremendous relief for the lazarus family, their wife, daughter, sister and once decorated detective was now a convicted killer we really did not expec
may have had a motive to har her. three of them w eliminated almost immediatel for insufficient motive. but there were still tw names left. one of them was coworker a woman named debra tha worked with sherri rasmussen i the glendale hospital. thi person of interest was later placed by sherri rasmussen i 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 loca law enforcement to watch her and secretly try to snag a sample of her dna fo comparison testing. in the meantime, nuttall learned more about the second woman. he contacted john ruetten sherri s former husband and no remarried and living in sa diego. john involved he had been involved in a dating relationship with stephani lazarus. stephanie lazarus that was the other name on the shor list of suspects. nuttal
pressed ruetten for more o their relationship which had started when they were bot students at u.c.l.a.. they dated on and off until john go engaged to sherri. but eve then.. even though you re convince the relationship that john had with stephanie lazarus overlapped with th relationship he had with his wife we know from john that ther was at least on one occasion where he was engaged that he was intimate with stephani lazarus. there was a lov triangle and stephanie lazarus had deep feelings for john ruetten, and may have had motive to harm sherr rasmussen. was sherri s killer a scorned lover or a jealous coworker we had two women on the lis who, in our opinion, had a motive to harm her debra, the nurse, and stephanie lazarus? correct a few weeks later, cops i northern california tracke down debra and secretly scoope up a sample of her trash which contained dna. it was sent t