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.
sherri s friends and family and it became clear to them that stephanie lazarus had the means, the motive, the opportunity to kill sherri rasmussen. she seemed obsessed with john and jealous of his new wife. she was the woman with the scary eyes, who d been stalking sherri. sherri s purse and all of its contents stolen during the crime were recovered soon after the murder, except for one item inside. the only thing to this day that was never recovered was john and sherri s marriage certificate. after three months of intense secretive investigation, nuttall s team needed one last piece of evidence that would either clear detective lazarus or incriminate her. we needed a sample of her dna. our divisionss were not cut out for undercover surveillance work. so, nuttall finally brought
relationship with stephanie lazarus. stephanie lazarus that was the other name on the short list of suspects. nuttall pressed ruetten for more on their relationship which had started when they were both students at u.c.l.a.. they dated on and off until john got engaged to sherri. but even then. even though you re convinced 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. 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. debra, the nurse, and stephanie lazarus? correct. a few weeks later, cops in
that s why comcast works around the clock constantly improving america s largest gig-speed broadband network. and just doubled the capacity here. how do things look on your end? -perfect! welcome back. there was a because we re building a better network every single day. lot at stake at the murder trial of lapd detective stephanie lazarus who stood accused of murdering sherri rasmussen. the prosecution believed the dna evidence was their smoking gun. but the defense said it was tainted. what would the jury believe? here is josh mankiewicz with the conclusion of the smoking gun . it took 26 years to get here. a generation of false leads, missed opportunities. a family s frustration. a police department s nightmare. february 6th, 2012. the people
bittersweet day. a 23-year-old cold case they believed had finally been cracked, but the prime suspect worked right beside them. for the rasmussen family, stephanie s arrest brought back their memory of the original lapd. i think she was a police officer, so they figured they would cover this one up. the family hired a prominent l.a. attorney john taylor, who filed a lawsuit against detective lazarus and also the lapd, claiming the department deliberately ignored clues that pointed to a fellow officer. the earlier missteps of lapd weren t missteps. they were intentional conduct, intentional ignoring of