trail of what we were doing. they even gave lazarus a code name. number five. and contrary to police procedure they decided to not tell l.a.p.d. headquarters that their new suspect was a fellow detective. you are doing it 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 our careers. she was one of us. she worked our unit. had worked side-by-side with the people around us. but nutall and his three fellow detectives did not waiver. they methodically built a case by exhaustively reviewing the original files and interviewing sherry s friends and family. it became clear to them that stephanie lazarus had the means,
the motive, and the opportunity to kill sherry rasmussen. she seemed obsessed with john and jealous of his new wife, was she the same person with the scary eyes who was stalking sherry. to nutall, it seemed to add up. especially when he considered this. sherry s purse and all its contents stolen during the crime, were recovered soon after the murder. except for one item inside. the only thing that to this day was never recovered was john and sherry s marriage certificate. after three months of intense investigation, nutall s team needed one a last piece of evidence that would clear detective lazarus or incriminate her. we needed a sample of stephanie lazarus s dna, our investigators were not cut out for undercover surveillance work. so, nutall finally brought l.a.p.d. s internal affairs
with crazy eyes. the ex-girlfriend of sherry s husband. nell s had never known that the girlfriend s name was stephanie lazarus. but he did know something else about her . something very important. and by this time, detective nutall knew it too. he was very cautious with what he said, but he said that we would be hearing more from him. nutall had reason to be cautious, he learned that stephanie lazarus wore the same badge he did. you now have a los angeles police officer as a person of interest in a murder case. reporter: and you thought i have bitten off more than i can chew. we are not this kansas anymore. detectives go after one of their own. we would never leave a paper trail of what we were doing. she worked our unit. when dateline continues.
woman who also happened to be a member of the l.a.p.d. here s josh with more of the smoking gun . for two decades the l.a.p.d. had one narrative for sherry rasmussen s murder. she was randomly killed by two men in a botched burglary. now science had rewritten the script and the once cold case was suddenly too hot to handle. the prime suspect, a l.a.p.d. detective named stephanie lazarus. but as detective jim nutall went through the original murder book, he found nothing on lazarus, even though she was the ex-girlfriend of sherry s husband. no indication she was spoken to? no. just one notion in the chronology of 1986, somebody had
well, i m, i was, i m just saying you know, do i need to get a lawyer? are you aaccusing me? it came to an end that must have been as familiar as uncomfortable. i know you will have to do your job, and i have to contact somebody. that s fair. i know how this stuff works. and then stephanie lazarus was read the same words she herself had read to hundreds of suspects over the years. stephanie, do you know you have the right to remain silent, do you understand? yes. and for just a moment, you can see the handcuffs placed on her by her fellow officers. i m in shock, i m totally in shock. word of lazarus s arrest traveled fast to tucson, where detective nutall was standing by to deliver the news to the rasmussen family. tell me what you said. you were right folks, you