scooped up a sample of her trash that 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. reporter: that left one possible suspect, number five on the list. john rutten s ex-girlfriend, stephanie lazarus. he called the rasmussens. we came home and there was a message that there was a detective that wanted to talk to us, and i thought, oh, yeah, right. i thought it was another false hope. reporter: this is detective nutall. he said that they were opening the investigation. they were upset with me, it was like, detective, where have you been for the last two dec e decaddecade s. reporter: and now, nells rasmussen explained it all saying that someone was stalking his daughter sherry, a woman
here s josh mankowitz with more of the smoking gun. for two decades, the lapd had but one narrative for sherri rasmussen s murders she was randomly killed by two men during a botched burglary. now science had rewritten the script, and this once cold case was suddenly almost too hot to handle. the prime suspect, an lapd detectives named stephanie lazarus. but as detective jim nutall went back through the original murder book, he found almost nothing on lazarus even though she was the ex-girlfriend of sherri s husband. no indication she was ever spoken to? no. there was just one notation in the official chronology of the investigation from back in 1986. a detective had written, stephanie lazarus, p.o., police officer. as if her name had come up but not as a suspect.
know do i need get a lawyer if you re accusing me? minutes later it came to an end that must have as familiar as it was uncomfortable for all of them. i know. you guys have to do your job, and i guess i m going to have to contact somebody. that s fair. i mean i know how it works. then stephanie lazarus was read the same words she herself had read to hundreds of suspects over the years stephanie, you know you have the right to remain silent. do you understand? yes. for just a moment, you can see the handcuffs placed on her by her fellow officers. i m like, i m like in shock. i m totally in shock. word of lazarus 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 folks were right. and i apologize that it took us
nels 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 what he said, but he said that we d be hearing more from him. nutall had ample reason to be cautious. he d learned that stephanie lazarus wore the same badge he did. now have a los angeles police officer as a person of interest in a murder case. and you thought i ve bitten off more than i can chew? toto, we re not in kansas anymore. that changed everything. coming up a top-secret investigation as detectives go after one of their own. we would never leave a pap paper trail of what we were doing. she worked our unit. worked our . i had a heart problem.
kids. she was twice named detective of the year. later lazarus worked at internal affairs, investigating other officers accused of wrongdoing or corruption, and was then promoted to the lapd s art theft unit. her personal life was good, too. in 1996, lazarus got married to another lapd detective. together they adopted a baby daughter. life both at home and on the job never seemed better. she was a happy person. she loved when she did for work. she loved her husband, loved their life. but in 2009, this high high-achieving cop because the focus of a homicide investigation. jim nutall and detectives had to be mindful that lazarus had many friends on the force. her husband worked at the same station as nutall did. we were going to work behind closed. we would never leave a paper trail of what we were doing.