- [Male Narrator] What is up EWU crew,
today we are covering the creepy case
of Sherri Rasmussen.
Filled with heartbreak and betrayal,
toxic jealousy, and years of pain for friends
and family, the case of Sherri Rasmussen
is an unfortunate, brutal crime of passion.
Sherri Rasmussen was a young, accomplished newlywed
living in Los Angeles with her husband, John Rutten.
Having entered college
at only the age of 16,
Sherri was already the director of nursing
at Glendale Adventist Medical Center by her mid 20s.
As a beautiful and lively young woman,
friends and family described Sherri
as having the ability to be the sunshine in the room
as she could cheer up anyone she was around.
Others also admit that John Rutten was crazy about her
and that she was the kinda person John wanted to be,
almost like a personification of how he saw himself
in his best moments.
She apparently fell just as hard for him
as their connection was immediate
and untroubled in the spring of 1984.
They were quickly married by November of 1985.
However, their fast-paced, loving relationship
never had a chance to make it
even half a year into marriage.
On the morning of February 14th, 1986,
Rutten left the couple's condominium
on Balboa Boulevard to head to work
at his new job with a local engineering company.
Rasmussen was scheduled to give a motivational speech
at work that day but told her husband
that she might call in sick
to avoid going through with it,
using a back injury she had gotten during aerobics
the day before as an excuse.
John encouraged her to just go in
and get the class over with
but Sherri was still undecided and remained
under the covers when he walked at the door
at around 7:20 a.m.
Around 9:45 a.m., a neighbor noticed
that the Rutten's garage door was open
but strangely, no car was visible.
Approximately 15 minutes later,
John Rutten made the first of several unanswered calls home
over the course of the day.
At first, he assumed Sherri had decided to go in
and teach the class after all
and he didn't think much about it.
However, after calling her secretary
who had not seen her come in for the day,
John was a bit more concerned
as to why Sherri was not picking up
and their answering machine had not been turned on
if she had chosen to leave.
Maybe she had simply forgotten
and left the house in a hurry.
However, Rasmussen's sister also called without answer.
A maid cleaning a nearby unit later claimed
that she heard something that sounded
like two people fighting and then something falling
at around 12:30 p.m.
When Rutten returned home in the evening,
he found the garage door open
and broken glass scattered across the driveway.
In addition, he discovered that the BMW
that he bought Rasmussen as an engagement gift was missing.
Because of Rasmussen's morning plans,
he found it strange that she would've later gone out
without letting him know.
Just inside the home of the newlyweds,
Rutten tragically discovered Rasmussen lying motionless
on the living room floor.
She had been shot three times.
There were signs of a struggle
as furniture everywhere had been overturned
and a porcelain vase
had apparently been broken over Rasmussen's head
prior to the shooting.
John was shocked and terrified
by a bloody hand print on the wall
next to the burglar alarm's panic button.
An eerie cry for help that tragically went unanswered.
Sherri also had defensive wounds
and a bruise on her face
that appeared to have been inflicted
by the muzzle of a gun.
The fatal shots had been fired through a quilt,
apparently to muffle the sound.
John immediately called police
and a in-depth forensic investigation sprang into action.
The investigating criminalists observed a bite
on Rasmussen's arm and took a crucial swab
from the site of the injury.
LAPD detectives investigating the case quickly concluded
that Rasmussen had been surprised
and killed by a burglar.
Rasmussen's attire, a bathrobe, nightgown,
and underwear suggested
that she had not been expectin' any visitors.
Although the maid
in the neighboring unit reported hearing screaming
and fighting earlier in the day,
she did not recall hearing any gunshots.
She thought the whole event had been a domestic dispute
and did not call the police.
Officers concluded that the perpetrator
had been in the process of taking electronic equipment
when Rasmussen came upon them,
and, as a result, jewelry had been left behind
and the vehicle taken as a getaway.
The abandoned BMW was recovered a week later
but unfortunately, it yielded no new evidence.
Strangely, the only other thing that appeared
to have been taken from the home
was the couple's marriage license.
John Rutten was quickly ruled out
as a suspect in his wife's murder
as he had a solid alibi and no easily-found motive.
Having only been married to Sherri
for a few short months,
Rutten heavily grieved to the extent
of quitting his job
and moving out of Los Angeles altogether
in an attempt to start over.
The further detectives began digging
into Sherri Rasmussen's personal life,
it quickly became apparent
that she had a very close relationship
with her father, Nels Rasmussen.
Nels ended up becoming an integral part
of helping solve this 23-year-old cold case
to finally gain justice for his daughter.
Nels, in particular, was unconvinced that Sherri,
who had been six feet tall and in good physical shape,
had been the victim of a burglary gone wrong.
It would've been a struggle for anyone to subdue her
in close quarters.
Detectives had informed the grieving father at one point
that the events may have lasted an hour and a half,
an unusually time for burglars primarily after items
of value in the home.
Additionally, whoever shot his daughter
had fired directly into her chest at close range
and taken the trouble to muffle the shot
with the quilt, suggesting that the killing was deliberate
and not the accidental byproduct of a struggle.
Nels Rasmussen immediately turned police
onto the suspect he believed could be behind
this sudden, violent crime against his daughter.
Remembering a strange conversation Sherri had
with an old girlfriend of John's,
Nels brought up the name Stephanie Lazarus.
A detective of the LAPD in her mid 20s.
Prior to Sherri and John's marriage
while John was an undergraduate
at the University of California,
he occasionally dated Stephanie Lazarus.
John claims that their relationship
was nothing more than friends with benefits
but Stephanie might've felt otherwise.
John reported that Lazarus would often steal his clothes
when he showered and take photos of him naked
while he slept.
Although Rutten never considered their relationship
to be anything more than necking and fooling around,
Lazarus was shattered when she learned
of Rutten's budding relationship
with the young Sherri Rasmussen.
At one point, Lazarus threw Rutten a surprise party
on his 25th birthday,
unaware that he had been dating other women
or that he had developed
a serious relationship with Rasmussen.
When she learned he was seriously involved with Rasmussen
in August of 1985, she wrote Rutten's mother
and said, "I'm truly in love with John
"and the past year has really torn me up.
"I wish it didn't end the way it did
"and I don't think I'll ever understand his decision."
- [Female Narrator] During their engagement,
John admitted to hooking up with Lazarus one last time
after she called him, distraught,
over learning about his engagement.
John recalled this encounter in court,
full of tears and regret.
He also admitted that he had come clean to Rasmussen
about the encounter and begged her not to call it quits
as all he wanted in life was to become her husband.
Sherri had agreed.
Still during their engagement,
Lazarus later brought her skis
to the apartment Rutten shared with Rasmussen
and asked him to wax them
and despite Rasmussen's objections, he complied.
Rasmussen felt this was a little strange
since Lazarus was dressed in flattering workout clothes.
After Lazarus left, Sherri asked John if his relationship
with her was truly over.
John convinced her the two were just friends.
A few days later, Lazarus returned to pick up
the waxed skis in uniform and armed
after John had left for work.
Understandably, Sherri was shaken by these visits
and pleaded with her fiance to tell Lazarus
to stop coming by their apartment.
However, John replied by saying
there was not a lot he could do about the situation
and that she should simply try not to think about it.
Nels Rasmussen later stated to police
that his daughter had confided in him
when Lazarus even visited her at her office
to tell her that things were not over
between her and John.
Lazarus supposedly told Sherri,
"If I can't have John, no one else will."
And Sherri told her father
that the woman continued to stalk her
on the street.
However, since no other solid evidence
of this encounter existed,
the word of Sherri's father was not enough
to lead to any arrests or investigation
into the LAPD officer.
Nels claimed that his daughter
had not told John about the intense degree
to which Lazarus approached her at work
because she was more concerned
with the status of their relationship
than any possible threat to her life.
Unfortunately for Nels, this further discredited
the supposed interaction.
Although Nels confided in police
and constantly questioned why Lazarus
was not under question for the murder of his daughter,
investigators seemed to only consider two possibilities,
that John had killed his wife
in a domestic dispute or that Sherri
had been surprised by a couple of burglars
who panicked and killed her.
Although neither supposed solution
could be supported by any evidence from the scene.
Could there have also been a degree
of institutional bias at work
within the investigators of the case?
Perhaps police were afraid to look
into one of their own and admit the dark truth
of a life taken far too soon.
According to further investigations,
the case records suggest that one or more persons
during the initial investigation
and continuing through the next 10 years actively conspired
to hide evidence that might have proven Lazarus' guilt.
For starters, nearly all of the conversations
and records of Nels' discussions with police
about the stranger interactions
and behavior of Lazarus
were mysteriously missing.
There are multiple audio recordings of interviews
from the first round of interrogations
but all conversations that possibly mentioned Lazarus
were nowhere to be found.
The lead investigator, Lyle Mayer,
later suspected that perhaps the perpetrator was female
since the occurrence of bite marks
is not typical for male aggressors.
For years, no arrests were ever made.
The evidence of Sherri Rasmussen's murder
was packed away in commercial storage.
However, Nels and his wife never gave up hope.
Nels continuously called the LAPD,
asking if they had looked into the lady cop yet.
When he first learned of technology
for new, advanced DNA testing as the years pressed on,
Nels even offered to pay for the tests himself
for the blood, hair, and bite-mark samples
form the scene.
He was told that these tests would do him no good
without a suspect but he was desperate
to convince police that he did have a suspect.
However, as with other possible leads
in this heart-wrenching case,
all of the evidence was mysteriously signed out
of storage and misplaced.
In 1989, John was reunited with Stephanie Lazarus
on a scuba trip to Hawaii.
Before he met her there,
he told investigators he had called Mayer
to make sure no evidence had ever linked her
to Sherri's murder.
It seems odd that the possibility
of what he had previously
so strongly rejected remained present in his mind.
As he would recall later, Mayer assured him
there were no suspicions about Lazarus whatsoever.
In January of 2005,
criminalist Jennifer Francis reopened the case.
She found it odd that the evidence had been misplaced
and she knew that evidence recovered from the victim's body
would be held for a time in the coroner's freezer
and, at some point, would be gathered up
and stored under the file number.
What if the swab hadn't made it
from the freezer to the file?
Francis called the coroner's office.
The swab was not on file
so they searched the freezers by hand.
They managed to recover the cotton swab
in a damp manila envelope
with Rasmussen still written on the front.
They could now retest the DNA collected on the scene.
It was then that it was determined
that the killer had definitely been female
but they still did not have a suspect that matched.
However, detectives finally decided
the burglary theory was invalid
and they would have to start from the beginning.
Investigators soon followed one other female lead
of a coworker that had reported disputes with Sherri
but upon discreet DNA testing, the suspect was eliminated.
Finally, the LAPD was focusing on one of their own
as the final prime suspect, Stephanie Lazarus.
Detectives theorize from their own experience
about how an LAPD officer
would go about committing a murder.
They presumed that it would be better to commit a crime
on a day off and departmental records show
that Lazarus had indeed been off
the day Sherri Rasmussen was killed.
- I mean, what's this all about?
I mean.
- [Officer] Well, lemme ask you this.
What ended the relationship between you and John?
- You know, I don't, it was kind of a weird relationship.
I mean, we dated.
I can't say that he was my boyfriend.
I don't know that he would consider me his girlfriend.
We just, we dated, we did things.
I played sports in college, he played basketball.
His brother played basketball.
We just, you know, it just didn't work out.
- [Female Narrator] It was time
to get a DNA sample from Lazarus.
Detectives decided to do it under the radar
to avoid tainting her with suspicion
if the lab tests cleared her.
A special operations team staked out Lazarus
and her adopted daughter on a trip to Costco
and after they had snacked at a table outside the store,
the team retrieved a cup and straw Lazarus had used.
Two days later, the lab confirmed
that the mouth on that straw was the same mouth
that had bitten Sherri Rasmussen's forearm
in a violent struggle 23 years ago.
- [Officer] Had you ever met his wife?
- I may have.
- [Officer] Do you know,
do you remember her name or anything or?
Or what she did for a living or where she worked
or anything about her?
- Well I think she, I'm gonna say I think she was a nurse.
I mean, I can't even remember how he said he met her.
I mean, you know, it's been so long ago.
- [Officer] Well let me ask you,
did you go to their wedding, you know?
- No, I didn't go to their wedding.
No, I did not go to their wedding.
I couldn't even tell you what year he got married.
I mean, you know, it's been a million years ago.
- [Female Narrator] Lost in a fit of rage targeted
at her ex-boyfriend's fiance,
Stephanie Lazarus had silently walked
into the couple's home back in 1986
and murdered Sherri Rasmussen.
- Yeah, I mean, I don't, you know.
Again, I mean, what?
You know, I don't understand why you're talkin'
about some guy I dated a million years ago.
- [Officer] Well, do you know what happened to his wife?
- Yeah, I know she got killed.
- [Officer] What did you hear about that?
- Like, I saw a poster at work.
I'm sure I spoke to him about it.
I think I spoke to another friend of his about it.
- [Officer] And how did you first learn about that?
- Jeez.
- [Female Narrator] She then expertly staged the scene
to look like a robbery and fled from all accusations
for 23 years.
- [Officer] If I asked you for a DNA swab,
would you be willing to give us one?
- Maybe, 'cause now...
- [Officer] Just because now-
- Now I'm thinkin' I probably need to talk to a lawyer.
- [Female Narrator] In March, 2012, Stephanie Lazarus
was convicted of the murder of Sherri Rasmussen.
She was sentenced to 27 years in prison.
- This is insane.
- [Officer] Okay.
- [Female Narrator] The Rasmussens have sued
both Lazarus personally and the LAPD
but a preliminary ruling asserted
that the department is immune to lawsuits of this type.
The missing evidence from the case file
means that a piece of the mystery remains unsolved.
How many officers were truly involved
and covering for murder committed by one of their own.
- [Officer] Okay, okay.
- This is crazy.
- [Officer] Okay.
- This is, I'm like in shock.
I'm totally in shock.
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