A woman comes out of a Costco cafe carrying oily pizza on paper plates covered in silver foil and Pepsi soft drinks. Her daughter is beside her. The little girl is not quite three years old. They step into the courtyard seating area and sit at one of the red and white outdoor tables. About 20 feet away, a Latino man sits alone at a table beside a large trash bin. It is May 28, 2009 in Seamy Valley, California. The woman doesn't look at him. There is no reason she would. She eats with her daughter, going through napkin after napkin on the greasy pizza. The woman drinks from a wax coated cardboard cup through a plastic straw, taking sip after sip as she talks to her daughter. The little girl points and says something in the woman laughs. When the woman stands up with the cup still in her hand, there is a trash bin closer to her table. She walks right past it. She walks straight at the Latino man and for a second, he is certain she has spotted him. She takes one last pull on the straw and drops the cup in the trash bin beside his elbow and keeps walking, holding her daughter's hand. 10 seconds later, the man has the cup out of the trash. 15 seconds later, it is in a Manila envelope and the man is moving quickly through the Costco parking lot to his car. The Latino man at the table is a Los Angeles police officer from an undercover unit inside the LAPD where its people are not called detectives. They are called operators. He has been following this woman for more than a week. The woman with the little girl is Stephanie Lazarus. She is an LAPD who has been with the department for more than 26 years and now her own department is trying to find out whether she murdered Sherry Rasmussen. I'm Megan Kelly and this is MK Confidential. Everybody is talking about weight loss injections because the results can be so dramatic. They work by lowering blood sugar and reducing appetite. 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He has DNA from a bite mark on Sherry Rasmussen's arm and the DNA belongs to a woman. He asked John Rutton, Sherry's husband, whether there were any women in Sherry's life who had a problem with her and John gave him a name, Stephanie Lazarus. John told Nuttall that Stephanie joined the LAPD before he ever met Sherry. And as far as he knows, Stephanie still works for the LAPD. One of the other detectives Mark Martinez runs the name through the police directory. Bingo. Stephanie Lazarus is still on the job. She's an LAPD detective assigned to the art theft detail. None of the four detectives in that room has ever heard of her. So now they have a person of interest in a murder and she carries a badge. LAPD policy on that is not ambiguous. Any employee who learns of possible misconduct by another officer must report it immediately up the chain or two internal affairs. Stephanie Lazarus has friends in the department and Nuttall's team does not yet have her DNA. They do not know whether Stephanie had anything to do with Sherry's murder. So the four detectives make two agreements. They will follow the evidence wherever it goes and they will never say Stephanie Lazarus's name out loud or write it anywhere another officer might see it. Inside Van Aes homicide, Stephanie becomes number five. Their supervisor Rob Bubb takes it a step further. He creates a generic case number for any evidence they collect, one that has nothing to do with Sherry Rasmussen. Any LAPD detective can look up a case on the department's computers. If Stephanie Lazarus checks the Rasmussen file and sees new evidence being booked, she will know someone is working the case again. It works as well as possible they think. For four months, four detectives investigating murder that as far as the department can tell from its own computers, nobody is investigating. That includes even the Chief of Police Bill Bretton. By February 10, 2009, the detectives have a list of five women in Sherry's life they need to eliminate as possible suspects. Not because of motive, but because Sherry knew each of them well enough that she might open her front door for them. Number one is Sherry's mother Loretta. Number two is her sister Teresa. Three is her friend and former roommate Jane Goldberg. Number four is Deborah Putnam, a nurse who bitterly resented being passed over for a promotion by Sherry. Number five is Stephanie Lazarus. There is zero evidence of conflict between Sherry and her mother, her sister, or her closest friend, so the first three come off the board. That leaves Deborah Putnam and Stephanie Lazarus. The detectives take Deborah Putnam first. Sherry had promoted another nurse over Putnam who believed the job should have been hers. Putnam's boyfriend was the hospital's medical director and when he tried to intervene, Sherry held her ground. Afterward, Sherry started getting threatening phone calls. Jim Nudol finds Deborah Putnam living in Northern California and asks the local police to collect a DNA sample from her trash without telling her. On March 20th, police get one and FedEx it to Van Ayes homicide. On April 16th, criminalist Jennifer Francis calls with the result. Deborah Putnam is not a match. On April 23rd, Jennifer, who was the first to tell police they are looking for a woman, drives out to Van Ayes and the detectives give her a full briefing, including that the woman they are looking at is an LAPD detective. Nudol asks her for extraordinary discretion. That April, Nells and Loretta Rasmussen are in Washington State for their high school reunion. Old classmates keep asking them the same question. Have you heard anything on Sherry's case? They haven't. Back in February around Sherry's birthday and the anniversary of the murder, Loretta thought about calling the LAPD again. She decided it would do no good. And instead, she prayed. That same month, four detectives in Van Ayes had quietly reopened her daughter's murder. When Nells and Loretta get home to Tucson, there is a message waiting on their answering machine. Nells returns the call on April 28th. Jim Nudol later tells Dateline that Nells came into that first conversation carrying 23 years of frustration. Nells was upset with me and he was very animated. It was sort of like a detective where have you been for the last two decades. Nudol asks Nells what he thinks happened to his daughter. Nells tells him there were two problems in Sherry's life. There was a nurse and a doctor at the hospital and there was a woman connected to John. She was a police officer and she would not leave John and Sherry alone. Then Nells tells Nudol something else. He says he told the LAPD about all of this back in 1986. Two days later, on April 30th, Detective Mark Martinez runs Stephanie Lazarus through the state firearms database. She has purchased a total of five handguns, whether she has physical possession of them is a different matter. One of the guns is a Smith & Wesson Model 49, a 38 caliber revolver with a two-inch barrel, the kind of gun LAPD officers commonly carried as a backup weapon in the 1980s. Stephanie bought it on February 29th, 1984 from the gun shop at the police academy. On March 9th, 1986, she reported it stolen 13 days after Sherry Rasmussen was murdered. For 23 years, the information that Stephanie Lazarus had reported her 38 revolver stolen shortly after Sherry was killed with 38 caliber bullets sat in a state database any LAPD detective could search. So far as anyone can tell, no one working Sherry's case ever looked. On May 2nd, Nudol emails criminalist Jennifer Francis, quote, "Candidate number 5 reported 30-eight caliber handguns stolen in San
monica within days of the 187, a 187 is a murder. The next problem, DNA, they need Stephanie's and they need to get it without letting her know they are looking at her. But first, they have to find her. The address on her LAPD emergency contact forum belongs to her mother. Detective Rob Bub searches other databases and comes up with three more addresses all in Seamy Valley. He and Nudol drive out early one morning and check them one by one. Two are shuttered businesses. The third is a mailbox rental store. On the drive back to Van Ayes, Nudol has to give her credit. She's good. She kicked our asses today. The search keeps going. On May 4th, the fourth detective in the unit, Pete Barba, is looking for Stephanie's house when he finds her husband instead. Scott Young. He is also an LAPD detective assigned to the Van Ayes station. The four detectives do not know him by name, but recognize his face. In the Van Ayes locker room, Young's locker is only a few down from Nudol's. The next morning, May 5th, Bub makes another trip to Seamy Valley. Four addresses have led nowhere. At the next one, Bub pulls up to a one-story house with an attached garage and a pool. A silver Toyota pickup is parked in the driveway. Its license plate reads, "Five, Steph." Bub keeps driving. Now they know where she lives. On May 6th, Nudol calls Nell's back. This time on a recorded line and asks him to go through all of it again from the beginning. Nell's walks him through the months before the murder and everything that happened in the years after. Quote, "If one of our officers is responsible for this, Nudol tells him, 'We are on the same page you are.' It's an investigation that is moving forward. What we're waiting on now is a DNA sample, and that has to be done with the utmost discretion. Because as you can imagine, we can't walk down and knock on somebody's door and say, 'I realize that interjects Nell's.' Before they hang up, Nell says one more thing. If you want to make $100,000, bet me it's not her. Nudol laughs. The four detectives discuss going through Stephanie's garbage to get a sample of her DNA, but Bub kills the idea. Too many variables, too many ways for the sample to be contaminated or challenged. Too many ways it goes wrong. So on May 12th, they take another route. The request goes up the chain to a lieutenant, to a captain, and then to deputy chief Michael Moore, who authorizes the Internal Surveillance Unit, aka the operators. Some of them know Stephanie Lazarus. Not one asks to be taken off the case. Surveillance starts on May 20th. Two undercover teams trade shifts around the clock, following Stephanie and waiting for her to throw away something that might carry her DNA. Her neighborhood makes surveillance difficult. It is quiet with little traffic, and the only place to park is across the street from Stephanie's house, which is directly outside a separate LAPD officer's home. On a previous surveillance job, that officer had confronted an undercover unit parked there and asked what they were doing. So they learn Stephanie's routine. At five in the morning, she comes out for the newspaper, and she drives to the Semi Valley train station and takes the train downtown. She reads the paper along the way and throws it out before she walks into Parker Center, where she works as an LAPD Art Theft detective. The first things they collect are the newspapers. Then as cellophane muffin wrapper, she lifts to her mouth with each bite. All of it goes to the lab. None of it carries enough DNA to give them a profile. The operators also learn something else about Stephanie's routine. If she does not come out at five a.m., she is off that day. On Thursday, 20th, she does not come outside at five a.m. A few hours later, the garage door goes up and a van backs out. She's driving, and her young daughter is in the back seat. Stephanie stops for gas, and she drives to a Costco in Semi Valley. That is where Stephanie drops the Pepsi cup and plastics draw into a trash bin beside the waiting undercover operator. Within seconds, she has the cup out of the trash and inside a Manila envelope. 15 seconds later, he is moving it toward the crime lab. The next day, Friday, May 29th, the call finally comes. Jennifer Francis's team tells Bub and Jim Nuddle that the DNA on the straw is the same DNA that was in the bite mark on Sherry Rasmussen's arm. 23 years after Sherry was murdered, detectives have their match. Within hours, Bub and Nuddle are downtown, handing their four-month-old investigation to Robbery Homicide, the LAPD unit that handles its most serious murder cases. Before the end of the day, BenI's four homicide detectives are no longer running the investigation. Robbery Homicide has the case. Robbery Homicide sits on the third floor at Parker Center, so does the art theft detail where Stephanie Lazarus works. The two units sit across the hall from one another, sharing a water cooler. Stephanie sometimes walks into the robbery homicide squad room just to fill her water bottle. The two detectives assigned to a rest Stephanie are Greg Sterns and Dan Harameel. They need to get her somewhere controlled, away from her desk and away from her gun. They choose the jail division on the second floor of Parker Center. Anyone entering the jail has to check their weapon at the door, and even for an LAPD detective, there is nothing unusual about that. Friday morning, June 5, 2009, Stephanie is followed to work. A few minutes after she sits down at her desk, Harameel comes over. He tells her they've picked up an extortion suspect who said something about stolen art and that he could use a second opinion. "You can kind of talk to him," he says. "You can see if he's for real. Sure," she says. They go down together. At the jail door, Harameel checks his gun. Stephanie tells him she left hers upstairs at her desk. He walks her to an interview room, where Sterns is waiting inside. There is no extortion suspect. They ask Stephanie to sit down. On the table between them is a three-ring binder with a tiny video camera hidden inside. "I don't want to bring this up in your squadroom. We've been assigned a case that we've been looking at." "Okay, it's a new case, and we're doing the case. There's some notes to see as far as your name can mention." "Oh, okay." "Do you know John Routon?" "John Routon?" "Routon?" "Routon." "Oh yeah, I went to school with them." He says the name wrong, and Stephanie corrects him. She knows exactly who John Routon is. But over the next hour and a half, the details around John begin to blur. Whether she ever met the woman he married, when she last saw John, what happened when. She made remember. She may not. It was a long time ago. "Yeah, well, God, that's been a million years ago. I mean, you know, what year is it now? 2009? I mean, I graduated in '82." Stephanie says it was a million years ago, five times. Every time she is talking about John. More than once, when she cannot remember something, she tells the detectives she would have to look at her pictures to know for sure. She keeps about 10,000 photographs. The woman sitting across from Sterns and Haramio is now 49 years old and has been an LAPD officer for 26 years. She spent 18 months in internal affairs investigating other police officers. Her husband is also an LAPD detective, and her daughter is the little girl who set beside her at Costco that afternoon, eating lunch with her mom while detectives waited for Stephanie to throw something in the trash. The detectives ask about Stephanie's relationship with John. 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live on the 10th floor of Dijkstra Hall, part of a group of friends who stay close long after college. Stephanie takes photographs constantly. One of them is of John, a sleep in his dorm room, wearing only his underwear. She writes a caption on the photo. John Rutton, 1979, Dijkstra Hall. I snuck in room and took the picture. She keeps that photograph for 30 years. John says that their relationship became sexual in the summer of 1981. He estimates they had sex between 25 and 30 times over the next three years, while each of them dated other people. He does not describe Stephanie as his girlfriend. His friends will later be shocked to hear it turned sexual at all. John never talked that way about Stephanie, though it was clear to all that she wanted more from John. By the time they are out of college, the relationship means more to Stephanie than it does to John. Here's how she describes it. 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. It just didn't work out. I don't know what to tell you. By 1984, Stephanie is out of college and about to become an LAPD officer. On February 29, 1984, Stephanie buys a backup gun. It's common practice at the time for LA cops to carry a second firearm. And Stephanie is two days away from graduation. She picks up a five shot 38 caliber Smith and Western revolver, snub-nosed, easy to conceal, even in an ankle holster. Stephanie fills out a standard federal form to buy the handgun. No one will give it a second thought for more than 25 years. In the summer of 1984, John Rutton meets Sherry Rasmussen at a party. He falls for her instantly. Before long, they're an item. In May of 1985, John asks Sherry to marry him. And she says yes. A few weeks later, Stephanie calls John trying on the phone and asks him to come over. He goes without telling Sherry. Stephanie tells him she loves him, that she wants to be with him. John tells her he is going to marry Sherry. She asks him to sleep with her one last time. John has sex with Stephanie that night and unleashes an obsession in her that will haunt many families for the rest of their lives. A few weeks later, John moves in with Sherry at the condo on Balboa Boulevard. He does not tell her about his interlude with Stephanie. Shortly afterward, Stephanie begins crossing a new level of boundaries. She goes to the hospital where Sherry works. And yeah, I may have met her at a hospital. I may have talked to her once or twice. At a hospital. Or more. I mean, that's kind of sounding familiar. It should. Stephanie walks into Glendale Adventist Medical Center around lunchtime and approaches the desk of Sherry's secretary, an older woman named Sylvia Nielsen. She asks for Sherry but does not give her own name. Sylvia tells her Sherry's at lunch. Stephanie says she'll wait and sits down in front of Sylvia. After a few minutes, Stephanie gets up and walks around and then out into the hallway. She comes back with Sherry and they go into Sherry's office and Sherry closes the door. When it opens again, Stephanie walks out. Sherry follows and she's clearly been crying. She goes home in the middle of the workday. That evening, Sherry calls her parents in Tucson. It is the first time she has ever mentioned John's ex-girlfriend to them. Nielsen says his daughter told him that the woman came to Sherry's office uninvited, dressed in a tight tube top and tight short shorts, that she was an excellent shape. And what the woman said to Sherry's face was that if she could not have John, no one could, including Sherry. When John gets home that night, Sherry is waiting for him. She tells him, Stephanie came to her workplace and told her that the two of them had sex just weeks ago, that she had known John a long time and knew what he wanted, and that if the marriage failed, she would be waiting to pick up the pieces. And then Sherry tells John what she said back. Don't worry, we won't be needing your services. John rotten tells his fiance the truth. That's Stephanie called him crying, that he went to her place, that they did have sex. He tells her he made a terrible mistake and asks Sherry to forgive him. She does. They talk late into the night. By the time they go to bed, the wedding is still on, but a trail of destruction is heading their way. John makes a decision about the other woman. He will not call her and ask why she went to his fiance's workplace or tell her she was out of line or ask her to leave Sherry alone. He will avoid her, ignore her. He tells Sherry to let it lie. He tells her it's done. Sherry does, but her mother and father, no Stephanie, has threatened Sherry, but they do not know her name. Sherry worried about her father's opinion of John, does not tell him about the cheating. On August 4, 1985, Stephanie Lazarus writes a letter to John's mother who had sent her some photographs. It opens with an apology. The reason it has taken me so long to respond is because I had to build up my courage. I don't know when or if I'll ever see you in your family again. I'm truly in love with John and this past year has really torn me up. I don't think I'll ever understand John's decision. She mails the letter two days later. In November, Sherry Rasmussen marries John Rotten. Three weeks later, Stephanie Lazarus receives a card from John's mother. She writes in her diary, "Unfortunately, I got a card from Mrs. Rotten. This made me very, very, very sad." Stephanie does not say what the card from Mrs. Rotten communicated. On December 16, John and Sherry have a burglar alarm installed at their condo. Sherry's father is surprised, but does not ask her why. Before leaving for her honeymoon, Sherry shows her friend Jane the alarm panel by the front door and punches in the code. One, one, two, three. Well, that's not very clever, says Jane. Jane, it's our wedding anniversary. The next month in January, 1986, Sherry tells her parents that John's ex-girlfriend entered their home uninvited. Sherry worked from home that morning, came downstairs and found the woman standing in her living room. She does not know how she got inside. Nell's says Sherry should involve John, that he should tell his ex-girlfriend, no. Sherry responds John doesn't have the will to stand up to her. Nell's is getting concerned. On February 24 in that same living room, Sherry Rasmussen is beaten, bitten, and shot three times in the chest. Her purse is stolen and later returned with one item missing, her marriage license. The next morning, February 25, 1986, by their own accounts, Sherry's husband and father, both tell detectives to look into John's ex-girlfriend, the one with the LAPD. Nell's later says he mentions her at least three times, and that Mayor finally snaps at him. There's nothing there. When detectives walk John through the crime scene, he says they mention a bite mark on Sherry's arm. They mention that it could be from a woman. Women bite, a detective says. He tells them Stephanie's name, and that she had confronted Sherry at the hospital. Here is John Rutton describing that conversation. I know that she went to go see Sherry, and I know that she was upset, you know, that we weren't gonna have the relationship. That's the reason for identifying her. So if that's the reason I identified her 23 years ago, one of my concerns is that that was never, you know, appears to be recorded. John gives police two interviews on the 25th. Neither one is taped. Neither leads to a note in the murder book that mentions Stephanie Lazarus. Years later, John will say he asked the police about Stephanie again and received a court response. He says, quote, they said, we've eliminated that possibility, something to that effect. Detective Lyle Mayer disputes all of this. He says he would have followed up on Stephanie's name if he had it. He retired still believing Sherry was killed by burglars. Nell says he raised it repeatedly, and John says he told police that Sherry had found his ex-girlfriend standing in their living room. Mayer disputes that as well. Quote, that is an absolute bullshit lie. He never told me that no way. We'd have been all over her. We'd have arrested her for burglary. That would have been the greatest clue going. So is an embarrassed detective lying? Or is a family embellishing the leads they gave police? The day Sherry Rasmussen is killed is Stephanie's fourth straight day off from work. She reports for duty at 7.30 a.m. on Tuesday, the 25th. There is no way to know, years later, if she had any f-
physical scratches or injuries on her. 12 days after that, she reports her backup gun stolen in Santa Monica. She buys a replacement just over a week later, another 38 from the same gun store. Sherry Rasmussen was shot with a 38. In November of 1987, more than a year and a half after the murder, Stephanie's name appears in the murder book. There is a note in the case log dated November 19th. John Rutten called, verified Stephanie Lazarus, PO, was former girlfriend. The note is sandwiched between details about press conferences with the Rasmussen family. It is the only written mention of Stephanie Lazarus for decades. Lion Mayor retires from the LAPD in September of 1991. Steve Fisk takes up the case. He does not recall ever speaking with Mayor about it. Sherry's family says they speak with Fisk at the Van Ey station in the early 90s. They ask for DNA testing and pay a parking ticket. Fisk does not note this meeting in the case log. He does note that he contacts the Rasmussen's in 1997. When detectives show him that entry years later, Fisk tells them, quote, "There was no mention of an involved police officer, absolutely no mention. Bells and whistles would have gone off. That would have been a big deal." In February 2009, Jim Nudol finds the November 1987 entry referencing Stephanie's name in the murder book. He does not know what PO stands for. He finds out on February 10th, when John Rutten says out loud that Stephanie Lazarus is a Los Angeles police officer. June 5th, the Jail interview room at Parker Center. Harameo asks Stephanie Lazarus a housekeeping question. Did the detectives ever reach out to you? No, no one's ever talked to me. I don't think anybody ever talked to me about them. It seems like-- Well, I'm thinking that I did talk to a detective. God. Well, what division was it? In Van Eyes. And where was I working? 1986. I would have been working in Devinshire. You know, I'm thinking that I did speak to somebody. Oh, really? I couldn't tell you who it was. Because it doesn't-- it doesn't say anything else. Probably on the phone. Would have been somebody in regards to this or just-- Yeah. There is no record in Sherry Rasmussen's murder book that any detective ever contacted Stephanie Lazarus. For decades, there was only Stephanie's name, one time, and PO. Detective Greg Sterns asks about Stephanie's cars. Has she ever had one stolen? Yeah, I don't think any of my cars had ever been stolen. No. My cars haven't been stolen. Broken into-- None of that, huh? Oh, yeah. My cars have been broken into-- Do you ever lose anything here? Yeah. Now that you mention it, let's see. I had a gun that was stolen. I had other stuff that was stolen. Not your duty, guys. No. That's good. Is it ever recovered? I don't know. I don't think so. Not that I know of. She brings up the gun herself. No one has asked about it. The 38 revolver she reported stolen in 1986 has never been recovered. An hour and a half into the interview, Harameo tells Stephanie that Sherry's friends remember trouble between the two women. He asks whether she ever fought with Sherry. And he asks her for a DNA swab. Maybe. Because now-- now, now-- Yes, because now-- I think I probably need to talk to a lawyer. I mean, I-- because I know how this stuff works. OK, don't get me wrong. You're right. I have been doing this a long time. And I wish I had been recording this. Because now, it sounds like there's-- you're selling these people, saying, I'm a fighting with her. And now, you sound like you're trying to-- I've been doing this a long time. Yeah, we know. OK, and now it all sounds like you're trying to pin something on me. Now, I got that sense. Harameo tells her they may have DNA from the crime scene. And that her name is in the murder book. They have to look. Twice, the detectives tell Stephanie, she's free to leave. She stays. I just can't even believe it. I mean, it's just-- I mean, I'm shocked. I'm really shocked that somebody would be blaying, saying that I did this. I mean, we had a fight, so I went and killed her. I mean, come on. Then, Stephanie Lazarus stands up. Thanks to the two detectives for their courtesy and walks out of the room. She gets as far as the hallway. This is absolutely crazy. I'm going to see Stephanie. This is the same. OK. OK. Stephanie, you know you have the right to remain silent. Do you understand? Yes. Anything you say may be used against your own court, do you understand? Yes. Do you want to talk to us right now? No. All right. That's crazy. This is impossible. I'm like, I'm like in shock. I'm totally in shock. They had the DNA match a week before she sat down. 23 years after Sherry Rasmussen is murdered, the police have their woman. Stephanie Lazarus is under arrest. Now they have to convince a jury that she's responsible. I'm Megan Kelly. Next time on MK Confidential, Stephanie Lazarus goes on trial for murder while drawing an LAPD pension. And after a jury answers who killed Sherry Rasmussen, another question remains. Why did the police take 23 years to find her?
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