"Fatal Attraction" - The Murder of Sherri Rasmussen: The FULL MK Confidential Series

Welcome to the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM channel 111 every week day at NEAST. Hey everyone I'm Megan Kelly welcome to the Megan Kelly show in our weekend mega episode. Oh it's a good one today. It's our full series on the Sherry Rasmussen story which we are calling fatal attraction. I've gotten so many text messages about this case. Friends who have seen this story told elsewhere who learned so many brand new facts our crack research team does such a good job finding the obscure but interesting things around stories like this. So we're going to get into the murder the arrest after the case had gone cold and an exclusive interview with two of Sherry's sisters what she only had to and they're both with us. Enjoy and we will see you Monday it is around 12 o'clock on a Monday in Van Nye's California a suburb of Los Angeles 1986. retiree Anastasia Valenitis is at home in her condo where she and her husband Gus have lived for many years just doing chores enjoying her day. She looks up and sees out the window to Hispanic men in workloads crossing the driveway coming toward her house they look like gardeners. The men knock on her door and when she answers Anastasia sees one of them is carrying a brown leather woman's purse. The men don't speak any English only Spanish. After a few attempts to communicate one of the men just hands Anastasia the purse. She looks inside of it finds a wallet and in the wallet a driver's license. Anastasia knows the face in the picture. The young woman from unit 205 directly across their shared driveway. Her name is Sherry something. Her eyes dart over to the name on the license Sherry Rasmussen 29 years old right the nurse. She's a newlywed. Anastasia hands the purse back to the Hispanic man and points him towards Sherry's condo just across the way. Within five minutes the men are back purse still in hand. No one answered at unit 205. Anastasia takes the purse from the men. She can return it later when her neighbor is home but her neighbor is home. Sherry has been lying in her favorite bathrobe on her living room floor dead since earlier that morning. Her face beaten and smeared with blood. Six more hours passed before anyone finds Sherry. Outside the condo complex moves through a normal Monday. Cars come and go through the gate neighbors leave and return. School pickups groceries a stop at the pharmacy. Inside Sherry's home the refrigerator hums clicks off and starts again. On a chair nearby it's a quilt Sherry's grandmother made for her with sleeves sewn into it so she could wear it around the house when she got cold and the phone rings. It is Sherry's sister Teresa calling during her break at work. Teresa leaves a message and says she'll try again later. At five p.m. Sherry's husband John leaves work. On the way home he stops for the dry cleaning and picks up a package at UPS. Ordinary errands at the end of what he thinks is an ordinary Monday. And all this time Sherry is there lying alone on the living room floor. One eye open and unblinking the other swollen shot. At six o'clock John arrives home. Later that night he tells police what he saw when he walked inside. Before the night is over a Los Angeles police detective will stand in John and Sherry's living room and decide he knows exactly what happened there. He will write it down and he will be very wrong. The truth will remain hidden for 23 years. I'm Megan Kelly and this is M.K. Confidential. Let's go back to the start of the day Sherry is killed Monday February 24, 1986. John Rutton wakes a little before seven in the Van Nies condo. He shares with his wife of three months. Sherry. She has lived there for more than five years. John moved in last summer. That morning Sherry stays in bed. She's thinking of calling in sick and she asks John to call her later in the day. John showers dresses and takes the stairs inside the condo down to their garage. 720 is when I left I got to work about 10 to 8. John slides into his new Mazda RX 7 coupe backs out of the garage and watches the door come down behind him. Sherry's silver BMW a 1985 318i is still parked inside. That is the last time John Rutton sees his wife alive. Across the shared driveway Anastasia Volonitis and her husband Gus pull out around 830am. They are true Angelinos and drive a few miles to a golf course to then take their walk. On the way out the couple pass unit 205 the garage door is closed. About an hour later around 930am Gus drops Anastasia off near a neighbor's house for an errand. And as Anastasia walks back to her condo she passes unit 205. She notices the garage door is now open. An hour earlier Sherry's silver BMW was inside. Now the garage is empty. It's 945 in the morning. In unit 206 on the other side of Sherry's wall a housekeeper is cleaning. She has cleaned this unit every Monday for about two years. A few hours into the morning the housekeeper hears a heavy thud through the wall. She goes to a window and looks outside. Nothing seems wrong. As she turns away the thud comes again. Then a scream tears through the wall. No words just one long sound. Then it stops. She checks another window. Still nothing. She shrugs to herself and goes back to work. All day people who love her try to reach Sherry. At 10am her younger sister Teresa takes a break at work and calls Sherry's office as she often does. In 2020 she told Dateline what happened on this particular Monday. And her secretary said that she was home sick so I called her at home after that. Sherry's answering machine picks up. Teresa leaves a message. The two Hispanic men bring Sherry's purse to Anastasia around noon. Anastasia takes it planning to return it later. That afternoon John calls the hospital and cannot reach Sherry or her secretary. He's not worried just mildly annoyed. He assumes she went in late and forgot to call him back. Later Peggy daily a head nurse and one of Sherry's closest friends calls her house. She also gets the machine. At 530 Teresa gets home from work and calls her mother in Tucson. Has anyone heard from Sherry? At 6 o'clock PM John Rotten comes home. The garage door is all the way up. Sherry's car is gone. Broken glass lies across the pavement outside. John parks, lifts the dry cleaning from the passenger seat and starts up the short staircase from the garage. At the top of the stairs is the door into the condo with a push button lock. That morning John had pushed the button and heard the door catch behind him. Now it is open. There are flecks of blood on the wall beside the stairs but John does not see them. At the top he steps into the tiled entryway and he sees Sherry on the living room floor. Rob Bubb is a retired LAPD homicide detective. He comes to the case more than 20 years later and reconstructs what John saw when he came through that door. He opens the door, looks inside and sees his wife. Sherry Rasmussen, she's lying on her back in the middle of the living room, wearing essentially what he had left her wearing that morning when he went to work. The living room is a disaster. A shelf has come down from the entertainment unit. Accorded phone and pieces of a broken vase lie on the carpet near her. A drawer from an end table has been pulled out and emptied onto the floor. John touches Sherry's calf. It is cold. He feels for a pulse. Nothing. Sherry's face is so badly injured that John does not notice the three gunshot wounds in her chest or the bite mark on her arm. He calls 911. Then John takes a hand towel and covers his wife's face. He cannot bear to look at her this way. Paramedics arrive and pronounce Sherry dead at 610 pm. In Tucson Sherry's parents are asleep when the phone rings. It is close to one in the morning. They will later express their resentment that John did not call them sooner. Sherry's father Nell's gets out of bed and answers. It is John's father calling him. John does not deliver the news himself. Nell's begins calling his daughters. First Teresa, then Connie, both remembered the calls to NBC in 2020. Answer the phone and dad told him hit it. She'd be killed and I sat up and screamed bad. It was close to midnight by the time I heard, and then I started screaming. By morning, they are all on their way to Los Angeles. Sherry Rasmussen was the middle kid of three girls. She grew up in Tucson, Arizona, where her father, Nell's, had a dental practice, and her mother, Loretta, ran the front office. As a little girl, Sherry was what her dad called a mama's girl. Nell's could promise her anything, and she would not get in that car unless Loretta was coming too. Then Sherry got to school. Her sister Teresa says that Sherry was so ahead of her class that her kindergarten teacher used to use her as an assistant at just five years old. Sherry skipped seventh grade. By the end of her junior year of high school, she had finished the classes needed to graduate, so at sixteen, she left Tucson for Loma Linda University in California. By twenty-three, she had a master's degree in nursing from UCLA. At twenty-six, she was supervising an 80-bed critical care division at UCLA Medical Center. A year later, Glendale Adventist Medical Center hired her to run critical care nursing. She was twenty-seven years old, younger than most of the nurses she supervised. At Glendale Adventist, Sherry was management now. She wore business clothes to work, but still put a white lab coat over them. Her dad had wanted her to go to medical school. Nell's told Sherry more than once she would make a phenomenal doctor. Sherry thought seriously about medical school, but she told her younger sister Teresa there was something else she wanted more, a family. She worried becoming a doctor might mean giving that up. Sherry's priority was always her family. She was the medal, a sister, and she was a clown. If everything got too serious, she would make everybody laugh. She had a very unique little giggle. Sherry was all about family. Sherry was our glue. She kept us all together. She always switched us. I would have never learned how to snowsky, except for she drug us all to tell us who Mexico to learn how to snowsky. Even now that she's gone, I think she forces me to be a better person. Sherry Rasmussen turned 29 on February 7, 1986. 17 days later, she is dead on her living room floor. She has been shot three times in the chest. One of the shots is fired with the muzzle pressed against her body. The skin around the wound is blistered. There is blacksoot inside it. One of her fingers has blacksoot on it too, indicating she may have tried to block the gun. Her face has been badly beaten. And on the inside of her left forearm is an oval bite mark, deep and distinct enough that a forensic dentist believes it could be compared to the teeth of a suspect. She's retired LAPD homicide detective Rob Bubb, who later reconstructed the scene talking with Dateline in 2020. The blunt force trauma injuries were particularly disturbing. The right side of her face, her eye, was swollen and blackened. She was actually pistol whipped possibly two times. Stereo speaker had fallen down, was very near her head. There was a two fingernails near the front door, and a clothesline or a small thin rope also near the front door of the apartment, and her left inner forearm. It was very obvious, it wasn't just small impressions, they were red and raw. Later, the medical examiner will find marks on Sherry's wrists consistent with that rope. It looks like someone tried to bind her. There are smears of blood across the entryway wall up the closet door on the light switch over the floor and the door leading down to the garage as well. Low on the wall beside that door is a bloody handprint, 13 inches off the floor. The palm is lower than the fingers. Three days later, a fingerprint analyst photographs that handprint, a week after that the analysis confirms it matches Sherry's left hand. Upstairs, off the kitchen two bullets have passed through a floor length white drape and shattered the sliding glass door behind it. Most of the glass fell onto the balcony, some dropped to the driveway below. That's the broken glass John saw when he came home. Beyond the bullet holes on the second floor and the chaotic mess on the first, detectives find a few specific items that explain the lead up to the violence. The base of the stairs in the entryway directly facing the front door lies a vcr with a disc player stacked on top. The power cords for both lay haphazardly on the floor. They look like someone put them together for a quick carry out, but left before they got the chance. Rodney Forrest is one of the first LAPD officers to arrive at the condo. The stacked up electronics immediately stand out as he later tells ABC. I do remember there was electronic stereo equipment right here that I saw when I came in and that suggested to me that it was possibly a burglary and a burglary interrupted. I put this together with a stereo equipment stacked over here and it seemed to me that she could have struggled with the burglary and she obviously lost that fight. Sherry's purse is missing and everything in it, so is her new BMW. Within 30 minutes of John discovering Sherry's body, the LAPD assigns two detectives to the case. The first is homicide detective and Medal of Valor recipient Lyle Mayer. Earlier in his career, Mayer broke down a hotel room door to save a man from burning to death. The LAPD awarded him with its highest honor for his actions. By the time he's called to the Sherry Rasmussen case, Mayer has been investigating homicides for 10 years, with more than 20 served in the LAPD. Mayer's regular partner is off duty the day Sherry is found, so he's joined by a young burglary detective Steve Hooks. Hooks has led roughly 150 burglary investigations in his eight years on the force. As for homicide, he's assisted on a few. This is the first case, Mayer and Hooks will work together. When Mayer and Hooks arrive at John and Sherry's condo, John is standing outside. Mayer spends about an hour examining the crime scene, then asks John to come down to the Van Nij's police station for an interview, John agrees. At 9 o'clock p.m., Mayer starts a tape recorder. John is the first to discover Sherry's body and likely the last to see her alive, aside from whoever killed her. Mayer needs to know whether they can eliminate John as a suspect. As they go through the interview, Mayer tells John that he's usually a pretty good judge of character, and is fairly certain that John has absolutely nothing to do with this. And he gives John his explanation for what happened to Sherry. I believe your house was burglarized today, sometime before 10 a.m., I believe they got in your friend's door by praying up in the front door. I believe they were trying to steal your stereo on, probably some other hours. Mayer says he believes the burglars did not know Sherry was home. She hears the commotion, comes down to the kitchen, and surprises them. One of them does run. The other fights. They fight down the stairs into the entryway and into the living room. There he kills her, shoots her, mayer says. Even with his getaway driver gone, Sherry's killer leaves the electronics and makes off with her engagement gift from her husband, the BMW. Mayer's theory comes from more than just the condo. Los Angeles is experiencing a massive murder surge. Sherry Rasmussen is murdered in February by the end of December 1986. More than 800 people will have been killed within L.A. city limits, and the police can feel it. An officer retired LAPD Captain Anita Ortega, described the atmosphere to ABC in 2024. "Anyone that worked in the City of Los Angeles, they knew that they were going to have their hands filled. It was out of control." The city had spent the previous summer under the threat of a serial killer known as The Nightstalker, who invaded homes and brutalized the women inside, killing more than a dozen. Here's journalist Leo Stahlworth, also, to ABC. "It was a dark period in our history. People were terrified to leave their homes." Detective Lyle Mayer has been working homicides in this city for over a decade and has seen the rising chaos. In this environment, the idea that Sherry died at the hands of a surprise burglar makes perfect sense. That does not make it true. One piece of physical evidence flies in the face of the burglary theory. On top of the electronics, stacked at the base of the stairs near the front door, is a fingerprint, a bloody fingerprint. The blood is the first key. Whoever left it touched the disc player after the fight was Sherry. the intensity of the fight and that the disc player is intact. act, not smashed like the vase, this must have happened after Sherry was killed. At that point, why would a burglar grab the disc player and likely the VCR with it and then leave them behind? Burglers caught in the act typically drop with their holding and run. This one stayed to fight, then abandoned the prize. The blood suggests a sequence of events that does not line up with a burglary. And the fingerprint? According to Detective Rob Bub, the print itself never enters the case. He explains to Dateline NBC in 2020. Unfortunately, it was never recovered. No one lifted it, no one tested it, no one booked the the stereo component into evidence. It was lost for time. The bloody fingerprint is not even closely photographed. The blood is not sampled. It's unclear why. The bloody fingerprint is noted in reports and remembered by responding officers, but that's it. The disc player and the VCR are left at the scene. Some of the strongest physical evidence against the burglar theory does not enter evidence at all. Responding officer Forest sees a different issue with the burglar theory. This one based on target selection. He shares his concerns with ABC in 2024. I thought to myself, this is a burglary. Burglers don't usually pick a place by condos from the street. They want to get away. They pick something next to the street. They don't want to be seen. It's just strange that they would pick this place. Author and journalist Matthew McCuff, who covered the case for more than a decade, says the burglar's ransacked odd places and ignored the obvious ones. Here he is speaking to Dateline in 2020. If you're looking for valuables, are you going to look in a junk drawer in the living room, Sherry had a jewelry box that was undisturbed? Sherry's purse, one of the few items of value actually missing from the home, is returned to neighbor Anastasia Valenitis the same day she is murdered. On the night of the 24th, her BMW is still missing. Police find her BMW 11 days later. Unlocked and abandoned on a residential street with the keys in the ignition. The car's radio and other parts still intact and it seemed totally undamaged. Mayor described the neighborhood where it is found as "a very, very, very bad old area." The detectives working the case take the car's location as further support for the burglar theory, but the obvious questions about it being intact and undisturbed go unanswered. Police never find out where the car had been for those 11 days since Sherry was murdered. Tuesday, February 25th. The morning after his wife is shot, John Rutton arrives at the Van Nij's police station for a 10am interview. It is not recorded and earns a single line in the day of report. Re-interviewed deceased's husband. Three months later, the detectives expand on that in a follow-up report. There were no changes in his account of what happened. It appeared as though John was truthful and he obviously was still in shock over the death of his wife. At 1030 on day two, Mayor and Hooks take John back to the condo to see what if anything is missing. Sherry's body is gone. The blood stain is still in the living room carpet. Upstairs, the shattered glass door has not been repaired and is still wide open to the air. No cardboard, no duct tape, nothing. The walkthrough of the crime scene is not recorded. Three months later, the three-ring binder that LAPD detectives used to document a homicide investigation known as "A Murder Book" gives it a single line summary. John could identify nothing missing inside the condo except Sherry's purse and its contents. Also missing is their marriage license. While John is back inside the condo with Mayor and Hooks that Tuesday morning, Sherry's parents, Nells, and Loretta Rasmussen are still trying to get to Los Angeles. They have been awake all night. They take the first flight they can get out of Tucson. It stops in Phoenix. After takeoff, something goes wrong with an engine and the plane turns back for an emergency landing. Nells and Loretta barely notice. When the plane lands and everyone is ordered off, they remain sitting in their seats until a flight attendant comes down the aisle to get them. They just want to get to Los Angeles. The flight attendant walks them to another gate and Nells and Loretta make the next flight. At LAX, they meet their daughter Connie, rent a car, skip the hotel, and drive straight to Van Nies by around noon there at the police station. Roughly 18 hours have passed since John found Sherry's body and her family knows almost nothing about what the police have found. Nells and Loretta give their names at the front desk and officer calls upstairs to homicide. They wait. Finally, a man comes out of an interview room and John is behind him. The man is Detective Lyle Mayor. Later, when Mayor finishes meeting with Nells and Loretta, he gives Sherry's sister Teresa his business card and tells her to call him if she has any questions or any information that might help. The family keeps Detective Mayor's card for years. They remember it going soft at the edges from being handled so often. From the beginning, Mayor had made a promise. He made it to John on tape that first night. We're going to catch these persons. Are this person current? He got to have a little faith in me. We're very successful at what we do. Very, very successful. They do not catch anyone. Not that year. Not that decade. Not for 23 years. Before we leave the night Sherry died, there is one more thing to see. It is just after midnight. John Rutton's first interview with Detectives is over. He sits in the hallway and waits. He sobs quietly. Around him, radio dispatchers call out addresses and codes. Phones ring and ring until whoever is calling gives up. John's parents are driving up from San Diego. Sherry's parents still do not know. John cannot bring himself to make the call. To tell them, their daughter is dead. Back at the condo, Sherry is still lying on the living room floor. Two men from the Los Angeles County Coroners Office pull up at the condo and walk in with their evidence kits. Walter Rainey is an investigator. Lloyd Mahaney is a senior criminalist. This is their second homicide of the night. Their first was a woman found dead in the back seat of a locked yellow Ford Pinto in a panorama city parking lot. Mahaney and Rainey are working that scene when word comes. Another body is waiting in Van Nies. Lloyd Mahaney has a reputation at the coroner's office. He does not improvise. He collects evidence in the same order every time and writes down every step. Trace evidence first, fibers from Sherry's robe, hairs from around her neck, each sample goes into its own envelope labeled by hand, sealed with evidence tape and Mahaney's initials written across the seal. Mahaney opens a sexual assault kit, lays out its contents neatly on the carpet near Sherry's head, swab tubes, slide envelopes, a coroner's checklist. He works through it one item at a time. Then Mahaney sees something on the inside of Sherry's left forearm, a bite mark. Mahaney carries spare swabs for exactly this purpose. If he sees a bite, he swabs it. Blood might belong to the victim. saliva left behind in a bite mark probably does not. He reaches into his kit. The tube he takes out is clear plastic, roughly the size and thickness of a cigar. A red cap screws onto the top. Attached beneath it are two cotton-tipped wooden sticks. Tiny holes in the bottom of the tube allow the swabs to air dry. Mahaney wets them with distilled water that runs one across the upper teeth impression, the other across the lower. He screws the red cap back on and labels the tube. Left arm, bite mark. His initials and the date. Case number 86-2676. Then the tube goes into a fresh evidence envelope. On the front, Rasmussen Sherry swabbed bite mark left arm and the time, 206 am. Lloyd Mahaney seals it. No one in that room knows what this swab will one day be able to tell them. In 1986, DNA testing is not yet available to criminal investigators. saliva can be tested for blood type, useful for excluding someone, maybe for narrowing the field, but nothing close to what DNA will eventually make possible. Mahaney's envelope reaches the coroner's evidence room on the morning of February 25th. Bikemark swabs have their own rule. Keep them frozen, filed by case number in a secure basement room. So the envelope marks Rasmussen Sherry goes downstairs into a freezer. Case number 86-2676. Stuck between evidence from other people's cases. Lloyd Mahaney never knew Sherry Rasmussen. He spent a few hours in her home that night and followed his procedure. He wet two swabs, labeled a tube, sealed an envelope. And because he did, something from the person who bit Sherry is preserved. In 1986, no one knows how to read it. One day, they will. But not for nearly 19 years. And that ability will change everything about this case. I'm Megan Kelly. Next time on MK Confidential. Sherry's family keeps pushing for answers. Evidence disappears. And investigators begin to ask, was the burglary theory wrong from the start? In the fall of 2004, a fledgling criminalist named Jennifer Francis gets to pick her next case from a stack on a colleague's desk. She has just been clear to perform DNA analysis on her own. The stack holds DNA requests from detectives all over the Los Angeles Police Department. Jennifer is the newest analyst in the unit and the only one without a backlog. She goes through the stack looking for something simple. She finds a request on a 1986 murder in Venice, a nurse. The detective who submitted it wrote that the victim's blood type was O and that type A blood had been recovered inside her home. Blood that could not have been hers. Jennifer reads that and thinks this one is easy. Pick a type A stain, pull the suspects profile, run it against the national database, compare it to the victim, close the file. She takes the Sherry Rasmussen case. The request Jennifer picked up has been waiting for more than a year. Cliff Shepard, a cold case detective, submitted it on September 19, 2003, 17 years after the murder. Shepard works in a unit the LAPD created in 2001 to go back through murders the city never solved between six and 9,000 of them. Detectives spent a year just cutting that list down to the ones that still had evidence someone could test. Sherry Rasmussen's case made that list because of one line in a report from 1986. Years later, detective Shepard pointed it out to date line. "I saw that a bite swab had been collected by the corner's office. It's okay with that swab. There should be a DNA." Shepard attached two documents to his request. Detective Lyle Mayer's follow-up report from 1986 and the property log, meaning every item the LAPD booked into evidence in Sherry's case. The property log contains 29 items. The bite mark swab is not one of them. So Cliff Shepard goes looking. The coroner's office tells him they do not have it. "I checked with our evidence room. They didn't have it. I looked at our property reports. It's not booked." "How could that happen?" "Incompetence." "Did that happen alive?" "Yes." In 2003, Shepard takes a yellow highlighter to the sentence in Mayer's report describing the bite swab and writes a note in the margin asking where it is. It is that handwritten note that newbie criminalist Jennifer Francis finds when she picks up the Sherry Rasmussen case for DNA analysis and reads Shepard's request. Jennifer calls Shepard herself and asks whether she can see some crime scene photographs. It's a normal request. Shepard offers her the murder book instead. This is not normal. A murder book is the complete case file. There is only that one binder. It's irreplaceable. Detectives usually stay while an analyst reads it and then take it back. But Shepard tells Jennifer to keep it as long as she needs. A few days later, she comes back from lunch and it is sitting on the center table of the lab. A blue, three-ring binder. Jennifer shows a coworker, check it out, she says, a real life murder book. Then she starts reading it. Inside, Jennifer finds a security report from Glendale Adventist Medical Center, the hospital where Sherry Rasmussen worked. It describes a nurse Sherry turned down for a promotion. It says the hospital disciplined that nurse and her boyfriend to a doctor after they made harassing phone calls to Sherry. By December 22, 2004, Jennifer has finished testing the items Shepard submitted for DNA analysis. Every sample comes back as belonging to Sherry Rasmussen. Three weeks of work and all Jennifer has is the DNA profile of a woman everyone already knows is dead. Frustrated, she thinks about the bite mark she has seen mentioned in this murder book, but not in the case's property log. If any evidence in this case carries the killer's DNA, it is that swab. People do not bite themselves. Jennifer goes back to LAPD property, which contains the 29 items listed on the log and checks out the sexual assault kit from 1986. There are swabs and slides inside, but not one is labeled bite mark. Tracking down evidence is a detectives job. Francis is a civilian scientist with no contacts at the coroner's office, but she calls anyway because that's where evidence like this might be. A woman answers, Jennifer introduces herself, says she's calling from the LAPD crime lab and reads off the coroner's case number. She is looking for a bite mark swab. The woman puts her on hold. Ten seconds later, she comes back on and says there is no evidence booked under that number. Jennifer hangs up, wondering whether the woman typed a digit wrong. She calls the coroner's office again the next day, hoping someone else picks up. A man answers and tells her the same thing. Nothing here. Jennifer considers calling a third time, hoping to reach someone who remembers how evidence was stored before everything went into a computer. One of the other criminalists tells her to stop. "You're done," she says. "You don't want to get the reputation of being a pain in the ass. You're brand new at this. You've already called twice." Jennifer knows she's probably right. So she goes back to Mayer's 1986 report and reads it one more time, looking for anything she's missed. And she finds a name. The man from the coroner's office who collected the swab in the first place. Senior criminalist Lloyd Mahaney. Jennifer does the math. Almost 19 years. What are the odds this man is still on the job? She calls the coroner's office and asks for Lloyd Mahaney by name. He picks up. Jennifer asks him one question. If you swabbed a bite mark in 1986, what would you have called it? Mahaney says bite mark swab. Jennifer tells him nobody can find it. The coroner's office says they don't have it and neither does the LAPD. Mahaney is not surprised. When the coroner's office moved to computers, some of the old cases never made it in. To find something from 1986, you would have to pull the coroner's evidence log on microfiche. It would be a big job and Mahaney is leaving on vacation. Then Lloyd Mahaney tells her this, we would never get rid of a bite mark swab. We don't keep clothing forever, but a bite mark swab? We would not throw that away. Jennifer tells him there's no rush. Just see if he can find it when he gets back. Before they hang up, she says one more thing. Don't forget about me Lloyd. Lloyd Mahaney sealed that envelope at six minutes past two in the morning on February 25th, 1986, and sent it downstairs into a freezer. The bite mark swab has been there ever since, almost 19 years. It isn't gone. It is still there somewhere, but no one can find it. I'm Megan Kelly and this is MK Confidential. Let's go back to 1986 and what the LA police department was doing while that envelope sat untouched in the coroner's freezer. It is April 10th, seven weeks after Sherry Rasmussen was killed. Two blocks from Sherry's condo, a woman named Lisa Ravali comes home to find two men inside her apartment. One runs past her and out the door. The other points a gun at her, backs away and disappears out the door. Detective Lyle Mayer hears about it the next morning, Ravali walks him through her place. It is laid out almost exactly like Sherry's, and the burglars had stacked her stereo equipment by the door. To Mayer, the resemblance is enough. He connects the two cases. Years later, retired LAPD homicide detective Rob Bubb tells Dateline why it was not a stretch to call the two cases related. No, not at all. Not with the proximity, the time of day, and basically the same MO. Mayor calls a press conference and brings composite sketches of two men. We have obtained fingerprints in the crimes. We are of the opinion at this point that the suspects may be illegal aliens. Nobody has ever charged in the burglary from April 10th. Mayor would say years later that his detectives arrested around 20 people and ran every one of their fingerprints against the crime scene. None of them matched. On April 7th, 1987, one year and six weeks after Sherry's murder, Lyle Mayor files a progress report on the Rasmussen investigation. Its conclusion is one sentence. No additional leads have developed in this case. In Tucson, Sherry's parents, Nell's and Loretta Rasmussen keep pushing. In October 1986, they put up a $10,000 reward and fly to Los Angeles for a press conference. The LA Times runs Sherry's photograph beside composite sketches of the two men police believe killed her. Local radio picks it up, so does the evening news. A year later, in November 1987, Nell's and Loretta do it again. Another press conference, another round of coverage. The reward leads nowhere. Loretta telephones the Van Aes detectives many times over the years. The calls are brief and she often comes away feeling like the detectives just want her off the phone. In August 1990, Nell's rights to the television program America's most wanted, "We feel this case has not been thoroughly investigated and we would appreciate any help in this matter" unquote. The letter produces nothing. Nell's keeps going anyway. Years later, Connie remembers to NBC how relentless her father became. "As a father, he had felt a responsibility to protect her and the only way that in her death he could protect her was to find out who killed her. He would constantly re-disect the information that we knew." In 1991, Lyle Mayor retires from the LA Police Department and Sherry's case passes to whoever is running the homicide desk in Van Aes. Around 1992, Sherry's longtime friend, Donna Robison, tells the family she has a relative who can arrange an exciting new analysis called DNA testing. Sometime in 1992 or 1993, Nell's and LaRetta fly to Los Angeles with their daughter Connie and drive to Van Aes station to ask the LAPD about DNA tests of the evidence in Sherry's case. The Rasmussen's remember it this way. Nell's goes in and asks the officer at the front desk where they should park. "Anywhere on the street outside," the officer says. LaRetta had called ahead and made an appointment. Upstairs, the three of them are put in a small room and left there. It looks like the kind of room where police interview suspects. They wait for more than an hour. They had expected to meet with Lyle Mayor. Instead, the detective who finally comes in is someone they have never seen before. His name is Steve Fisk. Fisk has retired, Fisk tells them, and he has taken over Sherry's case. Fisk sets a thin folder on the table between them. It stays closed. He never opens it and never takes a note. Connie looks at that folder and thinks, "If the LAPD were working my sister's case, it would be thicker than that." "What do you want to know?" he asks. The family asks about the fingerprints from Sherry's case. Have they been run through the FBI database? Fisk tells them they're still working on it. By this time, Sherry has been dead more than six years. Fisk tells them it is a cold case with no leads, and that if anything changes, he'll let them know. Then Nell's asks him a question, "Have you run the DNA?" Fisk tells him DNA testing is expensive, and that the LAPD's budget cannot cover it in Sherry's case. Nell says, "Fine. I'll pay for it. I even have a person who would do it." Fisk tells him that would do no good. They have no suspect, and he says they need one before they can run DNA. The detective asks whether Nell's is still suspicious of John Rutton. Nell says he does not believe his son-in-law killed Sherry. However, he does believe John knows something, that he's holding back something. Nell's points to the closed folder on the interrogation room table, and tells Fisk that what matters is already in there, in the LAPD's own records. Fisk does not even look at it. Connie gets the distinct sense that he wants her and her family to leave. After less than an hour, they do. They did meet with us, but it was also more of a show. They walk out of the Van Ayes police station to find a parking ticket on their windshield. Nell's goes back inside and says the police told him to park there. He is met with an instruction that he will have to pay it anyway. After meeting with Fisk, the Rasmussen's call Sherry's friend Donna, and tell her the police turned down Nell's offer to pay for DNA testing. Donna's memory is the only record outside of the family, that the conversation with LAPD ever happened at all. There is no reference to the meeting in the LAPD murder book. The next entries in the case log come in October, 1993, when detectives run latent or barely visible fingerprints from the crime scene against databases in California and other western states. No hits. They also pull lists of nearby police interactions and state prison parolees from around the time Sherry was murdered. Then on October 11th, a detective named Phil Moritt goes to the LA County Coroner's office and signs out the trace or transfer evidence from Sherry's case. This is the evidence that the coroner's criminalist Lloyd Mahaney collected the night Sherry died. There are two teams that collect evidence at an LA murder scene. One is the coroner's office. They collect the body and everything touching it. In Sherry's case, this includes fibers found on her robe and loose hairs from her neck. The LAPD has its own team of criminalists in its scientific investigations division. They collect the evidence that is not directly touching the body, bullet casings, fingerprints, blood stains on the walls, that sort of thing. That evidence was booked into LAPD property. One day Jennifer Francis will test it and find only Sherry's DNA. The trace evidence from the body went into the coroner's property room the morning after Sherry died. At this point in our story, it has sat undisturbed for seven years. At 12.25pm, for reasons unknown, Morit signs out all of that coroner's trace evidence. From there, it vanishes. There is no record that this evidence was ever returned to the coroner. No record of what happened to it at all. Some of the most critical evidence in the case, which could positively ID a suspect, gets checked out and is never returned. No one knows where it went. It simply disappears. There is no mention of any of this in the murder book. In fact, there is no entry for anything from October 11th. Years later, detectives working Sherry's case show Morit the signature from the County coroner's office. He confirms that it is his, but tells them he does not remember picking up the evidence, nor ever even working the Rasmussen case. And yet there is one piece of evidence that Morit left behind at the coroner. It is hidden away in a basement freezer, and its label is fading. It would be tough to find one tiny, cigar-sized test tube that will remain hidden for another 12 years. The bite marks swab from Sherry's left arm. It is still in the freezer, where it has been since the morning after the murder seven years ago. Fast forward now to January 2005, and criminalist Jennifer Francis, the new DNA analyst looking for her next task, here is the phone ring in the LAPD crime lab. She picks up. It's been a week since she spoke with Lloyd Mahaney about the bite mark and asked him not to forget about her. The call is from a supervisor at the L.A. County coroner's office. We found your bite mark swab. He and his team had just spent six hours in the freezer, hunting for it. Jennifer calls Detective Shepherd from the cold case unit with the news. We found the swab. Shepherd asks why they missed it when he asked. And Jennifer tells him about the new fangled computer system. When the swab arrives in mid-January, she sees another reason, and why it took several hours in the cold to find. The evidence envelope is in rough shape. worn by years of being shuffled around the freezer as other evidence was crammed in and out around it. Mahaney's handwriting on Sherry's name is so faded, Jennifer can barely read it to confirm. There is a hole in the top right corner of the envelope. The red cap of the plastic sample tube peeks out. At some point, it appears to clean through the envelope, right where Mahaney had written the case number. What remains of it is illegible. Bite mark swabs are filed by case number with no legible case number on the envelope finding the swab required a bit of detective work of its own. But the tape sealing the envelope is intact, the tube is intact, and so are the two swabs inside. So on January 27th, 2005, Jennifer Francis puts a sample of cells from the swab under a microscope. It looks like saliva, this is a good sign. She starts the sample through DNA analysis. As the computer runs, it draws the profile as a row of peaks across her screen. It draws big tall spikes, meaning the sample is strong, another good sign. The whole process takes 30 minutes. The profile reaches the sex marker, the part that shows whether the DNA came from a man or a woman. X, Y, or X, X. Jennifer expects a male result. She remembers the investigators prevailing theory from the murder book about two burglars. Besides that, most murders are committed by men. She stares at the computer screen, waiting. An X, Y, reading would cause the line to peek again. It stays flat. Jennifer looks at the flat line, wait. The first thought is, "Sherry, is the computer showing Sherry's DNA?" Maybe the bite broke the skin and the swab picked up some of Sherry's blood. That would explain a female result. When the computer finishes, Jennifer takes the final profile and puts it side by side with Sherries. They do not match. There is another woman's DNA in the bite mark from Sherry's arm. A woman bit Sherry Rasmussen. Jennifer has read the murder book and her mind goes straight to the nurse from the hospital security report, the one who harass Sherry after missing out on a promotion. However, Jennifer does not suggest this idea, even as a theory. She is expected to stay in her lane as a criminalist. Analyze the evidence. Let detectives come up with the theories. And so she does. On February 8, 2005, Jennifer sends her report to Detective Shepard. The result catches him off guard. She called me and said, "Hey, this is an unknown female's DNA." That is not what I was expecting. But the surprise does not change his basic theory of the crime. Shepard now looks for a male female burglary team. The violence at the scene still makes him think a man had to be involved. He explained that reasoning to date line in 2020. I believed that, okay, there's a woman and then there's a man that Sherry had been clubbed from behind, knocked down or unconscious and then somebody stood over her and shot her. Jennifer does not understand why Shepard fixates on a burglary in light of this new DNA evidence. She thinks the personal motive is at least worth a look, but it's Shepard's case and she is only a criminalist. No arrest follows. No suspect is identified. Jennifer moves on to other cases. Sherry's case goes quiet again. Fast forward three years to March 2008. Van Aes homicide where Sherry's case started more than two decades earlier is moving offices. Someone plunks a box of files next to Jim Nudol's desk. Nudol is a three-year homicide detective. He has spent all three of those years in Van Aes. He is not thrilled to see this box. Two detectives are about to retire and Nudol's wife is eight-and-a-half months pregnant. He's taking time off next month, trying to button up loose ends before the baby comes. He's also got no idea who left the box beside his desk. Inside it are two faded blue binders. Murder books from cases waiting to be solved. Nudol came up under an old-fashioned supervisor who believed that reading old unsolved cases is the best way to learn. So Nudol has read and he has learned. He does not recognize the books in his newly acquired file box. Catherine Braille killed in Van Aes in 1988. The other Sherry Rasmussen 1986. Jim Nudol has tried his hand at investigating exactly one cold case. The murder of a biker and bookie who went by "Sid the Squid." He read the murder book, spoke to witnesses, and eventually arrived at a final suspect, a fellow biker, who beat Sid the Squid to death over money. However, Nudol hit a brick wall at the DA's office. He had only circumstantial evidence connecting his suspect to the murder. Nothing physical. He presented his case and the DA turned it down. No arrest, no charges. The blue book goes back with the others unsolved. Jim comes away convinced that solving a cold case requires physical evidence, no matter how compelling the argument a detective makes. The homicide unit moves locations. He drops the box on the empty desk next to his own in the new office space. His baby comes. He takes his leave and returns and tackles other cases. The box sits there undisturbed for nearly a year. Super Bowl Sunday, 2009. The Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Arizona Cardinals 27-23 on a touchdown with 35 seconds left. Nudol watches with a house full of friends and a fridge full of beer. Nudol later describes that Sunday to NBC's Dateline. Super Bowl Sunday is like a holiday to me so we were having a good time and we were up late. The next morning is Monday, February 2nd. Nudol comes in tired and a little worse for the wear as he later tells NBC. We commit early, oh dark 30 and I was tired. It was the perfect data. I have cup of coffee and then do some reading. Nudol gets coffee and opens the 4-volume Rasmussen murder book. He reads about a 29-year-old nurse fighting for her life inside her own home. Shots fired upstairs, a struggle over the gun. They fight their way downstairs. A vase breaks. Sherry is hit again. Someone bites down hard enough on her arm to leave a full set of teeth marks and then three bullets to the chest and somewhere in the middle of volume one, Jim stops. The stereo components stacked by the front door. The stacked the original detectives had read as evidence of a burglary had blood on them. He tells Dateline NBC this was a turning point. For me everything changed with that blood on that stereo equipment. If there was blood on the stereo components the components were moved after someone likely Sherry was bleeding. To Nudol that means the stack by the front door was built after the fight not before it. She's dead or dying and if you wanted that stereo equipment you had every opportunity in the world to walk out the door with it. Why stack it and leave it. At that point you start to draw the conclusion that murder was the main goal not the burglary. Then Nudol turns a page and finds a four-year-old lab report. It has Jennifer Francis's name on it. He keeps reading. The major DNA profile from the bite mark swab is female. Sherry Rasmussen is excluded as the source. Nudol reads it twice. Then it hits him. Oh shit not only do I have DNA I've got female DNA. We had a woman responsible or involved with this crime. The female DNA profile had been uploaded to the FBI's national database in 2005 after Jennifer Francis found and processed it but was never matched to anyone. The detectives will have to build a list of female suspects themselves. Nudol tells Dateline that suddenly 23 years after the murder this cold case seemed solvable. Once you debunk the burglary theory and you have a female DNA profile now this case becomes manageable. Now it becomes a matter of time. Within days Nudol calls the crime lab about the DNA work from 2005. Jennifer Francis calls him back that same day. They have never spoken before. Each is trying to figure out how much the other knows. One of the first things she tells him is detective. I'm not telling you how to do your job but I don't think this was a burglary. Nudol has taken it back. He thinks I know that but how do you know that? Jennifer does not tell him. Not yet. Fueled by the female DNA discovery, Jim Nudol, his supervisor Rob Bubb and two other vani's detectives start Sherry Rasmussen's case over from scratch. Whoever this killer is she bit Sherry Rasmussen hard enough to leave tooth marks and saliva on her arm. So the question is no longer which burglars were inside the condo, but rather, who were the women in Sherry's life? Women she knew well enough that if one rang her doorbell, she might open the door. Nadal is determined to find out. The next day, February 10th, he calls John Rutton. Nadal asks him, "Were there any women in your past that Sherry had a problem with?" John gives him a name, Stephanie Lazarus. John says he was involved with Stephanie for years before he married Sherry. On and off, he says, he says that Stephanie joined the Los Angeles Police Department before he ever met Sherry. And as far as John knows, she still works for the department. Nadal turns to another detective in the room. He tells Dateline, "He will never forget what happened next." I turn it one of the members of our unit, and I said, "Check a name for me in the directory." And he access the LAPD directory, and explaining me that she was currently a detective in the LAPD. Stephanie Lazarus, commercial crimes division, Parker Center, Los Angeles Police Department headquarters downtown. Nadal understands immediately. This case has changed. Total, we're not in Kansas anymore. I'm Megan Kelly, next time on MK Confidential. Four vanished detectives must decide what to do when their murder suspect is one of their own. 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. And 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 LA police detective 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. Three months earlier, February 2009, inside the homicide unit at the Van Eyes police station. Detective Jim Nuddle has reopened to 23-year-old murder. 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 Nuddle 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 Nuddle'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 Bratton. By February 10th, 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 FedExit 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, Nell's 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 Nell's and Loretta get home to Tucson, there is a message waiting on their answering machine. Nell's returns the call on April 28th. Jim Nudol later tells Dateline that Nell's came into that first conversation carrying 23 years of frustration. Nell's was upset with me and he was very animated. It was sort of like, detective, where have you been for the last two decades? Nudol asks Nell's what he thinks happened to his daughter. Nell's 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 Nell's 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 May. On March 9, 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 2, Nudol e-mails criminalist Jennifer Francis, quote, "Candidate number 5 reported 38 caliber handguns stolen in Santa 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 assets today. The search keeps going. On May 4, 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 5, 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 6, 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. 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 park there and asked what they were doing. So they learn Stephanie's routine. With 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 park or center, where she works as an LAPD art theft detective. The first things they collect are the newspapers. Then a 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 5am, she is off that day. On Thursday, May 20, she does not come outside at 5am. 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. As where Stephanie drops the Pepsi cup and plastic straw into a trash bin, beside the waiting undercover operator. Within seconds, he 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 29, the call finally comes. Jennifer Francis' team tells Bub and Jim Nuddle that the DNA on the straw is the same DNA that was in the bite mark on Sherry Razbason'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, Van Eyes' 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 Harameo. 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, Harameo comes over. He tells her they've picked up an extortion suspect who said something about stolen art, and that he could use the 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, Harameo checks his gun. Stephanie tells him she left hers upstairs at her desk. He walks her to an interview room where Greg 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 a case. There's some notes to see that as far as your name can be mentioned." "Oh, okay." "Do you know John Routon?" "John." "John." "Ruton?" "Ruton." "Ruton." "Oh yeah, I went to school with him." 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 may remember. She may not. It was a long time ago. "You know, God, that's been a million years ago. 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 Harameo 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. Let's go back to Los Angeles, 1978, at UCLA. Stephanie Lazarus and John Rutton live on the 10th floor of Dykstra Hall, part of a group of friends who stay close long after college. Stephanie takes photographs constantly. One of them is of John, asleep in his dorm room, wearing only his underwear. She writes a caption on the photo, John Rutton, 1979, Dykstra 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. estimates they have. He 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 concern 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 crying 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. Someone 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 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 her own name. She 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. Good 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 Rutton tells his fiance the truth. That 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 know 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 and 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 Rutton. Three weeks later, Stephanie Lazarus receives a card from John's mother. She writes in her diary, "Unfortunately, I got a card from Mrs. Rutton. This made me very, very, very sad." Stephanie does not say what the card from Mrs. Rutton 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 going to 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 Mayor 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. Lyle says he raised it repeatedly. And John says he told police that Sherry had found his ex-girlfriend standing in their living room. Mayor 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? Today Sherry Rasmussen is killed as 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 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 Rutton called, "Verified Steps." Anthony 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. Lyle Mayer retires from the LAPD in September of 1991. Steve Fisk takes up the case. He does not recall ever speaking with Mayer 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 Nuttall 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 Rutton 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 about him. 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? I couldn't even see it. I would have been working in Devin's shirt. 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. It doesn't say anything else. You follow the on the phone. Okay. 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? 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, or-- 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, wasn't it? 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, I'm thinking I probably need to talk to a lawyer. I mean, I know how the stuff works. OK, don't get me wrong. You're right. I have been doing this 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 fightin' 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 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, I'm shot. I'm really shot. That somebody would be playing 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 don't see something. 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. 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? Stephanie Lazarus sits in front of a camera in a California state prison and answers questions under oath. It is February 12th, 2025. Stephanie is 64 years old, and she has been in state custody for almost 16 years. She really wants to get out. On the other side of the video screen, Sherry Rasmussen's two sisters Connie and Teresa are watching. So are Sherry's two nieces and John Rutton, Sherry's husband. The man Stephanie killed Sherry over and still lost. A parole commissioner named Kevin Chappelle asks Stephanie about a phone call she made on a February morning in 1986. Sherry had answered. Chappelle asks what Stephanie felt when she heard Sherry's voice. Yes, sir, I was enraged. Stephanie says she went down the stairs of her condominium and took a cord off of her workbench. Chappelle asks her why she brought that cord with her to John and Sherry's home. Because I was so angry that if she got in my way to see John, I was going to strangle her. Chappelle asks what she was thinking by the time she reached Sherry Rasmussen's front door. I'm going to kill her if I don't see John. Sherry's younger sister Teresa watches her screen, listening to Stephanie talk about murdering Sherry. At these parole hearings, Teresa makes a point of staying visible. She told us why. Personally, I make an effort to be sure that I'm on the screen the whole time that so she has to-- if she looks up, she has to see me. But she never looks up. Stephanie says she barged into Sherry's home asking for John. And from there, she describes what happened as a delicious fight. Kevin Chappelle stops her. Why are you calling it a fight? Stephanie thinks about this. I invaded her home. I was an intruder. So maybe it was just a fight on my part. Her trying to maybe defend herself would be a better description of the situation. Chappelle offers a different word, what about assault? And Stephanie agrees with that. Stephanie describes a violent struggle, hitting Sherry in the face with her gun, then biting her and smashing a vase over her head. And Stephanie says she picks up a blanket from the floor, wraps it around her gun, and fires three times into Sherry's chest. Chappelle comes back to that. When I think of someone in a rage, they're just out of it. They're not thinking about, well, I need to wrap this up. Why did you wrap the gun up? Stephanie shifts her eyes and answers to dead in the sound. I'm Megan Kelly, and this is Empty Confidential. [MUSIC PLAYING] 13 years earlier, in 2012, Stephanie Lazarus is singing a very different tune. She is on trial for Sherry Razwesson's murder. Stephanie was arrested in June 2009. Over the next 32 months, through preliminary hearings, motions, and other pre-trial proceedings, she comes to court shackled in an orange jail jumpsuit. Then on February 6, 2012, the first day of her trial, she appears dressed in black. She pleads not guilty. She will not testify. Prosecutors tell the jury that Stephanie Lazarus killed Sherry Razwesson because of a love triangle. John Rutton chose Sherry instead of her. They put the old evidence back on the table, the swabs from Sherry's arm, the 38 caliber revolver that Lazarus reported stolen after the murder, and Stephanie's own words about John preserved in letters, diary entries, and photographs. and then they call John Rutton to the stand. John is 53. A reporter in the courtroom watches him choke up several times and reach for a box of Kleenex when he is asked about the day his Sherry died. The prosecution begins with the relationship. John testifies that he and Stephanie Lazarus slept together somewhere between 25 and 30 times over roughly three years, beginning the summer after he graduated from UCLA. Justice Stephanie herself predicted when questioned by robbery homicide in their surprise interview. John says he did not consider Stephanie his girlfriend. John says that in the summer of 1985, weeks after he asked Sherry to marry him, Stephanie called him crying, asking to see him. So he went over and they had sex. As to explain it, he says, quote, basically she had no closure. She was upset, I felt bad. I was a stupid and young man. Sherry's younger sister, Teresa Lane, is in the courtroom. She's hearing for the first time that John slept with Stephanie after he and Sherry were engaged. When we spoke with Teresa for this series, she still remembered what that moment felt like. I was devastated. Sorry, it's hard. Sherry's older sister, Connie Wilkinson, is in the courtroom, too. John's behavior after the murder has bothered Connie for years as she told us. It wasn't as difficult for me to hear it because in my opinion, John's behavior around Sherry's death was suspect to me. He delayed, notifying my parents until after they couldn't get a flight out of Tucson. And my parents weren't notified until his parents were there to support him. Also, when my dad asked him, how did you know Sherry was dead? He goes that he used his foot and touched her with his foot and she didn't move. Those are behaviors I don't see as a loving, caring, loving husband. Teresa, who says she's still in touch with John, sees him differently. Sherry knew about the incident with Stephanie before they got married. Did he do wrong? Hell yes. But my sister was still willing to walk down that aisle and say, I do. So I am going to support my sister in that. Then Stephanie Lazarus's defense attorney, Mark Overland, gets his turn to cross examine John. Overland argues that it was John, not Stephanie, who could not let the relationship go. John is already dabbing at his eyes when Overland takes him back to the night he had sex with Stephanie after becoming engaged to Sherry. And to whether John tried to clean up before going home. The attorney asks, did you take a shower before leaving Miss Lazarus's place? John Rotten looks down. I don't recall that. The defense attacks the bite mark evidence. Overland points to that hole in the corner of the evidence envelope which poked straight through the case number and argues that someone could have used it to remove the tube and tamper with the swab. There is a second swab inside that tube. An independent lab tests the second swab with a defense representative in the room. It, too, comes back with the same DNA profile as the first, Stephanie Lazarus. The odds that the 15 DNA markers belong to anyone other than Stephanie Lazarus are about 1 in 1.76 trillion. 17 days after the trial begins on March 8, the jury comes back with a verdict. We, the jury in above-and-tile action pointed at them in Stephanie, Irene Lazarus. Heal to you the client of a Sherry mask in school. Teresa watches Stephanie as the verdict is read. She showed nothing. I mean, a woman that-- I mean, you have to have-- I assume people have feelings. I think the best of people, that she did not shut her. She didn't do anything. She didn't even blink. She looked forward. And there was nothing left in her soul. Nells and Loretta Rasmussen stay in their seats in the second row, sobbing. Two months later, on May 11, 2012, Stephanie Lazarus is back in the same courthouse for sentencing. She gets 27 years to life. Sherry's family stands one by one and tells the court what her murder has done to them. John Rutton speaks, too. The fact that Sherry's death occurred because she met and married me brings me to my knees. I have resigned myself to trying to endure the daydreams about a world where Sherry is still with us. In this point, this tragedy never occurred. Theresa remembers watching Stephanie, while John spoke. I remember him standing up there and talking. And Stephanie did not move, flinch, blink, or anything. That woman has no soul at all. Stephanie Lazarus says nothing. For Connie and Theresa, it feels like the end of the story. It was relief that, finally, that she will pay for what she did. I'm realistic, but it was like, OK, now we can close the book. But the book is never closed. You learned that after the verdict. I thought it was going to be closed. I thought it would be a done deal that she would be there for the 25 years, but it hasn't stopped. After the verdict, I mean, we don't get a rest. Sherry Rasmussen was murdered in February of 1986. Stephanie Lazarus was arrested in June 2009. 23 years, the question of what's taking so long has haunted this case from the very beginning. Connie says their father, Nell's Rasmussen, who was tortured by the fact that he could not protect his daughter in life, became determined to avenge her in death. He began doing his own detective work the day after Sherry died. The way that dad coped with the loss of Sherry was to be very analytical and go over every detail, and everything that she had said to him. So he did have a short list. Stephanie was on the list. Of course, we didn't know her day. We just knew that an ex-girlfriend that was a police officer. According to Connie, Nell's Rasmussen gave the detectives two leads back in 1986, a woman at the hospital who had been passed over for a promotion and had been making calls to Sherry and the police officer. In his book, The Lazarus Files, author Matthew McGuff reports that Nell's early on tried repeatedly to raise the possibility of John's ex and her involvement to no avail. Nell's also discussed with Mayor the two bullets recovered during Sherry's autopsy. In this 2009 LAPD interview, Nell's recounted, I mentioned to Lyle the fact that they were similar, if not the same, as what police are issued. According to Nell's, Mayor never acknowledged what Nell's said about the bullets. He never acknowledged. As things went along with Mayor day by day that week, Nell's became ever more insistent and emotional about bringing up the subject that seemed to irritate Mayor the West. John's ex-girlfriend, the female cop. Nell's felt Mayor was on his case from Wednesday on. After a certain point, according to Nell's, whenever he met with Mayor, Mayor got loud with him. Mayor was not afraid to let Nell's know he didn't want his input. Lyle Mayor, the lead detective, says none of that ever happened. No one from the family told him about a police officer, he says not even one time. And if they had, he would have run the lead down. According to Nell's, Mayor responded to his theories with, you've been watching too much television. I asked Connie and Teresa how they reconcile those two accounts and what they believe kept the investigation from moving. Here's a critical question. Do you believe that Lyle Mayor didn't want to talk about the police officer who John used to date because he wanted to back the blue and cover up for a fellow police officer? Or because he had tunnel vision on his burglar theory. Connie, I'll start with you on that. I believe he had tunnel vision because if you look at the murder book and the first interview when they come to the site, he already had labeled it as a burglary. So he was not open to discussing any other theories or alternatives. And what about Mayor's denial? I don't believe anything that Lyle Mayor says. I know my brother-in-law has told me that he said to the police when he was first questioned after Sherry died, that he had a girlfriend that was in the police department. And John has told me that. My dad followed up. - The sisters agree that the Los Angeles Police Department failed to seriously investigate Stephanie Lazarus. They are less certain about why. - I was naive at the time. I was very young. And I believed that the police were doing everything they could. And they were pursuing it with an honest heart. And I don't believe that happened in that sort of a distressing to me. On March 12, 1986, 16 days after the murder, the LAPD gives John Rutton a polygraph exam. The result is inconclusive. According to the murder book, Rutton was too emotional to give an accurate reading. Mayor says the two key questions were, are you personally involved? And do you personally know who killed her? On both of those, he was deemed credible. There are seven questions listed for the exam. Not one of them is about Stephanie Lazarus. 20 months later, on November 19, 1987, someone writes one line at the bottom of page 18 of the murder book Chronology. John Rutton called Verified Stephanie Lazarus, dash PO, was former girlfriend. Her name is in the murder book. Her job is in the murder book. Her relationship to the husband is in the murder book. Exactly once. That one line is the only time Stephanie Lazarus appears in the file for the next 22 years. The handwriting has never been identified. The detectives are no closer to finding her. Then sometime in 1992 or 1993, Nell's and Loretta and Connie drive to Van Aes trying to restart the case. Nell's asks whether anyone had run DNA and offers to pay for it himself. The detective who tells him no is Steve Fisk who runs Van Aes homicide. He sets a thin manila folder on the table between them, a tiny case file. According to Matthew McGuff's book on the case, Fisk says there is no point in running DNA without a suspect. Nell's points at the manila folder, quote, "I think it's in your record there about John's ex-girlfriend." Fisk says nothing. Connie later says he seemed eager for them to leave. Early Monday afternoon, October 11, 1993, a homicide detective from Van Aes drives to the Los Angeles County Coroner's office about 30 minutes from the station. His name is Phil Morit. He works under Steve Fisk. Morit is listed as the signatory taking out all trace evidence collected from Sherry Rasmussen's body. It is never seen again. It disappears from the record entirely. Years later, Morit acknowledges the signature on the paperwork appears to be his, but says he does not remember taking the evidence and says he never worked on Sherry's case. There is no mention of this removal in the murder book. No one tells the Rasmussen family. Sherry's sister Connie has been trying to make sense of it ever since. One thing we do know is that Stephanie Lazarus was stationed at the Van Aes police division during the '90s. So I don't-- she had a relationship or worked with that individual detective. Or she may have done and moved the items for herself and put his signature. Who knows? All we know is that it's gone. Stephanie Lazarus is transferred to Van Aes in March of 1995, which is a year and a half after the trace evidence leaves the coroner's office. She works out of that station on and off for the rest of the decade. Sherry Rasmussen's murder book is in the building, unsecured the entire time. Stephanie is there. She often volunteers to work the morning shift, a time when the building is mostly empty, particularly of higher ranks, whether she ever cracked it open or altered what was inside, no one can say for sure. I ask Teresa for her opinion. I don't see why she wouldn't have, because if you look at her track record from the day she killed my sister to 26 years later, she has-- everything is self-serving. So she has no regards for anybody else. I hate to think the worst of people to tell you the truth, but if you look at her life and how she dealt with her family during the trial and lied that she didn't kill my sister, she has no conscious about other people. I mean, her only thing is her well-being and what she wants to accomplish in her life and her goal. That evidence is not the only thing missing from the investigation. The original handwritten log of the first three months after Sherry died disappears from the murder book sometime between 1986 and 2008. No one knows when, who took it, or why. It is the only real-time record of what the detectives did to track down her murderer, including possible meetings with family members and various leads. Only a copy of the log prepared on a typewriter by someone survives. It is dated three months after the murder, and it is attached to the 60-day report. It is supposed to be word-for-word accurate. Without the original, there is no way to verify that. John Rutton's name is misspelled as "rutter" throughout. The break in the case comes from a piece of evidence filled more it left behind at the coroner. A bite-mark swab from Sherry's left arm tucked away in the basement freezer, but it only comes after the case changes hands. Mayer has retired, Steve Fisk moves on. Cliff Shepard is now in charge, an LAPD cold case detected from the respected robbery homicide division. When criminalist Jennifer Francis finds female DNA in saliva from the bite mark, it is because Cliff Shepard first asked for a fresh look at the forensics. But Shepard does not respond meaningfully to the news that the bite mark was from a woman, Jennifer's discovery. Jennifer calls Shepard a few weeks later. She asks him about the rasmussen case and the other woman. She means that nurse, who the murder book says, harassed Sherry at work. Shepard's reply surprises her. Oh, you mean the LAPD detective? She was not a part of this. He does not say that detectives name and Jennifer Francis does not ask how she has supposedly been ruled out. That ruled out female detectives name is in the binder on her desk. Just one line, page 18, written in 1987. Stephanie Lazarus, PO, former girlfriend. Francis had read right past it. Four more years pass with no movement. Then Jim Nudol is handed the murder book and starts over. Friday, June 5, 2009. Sherry's little sister, Teresa Lane, is living in Sierra Vista, Arizona. She receives an urgent cryptic message from her parents. And then they called me and they said, you need to be up here today. And I said, OK, which was sort of a nice thing and it was something at the same time. The family gathers at Nells and Loretta's home in Tucson. And LAPD detectives are already there. They will not say why. We were sitting around in my parents' family room. And my dad was questioning that detectives just see what was going on. They said they couldn't say anything until the arrest was made. And then once the arrest was made, they came in and told us that who they arrested. Stephanie Lazarus has just been taken into custody for murder, off the DNA from a Costco cup. Teresa remembers hearing the news. It was a relief, but it was just a new starting point. After Stephanie's arrest, the Rasmussen's file, a two-part claim against the city of Los Angeles. First, alleging that Stephanie Lazarus used her position as an officer to commit and cover up her crime, literally, to get away with murder. Second, that the LAPD protected Stephanie Lazarus and helped cover for her through fraud, negligence, and other wrongful acts. A judge dismisses the lawsuit before discovery begins, primarily on the grounds of governmental immunity. No witness is ever questioned under oath. No police documents are ever handed over. No court will ever decide whether the LAPD covered for one of its own. On February 6, 2012, Stephanie Lazarus pleads not guilty. She does not testify at her trial. After being found guilty, she says nothing at her sentencing. She appeals her conviction and loses, then appeals again and loses. Lazarus never publicly admits to killing Sherry Rasmussen. That is, until doing so. could work to her advantage. November 16, 2023, the California Institution for Women near Chino, California, Stephanie Lazarus' parole hearing. Two commissioners Lazarus and her lawyer are present. The Rasmussen family joins on a video screen, Connie, Teresa, Tuneses, John Rutton, and LAPD Detective Greg Sterns. Sterns is one of the detectives who interrogated Lazarus before her arrest in 2009. A California law makes offenders who were younger than 26 when they committed their crime eligible for parole earlier than usual. Stephanie Lazarus was 25 years, 9 months, and 20 days old when she murdered Sherri Rasmussen. The board asks Stephanie what she did. She describes driving over to the condominium and barging in, asking for John. She mentions the cord she brought and the vase. Then she says the gun came out of her fanny pack and she and Sherri struggled over it. Two shots went into the sliding glass door upstairs, Lazarus regained control of her weapon. Hearing is not recorded on video, but it is transcribed, and here is some of what Lazarus said, word for word. She stumbles throughout, "At some point she had me in a chokehold and I couldn't get out of the chokehold. I hit her several times to the right side of her face with my gun. I still couldn't get out. Eventually, I bit her." She continues, "I picked up a blanket or a robe, something off the floor. I wrapped it around my gun and I shot her three times to the chest." Stephanie adds, "What I didn't do is I didn't check her pulse. I didn't give her CPR. I didn't call 911. All I cared about was my selfish self to get out of there." The presiding commissioner Patricia Cassidy asks, "Why would you give her CPR when you were trying to kill her?" Stephanie backpedals and stammeres. She's just saying that she could have and that she went to the condo to talk to John. Lazarus was just in her way. Lazarus admits to the board that she staged the scene to look like a burglary and drove off in Sherry's car. She says that after the murder, John Rutton mentioned that he had given her name to the police. Lazarus, through the revolver she had used to kill Sherry off a freeway, and she reported the gun stolen to the Santa Monica Police Department because she was certain the LAPD would come and ask her for it. No one ever did. For 37 years, Connie and Teresa had waited for Stephanie Lazarus to say the words, Connie remembers hearing them. The first time that we heard that she admitted that she was murdered Sherry was at the first parole hearing. Up to that, she exercised every appeal and every way possible to get out of prison. But she is still lying. Every parole hearing, it's not the whole truth. It's a portion of the truth, maybe enough to get parole. It works. That day, the board finds Stephanie Lazarus suitable for parole after serving just 11 and a half years of a 27 year sentence. After the board's decision, LA Police Chief Michael Moore writes to the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, and asks him to intervene. Moore writes that Lazarus continues to pose an unreasonable risk to the public. Newsom formally recommends a second look. He sends the decision back to the full Board of Parole hearings to reconsider and they schedule a hearing. October 2, 2024. The board has no questions for Lazarus. It will decide based on the record from the last one and will allow statements. Stephanie speaks for seven minutes about the programs she has completed in prison. Greg Sterns is there in support of John Rutton. Sterns describes the crime to the board and makes the case that the young offender's law should not apply to Stephanie. In his view, this is a clearly premeditated and thoughtful crime. Quote. Stephanie Lazarus stalked her victim. She chose a time and a place when she knew that she would have the victim alone. She brought cordage to bind her, used an improvised suppressor to execute her, staged a burglary. Those are not the hallmarks of youthful offense. They are the hallmarks of criminal sophistication and maturity. John Rutton speaks as well, quote, "Every day she went to work as a police officer was a lie. The inmate has exercised her rights to the fullest, but never has never done the right thing." The full board rescinds the grant for Stephanie's parole. She stays behind bars for now. Which brings us back to where this episode began, February 12, 2025. This is the hearing where parole commissioner Shepel will not let Stephanie Lazarus call the killing of fight. It is also where he asks her how she found Sherry's address. "That's a good question," Stephanie seems to stall. I would say that I probably accessed LAPD records to obtain where she lived. Later, Lazarus' own attorney takes her back to the morning of the murder and asks what her plan was when she left her house. She responds, quote, "To murder Sherry Rasmussen." And there it is for the first time, clearly. Beyond the murder confession, Detective Greg Sterns calls out another crime for the board to consider. For the first time today, Ms. Lazarus admitted what we long suspected that she utilized police databases in order to obtain the address of John and Sherry. That's a felony in the state of California. Perole is denied. She will soon be eligible again. Sherry's sister Teresa Lane was in the room that February. She says the pattern is always the same. After Perole hearing we've done with Stephanie, she adds a little more details about the crime. She'll add a little tidbit here and there. She never tells the whole story. So I assume this next Perole hearing, she's going to add a little bit more information. The next Perole board hearing is almost here. October 9th, 2026, the same prison dialing in on the same video screen. Connie is confident they will be prepared. We have an excellent team. I can say that we are blessed. I asked Connie whether there was something specific in the years since 1986 that she wished her sister Sherry had been there for. When mom was critically ill and passed away, I would have liked to have, would have liked to have Sherry there in their process and caring for my mom. It was especially as a nurse. Well we're both nurses, but sometimes it helps to bounce your ideas and the symptoms you're seeing off with someone else and talk it through. There are two people who will not be logging on for the next Perole hearing. After the sentencing in 2012, Nells and Loretta Rasmussen sat down in front of a camera and recorded victim impact statements about the loss of their daughter. They did so just in case they were gone by the time Stephanie Lazarus came up for Perole, which turned out to be prescient. Nells died in the summer of 2020, Loretta followed in 2022. At the 2023 hearing, the family asks to play those recordings. The video files are too large for the state's system and they will not play in the room. So one of the granddaughters Rachel Buck asks to read the transcripts allowed. Rachel tells the commissioner her grandparents would rest better knowing their words had been heard. The commissioner agrees, Greg Sterns finds a copy, and Rachel reads her grandparents statements into the record. Here is part of what Sherry's mother, Loretta, recorded in her statement about Sherry. For a hearing she knew she might not attend, Loretta, who loved Sherry so much, was always described as "a soft one". She fought so hard to live, and it always worried me what she must have gone through. I would just like to say to the parole board, "I beg you not to let this person out". Sherry's father echoed his wife, first about the murder and Stephanie Lazarus, "I've been able to stand up to many problems in life, but this one has put me on the ground because I think of such a senseless killing, the selfishness that took place is just beyond me". He continued, "We have grandchildren and great-grandchildren now, and not only do we miss Sherry, but we miss the children that she would bring into this world. And knowing Sherry, she would have been a terrific mother, and her children would have been tremendous kids". John Rutton remarried, and stayed in California, he now has two sons and a granddaughter. Theresa Lane tells me that the trial for her sister Sherry's murder reached John's second family too. He's told me this many times that the trial came about when he his sons were in high school. You know, it was very publicized. And also, they realized their dad cheated on his wife. They have a good life. But, you know, it affects them as much as it affects us daily. - Teresa has remained friends with John Rotten. Connie has not. But Connie is careful to say this. - John has been very strong advocate and has really showed up for Sheria in regards to the parole hearing. - So I appreciate that. - I ask Connie what she really thinks led to her sister's murder. - Do you think this was a fatal attraction where she was just obsessed with John and could not have him be married to another woman, Connie? - Yes, I do. Her perception of the relationship and then how John describes their relationship is very different. He considers her a acquaintance where she considers him his, you know, her, is what her boyfriend is. So I think she had, in her mind, what she wanted and she was gonna get it no matter what. - Sheri never got to have the children. She's so badly wanted. Stephanie Lazarus made sure of that. But Sheri's own family never stopped loving or fighting for her. When she went off to California, Nell's wrote to her, quote, we all need a friend from time to time to talk to. I hope I will always qualify. He modeled the importance of a family first life, showing his children how to never lose touch and never give up. Now Connie and Teresa appear at every parole board hearing and do media around them to keep the pressure on officials not to release their sister's killer. When I asked them one last question about Sheri, the sisters who lived with, learned from, and loved her so much told me this. I don't know if you're religious people, if you believe in heaven, a God. But I wonder if you do, what do you think Sheri's gonna say to you when you see her again? - Well, I think she's gonna be proud of us for fighting for her. And she's gonna be really excited to see us. Now hopefully we're not as old as we are right now when we see her, but not too soon. - I think she'd be so grateful to both of you. You've been just true warriors. Every sister should be so lucky as to have two sisters like you. Thank you for telling her story and yours. - Thank you. - I'm Megan Kelly. This is MK Confidential.