00:00:00
This was an up-close and personal fight. While she was down on the ground, three rounds were fired.
00:00:08
All of them were hits. He opens the door and sees his wife. She had obviously been killed.
00:00:17
What happened? Why? When you heard that burglary theory, that makes sense to you?
00:00:22
No. I just came to the conclusion it was never going to be solved. I saw that a bite swab had been collected by the coroner's office.
00:00:32
There should be DNA. It indicated the suspect that had bitten Sherry Rasmussen was actually a female.
00:00:40
Now it becomes a matter of time. That moment, that call, never forget it. That changed everything.
00:00:48
This plays to everybody's favorite conspiracy theory, that cops cover for other cops.
00:00:54
No matter what, you're out of your mind. We made a determination. We'd never say her name.
00:00:59
We referred to her only as number five. Nobody would ever know who she was. December 1985.
00:01:12
For many families, a typical Christmas. For the Rasmussen family of Tucson, Arizona,
00:01:18
it would be a Christmas of firsts and lasts. It was the first Christmas for 28-year-old Sherry Rasmussen and John Rutten as husband and wife.
00:01:30
It was also a time to celebrate the first child of the next generation, Sherry's niece Rachel.
00:01:37
My first Christmas, I was told that I had chicken pox, so it was not very comfortable,
00:01:44
and the only person who could make me happy was my Aunt Sherry. Give me the camera.
00:01:50
Rachel and her younger sister Jessica only know their Aunt Sherry through videos, photos, and the stories their family told them.
00:02:01
Why? Why would you take her from such a young age, from a very loving family that misses her greatly?
00:02:08
Baby Rachel's first Christmas back in 1985 was also her Aunt Sherry's last Christmas on Earth.
00:02:15
It was great to watch it and to see her. And then at the same time, it hurts and it makes me angry because I feel like, why isn't she here?
00:02:26
Why did someone have to take her away? The mystery of what happened to Sherry Rasmussen would take more than two decades to solve,
00:02:34
while her family waited with a hole in their hearts. Teresa was so close to her sister Sherry,
00:02:44
She often called her while on her 10 a.m. break, like on that Monday morning in February 1986.
00:02:52
And her secretary said that she was homesick, so I called her at home after that.
00:02:59
Sherry didn't pick up. And when Teresa's phone rang late that night, it wasn't Sherry returning her call.
00:03:06
I answered the phone and Dad told me that she had been killed. And I sat up and screamed in bed.
00:03:23
Not just killed, murdered in her own home. The third sister, Connie, was next to get the call.
00:03:30
It was close to midnight by the time I heard. Then I started screaming. Shocked and sleep deprived, the Rasmussen family met up at the LA airport.
00:03:39
And then they went straight to LAPD's Van Nuys station, where Sherry's case was being handled.
00:03:45
Did police tell you what they thought had happened? I believe at that time they told my parents that she was in a fight in her home and had been shot.
00:03:55
Her injuries were extensive and disturbing. Jerping. Journalist Matt McGough wrote a book about the investigation.
00:04:05
John, Sherry's husband, came home from work that night around 6 p.m. and went upstairs
00:04:11
and discovered Sherry's body. When police got to the scene, they found video and stereo equipment stacked just inside the
00:04:20
front door. As if someone is in the act of burglarizing and suddenly discover the homeowner is home
00:04:27
and there's a confrontation and it goes sideways. John and Sherry had been married just three months.
00:04:35
By all accounts, John was distraught that night. Too distraught, apparently, to break the news to Sherry's family.
00:04:43
He didn't call you to tell you that Sherry had been murdered. No. He didn't call you.
00:04:49
No. He didn't call your parents. No. Instead, John had his dad call Sherry's parents.
00:04:55
telling me that Sherry had been murdered. And so I told his dad, I want to talk to John.
00:05:03
And he said, John doesn't feel like talking. Sherry's family says when they finally met with John
00:05:10
at the LAPD's Van Nuys station the day after the murder, he still wasn't talking.
00:05:15
I thought his behavior was odd, that he was more concerned about himself than about Sherry.
00:05:24
How so? Well, naturally we had questions, you know, because he had firsthand information because he found Sherry.
00:05:32
He wouldn't talk to us. It just was odd. But he did speak with detectives. Now, John, what is your wife's name?
00:05:42
Sherry. She's a nurse. She's director of nursing at Glendale Adventist Hospital.
00:05:49
She's got everything going. I mean she Hey so do you but She can ask me to receive it Hey hey hey John John For a couple of minutes I need you to be tough for me buddy Mayor believed the murder happened sometime between 7 and 10 a and John seemed to have an alibi for that time
00:06:11
He said he'd left early that morning for work, and he said Sherry was awake then, but still in bed.
00:06:18
7.20 is when I left. I got to work about 10 to 8. The detective asked him point blank.
00:06:27
You didn't harm your wife, did you, John? No, I didn't harm my wife. You didn't harm your wife?
00:06:32
Okay, very good. John even agreed, 16 days after the murder, to take a polygraph.
00:06:39
He sat and he was asked questions. It was recorded in the detective's notes as inconclusive because he was too emotional.
00:06:49
Sherry's entire family was shattered and it was only going to get worse. Inside, what seemed like a very good marriage.
00:07:02
If you look at the wedding pictures, you can see in my sister's eyes how excited and happy she was.
00:07:07
They made a very stunning couple. And later, the trail goes cold. They were going to take a psychic out to see if they could figure out what went on.
00:07:19
In 1986, Los Angeles saw a spike in murders. Everybody hold on to the wall. Driven mostly by the intersection of drugs and gangs.
00:07:42
We have continual shootings. Well, it's just a war zone. By year's end, 834 people in the city of L.A. would die at the hands of another.
00:07:53
It was close to a record. The murder of Sherry Rasmussen that February was number 138.
00:08:01
Except that doesn't quite tell the story. Because in death, as in life, Sherry seemed to stand out from the crowd.
00:08:11
Sherry was the middle child of three daughters. She was smart, athletic, and tall.
00:08:18
By age 16, she was 6 feet. Her sisters say Sherry's enthusiasm for life swept up their whole family.
00:08:26
She always pushed us. I would have never learned how to snow ski, except for she drug us all to Taos, New Mexico, to learn how to snow ski.
00:08:34
And she would push everybody else to do better. Yes. Even now that she's gone, I think she forces me to be a better person.
00:08:42
You're still living up to that standard. Oh, heck yeah. From the very beginning, Sherry set the bar high.
00:08:49
In kindergarten, she was advanced to the place where the teacher would just use her as an assistant.
00:08:55
She's five years old. Yes. Sherry went on to skip two grades and entered nursing school in Southern California at 16.
00:09:03
It did seem like there was sort of nothing she could not do, and not just do, be great at.
00:09:08
Yeah, well, she couldn't sew. So there's that. Sherry had considered medical school, but even at 16, she knew a nurse's hours would be more family friendly,
00:09:20
because another goal of hers was having a husband and kids. I'm guessing your dad wanted her to become a doctor.
00:09:28
Yes. Yes, he did. And she resisted that. Yes. No one told her what to do, even including your parents.
00:09:34
That's correct. Yep. Her parents thought Los Angeles was a dangerous place and were worried about Sherry living there.
00:09:42
They also knew they had no say in that either. So they helped her buy a condo in a gated complex with secure parking.
00:09:50
Sherry couldn't say no to that. She could be stubborn in some ways, but what struck her sisters was Sherry's compassion.
00:09:57
When she would lose a patient, I could tell when she'd come home how it affected her.
00:10:02
She definitely didn't have this emotional wall between herself and the people she was taking care of.
00:10:07
Oh, no. She was right there with them. By 26, she was a nursing supervisor. At 27, Sherry had fast-tracked into hospital management.
00:10:17
As a manager, she was excellent. Jane Goldberg was Sherry's colleague and, for a while, her roommate.
00:10:23
I can remember staff saying, you know, when you go to Sherry's office, even if there's a problem, you always come out feeling better about yourself.
00:10:32
That's a good talent for a manager to have. It really is. Jane says Sherry's life was good, a happy, single, 20-something.
00:10:41
And then Sherry met the one. She had gone to a party and came back talking about this guy,
00:10:47
and she was sort of smitten, and he was tall. Which was important to her. Which was important.
00:10:52
I mean, when you're somebody who's very confident and very tall, there aren't a lot of men who don't feel intimidated.
00:11:02
The tall man's name was John Rutten, and he seemed as smitten as Sherry. He's tall, he's ambitious, he was an engineer.
00:11:11
They enjoyed running, playing tennis. Sounds like he's ticking off all the boxes.
00:11:15
Yes. And she was clearly into this guy. You could tell from the way she was talking.
00:11:20
Yes, and she was happy. Yeah, she was happy. I mean, Sherry and John looked gorgeous together, I think.
00:11:26
They made a very stunning couple. He would dote over her, so that always made me feel good.
00:11:32
November 23rd, 1985. A little over a year after they met, John and Sherry married.
00:11:38
How'd she and John seem that day? Fantastic. If you look at the wedding pictures, you can see in my sister's eyes how excited and happy she was.
00:11:46
John and Sherry set up house in her secure condo. Sister Teresa and her husband visited the newlyweds one sunny L Sunday three months after the wedding We went on a short walk and they were walking in front of us and holding hands and talking They didn have a care in the world
00:12:05
Nope. It was a good day. It was, in fact, the last good day. 24 hours later, Sherry Rasmussen would be dead.
00:12:20
While she was down on the ground, three rounds were fired. All of them were hits.
00:12:24
Bullets and a bite mark. On her left inner forearm. It was very obvious. It wasn't just small impressions.
00:12:31
They were red and raw. This was an up-close-and-personal fight. LAPD homicide detective Rob Bubb knows the Rasmussen case as well as anybody.
00:12:55
Now retired, Bubb agreed to walk us through it from the perspective of the original detectives
00:13:02
who arrived on the scene that first night. John Rutten returns home after a day of work
00:13:08
and the door is ajar, which alarms him. He opens the door, looks inside and sees his wife, Sherry Rasmussen.
00:13:18
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.
00:13:26
He went over and checked her and she had obviously been killed. When the police first arrived, they removed John from the scene.
00:13:33
The detective in charge back then was a senior homicide guy named Lyle Mayer. Now retired, he's not talking with us.
00:13:41
He's the one who spoke with John Rutten the night of the murder and began the search for Sherry's killer or killers.
00:13:48
Has she had any problems at work? Her work's tough every day. She's got a hard job.
00:13:56
No, but I mean, has she had any problems with... Nothing unusual. She's not having any problems with an ex-boyfriend or you with an ex-girlfriend?
00:14:03
No. John's grief, along with his work alibi, seemed to rule him out as the killer.
00:14:10
I'm usually a pretty good judge of character, but I'm fairly certain that you have absolutely nothing to do with this.
00:14:17
Okay? To understand how the murder unfolded, it helps to know the layout of John and Sherry's condo.
00:14:26
Tall and narrow, the first floor is the living room. The second floor is the kitchen dining area.
00:14:32
And the third floor, the bedrooms. The original investigating detectives believed the attack started on the second floor,
00:14:40
where evidence indicated two gunshots were fired. There were two holes through a curtain and then through a sliding glass door
00:14:50
that led out into the parking area of the townhome. The original detectives thought the two rounds were misses and that a fight ensued down the stairs into the living room area.
00:15:01
It was here on the first floor where Sherry Rasmussen's last minutes were spent in a brutal and bloody fight for her life.
00:15:11
Whoever attacked Sherry used almost anything as a weapon, even a vase that was smashed over her head.
00:15:17
The blunt force trauma injuries were particularly disturbing. The right side of her face, her eye, was swollen and blackened.
00:15:26
She was actually pistol-whipped possibly two times. A stereo speaker had fallen down, was very near her head.
00:15:34
There were two fingernails near the front door and a clothesline or a small, thin rope also near the front door of the apartment.
00:15:43
At some point, Sherry was bitten. On her left inner forearm. It was very obvious. It wasn't just small impressions.
00:15:51
They were red and raw. When the original detectives noticed that she sustained that bite mark to her left forearm,
00:15:57
it gave them the knowledge that this was an up-close and personal fight. The fight only came to an end when Sherry Rasmussen was shot.
00:16:08
While she was down on the ground, three rounds were fired. All of them were hits while she was down on the first floor.
00:16:15
Low on the wall in the entryway, Investigators found what seemed to be Sherry's bloody handprint.
00:16:23
That handprint of Sherry's on the wall is so haunting. Leaving that print is probably one of the last things she did on this earth.
00:16:31
Yes. The original detectives also noted what to them appeared to be a major clue.
00:16:37
There were some stereo components that had been removed from an entertainment center
00:16:41
as if someone were going to pick up all the items that they gathered and leave the apartment.
00:16:45
There was a drawer that was pulled off from a table in between two sitting chairs in the living room, and that had been dumped.
00:16:53
And Sherry's purse and car, a brand new BMW 318i, were missing. The whole tableau convinced those 1986 detectives that this was a heist that had gone south.
00:17:06
They walked in and they saw what appeared to be a burglary, and so that's what they ran with.
00:17:11
Mayer was so certain it began as a burglary, he even shared his theory with John the night of the murder.
00:17:18
I believe your house was burglarized today, sometime before 10 a.m. I believe they got in your front door by prying open the front door.
00:17:29
I believe they were trying to steal your stereo on probably some other items. Except Sherry had called in sick that day.
00:17:37
And when the burglars were taking the stereo equipment, they knocked down one of the shelves and they knocked over one of the speakers.
00:17:44
And that those noises from inside the apartment alerted Sherry. She came downstairs to confront the burglars.
00:17:50
When she did, the struggle ensued. One burglar left taking their car The second one fought killed Sherry in the living room area and then not having that car went down into the sub parking area
00:18:05
Steals her car. And steals her car to leave the location. While a bulletin went out for Sherry's BMW,
00:18:12
crime scene investigators diligently combed through the house in search of evidence.
00:18:17
Photos were taken, blood samples collected, and fingerprints dusted. They even collected saliva from the bite wound on Sherry's arm.
00:18:26
Remember, this was 1986, before DNA testing changed law enforcement. Based on the science of the day, if they could get a blood typing from it,
00:18:37
it would be a big step in identifying, or at least in assisting to identify, a suspect later on.
00:18:46
Mayer believed the apartment was rich with evidence pointing to a botched burglary.
00:18:51
So much so, he even boasted to John they would soon find the killers. We're going to catch these persons, or this person, all right?
00:19:00
You've got to have a little faith in me. We're very successful at what we do. Very, very successful.
00:19:06
And sure enough, just weeks later, Mayer was convinced he was closing in on Sherry's murderers.
00:19:15
A woman had returned to her apartment, surprised two men inside, one ran past her, the second pointed a gun at her.
00:19:23
Detectives thought it was the same burglars who'd killed Sherry. Sherry's friend thought police were completely on the wrong track.
00:19:31
You lived in that condo for three years? Yes. You never worried about safety living there?
00:19:35
No, I never did. No. It felt very safe. When you heard that burglary theory, that makes sense to you?
00:19:42
No. There's only one person here who knows what Sherry was as a wife. Sherry, um, this, um...
00:20:04
Four days after Sherry Rasmussen's murder came a very difficult goodbye. John was a mess.
00:20:13
His color was just ashen. His hands were just shaking. You know, if he had been a patient, I would have expected him to go into cardiac arrest.
00:20:23
Sherry's husband did pull himself together enough to say a few words. I just want to thank you all for coming, and I want you to know that Sherry was the best professional in the world.
00:20:33
She was the best wife that anybody could ever have, and she was the best sister, daughter.
00:20:38
She wanted to make everybody happy. I was still in this state of shock, but one of the things that did get through the fog was the number of people that loved Sherry and respected her.
00:20:55
It was overwhelming how many people were there. There's a ripple effect from murder.
00:21:00
No one can anticipate how deep the loss will cut until you're seeing it through your own tears.
00:21:07
I was a nurse. I had always dealt with grief. I had to give people the clothing of their beloved after they had died.
00:21:15
But I'd never known grief like this. I had no idea what grief was until this happened.
00:21:23
Over the weeks after Sherry died, as family and friends learned how to live without her,
00:21:29
detectives locked on to what they thought was a crucial new lead, another burglary in Sherry's neighborhood, just a couple of blocks away.
00:21:37
A woman had returned to her apartment, surprised two men inside, one ran past her, the second pointed a gun at her.
00:21:44
To detectives, this seemed like the same scenario they believed had led to Sherry's murder.
00:21:50
It's not a giant leap to think these are the same two guys. No, not at all. Not with the proximity, the time of day, and basically the same M.O.
00:22:00
Detective Lyle Mayer held a press conference. We have obtained fingerprints in the crimes.
00:22:09
We are of the opinion at this point that the suspects may be illegal aliens. He came with police sketches of the two suspects he thought were responsible for both crimes.
00:22:21
KNBC, our Los Angeles station, was there. Detectives asked the public to call Van Nuys police
00:22:28
with any information that might solve this case before the gunmen strike again. The detectives seemed certain they were onto something.
00:22:37
Sherry's friend Jane was not as sure. You lived in that condo for three years? Yes.
00:22:43
You never worried about safety living there? No, I never did. No. It felt very safe.
00:22:48
When you heard that burglary theory, that makes sense to you? No. My theory is she came down to feed the cat, went into the kitchen.
00:22:56
If it had been burglars who were in the living room, the way the condo set up, they could have just leaned against that one wall,
00:23:03
waited until she was around the corner in the kitchen and walked right out the front door.
00:23:07
They could have gotten away without her seeing them. Exactly. And that's what burglars do.
00:23:12
They don't want to confront people. Writer Matt McGough points out, these burglars didn't seem to know what they were doing.
00:23:19
If you're looking for valuables, are you going to look in a junk drawer in the living room?
00:23:24
No, you'll go to the bedroom. Yes, where Sherry had a jewelry box that was undisturbed.
00:23:31
Her purse had been taken, but two men found it before nightfall the day of the murder and gave it to a neighbor.
00:23:36
The missing BMW showed up within two weeks. That car was discovered by an officer who was driving past it and was alert and recognized that matches the description.
00:23:48
Not taking to some job shop. Left with the keys in the ignition. Sherry's family gave the police other leads,
00:23:56
such as a nurse at the hospital where Sherry was. worked. After being passed over for a promotion, the nurse started harassing Sherry. She wouldn't
00:24:06
give her the job. I know that she had the security walk her out to her car for a period of time
00:24:12
because of the harassment at work. That's a little ominous. But she stuck to her guns.
00:24:20
Well, that was Sherry. That was. The cops never followed up on that nurse or on the other woman
00:24:26
the family told them about, this one an ex-girlfriend of John's. Sherry had told her dad the woman
00:24:32
would just show up sometimes, seemingly out of nowhere. Nels didn't know the ex-girlfriend's
00:24:38
name, and anyway, detectives seemed uninterested. Instead, they kept looking for the burglars,
00:24:45
but they didn't find them. And before too long, the case of Sherry Rasmussen began to go very cold.
00:24:52
Our family had a hard time existing as a family again. Loved ones looking for answers.
00:25:02
After 15 years, will they finally get one? You come upon the case of Sherry Rasmussen.
00:25:08
Yes. 1986 murder, not solved. Correct. I saw that a bite swab had been collected by the coroner's office.
00:25:15
With that swab, there should be a DNA. LAPD Detective Lyle Mayer and his team kept searching for, but not finding,
00:25:39
the homicidal burglars they were convinced had killed Cherry Rasmussen. They were going to take a psychic out to see if they could figure out what went on.
00:25:50
I thought, well, that's odd. A psychic, okay. You probably predicted this, but the psychic didn't sense anything that moved the case forward.
00:26:00
With the investigation stalled, a murder's ripple effect continued. Our family had a hard time existing as a family again properly.
00:26:09
I mean, because we were missing that part. Oh, here comes Aunt Sherry. Here's Aunt Sherry.
00:26:17
One of their last intact moments was that Christmas, when baby Rachel was the focus of all the attention.
00:26:23
Everybody here thinks there's going to be a baby rutting pretty soon. I think they'd better talk to Sherry.
00:26:30
There would never be a baby rutting for Sherry and John. Sherry was gone, leaving behind a long series of those ripples a murder can spawn.
00:26:41
The loss of my Aunt Sherry has impacted my entire life. We always had a sense of needing to protect ourselves and to be safe.
00:26:54
Sherry's killer was still out there, and her family had no answers. Maybe time would make the difference.
00:27:01
And maybe it wouldn't. In 1991, five years after Sherry's murder, Detective Mayer retired,
00:27:08
and the case was passed on to new detectives working the homicide desk in Van Nuys.
00:27:14
Along with their parents, Sherry's sisters Connie and Teresa went back again to Van Nuys Station to meet them.
00:27:21
They put us in an interrogation room and they came in with a little skinny folder about this big.
00:27:29
The family soon realized these new detectives didn't have anything new to offer.
00:27:34
Detective Mayer was gone by then, but the theory was still this was a burglary and somehow it turned into a murder.
00:27:41
Right. They did meet with us, but it was also more of a, it was like a show. Sherry's dad Nels coped by trying to solve the case himself.
00:27:51
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.
00:28:00
He would constantly re-dissect the information that we knew. In 1993, Nels read about something new, forensic DNA testing.
00:28:12
Nels Rasmussen, reading about DNA and the advances that that's brought to criminology,
00:28:18
offers to pay for DNA testing, and the department says no. Correct. Unfortunately, it's not something that our department is going to accept.
00:28:27
It's just not the way the quote-unquote business end of the department works. And so no DNA testing was done.
00:28:35
The Rasmussons went on living their lives without that missing piece. It was a loss felt all the way down to the youngest generation, including Sherry's other niece, Jessica.
00:28:47
Every time I would succeed in something, my mother or my grandfather would remind me about how I must have got my athletic build from my Aunt Sherry.
00:28:56
And really feeling that not having the opportunity to bond with her over that commonality of things, it was very sad.
00:29:04
And more years passed. Then in 2001, 15 years after Sherry was killed, a detective supervisor with the LAPD proposed a new unit
00:29:17
that would harness new technologies to analyze bullets, fingerprints, and the new thing Nels had asked about, DNA.
00:29:25
We had 6,000 to 9,000 unsolved murders in the city of Los Angeles. Cliff Shepard is now retired.
00:29:33
He was one of the first six detectives in that new open unsolved unit. As you're going through those cases, you come upon the case of Sherry Rasmussen.
00:29:43
Yes. 1986 murder, not solved. Correct. What made you include that in the cases you submitted?
00:29:51
With her case I saw that a bite swab had been collected by the coroner office I said okay with that swab there should be be DNA That is if Shepard could find the swab The coroner office said they didn have it
00:30:07
I checked with our evidence room. They didn't have it. I looked at our property reports.
00:30:13
It's not booked. How could that happen? Incompetence. That happened a lot? Yes. Shepard showed us the note he wrote to remind himself back then.
00:30:23
to follow up on the missing swab. As it happened, Jennifer Francis, a criminalist in the LAPD crime lab,
00:30:30
saw his note and set out to find that swab herself, which she did. The envelope was torn.
00:30:38
The writing was faded. But the tube containing the swab was still there and intact.
00:30:45
Now we have the swab and suddenly you're in business. Well, you think so. Cold cases are not the priority in the crime lab.
00:30:54
Today's murders are. It took about a year before Francis called Shepard with the results of the DNA test.
00:31:01
And the finding, when it did come, was a major surprise. She called me and said, hey, this is an unknown female's DNA.
00:31:10
That is not what I was expecting. Because the theory had been these were two male burglars.
00:31:16
Correct. But now it turns out she was bitten by a woman. A woman. That changed the police theory, but only a little.
00:31:25
Given the violence at the crime scene, Shepard did not see it as a woman acting alone.
00:31:31
I believed that, okay, there's a woman, and then there's a man. That Sherry had been clubbed from behind,
00:31:39
knocked down or unconscious, and then somebody stood over her and shot her. Just like the original case detective,
00:31:45
Shepard thought it had to be a burglary turned violent. Sherry's family had always doubted that theory,
00:31:52
but none of their concerns made it into the official case file known as the murder book.
00:31:58
When you first look at that murder book, was there anything in it that suggested to you that the original detectives
00:32:02
had been going down the wrong trail? No. So now Shepard started looking for male-female burglar teams.
00:32:10
But he didn't get very far. A serial killer on the loose in South L.A. took priority.
00:32:17
When I came in the next day, I had learned that I'm now going to go to a task force
00:32:21
to try to catch this guy. This has nothing to do with the murder of Jerry Rasmussen?
00:32:25
No. No, except that I'm now told that all my other murders I'm not supposed to work on.
00:32:33
And Cliff Shepard says he never reached out to the Rasmussons. I didn't want to build up their hopes and then crush them.
00:32:40
He also didn't think the family would have any useful information because they lived so far away.
00:32:46
My belief was living in Arizona, they didn't know day-to-day things going on in their daughter's life.
00:32:52
But you would have been wrong about that. I would have been very wrong. The murder book was shipped back to Van Nuys Station,
00:32:58
where it sat on the shelf for a few more years, until yet another detective picked it up
00:33:04
and found the key that unlocked a mystery. A new detective. For me, everything changed with that blood and that stereo equipment.
00:33:16
And a new theory of the crime. Murder was the main goal, not the burglary. Super Bowl Sunday 2009.
00:33:37
LAPD homicide detective Jim Nuttall spent the day like millions of other Americans,
00:33:43
watching the game with a house full of friends and a fridge full of beer. Super Bowl Sunday is like a holiday to me, so we were having a good time and we were up late.
00:33:53
Which left Nuttall beat and bleary-eyed when he dragged himself into work the following morning.
00:33:59
We came in early 0-dark-30 and I was tired. It was the perfect day to have a cup of coffee and then do some reading.
00:34:06
In 2009, Nuttall worked homicide out of the LAPD's Van Nuys station, where Sherry Rasmussen's murder investigation began.
00:34:16
That's where Nuttall randomly waded into it that hungover Monday morning. By that time, this was already a cold case, and nearly ready for cold storage.
00:34:27
Was there a point where the department just kind of gave up on this case? Repeatedly. We closed it in 1986.
00:34:36
We closed it in 1993. We closed it in 1999. We closed it again in 2005. At that point, it sat on a shelf, and in 2008, it was sent to us for archives.
00:34:50
Archive meaning deep storage, a death sentence for the Rasmussen case. Before that happened, though, Nuttall had to give the murder books one last read.
00:35:00
It was four books thick, four volumes deep. Nuttall knew nothing about the Rasmussen case before that day
00:35:08
but midway through volume one he was hooked taken in by Sherry Rasmussen's strength and tenacity
00:35:15
as she fought for her life life and death struggle Sherry is doing whatever she can do to get out of that house
00:35:22
or get help everything Nuttall read and saw fit the narrative that this was a burglary that had turned horribly violent
00:35:31
at least that's what he thought until he noticed a peculiar detail in Mayer's report.
00:35:38
That stereo equipment police found stacked near the door of the condo had blood on it, Sherry's blood.
00:35:45
That was noted but never closely photographed. For me, everything changed with that blood on that stereo equipment.
00:35:52
To Nuttall that meant Sherry attacker or attackers moved the stereo to the entryway after things got bloody After the fight Not before as the original theory went Meaning that maybe this wasn simply a burglary that had gone off the rails
00:36:08
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.
00:36:15
Why stack it and leave it? At that point, you start to draw the conclusion that murder was the main goal, not the burglary.
00:36:22
Not all began to think the original investigation was seriously flawed. His supervisor, Detective Rob Bubb, came to think so as well.
00:36:33
I think the original detectives, there were some oversights, especially in the area of interviews.
00:36:39
But if you assume that Sherry is simply the victim of a burglary, then her past, her other relationships, what's going on with her and her husband, none of that matters.
00:36:51
No, it doesn't. If you are focused, if you are that sure that it was a burglary, the rest of that doesn't play.
00:36:57
Bob also had a problem with the collection of evidence. That blood on the stereo, for example, in the middle of it was a fingerprint.
00:37:06
Unfortunately, it was never recovered. That print never gets lifted, never gets tested.
00:37:11
No one lifted it, no one tested it, no one booked the stereo component into evidence.
00:37:16
It was lost for time. Bubb and Nuttall also paid attention to what looked like ligature marks around Sherry's wrists.
00:37:23
It appeared the suspect, suspects, brought that ligature into the home to restrain a potential victim.
00:37:30
That doesn't really sound like a burglary. Does not sound like a burglary. As far as Nuttall and Bubb were concerned, the whole burglary gone wrong theory that investigators had worked for the past 23 years was no longer viable.
00:37:45
So then what? They didn't have an alternate theory until Nuttall got to this entry in the murder book,
00:37:53
a lab report Nuttall had never seen before. That DNA profile taken from the saliva found in the bite mark on Sherry's arm.
00:38:04
We had a woman responsible or involved with this crime. When Detective Cliff Shepard had seen that report four years earlier,
00:38:12
he started looking for a male-female burglar team and got nowhere. Now, with his new theory of the crime, Jim Nuttall went in another direction.
00:38:22
He started looking for a lone female killer, a woman, with a reason to target Sherry Rasmussen.
00:38:31
Once you debunk the burglary theory and you have a female DNA profile, now this case becomes
00:38:40
manageable. Now it becomes a matter of time. Who wanted Sherry dead? You start inward and you work outward.
00:38:50
That's Homicide 101. We tend to harm the ones that we know. And you start asking who benefited or who gained from Sherry's death?
00:38:59
Absolutely. And later, a top secret investigation. We made a determination among each other.
00:39:06
We'd never say her name. We referred to her only as number five. Number five. Number five.
00:39:12
nobody would ever know who she was. After studying the murder books, Detective Jim Nuttall was convinced
00:39:33
Sherry Rasmussen was not killed by random burglars, but by someone who wanted it to look like a burglary.
00:39:41
And what's more, that killer was a woman. And that alters the entire course of what we now have to do.
00:39:49
With a new perspective, Nuttall, Detective Rob Bubb, and two more homicide detectives
00:39:54
started working the Rasmussen investigation together, as if it were fresh off the blotter.
00:40:00
We started looking at the bite mark, the blunt force trauma, in addition to the gunshots and the setup of the apartment.
00:40:11
And it occurred to us that this might be a more personal murder situation for that type of violence to occur.
00:40:17
Which meant taking a new and much tougher look at Sherry's family and friends. You start inward and you work outward.
00:40:25
That's homicide 101. We tend to harm the ones that we know. And you start asking who benefited or who gained from Sherry's death.
00:40:34
Absolutely. Which is a question you ask in every homicide investigation. Absolutely.
00:40:39
Who wanted that person dead? Standard operating procedure. They didn't do that back in 86.
00:40:43
Doesn't appear so, sir. So Nuttall and Bub flagged all the women mentioned over the course of the Rasmussen investigation.
00:40:51
And just like that, the list of persons of interest had shrunk to a number low enough to be counted on one hand.
00:41:00
We had five women that we felt were close to Sherry, that would have had access to Sherry.
00:41:06
And perhaps at least some of them may have had a motive to harm her. The first two on the list, Sherry's mom and her sister Teresa,
00:41:14
who were both more than happy to cooperate if it meant the case was really being reopened.
00:41:21
It was surreal. My parents were so excited. I mean, for someone who's finally, you know, actively listening.
00:41:29
Not surprisingly, her sister and mother's DNA did not match that of Sherry's killer.
00:41:36
Next on the list, woman number three. Sherry's friend and former roommate Jane Goldberg. The detective came to our house and my husband
00:41:45
said oh she's at work and he said oh I don't want to bother her there and my husband said no go
00:41:50
she love to see you she wants to move this investigation along and he showed up at my work and I gave him a sample Jane too was eliminated which brought Nuttall and Bub to woman number four someone Sherry sisters had mentioned back in 1986
00:42:07
She was a nurse that had worked for Sherry Rasmussen. She'd been passed over for a promotion.
00:42:14
Soon after, Sherry said she started receiving obscene phone calls at work. And later, her car was keyed in the hospital parking lot.
00:42:22
There were a number of things that were done at the hospital that actually caused Sherry to make a complaint, which their internal security investigated.
00:42:32
There was a female profile, and now we had a motive. Workplace jealousy. Workplace issue.
00:42:38
Looked like a good suspect. A viable option, yes, sir. Nuttall and Bob learned the nurse was now living near San Francisco, so they asked for an assist from the local sheriff's department.
00:42:49
to do a surreptitious DNA run for us, which basically, we used to call it a dumpster dive.
00:42:56
They obtained some items from her trash, sent them to the lab for comparison. They waited a week for the results, and...
00:43:04
It was not a match. So that left woman number five, an ex-girlfriend of Sherry's husband, John Rutten.
00:43:12
None of the family's suspicions about her were mentioned in the murder book. Jim Nuttall only learned of her when he first called Sherry's parents.
00:43:22
Nels was upset with me, and he was very animated. It was sort of like, Detective, where have you been for the last two decades?
00:43:29
I have explained this to your organization, I have explained this to your investigators,
00:43:33
and why are we having this conversation now? And he laid out an alarming scenario.
00:43:40
Alarming how? He had been explaining to the LAPD that he had a person of interest,
00:43:46
somebody that needed to be spoken to, a woman that had been involved in a dating relationship with John.
00:43:51
He had told us what he had told the original detectives way in the beginning when the murder first occurred,
00:43:56
that John had an ex-girlfriend that had issue with Sherry, but he didn't know her name.
00:44:02
So Nuttall and Bubb contacted John Rutten to help fill in the blanks. Rutten confirmed there was a woman he sort of dated while at UCLA and continued to see on and off until his marriage.
00:44:16
The woman's name? Stephanie Lazarus. It was a name that didn't mean anything to the detectives until Rutten told them what Lazarus did for a living.
00:44:26
The last he knew, she was employed by the Los Angeles Police Department. Did you check to see if she was still employed?
00:44:32
That night, I turned to a moment I'll never forget. I turned to one of the members of our unit and I said, check a name for me in the directory.
00:44:39
and he accessed the LAPD directory and explained to me that she was currently a detective in the LAPD.
00:44:47
And you thought? Total, we're not in Kansas anymore. That changed everything. You probably did not become a homicide investigator
00:44:58
because you wanted to investigate other police officers. Never in my life did I think this would happen.
00:45:04
She was one of us. A most unlikely suspect. Her reputation within the department was stellar.
00:45:09
Stephanie Lazarus, a well-respected Los Angeles police officer for 26 years, was now at the center of a cold case murder investigation.
00:45:36
You probably did not become a homicide investigator because you wanted to investigate other police officers.
00:45:41
Never in my life did I think this would happen. She was one of us. That said, Detective Nuttall and his team had a job to do,
00:45:50
beginning with digging into Lazarus' background. She'd come out of the force in the early 1980s,
00:45:57
part of a wave of female officers who began joining the LAPD after a court order required the department to hire more women.
00:46:07
What was it like to be a woman on the LAPD back then? Well, it was not easy. In 1983, Nina Acosta graduated from the Los Angeles Police Academy
00:46:18
and started as a probationary officer at Hollywood Station. For me, it was a perfect kind of a job, but you couldn't go into it blindly.
00:46:28
There was a culture that women didn't belong in law enforcement. So for the most part, you had to prove yourself over and over again, every day, every month, to whoever you were working with.
00:46:38
So it wasn't easy, but it was worth it. Hollywood Station is where she got to know another female cop, Stephanie Lazarus.
00:46:48
Stephanie was a lot like me. We liked the camaraderie. We liked the every day was different, something new, the excitement.
00:46:57
Lazarus grew up in Southern California, the oldest of three children. In 1978, she started college at UCLA, where she joined the JV basketball team.
00:47:08
John Rutten was a year ahead of her. They were doormates and, you know, became friends.
00:47:15
A lot of their friends at UCLA knew that Stephanie wanted a relationship with John
00:47:20
and that he didn't feel as strongly about her as she did about him. After graduation, Lazarus made what was at the time an unusual choice,
00:47:30
joining the LAPD. So there's like a pattern of, you know, well, women don't do that. Women don't
00:47:38
play team sports. Stephanie, that's what I'm going to do. Women don't become police officers.
00:47:43
She could have chosen any career. I mean, there's an aspect of I'm going to prove you wrong that
00:47:49
seems to animate a lot of her life choices from adolescence into adulthood. She brought her basketball skills to the LAPD's women's team. What was she
00:48:00
Back on the basketball court, competitive? Very competitive. She was aggressive.
00:48:04
She was a very good athlete, somebody I admired. She was very lean, pretty tall, and took her fitness very seriously.
00:48:11
According to her friend Nina, Lazarus always presented well in uniform. She was very sharp in appearance.
00:48:19
She always looked perfect. Right down to her special bulletproof vest. The ones that we were issued were pretty much unisex,
00:48:29
and especially for women, we looked like a sack of potatoes in them. So she bought her own vest at her own expense,
00:48:34
which at that time was a lot of money, several hundred dollars, and looked like a million bucks.
00:48:41
Men were interested, but Nina says her friend didn't seem interested in dating guys on the force.
00:48:48
She never really talked about her relationships, and I didn't get the sense from her that her personal life was going the way that she wanted it to,
00:48:56
but nothing specific. After a year at Hollywood Station, Lazarus moved to a less hectic division in the San Fernando Valley
00:49:04
called Devonshire. That's where she was working when John married Sherry in November 1985,
00:49:12
and when Sherry was murdered three months later. In the years that followed, Lazarus rose through the ranks at the LAPD,
00:49:20
from patrol officer to detective. She set her mind on doing something and she achieved it.
00:49:27
Here she is alongside then-Police Chief Darrell Gates in 1989 while working on the anti-drug Project DARE.
00:49:36
The department, they would send officers into schools to teach about anti-drug message.
00:49:43
So that really sort of makes her the public face of the department in some places.
00:49:46
Oh yeah, her reputation within the department was stellar. She was chosen to work at Internal Affairs, investigating other officers accused of wrongdoing or corruption.
00:49:58
And in 2006 came a cushy assignment when she was moved to the LAPD's art theft unit, where she settled into the prime of her career.
00:50:08
That's how writer Matt McGough first met Detective Stephanie Lazarus in the spring of 2008.
00:50:14
I was working as a writer for Law & Order on NBC and read that the LAPD had the only art theft detectives full-time in the country.
00:50:25
I sat down with Stephanie and her partner at the time and interviewed them. Tell me your full name again.
00:50:32
Stephanie, S-T-E-P-H-A-N-I-E. Yeah. L-A-Z-A-R-U-S. Stephanie was very cordial, even helpful.
00:50:41
We went up to this museum where they had stolen a bunch of like five or six armed robbery takeover.
00:50:48
The LAPD has had an art theft detail since the 70s or the 80s. And it was one detective who sort of kept that unit going for a long time.
00:50:57
And I think he brought Stephanie in sort of to groom her to take over from him when he retired.
00:51:04
So she was in a pretty plum position. her personal life was in a great place too
00:51:11
in 1996 Lazarus had married another LAPD detective and they adopted a baby daughter
00:51:20
both at home and on the job Stephanie Lazarus' life had never seemed better then came the winter of 2009
00:51:29
and unbeknownst to this high achieving cop she was now the focus of a murder investigation
00:51:37
one that would have to be done in secret. You don't get to choose your suspects you don't get to choose your victims
00:51:43
but you can choose to solve the case and that's what we tried to do. My experience was I'd say she didn't do it.
00:51:55
Was Sherry's husband still carrying a torch for Stephanie? Stephanie Lazarus and John Rutten
00:52:01
end up going on vacation together to Hawaii. that's got to make you sort of sit up and lean forward a little bit.
00:52:08
Yes. For more than two decades, Stephanie Lazarus had worked her way up through the ranks of the LAPD,
00:52:30
even made a name for herself a couple of times. But by 2009, when four LAPD homicide detectives working in secret spoke of Lazarus, it was only in code.
00:52:43
We made a determination among each other. We'd never say her name. We referred to her only as number five.
00:52:49
Number five. Number five. Nobody would ever know who she was. Because Stephanie Lazarus was the fifth and by now only remaining person of interest
00:53:00
in a homicide investigation conducted by members of her very own police department.
00:53:06
It would protect the integrity of the investigation, and if she was not involved, then nobody would ever know about it.
00:53:13
The four detectives were mindful that Lazarus had many friends on the force. Her husband, also an LAPD detective, worked in the same building they did.
00:53:22
We were going to work behind closed doors. We were going to work after hours. We would never leave a paper trail of what we were doing.
00:53:31
The new team in Van Nuys did something Sherry's family said the original detectives didn't do. They listened to family and friends.
00:53:40
That's how the new detectives learned that before her death, Sherry told her father she was being followed by a woman dressed as a boy.
00:53:49
She said she has eyes that can see right through you Sherry also told her father about a woman John knew from college a woman she said had appeared uninvited inside her home She was sitting at her dining room table
00:54:08
and she heard a noise and she looked up and there was John's ex-girlfriend. In the house?
00:54:20
standing there in the living room. And she got up and she told her to get out. And Sherry told her friend Jane how John's ex had confronted her
00:54:31
at the hospital where she worked. She told me that John's ex-girlfriend had come to her office
00:54:40
and said, I just want you to know that if this marriage doesn't work out, I'm going to be waiting to pick up the pieces.
00:54:50
She said she was dressed sort of provocatively, like to show off her figure. It seemed as if the only person who didn't have a story about John Rutten's ex-girlfriend was John Rutten.
00:55:02
There was nothing in the police records from 1986 that indicated Sherry's husband had mentioned any suspicions about Stephanie Lazarus to detectives.
00:55:12
To the contrary. She's not having any problems with an ex-boyfriend or you with an ex-girlfriend?
00:55:19
No. He was specifically asked if Sherry had any problem with an ex-boyfriend or if he had a problem with an ex-girlfriend.
00:55:27
And he emphatically answered no to both those questions. And so in 2009, 23 years after Sherry's murder, the detectives breathing new life into this case were eager to ask some old questions of John Rutten.
00:55:42
They sat him down for an interview. Do you guys think Stephanie did this? Yes, from a second.
00:55:49
John told them how he and Lazarus met in the dorms at UCLA and how, at first, they were
00:55:57
just friends. I don't remember us ever being, I'll just say, fully intimate until after I graduated.
00:56:04
So it just sort of evolved. I just want to explain the relationship very clearly.
00:56:09
It wasn't like we were boyfriend and girlfriend and it was just always this understanding
00:56:14
that we were friends and that's where it was going to be. Today, we'd probably call it friends with benefits.
00:56:22
It fell somewhere between us being a dating relationship, but it was stronger than a close friendship.
00:56:30
Yeah, it was far more in that gray area, and that was part of the problem, frankly.
00:56:34
A problem, he says, became clear after his engagement to Sherry. That's when Rutten says he got a call from a devastated Stephanie Lazarus,
00:56:43
who insisted on seeing him. It was very clear that she was trying to tell me that, you know, she really wanted to be with me.
00:56:53
Not long after, Sherry came home from work upset and told him about Lazarus confronting her at the hospital.
00:57:01
I mean, I was so in love with Sherry. You know, she was the one. I was very adamant that after that, you know, there was going to be no contact with Stephanie.
00:57:11
So then why didn't John mention any of this to police in 1986? Well, John told the new detectives he did mention it.
00:57:21
They said, hey, we got a bite mark here, and that could be a female. And I said, I got to talk to you about Stephanie.
00:57:28
And I told them that she went to go see Sherry. Did you give the name Stephanie last recently?
00:57:33
Yeah, I gave them the name, and I said she's a police officer. John said he didn't tell the original detectives about how Sherry thought she was being followed
00:57:41
or how Lazarus had shown up at the house for one simple reason. John said he didn't know those things had happened.
00:57:50
I can't fathom Sherry not sharing anything like this with me. He said her dad never told him either.
00:57:58
If Nels knew the things you told me, he knew, I want to go punch him in the mouth and say,
00:58:03
why didn't you talk to me about this? we prevent this whole thing. But Sherry's sisters say it was John who had held back information.
00:58:12
They say that when he spoke with detectives in 86, he downplayed his relationship with Stephanie.
00:58:19
He tried to protect himself by sort of diverting the information about Stephanie. It wasn't
00:58:27
disclosed 100%. They say that if John had told the whole truth from the beginning. This case would have gone differently. You hold John responsible for what he didn't do,
00:58:42
what he didn't say. Absolutely. Absolutely. He didn't behave as a husband that loved Sherry
00:58:49
should have behaved. They also wonder why didn't John cut off his relationship with Stephanie Lazarus? He should have been frank with her instead of leading her on and
00:59:04
kept putting fuel to the fire. In his 2009 interview, John said he even followed up with police about Lazarus.
00:59:14
And there was one note in the case chronology, made nearly two years after Sherry's murder.
00:59:20
John Rutten called, verified Stephanie Lazarus, P.O., was former girlfriend. And that's when I got the answer, it's dead end, it's not going anywhere.
00:59:31
Maybe that's why, just a couple of years after his wife's murder, he reached out to Stephanie Lazarus again, even met up with her in Hawaii.
00:59:41
We played some tennis, paddled up and down the river. Stephanie Lazarus and John Rutten end up going on vacation together to Hawaii.
00:59:50
That's got to make you sort of sit up and lean forward a little bit. Yes, yeah. We wanted to ask John Rutten what he remembers telling the original investigators about his relationship with Stephanie Lazarus but he declined to speak with us
01:00:06
In his 2009 interview with detectives, Rutten seemed certain Lazarus had nothing to do with Sherry's murder.
01:00:14
If you forced me to bet every dollar I owned, whether she did this or not, by somewhat my experience was, I'd say she didn't do it.
01:00:21
Maybe John Rutten was right. Maybe Stephanie Lazarus had nothing to do with Sherry Rasmussen's death.
01:00:29
And maybe he was wrong. There was one sure way to find out. Stephanie Lazarus is asked to help interrogate a suspect,
01:00:44
only to discover she's the suspect. They're saying, okay, I fought with her, so I must have killed her.
01:00:50
I mean, come on. The woman who killed Sherry Rasmussen in 1986 had thankfully left a little bit of herself behind
01:01:12
in a bite mark on the victim. Detectives had a DNA profile of the killer, and now they had a prime suspect,
01:01:20
their own colleague at the LAPD, Stephanie Lazarus. Would her DNA match the sample kept on ice all those years?
01:01:30
In late May 2009, a specialized LAPD surveillance unit was sent to watch Lazarus' every move
01:01:38
in order to collect some discarded DNA. They said, this is the last ditch. We have exhausted every other lead, every other suspect.
01:01:49
The surveillance team followed Lazarus and her daughter to a Costco, where she ordered a soft drink.
01:01:56
And they watched her drink it, watched her walk over and throw the empty cup in a garbage can,
01:02:01
and they recovered that cup and straw. Off that trash went to the DNA lab for comparison with the swab from Sherry's arm.
01:02:10
Two DNA samples separated by 23 years. If they were a match, it could mean solving a cold case murder.
01:02:20
If not, the case would likely go back to collecting dust on a shelf. 48 hours after the samples went out for testing, Detective Rob Bubb's cell phone rang.
01:02:32
And he said, just to let you know, it's a match. And just like that, you guys solved a 23-year-old murder.
01:02:40
Yeah, kind of hard to believe. The next step was to interview Stephanie Lazarus.
01:02:46
She had no idea she was even under investigation. She still had her badge and gun, which made the prospect of questioning her a little nerve-wracking.
01:02:57
You'd have three detectives, each with a gun, and the potential for disaster was very high.
01:03:04
And they didn't want it to end in someone being shot. Deputy District Attorney Shannon Presby joined the investigation once the DNA results on Lazarus came back.
01:03:15
So they used this ruse, they essentially played on her vanity, and they said, hey, we've got this guy, we're investigating him, and he says he knows something about art theft, but we don't know anything about art theft, will you come down and help us?
01:03:30
And she said, sure. And, you know, he's down in the jail division. A place where firearms are not allowed.
01:03:37
Unarmed and unsuspecting, Stephanie Lazarus didn't realize she was being recorded by a camera hidden in a briefcase.
01:03:45
Stephanie, I don't know if you know my partner. Hey. Great. Hi. Good to meet you.
01:03:48
Good to see you guys. How's it going? Good. Nothing around? Uh, well, have a seat.
01:03:54
Stephanie didn't know that they had already put all the pieces together. She didn't know they had her DNA.
01:03:59
No. She was dead to rights before she even walked in. The detectives told Lazarus her name had come up in connection with a case involving someone from her past.
01:04:10
Do you know John Rutten? John Rutten? Rutten. Oh yeah, I went to school with him.
01:04:18
Was there any relationship or anything that developed between you guys? Yeah, I mean, we dated, you know, I mean, what's this all about?
01:04:28
Well, it's relating to his wife. Okay. How long did you guys date? I mean, are you guys, is this something, I mean, you said I was going to interview somebody about art,
01:04:43
and now you guys are, I don't understand why you're talking about some guy I dated a million years ago.
01:04:46
Well, do you know what happened to his wife? Yeah, I know she got killed. Stephanie Lazarus seemed uncomfortable and vague in her answers,
01:04:55
especially when detectives asked about Sherry Rasmussen. Do you remember her first name?
01:05:01
Shelly, Sherry, I don't know, something maybe, you know, like I said, it's been so many years.
01:05:10
At first, Lazarus seemed to have trouble remembering whether she'd ever met or spoken with Sherry.
01:05:15
I mean, I may have, you know, I may have talked to her. If she did talk to her, she said, that meeting might have taken place at a hospital.
01:05:26
I think she worked at a hospital somewhere. and yeah I may have met her at a hospital I may have talked to her once or twice
01:05:34
why speak with Sherry Lazarus said it could have been to tell Sherry to get John to leave her alone I may have gone to her and say hey you know what you
01:05:45
know what is he dating you he's but he's bothering me and so I'm thinking that we
01:05:49
had a conversation about that one or two maybe you know it could have been three She made admissions having to do with the meeting at the hospital which up until that time was really truly it was hearsay
01:06:07
And now you have Stephanie actually admitting, yeah, I did go see her at the hospital.
01:06:11
Right. And so you've got admissions that really advanced the case. Lazarus had now placed herself at the hospital with Sherry,
01:06:20
as many as three times, confirming the story Sherry had told her friend Jane. And she didn't rule out having been to the condo either.
01:06:30
I don't think I've ever gone there. That's what I'm saying. I don't want to say, no, I've never gone there.
01:06:35
And then you say, oh, I was at a party. While Lazarus admitted to meeting with Sherry,
01:06:40
or maybe meeting with her, she somehow couldn't say whether things had gotten heated.
01:06:46
Did you ever fight with her? You mean like we fought? Yeah, did you ever duke it out with her?
01:06:51
No, I don't think so. I mean... You'd remember that, right? That would be pretty...
01:06:56
Yeah, I would think so. Most of us can remember without much difficulty the number of fistfights we've had over the course of our lives.
01:07:04
Not so easy for Stephanie Lazarus. It just doesn't sound familiar. I mean, what are they saying?
01:07:12
So I fought with her, so I'm getting the jump. They're saying, okay, I fought with her, so I must have killed her.
01:07:20
I mean, come on. About 45 minutes into the interview, it seemed reality was sinking in.
01:07:27
I mean, if you guys are claiming that I'm a suspect, then, you know, I got a problem with that.
01:07:32
Now you're accusing me of this? Is that what you're saying? Closing in. But why so many missed steps?
01:07:44
Why do you think it was that detectives didn't look at John's ex-girlfriend? I think it was because she was a police officer.
01:07:52
This plays to everybody's favorite conspiracy theory, that cops cover for other cops.
01:07:58
No matter what, you're out of your mind. We're trying to figure out what happened, Stephanie.
01:08:17
LAPD Detective Stephanie Lazarus had been grilled for more than an hour by members of her own department.
01:08:23
I don't even know that I knew where they lived. It looked to us like she thought she was going to be able to talk her way out of that interview.
01:08:33
At some point, Lazarus seemed to realize all that talking wasn't working. Now I'm thinking I probably need to talk to a lawyer.
01:08:41
Because I know how this stuff works, okay? don't get me wrong, you're right, I have been doing this a long time.
01:08:45
She elects to end the interview and stand up and walk out. And so once she walked out, she was greeted by other members of the Los Angeles Police Department
01:08:57
who placed her in handcuffs, brought her back in. This is absolutely crazy. She read her rights and she declined to talk from that point on.
01:09:06
Okay. Stephanie, you know you have the right to remain silent. Do you understand?
01:09:11
Yes. The arrest came as welcome news to the Rasmussons. That was a joyous day. There were other emotions as well.
01:09:19
For more than two decades, Sherry's family had harbored suspicions about the LAPD.
01:09:25
Did you think police were going to solve this? No, no. You had no confidence in them right from the beginning?
01:09:30
No. Because you didn't buy the burglary theory or because they didn't seem to be listening to you?
01:09:36
Both. I came to the conclusion in my life that it was never going to be solved. I don't think they cared to solve it.
01:09:42
They'd become convinced that detectives back in 86 were set on proving that burglars killed Sherry,
01:09:49
while ignoring evidence and witnesses that might lead elsewhere. You lived in that condo for a couple of years with Sherry,
01:09:58
and you knew her, and you knew her relationship with John. You'd seen it begin. You knew that neighborhood and what it was like to live there.
01:10:05
How long until police came to speak with you? Never. They never did? They never, never, never.
01:10:14
I kept waiting. I kept thinking, well, they'll do their job. You know, they're working on this.
01:10:20
Were they really? Back then, Sherry's family says it was impossible to tell. My mom had Lyle Mayer's business card that he had given her and said,
01:10:31
call any time and we'll update you. My mom wore that card as frayed. She's handled it so many times, calling and getting no information.
01:10:42
Sherry's dad Nels told me the detectives ignored his tips from day one. I told the police that they should look into John's ex-girlfriend.
01:10:52
Did you tell the detectives that John's ex-girlfriend was a member of the LAPD? Well, that's how I identified her.
01:11:00
I said, John's ex-girlfriend, that's an LAPD. You didn't know her name? I didn't know her name.
01:11:06
And they said what? The trouble with you is you've been watching too much TV. Remember, John Rutten also said he told Detective Mayer his ex-girlfriend, Stephanie Lazarus, was with the LAPD.
01:11:18
Kind of something that, as a detective, that should make your ears perk up. If you're investigating this case, I'm thinking you want to talk with Stephanie Lazarus.
01:11:28
One, because she's on your job and carrying the same badge you are. And you can say, hey, you know this guy John Rutten.
01:11:35
What do you know about him? What do you know about the two of them and that marriage and, you know, how did they get along?
01:11:40
And also, like, what was your relationship with them? Correct. People get tunnel vision, of course.
01:11:47
Even seasoned detectives can get so hung up on one theory that they ignore others.
01:11:53
Fury's father believed something else was going on. Why do you think it was that detectives didn't look exactly?
01:12:00
I think it was because she was a police officer. Why can't that just be sloppy police work?
01:12:06
Why does that have to be a cover-up? Why can't that be just sort of tunnel vision and a rush to judgment?
01:12:12
They're more intelligent than that. You've got to give them more credit than that.
01:12:16
Well, maybe not. The very first interview he conducted with John Rutten suggests Detective Lyle Mayer was already convinced
01:12:26
burglars killed Cherry. Mayer even shared that theory with John the night of the murder.
01:12:31
I believe your house was burglarized today, sometime before 10 a.m. Remember, this is long before there was any talk of John's ex-girlfriend.
01:12:42
There's a couple possibilities here. Matt McGough, author of the book The Lazarus Files, took a hard look at the investigation.
01:12:50
He says there's no simple explanation for what went wrong. At one end of the spectrum is incompetence, and the other end of the spectrum is willful cover-up, right?
01:13:05
So it's somewhere along this spectrum. Does that make sense to you, that they would have started instantly covering up or deliberately looking away from somebody who they only knew as a fellow member of the department?
01:13:18
Okay, you just said covering up or deliberately looking away. Covering up makes it sound like there's something active is required of those detectives to cover something up.
01:13:29
Cover up doesn't require anything active. A cover up requires refusing to investigate what is obvious you have a responsibility to investigate.
01:13:42
Lyle Mayer did not respond to our request for an interview. He has previously denied that there was any cover up and says the Rasmussen family never asked him.
01:13:52
to investigate John's ex-girlfriend. Cliff Shepard, the cold case detective who took over the investigation in 2005
01:14:00
and who also pursued the burglary theory, completely rejects the idea that there was a cover-up, passive or otherwise.
01:14:09
Is there any way you would have looked away from a murder case involving a fellow police officer?
01:14:15
No. Why? What motivation? Well, this plays to everybody's favorite conspiracy theory,
01:14:22
that cops cover for other cops. No matter what, you're out of your mind. Shepard said if he really wanted to engage in a thorough cover he could have just dumped the murder books and stopped working on the case That would have not been a problem Just don include it in the cases you submit
01:14:40
Throw the case away. Throw it in the trash. Take it home with me. Throw it down the freeway.
01:14:45
Shepard concedes he does have second thoughts about how he investigated the Rasmussen case.
01:14:51
Oh, I do. Lots of regrets. I suspect had I talked to John Rutten again, he would have told me about his relationship with Stephanie Lazarus.
01:14:59
Officially, the LAPD declined our request for a comment on this case. It looked like they had worked the case hard, but in the wrong direction.
01:15:10
Prosecutor Shannon Presby acknowledges there may have been mistakes in 1986. But he says once he, Nuttall and Bubb saw the evidence pointing to Stephanie Lazarus,
01:15:21
they followed it, regardless of the badge she wore. Our focus was the evidence, who does that show was the killer, and trying to bring that
01:15:32
killer to justice. Even if it meant putting a cop on trial for murder. Sherry's husband makes a painful admission.
01:15:43
I didn't know that until the trial. No defense for that. You're not that charitable.
01:15:47
No, that hurt. February 6, 2012. More than a quarter century after Sherry Rasmussen's murder,
01:16:09
the trial of Stephanie Lazarus began. The prosecution made an overwhelming case.
01:16:15
The day Sherry Rasmussen was murdered, Stephanie Lazarus was off work and had no alibi.
01:16:22
Lazarus' DNA was in the bite mark on Sherry's arm. The bullets that killed Sherry were the type used by LAPD officers at the time,
01:16:32
and Lazarus reported her gun stolen shortly after the murder. It's the combination of all the evidence together, and who does that point to?
01:16:43
So we have only one person in the world, basically, that we were able to determine
01:16:47
had any motive to harm Sherry Rasmussen, and that was Stephanie Lazarus. There was evidence of that motive, written in Lazarus' very own hand.
01:16:57
When police searched her home, they found a 600-page journal. Buried deep in the mundane details of her early years on the force there were some telling references to John Rutten like this passage from eight months before the murder I really didn feel like working I found out that John is getting married I was very depressed This is very bad My concentration was negative 10
01:17:24
We knew from her journal that she was fixated on John, that she wanted John. Also found during the search of Lazarus' house, this photo she took in college of a sleeping John Rutten.
01:17:37
The writing on the back reads, I snuck in at 1 a.m. and took the picture. Lazarus held on to this photo for more than 30 years.
01:17:47
The prosecution called the focus of her affection to the witness stand. 26 years after his wife Sherry's murder,
01:17:55
John Rutten told the jury Sherry came to him after Lazarus confronted her at the
01:18:01
hospital and then he admitted there was something else when Lazarus called him devastated about the engagement he went to her place John said on the witness
01:18:13
stand that they ended up having sex that night that's why Sherry was so upset after the hospital visit.
01:18:21
Lazarus told her she and John had sex. So he truthfully said, I told her, yes, I had slept with Lazarus
01:18:33
after we got engaged. It was a horrible mistake. I love you, Sherry. I don't love Lazarus.
01:18:43
Please don't let that mistake of mine derail our plans. I want to go forward with our marriage.
01:18:50
And they talked basically all night long, and Sherry forgave him. It was all painful for Sherry's sisters to hear.
01:18:59
I didn't know that until the trial, and I heard that come out of its mouth. So when you want somebody to go away, you sleep with them?
01:19:06
Really? No defense for that. You're not that charitable. No, that hurt. If Lazarus did kill Sherry, though, she never did claim her prize, John Rutten.
01:19:17
after the murder. The prosecutor told the jury that didn't mean Lazarus stopped thinking about John.
01:19:24
A search warrant of her home and devices told that story. And we found that she was doing internet searches for John Rutten even 10-15 years later.
01:19:36
Stephanie Lazarus did not testify at her trial We may never know exactly what sequence of events led to violence on that particular February day Maybe Lazarus was sneaking into the condo thinking she be alone and was surprised
01:19:52
to find Sherry there. Or maybe Lazarus planned to kidnap Sherry. That would explain the rope found at the scene.
01:20:00
The jury didn't need to answer those questions. They only needed to answer one. did Stephanie Lazarus kill Sherry Rasmussen?
01:20:10
It didn't take them long to decide. We, the jury, in above-entitled action, find the defendant, Stephanie Eileen Lazarus,
01:20:19
guilty of the crime of murder of Sherry Rasmussen. Stephanie Lazarus was sentenced to 27 years to life.
01:20:26
John Rutten spoke at the sentencing hearing. And the fact that Sherry's death occurred
01:20:31
because she met and married me brings me to my knees. For Sherry's loved ones, the questions linger, and so does the pain.
01:20:42
You angry about how long this took? I am. I'm angry that they didn't treat people better, that they didn't listen to us.
01:20:55
The other side of that is God waited long enough for us to really be able to prove that she did it
01:21:00
and then put her in prison away from those people that she loves. Although she's still got a better deal than Sherry did.
01:21:08
In fact, it's a better deal than you might have expected. Because of her lengthy service to the LAPD,
01:21:15
Stephanie Lazarus continues to receive her department pension, even though she's locked up.
01:21:21
It comes to just more than $75,000 a year. Sherry's sister's focus on keeping her memory.
01:21:30
alive. I see it in my daughters and I see it in my grandkids. You see Sherry. Yes. It gives you comfort to know that
01:21:40
she's carrying on. She was a dedicated nurse. She cared for people deeply. She was such a people person and was so kind. I think that's a big part of my life and my family's life and
01:21:55
Trying to help others and be there for them So many years after that last Christmas, baby Rachel still feels her aunt's embrace.
01:22:07
I've always felt that she's watching over us, that you can talk to her whenever and know that she is there with you and loves you.