00:00:00
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Data accurate as of 2-20-26. Hello and welcome to My Favorite Murder, the Thanksgiving episode.
00:02:15
Oh, right. It's Thanksgiving for y'all today. It's Thanksgiving Day episode. How is it not having to see your family this year?
00:02:24
How is Zooming with the fam ideal the way it should always be done? The best. That's Karen Kilgara.
00:02:32
Oh, that's Georgia Hartstark. Hi. We're here. Yeah. Oh, so, you know, in this in the mini of this episode this week, I asked about mid-century modern dollhouses.
00:02:44
Yes. And is there like a hashtag and a bunch of people tagged me on this really great one called Tiny House Calls, C-A-L-L-S.
00:02:52
And it's by Dr. Kwanda Roberts. And it's just beautiful interior design, mid-century modern, like cute style, our fucking style.
00:03:03
But it's all mini. Look, can you see that? Whoa, that looks real. I know. That doesn't look small at all.
00:03:09
It's all mini. Look at that. I want my house to look like that. Is this decorator slash designer making, like they have a mid-century dollhouse that they're then filling with mid-century furniture?
00:03:23
Or are they just making the furniture? I think they do the whole thing. I think you like design a room.
00:03:29
So I don't know if it's like an actual house, like dollhouse, or if it's just room by room.
00:03:33
But I follow a lot of miniature makers. And it's, I mean, it's fascinating. In the same corner, reply corner, we can say.
00:03:42
last week I made a I was actually going to have Stephen cut it out when I talked about my newest
00:03:48
candy obsession which is Sour Sketty I wrote it down in the middle of the night to be like stop talking
00:03:54
about candy like stop pretending that's interesting it's not well then I got some support on Twitter and I really
00:04:02
want to thank their name's Boodle on Twitter and their at is Bailey Eschbach like an impossible. I don't know if it's a name
00:04:12
or if you're trying to sound drunk. I don't know if it's a joke. Russian spy. Whatever you are.
00:04:20
Thank you, Boodle, because they wrote to me, I am also not super proud of my Sour Sketti needs
00:04:26
so I buy it in bulk. And they showed a picture of a whole box of Sour Sketti that they have sent
00:04:34
to their house, which I really respect. There it is. Haribo. Oh, you gotta love Haribo.
00:04:40
Come on. Shame dies in the light. So thank you. Thank you for being there with me in that.
00:04:46
Oh, I'm reading a book that I really like that Oprah. Oprah likes, too. So clearly.
00:04:51
It must be good. It must be good. And she and I must be best friends. It's not Hillbilly Elegy, is it?
00:04:57
No, no, but I really want to watch that because everyone keeps saying it's the worst movie they've anyone's ever seen, which makes me absolutely want to see it.
00:05:05
I mean, sure. My thing is people keep posting pictures of Amy Adams looking dumpy from that movie. Every time I see it, I go, oh, that's a cute shirt. Every time I see it, I get really, I feel supported and seen. And I'm like, yay, I like messy hair. Oh, it's supposed to look bad. Oh, that's right.
00:05:26
Finally, Amy Adams is like, likes my style. Oh, wait, she's supposed to be playing.
00:05:31
Oh, I guess it hasn't come into style yet. Not brushing your hair. That's the 80s and 90s.
00:05:39
And it hasn't come back yet. But you won't come back. You just wait. I'll hold on.
00:05:43
So I'm listening to this incredible book called Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker.
00:05:48
And it the true story of this family with 12 children and from the 1945 on and six of those children end up getting diagnosed with schizophrenia So at the time of course there not a ton of research done on it and they become kind of this
00:06:07
like study of the science of schizophrenia, you know, based on their family. And so psychiatry
00:06:13
and brain doctors and scientists study them to figure out the how and the why of and the what
00:06:20
of schizophrenia and the diagnosis and what it means and how it can be treated. And it's just really fascinating. If you read the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,
00:06:29
it's really similar where it goes between the family and what they're going through and their
00:06:33
life. And then the next chapter is about the scientists and the study and the brain. And it's
00:06:37
just, it's a really interesting read. And if you're fascinated by psychiatry, which I am,
00:06:45
It's such an incredible book. So that's Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker. That's great.
00:06:52
Yeah, I love it. I highly recommend it. That sounds really good. I just binged The Crown, the fourth season of The Crown.
00:07:01
I watched my first episode I've ever seen of it last night. Of The Crown? And now I'm going to watch it on four?
00:07:06
Yeah, because I wanted to see Lady Di on it. And then it's just Olivia Colman. But I'm fucking really enjoying it.
00:07:13
And I'm like, oh, shit, I might have to go back and just start from the beginning.
00:07:16
You really should, because it's just as good when Claire Foy is the queen. And it is.
00:07:21
It's really. I was surprised how much I liked it. Yeah. It's good. Okay. I might do that.
00:07:27
I don't think Vince is interested, though. So I'm on my own. I'll say this. They they're not.
00:07:33
It's not just one of those kind of like, oh, it's a historical, you know, like drama series
00:07:40
or whatever. They know how to make TV. The people that make this show are really good at making TV.
00:07:45
So it's very compelling. You know, you learn and grow, but also it's just good, good TV.
00:07:52
I'm into the World War Two history of it all. So that sounds super exciting. Yeah.
00:07:57
For me. Okay. It's great. So you binged that. I binged it. There's a couple episodes nearly.
00:08:02
I didn't get, I think I got like six episodes in and then I fell asleep, which I think about
00:08:07
all the time where I fall asleep and then I'm like, does my, is my brain still listening?
00:08:12
Do I know what happened at the end of season four of The Crown and I just, my conscious brain doesn't know, but it's like in there somewhere.
00:08:20
Maybe. I wonder if it works that way. Listen, dream doctors, fuck it, or anyone who has a dream diary, dictionary, let us know, please.
00:08:31
What if I go and try to pitch the back half of season four of The Crown and people are like, this is word for word what they already made as a podcast.
00:08:38
No. I have this great idea. I can't do that. Okay. What else? Did you see, this is one of the better videos I've seen on Twitter all week, in Utah.
00:08:50
They made, because so many animals were being killed on Interstate 80, I think it is, they
00:08:56
made an overpass for animals. No. And then they put video cameras, day and night scope video cameras.
00:09:05
And so you can watch the video. It's the best. Oh, like, see who's crossing? Look who's crossing.
00:09:10
Look who's crossing. Is that what it's called? there's deer there's tons of bears
00:09:15
there's little squirrels and tiny mice and like in the overpass there's like it's dirt
00:09:21
and then they put like logs and rocks and natural things so that they can hide if they're scared
00:09:27
or whatever is it like they're just like great I'd rather do this than run across the street
00:09:33
or whatever maybe they like herd them herd there. But there's like a there's some kind of a really bossy
00:09:44
deer crossing guard that's on one side like this way. We're doing it this way now.
00:09:49
Okay, Claire, with your clipboard. Get it. You're in charge, Claire. I want to go down by the highway. No, no, no, no.
00:09:56
We're not doing that anymore. I'm Claire, the bossy deer. Yeah, you got to see that. It's really
00:10:02
that's worth it. I like how everything's feeling a little lighter and a little, you know, a little
00:10:08
more positive these days. And then you see videos like that. You don't need them so much. You're
00:10:13
just like, great. Yeah. And it's not like you're holding your phone crying and staring going,
00:10:18
oh my God, there is good in this world. Just go watch for yourself. You'll see how goddamn great
00:10:24
it is to watch a bear walking and then stop and stand on its hind legs and look around like,
00:10:27
could this be trusted? Yes, it can be. Another reason I'm real bummed is that I had to stop
00:10:34
feeding the squirrels, my like neighbors, the squirrels that have like essentially taken over
00:10:39
our deck, our like patio, because it's theirs now. So I have to stop giving them walnuts all the time.
00:10:45
Yeah. So they're not going to come around anymore. And I'm really fucking sad about it. I watched
00:10:48
them grow up. And so bye. Goodbye to the squirrels. Oh, I know. Just because they don't
00:10:55
want them around. Because they're now like living on our outdoor space. They like live there. And we
00:11:02
can't go outside now. The cats can't go outside. I'm worried about mites and fleas and stuff. They're all over our
00:11:08
furniture, patio furniture. They're throwing my plants over the balcony. It's just
00:11:13
a little too much at this point. You really didn't think it all the way through when you started going, hey, free food
00:11:20
over here. Oh my God, look how cute they are. And Vince was like, hey, I'm from Michigan.
00:11:24
You shouldn't feed those. And I was like, no way. It's so cute. I love them. And he's like, okay.
00:11:29
Okay, Snow White, you're fucked. that's like the time that I put out a bird feeder because I'm like,
00:11:36
look, I like birds. Yeah. This is my passion. I put out a bird feeder. Birds were coming in a backyard.
00:11:42
And then like three days later I looked outside and there was no joke, like 30 pigeons just standing around.
00:11:48
And what they would do is one would jump up on the bird feeder and spin it and just flick the bird seat everywhere.
00:11:55
And so they just found out it was just like free food in this backyard It was just went out and took it right back down Exactly No thanks That exactly what is happening
00:12:06
Did you see the video of the old guy in Florida who rescued his dog from a little alligator?
00:12:12
I saw a screen grab of it and I couldn't watch it, but he survived. He's like dog survived.
00:12:19
Oh, yeah. Oh, thank God. Oh, my God. The old guy goes in. He's got a he's got a cigar.
00:12:25
in his mouth, like clamped between his teeth. That thing never fucking comes out of his mouth.
00:12:30
He pulls the dog. The alligator's only like this big. It's, you know, either it's a baby alligator or crocodile.
00:12:38
I'm not sure in that area or wherever. Or it's the kind that doesn't get any bigger.
00:12:43
But he basically is holding it like this and his little dog, he just like opens it.
00:12:48
Throws the dog this way. The dog takes off running and then he just like throws it.
00:12:53
And at no point. He's smoking a cigar the entire time. He's like, he's the ultimate old Florida man.
00:13:01
Love him. Yeah. Congratulations, dude. Yeah. And the dog had a punctured lung, but he's doing fine now.
00:13:08
Oh. I mean, he was like in the jaws of an alligator. Yeah. A little life flash before his eyes.
00:13:15
A little tiny, a little pea brain. Wait, sorry. Did you see the huge alligator on the other end of the alligator news spectrum?
00:13:23
No. They took a picture of this alligator that was walking across a golf course in Florida.
00:13:29
Okay, I think I did see this. And it's the size of a fucking minivan. Truly, truly.
00:13:34
Jai fucking gantic. Did you see the moose that someone took? It was a while ago, but it was a moose in Alaska walking down the center of a highway.
00:13:43
And someone pulls up to it and it is the size of a small building. Really? Did you know moose for this fucking size?
00:13:50
Did you? I saw a moose. I thought you were going to say the moose video where the moose is just fucking running through snow top speed.
00:13:57
And the snow is like four feet deep. And this moose runs by and it's going 30 miles an hour.
00:14:03
And the people are just like, whoa. And it's as if the snow is not there. I don't want that.
00:14:08
It doesn't impede that moose at all. I hope he used the bridge crossing. He was running to knock the bridge down.
00:14:16
He's anti. Which, you know, it's going to happen. Those anti-bridgers. They will not.
00:14:22
It's crazy. Speaking of which, friend of the family, Phoebe Bridgers, nominated for a Grammy.
00:14:27
Yay. Congratulations, Phoebe. Award. She's so talented. Did you hear her cover of Iris?
00:14:36
Yes. It was so incredible. It was so good. Her and Maggie Rogers. Her and Maggie Rogers covering.
00:14:45
Steven, are you a super fan? Maggie Rogers' record is really great, too. Obviously, Phoebe's record is like the best record this year.
00:14:51
Yeah. Pitchfork says so. That means it's a fact. Cool. So we do a little business, a little news?
00:15:01
Sure. A little exactly right corner news. Well, what's really exciting is that our newest show, Tenfold More Wicked, premiered on Monday.
00:15:09
I mean. Which we hope you already love it and subscribe to it and adore it. Yeah.
00:15:16
If you need a new true crime podcast, this one has everything. That's right. I said I'm doing I said no gifts at the end of the month.
00:15:24
Oh, great. Started. I'm like really nervous and I'm a really nervous gift giver.
00:15:28
So I've already started collecting things to maybe give Bridger. Two days before you go on the show, you're going to call him up and tell him what the gift is.
00:15:36
I absolutely am. That's so me. I'm going to send him a photo. I'm just this is for a friend.
00:15:41
Which one of these would you rather have? I'm so nervous. All right. Yeah. You guys know all that.
00:15:48
I saw what you did. Bananas. we have so many good podcasts on our network. Check it out. Pretty soon we're going to have so many
00:15:53
podcasts we're not going to be able to do this because there's going to be too many to talk about. But until
00:15:57
that time, we've got to stoke the fire. Oh, this is fun. This is a quick mention and it's the
00:16:03
2020 is almost over sale. Right. So we're doing 20% off all merch in the store from Friday
00:16:09
at midnight until Monday at midnight Pacific Standard Time. So just use the code goodbye2020
00:16:15
when you check out. and, you know, get yourself something nice. Get yourself a little something, something in celebration.
00:16:23
Yeah, so that's myfavoritemurder.com and the story Goodbye 2020 is the promo code.
00:16:28
There's so much stuff on the tip of my brain to talk about that I can't remember today.
00:16:33
So why don't we get to the murders instead? The murderer. Yeah, the murderer. The story.
00:16:40
It's I'm all alone this week. Yeah. Karen's going this week. I'm going to go next week because I have a big one for next week.
00:16:46
Because, guys. Yeah. We've been podcasting all the way through 2020. And I realize that you know this because you listen to the podcast and thank you for that. But it has not been easy. This year has not been an easy one to just continually churn out content for.
00:17:04
Right. Yeah, that's very true. That's very true. And we're doing other things. We're running this network. There's another thing we're doing that we can't talk about yet. That's really exciting.
00:17:15
What the s***? Yeah. Oh, we're not allowed to do that. Sorry, Stephen. Just bleep the word.
00:17:27
Yeah, that's how we make it exciting. Good idea. So, yeah, there's a lot going on. But we, of course, the most important thing is the podcast and we fucking love it.
00:17:35
And we just want to make sure that this is that this is sustainable for the two of us so that we can keep doing it through what's going to be the best year in anyone's existence.
00:17:45
2021, hopefully. Fingers crossed. Oh, my God. First of all, just let's just talk each individually about the first celebratory action we're going to take.
00:17:54
Once the vaccines have been distributed And proven to be effective Suddenly everything open again Normal life has started Georgia Hart dark Where are you going to go
00:18:05
Downtown Las Vegas. I'm going to go fucking play Buffalo. Buffalo. Vince and I are going to fucking just have it out in Vegas.
00:18:16
It's going to be best. Yeah. Oh, you mean fighting? Big boxing match? The time of our lives.
00:18:21
you're going to MMA fight in Vegas okay we're going to finally we've been getting along
00:18:27
so well through the quarantine that we're just going to have a huge fight in the middle of
00:18:31
downtown Las Vegas that'll be very cathartic like right by the fat burger that we went
00:18:35
to that time did the show yeah what about you I just think I should start drinking again and go straight to a bar
00:18:41
a terrible bar like an old man bar that no one wants me there yeah I just sidle right up right up to
00:18:47
the bar elbow people out of the way yeah I'm just like Can you see that bottle of creamed mint?
00:18:53
Bring that over here. Ew. Oh, and then Karen is gone. I just go back to drinking the most disgusting beverages I can.
00:19:02
What if you just drink really low alcohol percentage trash? And that's like... Peach schnapps?
00:19:08
You never get drunk, yeah. Peach schnapps mixed with creme de mint. Why is it always chaos when we link up?
00:19:16
Because nobody plans anything, bro. Good thing the rug's ready like that. For real.
00:19:19
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mid-sites class, excluding electrical vehicles based on manufacturer websites. Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
00:20:01
This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's
00:20:07
audiobook Project Hail Mary, massive sci-fi adventure about survival and science and what
00:20:14
happens when you wake up alone very far from earth. I really had to make a decision because
00:20:19
I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some
00:20:24
of these sections. And it's like, okay, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about
00:20:28
it. I was like, no, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the
00:20:34
listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book
00:20:39
that deeply emotionally affected me, and I left it on the mic. That's great. Because it served the story.
00:20:46
People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah, dude, me too.
00:20:50
Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Data accurate is of 22026. All right. Let's do this thing. Okay. I have a story to tell you.
00:21:31
Great. It's incredibly terrible. Oh. Which I think is what you're going to like about it.
00:21:37
Okay. This one we've never done before. It's obviously the B-Word of like, I'm going to do the one you did last week.
00:21:45
This is one I've actually done before. And so I'm really excited to tell you again about it.
00:21:50
I just want to, this is a quick reminder of the one you just did. No, I've actually, I almost did this one before, but it was very long and involved and kind of intimidating.
00:22:02
So I knew from the quilt episode that I would have time. I would have time for Jay to do the research.
00:22:11
Jay Elias, by the way, he works for us. He works at Exactly Right. But then he also does my research and he's so great at it.
00:22:18
So thank you, Jay, once again. So this week I'm covering the murder of Sherry Rasmussen.
00:22:26
Oh, wow. Okay. Let's dive in. I love it. I hate this murder. I love this story. Yeah.
00:22:36
Right? Yeah. That's usually how it goes. Yeah. So in 2012, a writer named Mark Bowden wrote an article for Vanity Fair called A Case So Cold It Was Blue.
00:22:49
And so that's an amazing article if you want to read it. We also used research from the Los Angeles Magazine article by a writer named Steve Nicolán.
00:23:01
It was from 2012 and called In Plain Sight. There was an article on the website Crime Library written by Tricia Romano.
00:23:10
And of course, there's an exhaustive Wikipedia page about this case. I should tell the story probably that we were supposed to record at six.
00:23:19
And right around that time, I was finishing up, you know, final notes on this. And then my computer screen screen turned very dark blue.
00:23:31
So it wasn't off. The screen just died. And for five full minutes, I thought that like the computer screen had gone out.
00:23:41
And then finally, I was able to turn it off and turn it back on the classic fix.
00:23:47
And when it came back on, the document was in its original form, four hours previous after four hours of work.
00:23:54
And it was very upsetting. And then slowly but surely... It renewed itself. So the most recent version came back.
00:24:04
A lot of drama. So we start here on the morning of Monday, February 24th, 1986. Sherry Rasmussen wakes up in her Van Nuys condo alongside her new husband, John Rutten.
00:24:18
They're newlyweds. They'd just gotten married three months earlier. She's the director of nursing at Glendale Adventist Medical Center in Glendale, California.
00:24:27
And she's supposed to be going to work that day because she has to give a speech for human resources.
00:24:33
They're doing a class in human resources, and she's supposed to give like an inspirational speech.
00:24:39
But she kind of isn't feeling up to it because she injured her back working out the day before.
00:24:44
So she's considering using that as an excuse to just take the day off and call in sick.
00:24:49
So around 7.20 in the morning when John leaves for work to go to work at the engineering company that he works at,
00:24:56
She's still laying in bed. So around 945, one of Sherry and John's neighbors notices that their garage is open.
00:25:05
There's no car inside. Then around 10 a.m., John calls the house to check in with Sherry.
00:25:12
But there's no answer. And he notices the answering machine doesn't go on. so for all the children that don't know what that means um when back long ago your answering machine
00:25:26
uh lived outside of your phone it was a big huge weird like tape recorder and you would have to
00:25:32
turn it you could turn it on and off so um obviously they turned theirs off and she she
00:25:37
was before she left for work she was supposed to turn it on um so it hadn't been turned on but that
00:25:42
was something she'd forgotten to do before. So he didn't really it didn't click with him. He didn't
00:25:47
really think much about it. Instead, he just tries Sherry at work. But there, the person he talks to
00:25:55
tells him that Sherry hasn't arrived yet. She said that Sherry most likely went straight to that HR
00:26:01
class and didn't come into her office. So John tries Sherry at home again, a couple more times
00:26:08
throughout the day, as does Sherry's sister. Each time, no one answers. Around 12 noon,
00:26:15
there are two gardeners who are working on the condo grounds and they find a purse. So they give
00:26:20
it to one of the neighbors, a husband and wife. The husband and wife look inside and they realize
00:26:26
that the purse belongs to Sherry Rasmussen. Around 12.30 p.m., a maid who's cleaning another
00:26:32
neighbor's condo. Here's two people arguing, coming from the direction of Sherry and John's
00:26:38
unit, followed by a thump and what sounds like a hard fall. That maid doesn't hear anything else,
00:26:45
assumes it was just a normal argument that people sometimes have, and she just continues on with her
00:26:50
day. So John is on his way home from work. He does some errands first. He stops at the dry cleaners.
00:26:57
He stops at the UPS store. When he finally gets home, he sees their garage door is open.
00:27:04
And Sherry's BMW, which was his engagement gift to her, is gone. So then he notices there's broken glass in the driveway.
00:27:14
So like recently, Sherry had dinged her car door. And so John thinks maybe she accidentally hit something while she was pulling out of the driveway.
00:27:23
Right. And broke one of the car windows. You know how your brain just kind of tries to put a story together?
00:27:30
Yeah, not jump to the craziest conclusion. Yeah, just like, oh, this could be what happened.
00:27:35
But then as he walks in through the garage door and up the stairs, he sees that the door leading into their living room is open.
00:27:44
And now all of these separate minor details of the day suddenly add up and panic sets in.
00:27:49
He rushes up the stairs only to find Sherry's lifeless body lying face up on the living room floor.
00:27:56
She's still wearing her robe from that morning. Her face is swollen and she's covered in blood.
00:28:01
John then realizes that she has bullet wounds in her chest. He checks her pulse.
00:28:07
He can't find one and he immediately calls the police. The investigative team arrives and it's led by a detective, Lyle Mayer.
00:28:14
So they determine that Sherry has been shot in the chest three times with a 38 caliber gun.
00:28:21
There's a bruise on her face that suggests she was hit with the gun before being shot.
00:28:26
there's a quilted blanket with blast holes lying nearby that indicate the killer used it as a makeshift silencer.
00:28:34
And they find a bite mark on Sherry's left inner forearm. They swab that for saliva and they make a dental mold for later analysis.
00:28:44
So investigators see that there's clear signs a fight took place. There's a porcelain vase that looks like it was broken over Sherry's head.
00:28:51
There's a stereo speaker that's been knocked to the floor. There's the shelving of a display cabinet is knocked off its brackets and the TV's amplifier and receiver are both just hanging by their cords.
00:29:03
And then at the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor, there's a VCR and a CD player.
00:29:10
They're neatly stacked as if someone was planning on taking them. And the CD player has blood smears on top of it, which match the blood smears on the east wall and the front door.
00:29:22
and on the second floor the back balcony sliding glass doors have been shattered so this is the
00:29:29
glass that john saw in the driveway um but there's no signs of forced entry nothing appears to be
00:29:34
actually stolen except for john and sherry's marriage license what so john's questioned of
00:29:42
course because you know the husband um and he recounts his day it's clear to investigators
00:29:49
He's not a person of interest. His alibi can be proven by many people They question the neighbors and then they learn about the disturbance the maid heard They learn about the open garage door and they learn about Sherry purse being found by the gardeners So after a few hours and basically with John alibi in place Detective Mayer tells John that he believes Sherry was the victim of a burglary gone wrong just around 10 a that day
00:30:19
So a week later, Sherry's BMW is found abandoned on the street in Van Nuys. It was unlocked and the keys were in the ignition.
00:30:28
Investigators are able to pull a couple of fingerprints from the car and a spot of blood and also a single brown hair.
00:30:35
But those clues yield no immediate results. And then over the course of the next few weeks, police continue interviewing neighbors, family members, friends, coworkers.
00:30:45
and a picture of Sherry's life begins to come into focus. So Sherry Rasmussen is originally from Tucson, Arizona,
00:30:52
but she moves to Los Angeles in 1973 to study critical care nursing at Loma Linda University
00:30:59
when she's just 16 years old. Wow. So she's really, really smart. She excels in school, and she's on a fast track to a promising nursing career.
00:31:10
By her late 20s, Sherry's been promoted to the director of nursing at Glendale Adventist.
00:31:17
She's also an avid runner, an athlete. She's really beautiful and she's really confident.
00:31:23
And so in the summer of 1984, when she meets the handsome, talkative 25-year-old John Rutten, it doesn't take long for sparks to fly.
00:31:33
So John's originally from San Diego. He moved to Los Angeles to study mechanical engineering at UCLA.
00:31:38
He graduated in 1982. and he is head over heels in love with Sherry. And they date for about a year and a half.
00:31:46
And then in November of 1985, they get married. But it's, of course, as any marriage, all is not as perfect as it seems.
00:31:55
Except for mine and Vince's. Except for Georgia and Vince's. Even though she wouldn't take his last name.
00:32:01
I don't know why. Anyway, just weeks before John and Sherry's wedding, they get visited by an old friend of John's
00:32:11
named Stephanie Lazarus. So Stephanie has dark hair and an athletic frame and she shows up unannounced one day
00:32:18
carrying a pair of water skis asking if John will wax them for her. Not waxing anyone's fucking water skis.
00:32:28
So Sherry immediately suspects John is cheating on her with this woman. John assures her he is not.
00:32:36
He says that they were just old college friends and that while they used to sleep together every once in a while, Stephanie was never his girlfriend.
00:32:44
Either way, Sherry sees through this kind of wax. My skis ploy as a way for her to get FaceTime with John.
00:32:50
She basically tells John, don't do that. Like, just say no. But he says it's just better if I do it now and then just she'll go away.
00:33:02
But of course, she doesn't. So when Stephanie shows up again, unannounced to pick up her skis, which is just like basic manners of weird, this weird popping in on people.
00:33:15
No. Yeah. On an ex? No. On an ex. Or even like a friend just kind of like, hey, I'm here.
00:33:23
Right. Very suspicious. So John basically gives the skis back and then Sherry just asks her to leave.
00:33:31
She's just like, yeah, you're not hanging out. So Stephanie leaves, but a few weeks later, she shows up again.
00:33:37
But this time, she's in uniform, complete with a gun on her hip, because it turns out Stephanie Lazarus is an LAPD police officer.
00:33:48
She's dropped by the house at a time of day when Sherry's usually already left for work and John is still at the house.
00:33:54
But this morning, John had left early and Sherry was still there. so uh sherry's immediately like this does this is not good like this is a very bad thing and
00:34:08
basically she's just like you need to get out of here to stephanie and of course now her suspicion
00:34:13
that her husband's having an affair with this woman grows into a real fear and that fear is
00:34:17
confirmed when sherry gets a third unannounced visit from stephanie lazarus this time it's a
00:34:23
Sherry's work. So apparently Stephanie Lazarus just walks into Glendale Adventist Medical Center
00:34:30
right past the front desk and she just walks straight into Sherry's office. And if that's
00:34:36
not weird enough, she's wearing like tight short shorts and a tube top. Which is that's,
00:34:46
That's insane. No matter what the scenario, that is bizarre. Bizarre. Unless you're going to like a roller rink.
00:34:56
Right. Not a hospital. Yeah. No. So she basically goes there and tells Sherry things are not over between her and John.
00:35:07
Shit. And essentially before she leaves, she makes this ominous declaration. she tells Sherry if I can't have John
00:35:15
no one else can so now Sherry doesn't know what to believe or what to do she's super worried and confused
00:35:23
so she calls her father Nels Rasmussen he's still back in Tucson and she confides in him about this
00:35:31
insane situation she not only tells her dad about Stephanie's disturbing visits but she also says that she thinks
00:35:39
Stephanie has been stalking her so Nels is a very protective father and he's also never really been a fan of John's he always
00:35:49
thought John was too soft to properly take care of Sherry and now that he hears this story he convinced he was right because John clearly doesn have the guts to stand up to this weird ex And even worse Nels thinks John cheating on his daughter So in the aftermath of Sherry murder when Detective Mayer interviews Nels and his wife Loretta Nels first question is have you looked into John ex the lady cop
00:36:16
And Detective Mayer immediately dismisses the idea, telling Nels he watches too many detective shows.
00:36:21
Oh, my. To a newly grieving father of. And also just as as an investigator, why wouldn't you keep everything open?
00:36:33
You're trying to solve a murder case. So anyway, John Rutten meets Stephanie. So this is this is a little history between the two, John and Stephanie Lazarus.
00:36:44
So they met sometime around 1978, 79. They're both undergrads at UCLA, and they're both in the same dorm.
00:36:56
Stephanie is originally from Simi Valley, so she's a local. She was there studying political science.
00:37:02
She also played on UCLA's JV women's basketball team. And then after she graduates, she applies to the L.A. Police Academy.
00:37:10
And by 1983, she'd become an LAPD officer. According to John, he and Stephanie were just basically just friends.
00:37:18
They had like the same big friend group, although he admits that she did do things like steal John's clothes while he was in the shower and she would take pictures of him in his underwear while he slept.
00:37:31
That was when they were friends. Then after a few years, sometime around 1981, they start sleeping together.
00:37:42
So they just kind of are hooking up off and on for the next three years, during which time John estimates they'd had sex somewhere between 20 or 30 times.
00:37:51
And he maintains that they were never dating. I'm sure she was fine with that. Well, yeah, she just she didn't see it that way.
00:38:00
She actually believed that they were in a relationship. so then when she finds out that john is seriously dating sherry rasmussen and um i think she
00:38:12
basically found out that they had gotten engaged it's a total shock to her so she falls into a
00:38:18
deep depression um she's really broken hearted over this this piece of news that john's gotten
00:38:25
engaged she even writes a letter to john's mother in august of 1985 saying quote i'm truly in love
00:38:32
with John in the past year has torn me up. I wish it didn't end the way it did. And I don't think
00:38:37
I'll ever understand his decision. Oh, here's what I have to say about this. Because I've actually
00:38:43
heard of people doing this reaching out to people's family members, especially their mothers,
00:38:47
when someone breaks up with them. If someone breaks up with you, it that don't go on a letter
00:38:53
writing campaign to their mother, or any family member. Yeah, you just accept it. Even if you
00:39:01
don't like it for your future self, don't go begging. Like what's the end game there? He's
00:39:08
going to show back up at your door going, Hey, I don't want to be with you, but my mom wants me to.
00:39:14
Or my mom talked to me and do it. It's just that grieving when you get broken up with.
00:39:18
It's hard to handle rejection. No one, no one likes rejection. But what you're basically doing
00:39:25
is going, I don't accept your feelings. And your feelings about me, either never were there in the
00:39:32
first place, and you're letting me know, or they've changed, and you're letting me know.
00:39:36
Either way, the person saying no, thanks, there's no other answer to that. Yeah, there just isn't
00:39:42
even no matter what your feelings are, you just got to like, it's you just gotta you got to play
00:39:47
the dignity card. And just like, you know, here's the thing, there's 7.8 billion people in the world.
00:39:53
so you're going to find somebody else that smells really good and likes the same Netflix shows
00:39:58
as you like you're going to be okay eventually yeah you are block off six months to be insane
00:40:03
but don't be insane with his mother yeah they don't need to know about the insanity and they won't
00:40:11
I know so many people who do that thing were like I was really close with this mom so we've been talking and it's like it's not
00:40:16
going to work it's making you look crazier like it's that that plan doesn't ever work
00:40:22
so anyway sorry to yell at you about your breakup okay so shortly after this and only weeks before
00:40:30
john and sherry's wedding stephanie begs john to come to her condo in woodland hills to talk
00:40:36
and he does and the two of them end up having sex yeah and john later says uh he did it to give
00:40:46
Stephanie a sense of closure. That doesn't, that's not how That's bullshit, buddy.
00:40:52
Yeah. So he said sacrifice for him. Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so if you're breaking up with a girl
00:41:04
and then you think, oh, this is going to be my last great gift, like you're giving her, here's all your
00:41:10
sweaters back or something. If your last great gift includes you having an orgasm, it's
00:41:16
not a gift. No, no. That's a gift to you. That's right. That's your gift. That's right. You can
00:41:22
give yourself elsewhere. That's right. John actually quoted saying, she was upset. I felt
00:41:29
bad. I was a stupid and young man. But when Stephanie starts showing up at John and Sherry's
00:41:35
condo, that's when it becomes clear to John that his sense of closure rationale was self-serving
00:41:43
and short-sighted. Yeah. So when Detective Mayer talks to John again, John tells the detective
00:41:50
that he doesn't have any problems with his ex-girlfriends. He says there's no reason
00:41:54
to suspect Stephanie Lazarus of being involved John simultaneously grieving over the loss of his wife He at odds with his disapproving father And for good reason John waited
00:42:05
a day to tell the parents, Sherry's parents, that she'd been murdered. Why? So they're livid. I mean, they're already livid. And of course, grieving themselves.
00:42:16
I wonder what the thought process was behind that. Yeah. Did it just like, he wasn't thinking straight or what? That's awful.
00:42:24
Yeah, I don't know. But they're, you know, they're furious, of course. All of this makes Detective Mayer sympathetic towards John.
00:42:34
So he takes his word for it about Stephanie, quote unquote. Cool. Another officer points to the bite mark that's found on Sherry's arm as a sign that a woman may have been involved in her murder, since that's an injury that's typically inflicted by women.
00:42:49
mayor notes it's not entirely unheard of for a man to bite during an attack and ultimately he
00:42:55
sticks to his burglary theory so this is one of those things too where he was like it's either the
00:43:00
husband or it's a it's a burglary gone wrong right and since it's not the husband now this is what it
00:43:06
is and i'm not looking anywhere else and i'm certainly not looking at a fellow police officer
00:43:10
of course so detective mayor uh he shows sherry's parents the rasmussen sketches of what he calls
00:43:17
two possible latin male suspects nels pushes back on the theory of the burglary gone gone wrong he
00:43:25
says that he tells detective meyer that he himself had said that the destruction in the condo indicates
00:43:31
the struggle may have lasted as long as an hour and a half because there's so much damage to the
00:43:36
condo and he says sherry was fit but she wasn't strong enough to fight off two grown men for
00:43:42
upwards of an hour. Yeah. Plus the shots to the chest through a makeshift silencer seem more
00:43:49
like a calculated assassination, like someone was planning to kill rather than a burglary gone wrong,
00:43:55
because that would just be like, oh, someone surprised them and shot them. Yeah. Wouldn't take the time to silence the gun. Totally. So the supposed Latin male suspects are
00:44:04
never found. And soon the LAPD turns their focus to the ongoing crack epidemic of the 80s.
00:44:11
So because that overshadowed everything, cases like Sherry Rasmussen's murder are neglected.
00:44:18
Nels and Loretta Rasmussen repeatedly try to follow up with the police over the next two years, pushing them to follow the Stephanie Lazarus lead.
00:44:27
So eventually, on November 19th, 1987, which is a year and a half after the murder, one of the investigators finally calls Stephanie Lazarus on the phone.
00:44:36
They quickly rule her out from that conversation. And those details from the conversation are never shared. They're never written up into a report.
00:44:45
The only part of the case's official report that mentions Stephanie Lazarus is a line that reads, quote, John Rutten called verified Stephanie Lazarus PO, which means police officer, was former girlfriend.
00:44:59
So Nels and Loretta keep pushing for justice. They post a $10,000 reward for information on Sherry's murder, and they participate in a segment on a show that was called Murder One that features Sherry's unsolved case.
00:45:16
in 1993 after being told the police department does not have enough money in the budget to test
00:45:22
the blood and hair samples because of course dna testing had begun in the early 90s
00:45:29
Nels offers to pay for the dna testing himself but before he gets a chance to a detective named
00:45:35
phil morit signs out all the forensic samples at the la county coroner's office that may have
00:45:41
been useful to the case. It is possible Moritz signed out the samples from several cases to take
00:45:47
to the lab for testing, which would have been standard procedure. But he himself, one later
00:45:52
asked, doesn't remember signing out the samples. And now those samples are nowhere to be found.
00:46:00
Okay. And like, this is the point where it's like, you're protecting a police officer,
00:46:04
that when someone's ready to finally do it, and you give them this blase excuse about it,
00:46:08
not having enough money and the person's like, well, I'll fucking pay for it. And then they disappear.
00:46:13
Yeah. It's always bad when material evidence disappears. Totally. Because it's in custody.
00:46:22
It's in police hands. So how else would that happen? Right. I mean, sometimes it's like, oh, they clean something out or there's a fire, there's water
00:46:32
damage, there's some excuse. But nobody was making any excuses. It was just kind of like it's gone.
00:46:37
Right. So in the years following Sherry's murder, Stephanie Lazarus continues working for the LAPD.
00:46:43
She's promoted up from patrol. Now she's working in the D.A.R.E. program. She is promoted from there to the homicide unit, from there to internal affairs.
00:46:53
And eventually she starts working for the art theft division. She is considered a tough and tenacious detective, yet friendly, and she's well-liked.
00:47:05
And so basically everybody that works with her, you know, she's like she gets along well with her with her co-workers.
00:47:14
So this is this. Here's a weird kind of strange twist. In 1989, Stephanie and John reconnect. Stephanie invites John on a scuba trip to Hawaii.
00:47:24
Before leaving for that trip, John calls Detective Meyer and he asks him if he's absolutely sure there's no evidence linking Stephanie to Sherry's murder.
00:47:35
He is. He just wants to make sure. Right. So Meyer assures him there isn't. And John goes to Hawaii with Stephanie.
00:47:44
Oh, my God. So a few years later, John remarries and he starts a family. Stephanie also gets married and it's she marries a fellow police officer and they start a family.
00:47:59
Yeah. She continues to succeed in her career. She's it's noted that she's never received a citizen complaint or disciplinary hearing.
00:48:09
And she's starting to she really making a name for herself in the LAPD. So then in 2001, now that like the crack epidemic has subsided, kind of everything else is calming down.
00:48:24
The LAPD creates their cold case homicide unit. So in 2004, a cold case criminalist named Jennifer Francis picks up Sherry's case and she discovers something very troubling.
00:48:38
The saliva swab that was taken from Sherry's arm and marked down in the report isn't available in the evidence archive.
00:48:45
And it isn't in the list of samples that Moritz signed out back in 1993. It's gone.
00:48:51
So she calls up the coroner's office, Jennifer Francis, the criminologist. She calls up the coroner's office and they say they don't have a sample on file either, but they agree to search their freezers just in case it's fallen through the cracks.
00:49:06
And lo and behold, they're in the back of one of the freezers at the coroner's office in a manila envelope, which is not properly labeled.
00:49:14
There's no case number on it, but it does have the name Rasmussen written on it in 18-year-old ink.
00:49:22
Inside, there are two sealed saliva swabs. Holy shit. So this kind of like lost evidence actually gets found, which is a miracle.
00:49:32
So Frances has these swabs tested and she gets the results back in January of 2005.
00:49:38
There are no hits in the system for this DNA, but she does learn that the saliva belonged to a woman.
00:49:45
So she's unaware of the Rasmussen's suspicions about Stephanie Lazarus. There's nothing on any report that mentions her.
00:49:53
And she does know that the now retired detective mayor suspected two, quote unquote, Latin men.
00:50:00
That's the phrase he used with Latin men. So she asked her colleagues if this new information upends that initial burglary theory.
00:50:09
But these colleagues quickly point out that one of the burglars could have been a woman.
00:50:13
So it's fine. Don't worry about it. They box the case back up and it remains unsolved for another four years.
00:50:20
No, they were so close. It goes right back in. And and apparently it's a whole separate story.
00:50:27
And it's all you know, it's all about this kind of serious internal corruption, LAPD.
00:50:33
But but Jennifer Francis, she had a lot of disciplinary and she had a really hard time after that because she kept trying to track down and wanting to investigate this case and find out what like what all of this meant.
00:50:48
But there were roadblocks and shit because of a lot. lots of roadblocks, lots of, um, lots of issues with, within the department.
00:50:57
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And I really thought about it. I was like, no, at this point it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have
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in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that deeply
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data accurate as of 2-2026. Okay. So now we go to February of 2009. So with a dramatic decline in
00:53:20
the LA homicide rates, two more detectives named Jim Nuttall and Pete Barba, they dive back into
00:53:28
Sherry Rasmussen's cold case. And they noticed that the saliva sample being from a woman is
00:53:34
inconsistent with that original burglary theory. But this time, they officially reopened the case.
00:53:40
So they treat it as a murder stage to look like a burglary because the evidence that they have fits that theory.
00:53:49
Because they were saying you know as they look at everything they think if someone was trying just trying to rob John and Sherry they easily could have taken Sherry jewelry box which is out in plain sight Plus the condo was a gated complex So it would have been easy for the neighbors to spot
00:54:05
two burglars, right? You know, walking around at 10am. Yeah. But no one saw anyone.
00:54:13
And as Detective Meyer noted, there were no signs of forced entry, which indicates that whoever came
00:54:19
into the condo just walked right in. But now these new cold case detectives discover something even more telling,
00:54:26
that if the fight between Sherry and the intruder did actually start upstairs and work its way downstairs,
00:54:32
as Mare originally thought, it's likely that that VCR and CD player that were stacked up there at the bottom of the stairs
00:54:39
would have been knocked down in the process. Right. Plus, the blood smear found on top of the CD player
00:54:47
was printless. It was a thumb mark, but it was printless, which means that somebody was wearing...
00:54:55
The blood belonged to Sherry, but clearly somebody was wearing gloves when they put that there.
00:55:01
And that means that those things were stacked after Sherry was killed. Right. To make it look like someone
00:55:08
was trying to rob the place. Right. So, with all this in mind, Nuttall and Barba devise a new theory
00:55:16
that Sherry was upstairs at home when an intruder walked in through the unlocked front entrance
00:55:21
and surprised Sherry upstairs. So the intruder fires two shots at Sherry but misses
00:55:27
and instead shoots out the sliding glass door, which would then explain the glass that's down in the driveway
00:55:34
that John saw when he first pulled up and thought somehow was connected to the car.
00:55:40
Sherry makes a run for it downstairs. She tries to hit the home alarm system's panic button
00:55:46
But the intruder grabs her and they struggle. Sherry manages to get the intruder in a headlock.
00:55:52
The intruder bites her arm and then with the other hand grabs a vase and smashes it over Sherry's head, stunning her.
00:56:01
And then now free, the intruder takes the gun and fires it at close range into Sherry's chest.
00:56:08
But that's not enough. She grabs the quilt, holds it to Sherry's chest and fires two more shots.
00:56:14
Then before leaving, the intruder stacks up the VCR and CD players to make it look like a botched robbery, steals Sherry's BMW, and then later abandons it.
00:56:26
So armed with this new theory, the investigators comb through the case files again to try to find female suspects.
00:56:33
They pin down four other potential suspects when they come across the line from Detective Myers report from November 19th, 1987, that says John Rutten called verified Stephanie Lazarus P.O. was former girlfriend.
00:56:50
They search the LAPD department directory. They find Stephanie Lazarus was and still is an LAPD officer and that she's currently working in the art theft division.
00:57:00
division. So not all and Barba eventually rule out the other suspects, including a co-worker
00:57:09
who Sherry had had arguments with in the past. And because their remaining suspect is a police
00:57:15
officer, they have to operate very carefully and very discreetly. So they mark the case classified
00:57:22
and only refer to Stephanie Lazarus as number five. So upon further investigation, the evidence
00:57:30
begins to add up against Stephanie Lazarus. She was off duty on the day of the murder,
00:57:36
and the murder weapon matched her personal weapon, which was a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson.
00:57:42
Fuck. Then they find out in March of 1986, a few weeks after the murder, Stephanie Lazarus
00:57:47
reported that her personal .38 caliber Smith & Wesson had been stolen. So now the officers are
00:57:56
convinced there's a good chance that they may have their killer here. So they go on,
00:58:00
they go to their commanding officers in May of that year. And they basically get their bosses
00:58:09
to authorize a special ops team to tail Stephanie Lazarus. So they follow her to Costco one day.
00:58:17
And she eats there. So after she leaves, the officers retrieve a cup and a straw
00:58:24
that she used from the trash. They take it back to the lab and they test it. And two days later, the results come back.
00:58:32
Stephanie Lazarus's DNA is a confirmed match with the saliva sample taken from Sherry Rasmussen's arm.
00:58:40
Okay, so now they have to devise a plan to question a fellow police officer without raising her suspicions.
00:58:49
So basically what they do is they get their, they get like the top boss or whatever,
00:58:53
the police chief, to get in on this. And they order her down to the lockup, which is in the basement of department headquarters,
00:59:04
telling her that they need her there to question a suspect about an art theft. So she thinks she's going down to join an interrogation already that's already happening.
00:59:15
And this is so that other, to maintain her privacy, kind of? this is so that they don't hip her to the fact that she's the suspect
00:59:24
okay so because because in lockup all police have to check their guns no one can bring their
00:59:31
guns into lockup so she couldn't bring her weapon in which is what they needed they needed to get
00:59:36
that weapon off of her in case when she when she realized she was being questioned for this cold
00:59:42
case she didn't pull her gun on the on the officers wow yeah so on the morning of june 5th 2009
00:59:48
Detectives Dan Jaramillo and Greg Stearns ask Stephanie to join them in the lockup
00:59:54
She is excited by the prospect of questioning a potential art thief She follows them downstairs She hands over her weapon per procedure They all have a friendly chat
01:00:05
And Stephanie's only slightly confused when they ask her to take the seat that would normally be the suspect's chair.
01:00:11
So they talk casually for like an hour until they finally land on the subject of John Rutten.
01:00:19
So Stephanie is trying to be helpful at first. She tells the detectives, yes, she did know him.
01:00:24
They were friends in college that they dated. But they talk about it so much, she starts getting suspicious.
01:00:31
And she finally says, what's this all about? They tell her it's about his wife. And they ask Stephanie if she knew her.
01:00:40
And she's like, she says, quote, not really. I mean, I knew that he got married years ago.
01:00:46
God, I mean, it's been a long time. I may have met her. Jeez. And then she's like shrugging.
01:00:51
You know, she's clearly annoyed. But she continues the conversation. She says, I couldn't even tell you the last time I talked to him.
01:01:01
It was kind of a weird relationship. We dated. I can't say he was my boyfriend. I don't know if he would have considered me a girlfriend.
01:01:07
We just dated. So Jeremilo and Sterns continue pressing her about any sort of like heated exchanges that they may have had, any fights.
01:01:18
Stephanie tells them she doesn't remember any. But soon her tone changes from friendly to sharp.
01:01:23
and she outright calls them out on suspecting her of Sherry's murder. And she says, quote, if you guys are claiming that I'm a suspect, then I've got a problem with that.
01:01:32
OK, so if you're doing this as an interrogation and you're saying, hey, I'm a suspect.
01:01:37
Now I got a problem, you know, now you're accusing me of this. Is that what you're saying?
01:01:42
So the detectives tell her that she's not under arrest, that she can walk out anytime she wants.
01:01:47
And then they ask her if she'd be up for a DNA test. She says, maybe. and then says she has to speak to a lawyer first.
01:01:55
So soon after that, she stands up abruptly. She acts super pissed. She's offended that she's been targeted and she walks out.
01:02:03
But the second she gets out into the hallway, she's handcuffed and Detective Jaramillo reads her her rights.
01:02:09
And 23 years after Sherry Rasmussen was violently murdered in her home, Stephanie Lazarus is arrested.
01:02:18
So when she's in custody, Lazarus is allowed to, quote, retire early from the LAPD.
01:02:26
And then she's held for six months before her bail is set at a whopping $10 million.
01:02:34
Wow. OK, so Stephanie's defense lawyer, he tries to have the entire case dismissed, saying that because police failed to identify Stephanie as a suspect in the initial investigation, that the whole thing should be thrown out.
01:02:46
That's not how things work. Because they didn't think it was you, then you don't have to ever.
01:02:52
Yeah, it doesn't count. Parts of the original case file are missing, as we know, like interview recordings, Sherry's blood toxicology report, a polygraph test that John Rutten had failed.
01:03:05
And because 23 years have passed, the defense argues that the remaining evidence has degraded and that thus denying Lazarus of her due process.
01:03:15
The judge denies that motion. The trial starts in early 2012. So the prosecution builds this argument around the love triangle.
01:03:25
John admits to having sex with Stephanie while he was engaged to Sherry. But the defense argues that Stephanie had actually been dating several other men during the time as well.
01:03:34
And those men she did mention in her private journals. and that the defense said they that Stephanie was not as distraught over John as the prosecution is making it seem.
01:03:46
But and then they pull out those letters to his mom. Oh, no, no, no, no. Sorry. I'm making that up.
01:03:55
I mean, I'm sure they did at some point because it's just like, are you kidding me?
01:03:59
Right. Anyway, the story that the defense team crafts is no match for the DNA evidence in the prosecution's hands.
01:04:06
And after a few days of deliberation, the jury finds 52-year-old Stephanie Lazarus guilty of murder in the first degree.
01:04:14
On March 8, 2012, Stephanie Lazarus is convicted of first-degree murder of Sherry Rasmussen.
01:04:20
And on May 11, she's sentenced to 27 years to life. Wow. So, Nels and Loretta Rasmussen file a lawsuit against the LAPD, alleging a cover-up benefiting Stephanie Lazarus.
01:04:33
unfortunately is thrown out because of the statute of limitations. Right. So because no one investigates this murder in any meaningful way.
01:04:42
Right. Then later on, they can't get in trouble for not having investigated the murder,
01:04:47
which doesn't make a ton of sense. Yeah. Because the timer went off on how long you had to fucking solve it.
01:04:54
Right. Also, criminalist Jennifer Francis files a lawsuit against the LAPD, alleging that the detective that was supervising her purposefully steered her away from Stephanie Lazarus as a suspect.
01:05:06
In the years following her discovery, Frances claims to have encountered punishment and retaliation for pursuing that lead.
01:05:14
Ultimately, though, that in that case, the jury sides with the city of Los Angeles and she does not win that case.
01:05:21
Wow. So Stephanie Lazarus remains in prison at the California Institution for Women in Corona, California.
01:05:27
she'll be eligible for parole in 2034. Nels and Loretta Rasmussen were relieved to see their suspicions were correct
01:05:38
and that their daughter's killer was convicted. On April 20, 2019, a writer named Matthew McGough released a nearly 600-page book
01:05:47
detailing the case of Sherry Rasmussen's murder entitled The Lazarus Files, A Cold Case Investigation.
01:05:54
and when asked in an interview with the LA Times if he believes that Stephanie Lazarus actively destroyed the evidence against her or if she had help from other police inside the department McGough says that he believes it quote an open question
01:06:11
And he states, quote, when Stephanie was arrested, the LAPD promised it would do an investigation into what went wrong.
01:06:18
That never happened. Is that an oversight or is that something else more intentional?
01:06:24
It's certainly evocative of what happened in 1986. A couple of years later, they stated their reinvestigation found no evidence of any intentional cover up.
01:06:33
But no one I spoke with had been contacted by the LAPD. And that is troubling to me.
01:06:40
Nels Rasmussen passed away on June 20th of this year. He's remembered as a loving father who relentlessly pursued justice for his daughter, Sherry.
01:06:49
And so I was trying to look up a quote to talk about police corruption. And obviously, if we're going to talk about police corruption, we're going to talk about things like this.
01:07:01
It all leads back to the police brutality and the kind of cases and the kind of stuff that we've been seeing lately and seeing for a long time.
01:07:11
Systemic racism inside the... The culture, the culture inside the police force. And I found this pretty amazing quote.
01:07:21
A writer named Mickey Kendall wrote this article in 2015 for The Washington Post after Walter Scott was shot in the back in North Charleston, South Carolina.
01:07:31
And the person who recorded that murder was too afraid to give that recording to the police because he was afraid then he would be killed, too.
01:07:39
Sure, yeah. And this article is really, really, really well written. It's about police murder, the police murder of black people and the cover ups within it and the way this system is breaking down.
01:07:55
But it is relevant to all of it. And this basically the name of the article is the police can't police themselves.
01:08:04
And usually the Washington Post is behind a paywall. And this article is not behind a paywall.
01:08:09
So you can read it. And it's the fact that it's in 2015 and the amount of police murders of black civilians, the amount that she is listing and the different details and how nothing is done and or that they got covered up.
01:08:28
It's it's unbelievable. And it's very prescient to like what we're all now really looking at and really trying to be do something about these days.
01:08:38
And so here's this quote from this article that is it's about Walter Scott, but it kind of is about all this in general.
01:08:47
When the system is the problem, individuals cannot be expected to counteract the problem alone, much less accept that the only countermeasures available are in the hands of those with a stake in maintaining the status quo.
01:09:01
If you can't trust the police to serve and protect, how can you trust them to maintain order within their own ranks?
01:09:08
The argument that, quote, not all cops are bad only works if there's a way to be certain the bad cops are being removed from service as soon as they're discovered and that those who report their misbehavior have an assurance of safety.
01:09:24
And that is the story of the murder of Sherry Rasmussen. Wow. Wow. Well, that was heavy.
01:09:32
You did a great job. Tough. It's a tough topic. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it.
01:09:36
Should we do some fucking hoorays a little bit? Yeah. Okay, here's my first fucking hooray.
01:09:42
This is from Meg underscore the random horse on Instagram. It says, fucking hooray.
01:09:49
In preparation for a second lockdown in Toronto slash as a half birthday gift for myself,
01:09:54
my partner and I adopted a gorgeous gray blue kitten who we named Millhouse. I'm finally a cat mom and now have a legitimate reason to own so much cat paraphernalia.
01:10:05
He's the most playful and cuddly boy, and I'm so in love. Yay. Everyone get a kitten.
01:10:11
Hooray. Congratulations, Cat Mom. Let us know how the litter box goes. All right.
01:10:18
Here's mine. It starts. Heads up. My punctuation sucks, as does my spelling. Please don't make fun, because I fucking don't care.
01:10:27
Fuck, yeah. Hey, then, why'd you bring it up? It says, anyway, long time listener, first time writing. I'm a 60 plus years old timer, recovering with a few more years of recovery on me. And I also have chronic PTSD with years of counseling under my belt. So here goes. Yesterday, after my doctor's appointment, I went to the food co-op and noticed an art store across the street. So I went in. I was looking at their art books. I must have spent 10 or so minutes with this one book.
01:10:59
I decided I'd already spent too much money and the book was a bit pricey. So I put it down and continued looking around the store on my way out.
01:11:07
All of a sudden, this 20-something young lady came over and gave me the book. I had no idea what was going on.
01:11:14
She looked at me and said she saw me looking at the book and it looked like I really wanted it, so she bought it for me.
01:11:20
Fucking hooray. I was about to argue with her, but then I remembered my counseling and my sponsor saying, just accept the compliment.
01:11:27
So I looked her in the eyes and said, thank you so much. That is so nice. And then she just disappeared.
01:11:33
She even left me the receipt. So needless to say, I hope she is one of us. And here's this.
01:11:40
P.S. Yes, I am now looking to pay it forward. Thanks for being here. A year ago, I was in a deep depression and was slightly suicidal.
01:11:49
I turned you on and I don't remember what you two were talking about. Something mental health-ish, I assume.
01:11:54
But when it was over, the ideation had lifted, and I have been better since. Oh.
01:12:00
again, Chris. Oh my God. That's beautiful on so many levels. I know. It's really vulnerable. It's
01:12:07
really fucking honest. It's all out there. And then just to basically say this beautiful thing happened to me, and it's
01:12:15
so hard to accept beautiful things sometimes, and I did it. Great job, Chris. Incredible. Thank you for sharing that.
01:12:22
Thanks for staying with us. Yeah. Awesome. Let's end on that. I love that. Okay, good. Yeah, me too.
01:12:28
Great. Really good. Yeah, send us your fucking hurrays. You can just comment on Instagram or Twitter or in the fan cult to tell us your fucking hurrays.
01:12:37
And thanks for listening, guys. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving wherever you were, whether it was all by yourself or if you have somebody with you or a couple people.
01:12:49
It's, you know, I hope you got through it and had some nice some nice food and some good times.
01:12:57
Yeah, and hopefully next year will be a huge celebration. How about Thanksgiving in Vegas, guys?
01:13:05
Let's fucking do it. Let's fight in the street in Vegas for Thanksgiving next year.
01:13:12
That's right. Stay strong, everybody. Wear a mask and stay sexy. And don't get murdered.
01:13:19
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