Sherri Rasmussen

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised.

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 428 of the Criminology Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson.

And this is Mike Morford.

Mr. Morford, what's going on?

Not a whole lot. What's new with you?

Nothing, you know, watching football. College is in full swing. The NFL is back. We've also got the baseball playoffs. I don't know, there's a lot in the sports world going on.

Yeah, definitely a lot to keep you busy. And if you're up there in the Ohio area, then I guess you can root for what? The Cleveland Browns, the Bengals, a little bit of everything going on up there.

Yeah, actually Cleveland's doing really well, but I root for the Bengals. I'm about 40 minutes from Cincinnati, so a lot closer to Cincinnati than I am Cleveland. I've always rooted for the Bengals, which is tough because historically we've not always been very good.

Yeah, both those teams have been pretty rough at points.

Yeah, no doubt about it. All right, let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout outs. We had new support from Victoria and Spring Peers. So amazing new support. We really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for that support. It really helps out the show. For anyone else who would like to help out, head over to patreon.com/criminology to get started.

All right, we're wasting no time. We're jumping right into this week's case and you know, we have one that's truly tragic and it really is a tale as old as time. A jealous person in a love triangle decided to take matters into their own hands by killing their romantic rival. In this case, it was 29-year-old Sherri Rasmussen, the director of a critical care nursing center. Her goal in life was to help people in need. What's so shocking is that her killer went on to have a career helping people as well by solving crimes.

That's because her killer turned out to be a rookie police officer named Stephanie Lazarus, and she would eventually become a police detective for the LAPD. And it's probably going to be shocking when you hear just how brutal this murder was and how Stephanie Lazarus used all of her knowledge to try and get away with it.

Sherri Rasmussen met her husband, John Rotten, at a party in the summer of 1984. The two married in November of 1985 and John moved into Sherri's condo on Balboa Boulevard in Van Nuys. Sherri's father had purchased it for her because it was an integrated complex with a garage she could drive into connected to the unit. She worked long hours as a nurse and he didn't want her to have to be outside in the dark at all. When she got home after sunset, she was safe in her car until she was inside the garage. So it was clear that Sherri's dad was worried about her safety and she was too. But as a single woman coming in all hours of the night, neither wanted to take any chances. But now Sherri wouldn't be alone in her home, so it likely felt even a bit more secure.

And I get that more if you know, as a dad to two girls, you have a girl, I, I just worry about them, you know, I want them to be safe. Sounds like Sherri's dad did as well. And I do think there is some safety, right? In having this kind of setup where you come home, it's late at night, you hit the garage door opener, you pull in, you shut it. Okay, you're in your safe space. You don't have to get out of the car and walk to the house. A little bit safer.

Yeah, plus this is in a gated community, so you, you know, have to feel good if you're her dad that I'm helping to put her in an even safer situation, you know, but with this home that she's in.

By February of 1986, 29-year-old Sherri had become the director of nursing at Glendale Adventist Medical Center. John was an engineer working for a computer company. The two were happy and just starting out their lives together as a married couple. But that safe and happy life they had forged was shattered on February 24th of that year. At around 10 a.m., John called home to talk to Sherri, but she didn't answer. The answering machine, which they both always made sure to turn on when they wouldn't be home, didn't kick in. The phone just rang and rang. He knew she wanted to call and sit and she had still been sleeping when he left for work around 7:20.

So the fact that she wasn't answering was odd. It's not clear how worried John was or if he called home at all again, but for whatever reason, he decided not to go home and check on Sherri.

Immediately upon pulling into his driveway at 6 p.m., John spotted something troubling when he noticed broken glass on the ground. The garage door was open and Sherri's car was gone. A neighbor would later say it had been that way since at least 9:45 that morning. Even if Sherri had some kind of emergency and had to leave, she surely would have called and told John what was going on. But the broken glass, the phone just ringing endlessly, and now Sherri's car being gone and the garage door being open was concerning. John cautiously made his way inside and saw that the living room was a mess. Broken pieces of a porcelain vase were strewn all over the floor, along with the items that used to be inside drawers. The TV stand was broken and then he spotted Sherri. She was on the floor dead.

Her face was badly bruised. Investigators would eventually determine that she had been likely hit in the face with the muzzle of a gun, but at the time it was only clear that she had been violently struck with something. She had been shot three times. One of those shots had been at such close range, the gun was actually touching Sherri's chest when it was fired. There was a bite mark on Sherri's left forearm. John raced to the phone, called 911, and police and first responders descended on the home.

And you know, to me, this is the stuff of nightmares. Finding someone you love, in this case, your wife, dead in your home. And this was a violent attack, right? There's no doubt about it. She was badly bruised. She was struck with something, shot three times, bitten. I don't even know, first of all, how you handle that in the moment? And then secondly, how you deal with it, you know, later and, and years into the future?

Yeah, what's interesting is there's no, you know, clear mention of, you know, whether there was forced entry, but it was obvious from what the scene looked like that it appeared someone had been rummaging through stuff, looking for something, maybe stealing something. So, you know, first impressions make this look like this could have been a burglar.

Yeah, I would agree with that. You know, I think investigators would look at this on the surface and say, okay, somebody was burglarizing the home. Maybe they didn't know Sherri was home and she walked out of the bedroom and a confrontation ensued. John was clearly shaken by finding his wife's body, but he composed himself enough to talk with investigators. In that discussion, John realized that the front door to the condo had accidentally been left unlocked before Sherri's murder. They normally use the door connecting the garage to the condo as their main door since they could pull right in, so they didn't even use the front door most of the time.

But recently, one of John's friends had visited and come in through the front door, which had stayed unlocked ever since. The broken glass in the driveway was from one of the panels in the sliding glass door on their balcony.

What happened to Sherri was almost immediately obvious to investigators at the scene. The fact that she was in her underwear and a tee shirt, as well as a bathrobe, was evidence that Sherri hadn't been expecting any visitors that day. The condition of the space downstairs, ransacked with expensive stereo equipment by the door, suggested that the condo had been broken into by burglars. From the looks of things, police thought it had to be at least two perpetrators. It looked like at least one person had been gathering items to take outside in the fewest amount of trips, while the other headed upstairs to look through the bedroom for valuables. A stack of stereo components in a VCR was piled up near the base of the stairs and the front door.

While forensic analysts photographed the bloody smudge on a VCR player and a red stain on the electronics, the marks were smear-like and couldn't be developed into identifiable matching prints.

And you know, more, I mean burglars have, you know, historically gone for expensive items, right? Or technology, jewelry, things like that. You know, in 1986, a VCR player was pretty expensive. And we kind of think about it now. Most people definitely don't have a VCR. I would probably guess maybe half the people don't even do DVDs anymore because of streaming. So they don't need a DVD player. I haven't had one in years. But technology has made some of

that stuff so inexpensive that I don't even know if burglars nowadays target that type of stuff. Because it's just not that expensive.

Yeah, I think a burglar, if they break in your home and find a bunch of DVDs and VCRs and stuff like that, they're really bummed out and probably not happy. Plus, that stuff is kind of big and bulky. I always wondered, when a burglar robs a house and carries that kind of stuff out, aren't they worried they're going to be drawing attention hauling big stuff out of a house that doesn't belong to you? I always wondered that.

Yeah, TVs. I mean, in the old days, TVs were so heavy and big and bulky. But even nowadays, TVs are really big. They're just not nearly as heavy. But what does it look like when you're carrying this 65 inch TV out the door? But yet again, I think you can go to Walmart and get those now for like 400 or 500 bucks. So I don't think they're as sought after as they would have been in the past. This was looking more and more like a burglary. And police thought that unfortunately, Sherry was home at the time. The burglars hadn't planned for this, but they were prepared for the possibility. At least one of them brought

a gun. Evidence at the scene painted a pretty clear picture, or so it seemed. Investigators theorized that Sherry had surprised the intruder, and then there was a struggle. Sherry was shot once in the dining room, and then tried to make her way downstairs and to the front door. There was a bloody handprint on the wall next to the panic button on the alarm panel. Sherry tried hard to summon help to the condo, but her attacker stopped her just short of the button. She actually fought back so hard that two of her fingernails had come off in the struggle.

The fact that Sherry's car had been stolen further bolstered the theory by police of more than one burglar. Sherry's car was parked in the garage that morning. If the burglars came to the condo looking to steal something, they would presumably have their own vehicle to get out of the area with the stolen goods quickly. However, the complex was gated. It appears you can get in through walking paths if you're on foot. Looking at the current Google Street View of the property, there are gates on those paths, but it's unclear if they're locked. If the burglars were planning to steal their getaway car, how did they know that Sherry's car was in the garage? She was supposed to be at work that day, but she ended up calling in sick. Could that mean that the burglars were close to Sherry and knew her schedule?

I know a couple people that have gated community homes. When you go there, it's kind of annoying. You have to stop. You have to punch in a code and wait for the gate to lift. And, you know, that's obviously part of the security. And I don't know if that was the same exact arrangement back then. But I do find that interesting, because, you know, if I assume they can track those numbers, or the person has to know those numbers if they came in that way with a vehicle, assuming there was one. And some places even had like a person on duty at the gate, depending on how fancy the place was. So it makes me wonder if this person came there by car, you know, how did they have access to get through that gated community?

Yeah, it's a great point. I don't know if they would have had the code type system in 86. They probably could have back then. But they also, you know, might have had like an actual person in a booth type situation. I just think it's strange that burglars would target a house without a vehicle, rely on stealing the vehicle at the house to get away. So I think if I'm an investigator, I'm thinking it's got to be more than one person, right? Because who would take that chance? What if there's no car there?

Yeah, you're going to draw a lot of attention walking through the neighborhood, making your getaway, carrying a bunch of stereo equipment if you're not driving out with it.

There were a few issues with the burglar theory, but they were overlooked early on. The issues were mostly explained away by the belief that Sherry surprised the burglars and they fled in a panic. For example, none of Sherry's jewelry was stolen. But there was one thing missing from the home. Sherry's purse, which had the couple's marriage certificate inside, had been taken. Sherry's parents believe she still kept the marriage certificate in her purse because the couple was now sharing bank accounts. But she still had her last name and needed to prove they were married. It had only been three months since they got married. If the burglars had gone through all this trouble and committed murder, why

didn't they take more? This was a glaring question for investigators.

That's a very good point. And jewelry is something that's not going to take a lot of space. You can put it in your pocket, you know, put it inside something else that you're carrying. So that is odd that they wouldn't take something that seems pretty easy to take.

Yeah. And I think for the most part, investigators are really good at that, right? Looking at not only what's missing from the scene, but what wasn't taken. Because both can tell you a lot.

And that brings up an interesting point, because if somebody was asking me what jewelry was missing from my house that my wife owned, not that she has a lot of jewelry, but I couldn't tell you. You know, I know she wears certain earrings and rings, necklace, but I couldn't tell you which ones are missing. So, you know, questioning her husband, I wonder how easy it was for him to say nothing was taken.

Yeah, I think you're like every other man. I have no idea. I see my wife wearing jewelry, but I don't know exactly everything she has.

Detectives found that the shooter appeared to have used a blanket to muffle the shots, making it pretty obvious that they didn't just shoot Sherry and surprise her in a panic. They knew when they grabbed that blanket that they were going to kill her. So maybe in the minds of detectives, this pointed away from a burglar gone wrong and toward a planned attack. There also was evidence of rage or anger. That possibility was further fueled by the bite mark on Sherry's arm. Why would a killer bite her if they could just shoot her? And since she had been shot multiple times, beaten, and had a vase broken on her head, it seemed like overkill with anger. Sherry's body was taken from the home and to the medical examiner's office, where they determined her manner of death was clearly

a homicide, with the cause of death being multiple gunshots. Sherry had what appeared to be a ligature mark on one of her wrists, as if someone had tried to tie her up during a struggle. The killer or killers had removed the bindings and taken them.

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Very soon after Sherri's murder, there was a burglary in a nearby home. For investigators, this strengthened the theory that Sherri was killed in a burglary gone wrong. In the eyes of the detectives working to solve Sherri's case, the woman who reported the burglary was lucky. She too, didn't meet the same fate. She came home and surprised two men who were in her home. One of them had a gun, but they both ran away instead of engaging in any altercation. Composite sketches of the two suspects in that case were released to the media, but nothing came of them. Some detectives thought these men might have been connected to the murder, but not all

of them thought that. Some doubted that the killers would be stupid enough to target the same area just after they had murdered someone there.

Less than two weeks after Sherri's murder, her car was found parked at an intersection with the keys in the ignition. There wasn't much in the way of evidence in the car, and police focused on evidence from Sherri's body instead. A DNA profile from the bite mark swab was able to be submitted to CODIS, but there were no hits. This sample ultimately led to the killer's identity, but it would take more than two decades. In the meantime, the case went cold and Sherri's family was left to wait for answers. Eventually, John moved from the area and remarried and started a family. He never gave up hope that Sherri's murder would be solved.

At the end of 2004, the evidence swab from the bite mark on Sherri's arm was discovered in storage at the coroner's office. The DNA sample proved that if Sherri had been killed by burglars, one of them was a woman, because the DNA was determined to have been left by a female, as Detective Jim Nuttall told The Atlantic Magazine. That alters the entire course of the investigation. It was an interesting development and made the investigators reconsider certain things, but still no progress was made on the case at the time. And the case didn't really become active again for another four years.

During that time, detectives looked at the entire case with fresh eyes and from a different angle.

Cold case investigators started by scouring the original files for the names of any female suspects who may have been overlooked due to the male burglary theory. They wanted to find any woman who had a beef with Sherri, no matter how small, and they found five and made a new list of suspects from most to least likely. One of the most likely suspects was one of Sherri's coworkers. Sherri was picked over another nurse for the promotion at work, and that other nurse was upset. Her father recalled to police Sherri mentioning how bothered that nurse was. It was very competitive at UCLA Medical Center, and Sherri was younger than most of the people she was supervising. Investigators tracked this nurse down to Northern California and followed her secretly

to obtain her DNA. She was excluded as the person who bit Sherri's arm. One by one, police ruled out suspects from this list.

And to me, Morf, this is very interesting, right? This revelation that the DNA from the bite mark was female. So investigators shift focus, right? They start looking at any females who had an issue with Sherri and, you know, getting passed over for a promotion. All right, that that definitely hurts. It stings. I've had it happen. Now, I've never thought about killing the person who got the job, but obviously that person has to be ruled out. That's a motive.

Yeah, sometimes people have a beef with someone over very small things, not even something as big as a promotion. And in their minds, they feel wronged and wind up killing someone. So I think police were smart to look at any women that had issues with Sherri, no matter how small, and just rule them out one by one.

The fifth and last name written down and the least likely suspect on this new list was a woman named Stephanie Lazarus. And investigators knew her well, because she was one of them, an LAPD detective. At the time of the murder, Lazarus was a young police officer, having joined the force in 1983. Since then, she had climbed the ranks and made detective. Before joining the LAPD, Stephanie Lazarus had graduated from UCLA and spent a year working at a law firm, considering becoming a lawyer. It was while in college there, living in the dorms, that she met Sherri's future husband,

John Run. John and Stephanie dated, but it's disputed how serious it was. Later, when questioned by detectives about their dating history, both John and Stephanie told investigators that it wasn't serious, and they both dated different people, but friends of theirs recall a much different story.

Michael Hargreaves, a fellow officer who was also a roommate of Stephanie Lazarus at the time, said that unlike John, Stephanie wasn't dating anyone else. He told LA Mag, "She told me she was in love with him." He also remembers the night that Stephanie found out her relationship with John was over for good. She came into his room and woke him up because she was so distraught. Her journal entries show that she was very much invested in her relationship with John and was depressed for quite some time after she learned that he was going to marry someone else. By that point, John had met the woman he wanted to marry, and it was Sherri, not Stephanie, which was a clear motive. Michael Hargreaves moved out of the condo he and Stephanie Lazarus shared just two weeks before Sherri's murder.

And I think, Morf, this is a fairly common situation, where you have two people, there is some type of relationship, but are each of the people involved on the same wavelength? And I think a lot of times, no. One person is more invested in the relationship, thinks that it's much more involved than the other, and I think that's exactly what we have here.

Yeah, and it's also interesting that later on, they sort of dismissed it as not serious, but then you have this friend and roommate who's like, no, she was serious about him. So it's a contradiction for sure.

By 1993, Stephanie had made detective and eventually got married to a fellow LAPD officer in 1996. They adopted a child together. In 2006, Stephanie applied to be one of the two detectives on the LAPD's art theft detail. According to unit leader Detective Don Reichich, Lazarus was practically overqualified compared to other detectives who applied. He told LA Mag, "I've had a dozen different partners, and Steph was probably the very best." When it came to Stephanie Lazarus's police work, not many people had anything negative

to say, but there's no doubt it was possible that Stephanie had a motive to murder Sherri, and perhaps her police training helped her cover it up.

The team working on Sherri's case had the hard job of investigating one of their own. It was hard for two reasons. First, she wasn't just a police officer, she was a highly respected detective that many of the people in the building knew personally. There was no way word wouldn't get back to her about her name coming up as a suspect if they weren't careful. And if she was guilty, the last thing they wanted to do was tip her off. If she had nothing to do with Sherri's murder, they couldn't risk interfering with her career or ruining her reputation. As we described, Stephanie was spoken of highly by most, if not all, of her coworkers. So they had to walk a tight rope investigating her. The team decided to make sure her name was never overheard or seen by anyone by calling

her number five, since she was the fifth and final woman on the list of female suspects.

And this is a real sticky situation, right? You're working on a murder case. Now, it's cold, but it is a murder case.

And you have to investigate someone who, you know, works in the department. A lot of precautions, right, had to, to be taken that they wouldn't have to take in most murder investigations because let's face it, most suspects, they don't have that type of access. They're not around in the building day in and day out. So this is a tightrope is, is kind of the perfect description.

Yeah. And I think one other reason to be careful and not spill the beans that they're looking at her is because if she is involved and she's guilty and she catches wind of what's going on, she could destroy potential evidence, escape, flee to another country, any number of different things. So I think it was, uh, they handled it the perfect way.

Well, the evidence part is big, right? Because she would have access to the evidence that most people would. Digging deeper into Stephanie Lazarus as a suspect. Investigators found the closest thing to a literal smoking gun. When she was still a patrol officer, Stephanie Lazarus had reported her personal weapon stolen just two weeks after Sherri's murder. This gun was a 38 caliber, the same as the gun that was used to kill Sherri. Also suspicious was the fact that she reported it to the Santa Monica Police Department instead of her own department. She claimed that's where her car was broken into. So

she reported it there, but to not also report that or even mention it to anyone in her own department is odd.

In May of 2007, investigators decided to covertly get Stephanie's DNA so they could compare it to the DNA profile of whoever bit Sherri during the attack. If it wasn't a match, they could cross her off the list without bothering her and potentially embarrassing her. If it was her, they would figure out their next move. And since Stephanie Lazarus was a detective, she had a gun with her at most times. If they approached her the wrong way, someone could get hurt, including Stephanie herself. So they followed her around and waited for her to drop or throw something away. At a Costco, she threw away a soda cup from the food court. It was immediately collected and sent to the lab. And after

a very short term, it was determined to be a match. They knew she had killed Sherri. Now they had to come up with a plan to safely take her into custody.

And I've probably talked about it before, Morph, but I love this idea, right, of following someone, waiting for them to discard something that you know is going to have DNA on it. I mean, obviously, if you have a cup, a straw, something like that, it's gonna have the person's DNA, no doubt about it. But I can always just imagine a detective or multiple detectives kind of secretly following someone, just waiting for them to discard something so they can swoop in and bag it. And then, you know, DNA can be extracted from it.

Yeah, it's almost like they're spies. And then a lot of times too, they'll go into a person's trash and pull stuff out of there because, you know, with DNA, a lot of times there has to be a warrant for them to agree to give it. And this way, if they're discarding something in public or in the trash, they give up their right to that item and they, and they can just be taken and tested.

Yeah. And I don't know if everybody knows that, right? Once you put something in the trash and you put it out, let's say on, on the curb for, you know, it to be picked up, it's pretty much fair game. You know, someone can come along, look through it, take something out of it.

That brings up a frightening possibility. I mean, someone grabs like a crusty Q-tipper and old toothbrushers or something and then drops it at a crime scene. And then the police find it. That would be, that would get you in hot water if all of a sudden the police are hauling you in for that.

Yeah, yeah, it actually is a pretty scary thing. And, you know, we've covered killers who have gone to great lengths. They know that. So they don't throw away anything that would have DNA on it. In June of 2009, Detective Dan Yaramio asked Stephanie to consult on a case he was working on. He told her that a suspect was claiming to have information on an art theft and he didn't know anything about art theft. So he had no way to know whether the information was legitimate and he needed a second opinion. She was happy to help out. The interrogation rooms are in a secure part of the building

where no weapons are allowed. Even officers have to surrender their guns before they can enter. This is why they pretended someone was in one of those rooms. Stephanie Lazarus would be unarmed when they spoke to her. And this really was an ingenious plan. Once inside the interrogation room, it was just Stephanie Lazarus and two detectives. There was no inmate waiting to talk. The only suspect with potential information in the room was Stefan.

Stephanie had to know something was up and detectives explained that the reason for the ruse was so that no one else knew what they were doing. They told her they were trying to be discreet so that when she left the room, no one would think any different of her. This was another ruse to get her to cooperate because she thought she was free to leave and dealing with friendly colleagues who seemed to be on her side. But no one knew how this was going to go. Investigators immediately laid out the scenario and asked Stephanie about her relationship with John. And she tried to downplay it at first. First, she said she went to school with him, then said they were very close friends, but then she finally admitted that they dated, but she acted like it was nothing serious. According

to the reporter.com, at five different times in the interview, Stephanie asked the detectives, what's this all about? She called John, some guy I dated a million years ago.

Once the detectives mentioned a DNA sample and asked Stephanie to give hers up, the interview was over. She declined and said she was finished and got up to leave. Just over an hour after she entered the interrogation room, she had walked out, but she didn't get far because detectives from the robbery homicide division stopped her in the hallway and started reading her, her rights for the murder of Sherri Rasmussen. She was arrested and held on a $10 million bail. Prosecutors attempted to make the death penalty a potential sentence by combining the theories of the case and claiming that Sherri was killed during

a burglary. But the trial would take a long time and it didn't start until 2012, but it did make a lot of headlines. And that doesn't surprise me at all, right? This is the type of case that would grab people's attention. You have an LAPD detective who is arrested for murder. Who wouldn't want to read about that? Who wouldn't want to watch a segment about that? But I do want to go back to this interrogation. First of all, you know, I thought the plan to get her in this room was brilliant. You know,

no guns are allowed in there. So she would be disarmed. And to me, that's very important. I mean, you are about ready to confront someone about a murder. And this is a person who, you know, would be armed all the time. Obviously she's trained, you know, police officers, detectives, they have to go through training and keep that training up over time. She knows how to shoot a gun. You have no idea how she's going to react when confronted with being a murderer.

Yeah. And I think she had to know when they started questioning her about this case as a detective, that, you know, the jig is up and she tried to leave, but they weren't gonna let her out of there. They were stopping her and arresting her on the spot.

And this interrogation is fascinating. It's out there online. You can watch the video of it. It really tells you a lot about Stephanie. You can see in her face, like the domino starting to fall. So I would urge everyone listening, if you haven't seen it, go out and watch that interrogation video.

A lot of information was disclosed during the trial. It was revealed that after Sherri's death, her husband, John, met up with and had sex with Stephanie on more than one occasion. In 1989, he went on vacation to Hawaii to meet up with her and a group of her friends. But there was no sex in Hawaii, according to John. The defense attorney tried to make the jurors doubt the strongest part of the case, the DNA evidence. They said that the swab wasn't stored where everyone thought it had been, and who knows what happened to it in the 20 years it was sitting in a freezer. The envelope the tube that held the swab was in had torn over time. Where was the tear from tampering and planting the DNA of Stephanie Lazarus?

They grasped at straws, hoping the jury would buy any of it. But that didn't happen. On March 8, 2012, Stephanie Lazarus was found guilty of first degree murder. She was sentenced to 27 years to life, but given four years of credit for time served. After the trial, John told the Vacaville reporter, "The fact that Sherri's death occurred because she met and married me brings me to my knees."

And it doesn't surprise me at all, Morf, that, you know, the defense is going to, you know, question everything. They're going to question the swab, the DNA, how was it handled? How was it stored? Because that is a huge piece of evidence, right? Against Stephanie Lazarus, you said grasping at straws. And I think a lot of times, that's what the defense is left with. You know, there is a mountain of evidence against their client, and they have to try every trick of the trade, right? To make the jury have even a whisper of doubt about some of that evidence. But that's, that's a tall order.

Yeah, it's when you've got that, it's the equivalent of a smoking gun, a bite mark on an arm, and then the DNA says it's Stephanie Lazarus. It places her at the scene. So the only thing they can try and do is discredit that somehow there was some shenanigans where it was planted, that kind of thing.

So now the person who killed Sherri was behind bars. It had taken years, but it turns out that Sherri's parents had been trying to get someone to look into Stephanie Lazarus the entire time. They knew about her, that she had harassed their daughter and that she was a police officer, but they didn't know her name. In the summer of 1985, before Sherri and John got married, Stephanie approached her at the hospital and told her that she and John were still sleeping with each other and that she would still be with John long after his marriage to Sherri ended. According to the LA Times, Sherri had told her father that Stephanie told her, "If I can't have John, nobody can."

John later admitted to Sherri that he and Stephanie slept together after he proposed to Sherri. He said she was very upset over the impending marriage, and he went to her condo to calm her down, and one thing led to another.

It was also reported that after the marriage, Sherri once found Stephanie in her police uniform inside the condo. And another time, Stephanie came to the condo to see John and asked him to polish her skis. This upset Sherri, but John assured her that the two were nothing more than friends at that point. Stephanie picked up her skis and uniform when Sherri was home alone. Just days before she was killed, Sherri told her father that she thought Stephanie was following her around town, sometimes in disguise.

So I think it's clear, Morf, that there was something, right? There was still some sort of relationship between John and Stephanie. Now, how much of a relationship? How often? How late into the marriage? I mean, I think some of that is in question, but this wasn't, you know, they dated in college and then it was over. They still had sex after that. He admitted, even after he proposed to Sherri, the two had sex. And I just wonder, you know, not to defame John, but how often did this happen?

And was he kind of keeping Stephanie on the side even once he was married to Sherri?

Yeah, it definitely paints a picture of her not being fully out of the picture as it originally seemed, because they had sex before Sherri came along and they had it after she died. It's only logical to think that it could have been going on while they were married, and then that opens up a slew of potential possibilities.

Well, there were definite questions of whether Stephanie Lazarus was overlooked as a suspect in the original investigation, because the detectives felt it was really a burglary gone wrong, or possibly because they were trying to cover for one of their own. Criminalist Jennifer Francis, who analyzed the swab from the bite on Sherri's arm, alleged that her supervisors pressured her into not pursuing Stephanie Lazarus as a suspect, even in 2004. According to an affidavit, she was told in no uncertain terms that Stephanie Lazarus was not a part of this, and that the DNA only proved that this was a male female robbery

team.

After Stephanie was arrested, Jennifer Francis met with the district attorney and explained how she felt the DNA pointed to Stephanie the whole time, but wasn't able to say anything, fearing retaliation from her supervisors. In early 2010, she repeated everything to Detective Nuttall, who had worked the whole case. She was then ordered to report to the behavioral science services because she looked stressed. The therapist she was assigned was only asking questions about the investigation into Sherri's murder, as if they were fishing for information about how much she knew. She was reprimanded for not cooperating with the therapist until she threatened to get a lawyer. At that point, she was no longer required to attend those sessions.

When Jennifer requested a new supervisor, she was transferred out of her department and into a completely different role. She was told that maybe after a while, she would be able to transfer back to her old department, but Francis found out that when a different person in her exact role made the same request, they were immediately given a new supervisor. Jennifer Francis believed this was just another form of harassment for accidentally revealing a cover-up. She tried to sue over all this in 2013, but eventually, the jury decided the case in favor of the city of Los Angeles.

And Morf, this is the type of stuff that causes people not to trust the, the police. You know, anytime, you know, we're talking cover-up, people get a real bad taste in their mouth.

Now, this therapist is someone within the police in their circles. So, you know, maybe they just instructed her, this is what we want you to do and see if you can find out any information.

Yeah, that's what it sounds like to me, right? She was within the behavioral science services. I'm assuming that is part of the LAPD. So you have to believe if this happened, then the therapist was given direction. And to most people, that would just kind of add to the whole cover-up conspiracy theory.

As far as fall in the aftermath of the conviction, LAPD chief Charlie Back said in a statement that the LAPD family felt a sense of betrayal to have an officer commit such a terrible crime. A lawsuit filed by Sherri's parents for wrongful death, intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraudulent concealment, and violation of their civil rights was dismissed due to issues with the statute of limitations on those kinds of claims. This is kind of upsetting because they had suspected the entire time that the case was unsolved, that an LAPD officer had killed Sherri, but they couldn't prove it until after Stephanie Lazarus was convicted. The statute of limitations was up long before Stephanie was ever arrested.

It was also discovered that there are files that seem to be missing from the binders containing all of the documents related to the investigation. It's unknown when and how these files disappeared. I mean, it had been 23 years. The binders had been transferred between departments. It could have been one, just one of those things that happened where stuff got lost, but it also could be possible.

That someone in the original investigation withheld notes or documents that would have implicated one of their own. But there's also the possibility that it was Stephanie Lazarus. You know, she worked in the same building as the binders multiple times in her career and would often work overnight hours with minimal people around her. So it's possible that no one would have seen her take anything.

A lot of times, as evidence, storage facilities are stacked with all kinds of stuff, stuff spilling out, not properly contained on the wrong shelves, put in the wrong boxes. And I imagine in an LAPD setting with all the cases they have, I could see something getting lost or switched around, moved. But it does certainly open up other possibilities, too, that something shady had happened. Many people over the years have accused Sherri's husband, John, of being involved in her murder. He had recently slept with the murderer, didn't give up her name to Sherri's parents so they could find out more about her, downplayed her obsession with him when speaking to investigators,

conveniently left the door unlocked for the killer to enter, and just happened to have an airtight alibi when Sherri was killed. He had also made his call to check on Sherri around the time that neighbors reported less seeing activity at the house. And finally, if John was still concerned about Sherri not answering, why didn't he go home to check on her?

It does seem odd that Stephanie Lazarus managed to strike the one day. Sherri was at home alone instead of at work. But there's no way to know how often Lazarus popped by the condo without anyone knowing. We are only aware of the times Sherri caught her and told someone else about the incident. Stephanie was also very good at her job and probably spent time watching the condo to figure out their schedules. She could have even just been watching that morning when John left and Sherri didn't. If she stalked her, it could explain the situation. But the suspicion of John was certainly there. There's nothing that we know of as far as evidence that points to John.

And if the LAPD arrested one of their own for Sherri's murder, they certainly would have arrested John, too, right? If he was involved. And this is one of those cases more of where, you know, when you look online, there are a lot of people who are very suspicious of John. And I understand why, right? When you are sleeping with someone after you propose, possibly still sleeping with that person after you get married, but definitely sleeping with that person after your wife is killed. That's going to invite some suspicion that you were somehow involved

when it turns out that this person is your wife's killer.

Yeah, never a good thing when you're a affair partner murders your spouse. It's only going to make you look like you could have been involved. And, you know, a lot of the stuff that they mentioned that they're suspicious of is, you know, kind of makes you think for a second. But you have to think that if police found anything that pointed to John, they wouldn't have hesitated to arrest him. Around 2020, a new law went into effect in California that allowed inmates who committed their crimes before they were 26 years old to be considered for parole early. Suddenly, Stephanie Lazarus admitted her guilt. According to CBS News Los Angeles, she confessed everything at her first parole hearing, saying she callously murdered and heinously murdered Sherri Rasmussen.

It makes me sick to this day that I took an oath to protect and serve people, and I took Sherri Rasmussen's life from her, a nurse. As far as the murder weapon, Stephanie claimed she tossed it into brush on the side of one of Southern California's many freeways. She was hoping the parole board would cut her some slack. And guess what? They did. The board decided to grant her an early parole date. Sherri's loved ones jumped into action. Governor Gavin Newsom stepped in and ordered a review of the decision, and the parole grant was rescinded.

John Taylor, attorney for the Rasmussen family, told the AP News, Lazarus had her parole time upfront. Evading arrest for 23 years after the murder, she has expressed no remorse for the cold-blooded execution of Sherri Rasmussen committed while she was an LAPD officer. It's unfair to the family that she should now go free and enjoy her life while receiving her LAPD pension. Sherri's parents, Nels and Loretta Rasmussen, have now both passed away. A new request from Stephanie's team for parole in 2025 was denied,

and she remains in prison at the California Institution for Women in Corona. She is currently 66 years old. So far, she's served 14 years. This is more than a decade less than the years she spent living her life, getting married, getting promoted after she killed Sherri. Her next parole suitability meeting is coming up soon. It's scheduled for October 9, 2026, just less than a week after this episode will air.

I think her sentence was pretty light, considering that she went into Sherri's home, did all this, covered it up, spent years trying to evade capture. And it's not like she felt remorseful, felt regret, went in, confessed, and threw herself at the mercy of the court. She only was apprehended after the detectives with DNA pinpointed that it was her that murdered Sherri. So I thought she should have gotten a harsher sentence in 25 years.

But I love this attorney, John Taylor's statement, right? She had her parole time upfront. She did. I mean, she lived probably her best life for 23 years after she killed Sherri. And I get it, people are gonna come up for parole in a lot of situations, right? There is life without parole. She didn't get that. But to me, if you're the parole board, I just don't see letting her have it so quickly. You know, factoring in everything that we've talked about. She was an LAPD officer. She took an oath. She violated that.

She killed a woman while she was an officer and then lied about it for, you know, decades. And it wasn't more of until this new law went into effect that she even admitted her guilt. So even that part, to me, was calculated, right? She thought that was going to give her a better chance of getting paroled, and that's the only reason she did it.

Yeah, it's very common. We see that a lot, that someone is tight-lipped about what happened and what role they really played until it benefits them in some way. And then suddenly, they're willing to come clean and share information and admit to stuff only when it helps them.

So, you know, as we wrap this case up, to me, it is a fascinating one. I mean, obviously, Sherri Rasmussen's life was ended so early. I mean, she had a lot to offer, a lot to do with her life, and her family missed out on, you know, all of that time with her. But what strikes me and probably grabs the attention of a lot of people is that Stephanie was a trained police officer. And if we go back and we look at that staged scene, no doubt in my mind,

she used some of her training to help her evade detection, capture. She made it look like a burglary. She probably had seen some burglaries and had a pretty good idea of how to stage it.

Yeah, and it seemed as if she almost got away with it because originally, police were of the mind that this was a burglary gone wrong, probably men involved. And short of that bite that she left on Sherri's arm that left DNA, she might have gotten away with this.

Yeah, I think you're right. If she doesn't leave that bite mark, this case probably doesn't get solved. And, you know, in 1986, not a lot of people, even in law enforcement, probably in 86, were really thinking DNA. It was just coming online. So I don't, I don't know if she would have even thought about that, that she was going to be leaving something in that bite mark. And obviously, that was probably, you know, done during a struggle. She had to to maybe get Sherri off of her because they were fighting.

But my thought is more, as the years dragged on and DNA became more known and the technology got better, she had to start worrying about that, right?

Yeah, she probably was second guessing herself, saying, okay, what could I have slipped up and left behind? You know, are they going to track something to me? And I wonder if she thought about that bite mark and said, I shouldn't have bitten her arm. I wonder if they got DNA off that. And thankfully, they did.

Yeah, yeah, thankfully, they did. And she's where she needs to be. And I don't think she needs to be paroled at this point. I mean, I'm okay with her never being paroled, but I certainly think this is way too soon. She should, in my opinion, at least spend as much time in prison as she did free after the murder. But who knows, right? We'll have to see how it plays out. But that's it for our episode on Sherri Rasmussen. As always, if you love the show, but you haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, leave us a rating, a review. Also, keep telling your friends because word of mouth really helps us out.

If you want to find us on social media, run every major platform. Just search for Criminology Podcast on your favorites. And for news about the show, old episodes, and more, head over to our website, criminologypodcast.com. And finally, if you want to join a discussion about the show and the cases we discuss, head over to Facebook and search for Criminology Podcast Discussion and Fans.

So that's it for another episode of Criminology. But Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then, from Mike.

And Morph.

We'll talk to you next week.

Take care, everyone.