Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

While an undergraduate at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) from 1978 to 1982, John Ruetten, a mechanical engineering major from San Diego, occasionally dated Stephanie Lazarus, a fellow Dykstra Hall resident from Simi Valley majoring in political science and sociology. Their friends said she seemed to take the relationship more seriously than he did. Both were avid athletes; Lazarus played on UCLA's junior varsity women's basketball team. She stole Ruetten's clothes when he showered and photographed him in his underwear while he slept. Ruetten never considered the relationship anything more than "necking and fooling around". They had sex for the first time after he graduated. After that they saw each other two or three times a month, occasionally taking trips together. Some of those encounters resulted in sex. Following his 1981 graduation Ruetten accepted a job with Dataproducts, a maker of computer peripherals. After graduating, a year later, Lazarus considered law school. She decided on law enforcement instead and was admitted to the city's police academy. At that time, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was trying to increase the number of women on the force in response to a consent decree following a sex-discrimination lawsuit brought by former female officers. After completing a special eight-week pre-academy training program, she graduated and became a uniformed officer in 1983. Classmates recalled that she was particularly tenacious during physical combat training, especially in exercises where trainees had to retain control of a weapon. During her training, Lazarus described Ruetten as her college boyfriend, and she was his date at Dataproducts' 1983 Christmas party, where they had a photo taken together. He later testified that they had sex "20 to 30 times" between 1981 and 1984, but that he never considered her his girlfriend. Upon graduation Lazarus settled in a Granada Hills condo and purchased a Smith & Wesson Model 49 .38-caliber revolver through the department as her backup firearm. Ruetten later met Sherri Rasmussen, a graduate of Loma Linda University who was on a fast career track in critical care nursing. Born in Walla Walla, Washington and raised in Arizona, Rasmussen began college at La Sierra University at 16 after graduating from Thunderbird Adventist Academy. After her freshman year she was accepted at Loma Linda's nursing program and transferred there. Upon graduating, she worked at UCLA Medical Center's coronary care unit and studied for the master's in nursing UCLA awarded her in 1980. Afterwards, her father, Nels Rasmussen, bought Sherri a condo in Van Nuys with a drive-in garage so she would not have to walk along the street after returning from work late at night. She paid him rent equal to his monthly mortgage payment. After earning her degree, Rasmussen was promoted to head nurse of UCLA's coronary care and observation unit. She also was appointed an unpaid assistant clinical professor of nursing, giving lectures to students. By her late 20s Rasmussen was the director of nursing at Glendale Adventist Medical Center. She also gave presentations and taught classes for fellow nurses. At a June 1984 party Sherri met Ruetten; they began dating shortly afterwards. For her first assignment as a uniformed LAPD officer, Lazarus drew the Hollywood division, an area notorious at the time for high levels of street crime. Morale among the predominantly male officers was poor in the wake of the "Hollywood Burglars" scandal in which 14 officers were ultimately fired after two were prosecuted for burglarizing video stores while on duty. Chief Daryl Gates closely oversaw the internal affairs investigation. He observed later that Hollywood seemed to have higher rates of police misconduct than other divisions. "There is something about the place," he wrote, "an almost carnival atmosphere that suggests 'here, anything goes'". A female colleague of Lazarus's at Hollywood, one of the few other women in the division and a teammate on the department's women's basketball team, recalls her as being an asset to the team primarily through her tight and physical defensive play and willingness to work with others. Teamwork at Hollywood went further than the requirements of the job. Officers upheld the blue wall of silence in the face of misconduct investigations, regularly telling each other to "Admit nothing. Deny everything. Demand proof." A diary Lazarus started while working at Hollywood documents her acculturation to the department, showing her increasingly identifying with the LAPD above all, accepted by fellow officers for her efforts to fit in and maintaining a detached, often nonchalant, attitude when responding to sometimes brutal crimes and their traumatized victims. Lazarus told the friend that her training officer, James Tomer, regularly sexually propositioned her; her repeated refusals led to workplace rumors that she was a lesbian. Later, Tomer faced departmental charges of narcotics theft. Lazarus was called to testify at his disciplinary hearing; Tomer was acquitted and later won a verdict against the department over the charges in federal court, arguing he had been framed, the first time the department had been successfully sued over an internal affairs investigation (the verdict was later overturned on appeal). After a year on probation, she was promoted and transferred to the quieter Devonshire division, covering Northridge, Chatsworth and Granada Hills, in March 1985. She rented the spare bedroom in her condo to a fellow officer. Ruetten–Rasmussen relationship and effect on Lazarus Lazarus had thrown Ruetten a surprise party on his 25th birthday, unaware that he had been dating other women or that he had developed a serious relationship with Rasmussen. In a May 1985 diary entry, she mentions visiting Ruetten and his girlfriend, the first time she met Rasmussen. The following month Lazarus was depressed after learning that Ruetten and Rasmussen had become engaged a week earlier. In her diary, she wrote, "I really don't feel like working. I found out that John is getting married ... My concentration is like -10". Later that night, she awoke her roommate, a fellow officer, to commiserate. sometimes posing as a young man. On February 14, 1986, Lazarus's roommate moved out. A week later, on February 23, one of Ruetten's friends from UCLA visited the couple's condo. Unlike their usual habit of entering through the garage, the front door was used during the visit, and Ruetten inadvertently left it unlocked afterward. ==Crime==

On the morning of February 24, 1986, Ruetten left the couple's condominium on Balboa Boulevard After making a few stops, Ruetten arrived at Micropolis about 30 minutes later. At 9:45, a neighbor noticed that the Ruettens' garage door was open, with no car visible. Approximately 15 minutes later, Ruetten made the first of several unanswered calls home over the course of the day. He found it strange that the answering machine did not respond, since both of them turned it on when leaving the condo unoccupied. Rasmussen's sister, a nurse at another local hospital, also called, getting no answer. At noon, two men, who the neighbor believed were gardeners in the compound, gave her and her husband a purse they had found, which turned out to be Rasmussen's. A maid cleaning a nearby unit said she heard something that sounded like two people fighting, and then something falling, at around 12:30 p.m. When Ruetten returned home in the evening, he found broken glass on the driveway. Rasmussen's BMW 318i was missing. Ruetten later told investigators it was unusual for her to have left the condo without telling him, given her plans to stay home that morning. The gun had been fired through a quilted blanket, apparently to muffle the sound. The investigating criminalist also observed a bite mark on Rasmussen's arm and took a swab from it for blood typing. ==Investigations==

Initial investigation LAPD detectives investigating the case quickly concluded that Rasmussen had been surprised and killed by a burglar. Rasmussen's attire—a bathrobe, nightgown, and underwear—suggested she was not expecting visitors. Although a maid in a neighboring unit reported hearing screaming and fighting, she did not recall hearing gunshots. She thought the whole event had been a domestic dispute and did not call the police. It appeared that the perpetrator had been in the process of taking the electronic equipment left in a stack at the base of the stairs when Rasmussen came upon them. Jewelry had been left behind and the vehicle taken. later identified by experts as Federal .38J Plus-P, into Rasmussen's chest. No other detective would pursue the case, and the evidence went back into the files. Since it had been reported stolen from near a popular pier, they assumed she had thrown the gun into the Pacific Ocean. Without the weapon, DNA would be the only definite way to connect the crime to Lazarus. LAPD officers were stunned at the idea that Lazarus might have murdered someone. Fellow detectives recalled her as vivacious and supportive (although some also recalled that her behavior when angry had led some to refer to her as "Spazarus" behind her back). ==Trial==

Over the next three years, Overland filed motions to dismiss the case, on the grounds that the evidence was too old for Lazarus to challenge, especially since she had not initially been identified as a suspect. He also sought to exclude significant evidence. The search warrant was defective, the interview admissions were obtained in violation of Lazarus's Fifth Amendment rights against compelled self-incrimination, and the DNA test results were obtained with unproven technology, Overland argued. Perry denied them all. The case attracted considerable media attention. Many of its elements—a love triangle with a woman scorned, a cold case unsolved for over 20 years, and the accused killer revealed as a police officer—seemed drawn from the plots of popular televised police dramas and reality shows such as Snapped, Scorned: Love Kills, and Deadly Women. Overland presented his case-in-chief over two days, disputing the prosecution's theme of a lovelorn Lazarus. Some of her friends testified that she showed signs of violence or despondence over Ruetten at the time of the killing. In contemporary excerpts from her diary, Lazarus wrote of dating several different men. Overland also reinforced his attack on the forensic evidence, with a fingerprint expert who said that some prints at the scene did not match Lazarus's. In March, after several days of deliberations, the jury convicted Lazarus of first-degree murder. ==Appeal==

Lazarus appealed her conviction in May 2013. Her attorney, Donald Tickle, argued that Perry had erred in ruling for the prosecution on all four pretrial motions. Overland, Tickle argued, should also have been allowed to cross-examine FBI burglary expert Mark Safarik about the other burglary. Decision A panel of three judges—Audrey B. Collins, Thomas Willhite Jr. and Nora Margaret Manella—heard oral argument in the case in June 2015. A month later, they unanimously upheld Lazarus's conviction. Lazarus and her attorneys, the panel held, had failed to establish that Perry's rulings resulted in any prejudice to her defense. Manella, writing for the panel, rejected the argument that the age of the case was an issue, observing that "the passage of time was more likely prejudicial to the prosecution than the defense." During her interview, Lazarus "had no objectively reasonable basis to believe she was compelled to answer" since she was not at that point under active criminal or departmental investigation.The MiniFiler DNA kit sufficiently different from previous DNA test kits to have required a separate hearing on that issue. As for defense claims the DNA had been mishandled, since it had not requested separate hearings on that it had failed to preserve the issue for appeal, and it was not central enough to the case to make acquittal more likely in its absence. And, lastly, "cross-examining [Safarik] about a specific burglary that occurred on a later date in a different location would have had little bearing on the validity of his opinions and conclusions concerning the Rasmussen crime scene", Manella wrote. ==Criticism of investigation==

As evidence was introduced at the trial, it became apparent that not all the evidence available and in possession of the LAPD had been found. Recordings and transcripts of interviews with both Nels Rasmussen and Ruetten that discussed Lazarus were absent from the file, although both remembered them when called to testify. Other aspects of the missing interviews are alluded to in other interviews in the file. The only mention of Lazarus during the initial investigation is a brief note of Mayer's in which he reports that Ruetten had confirmed that she was a "former girlfriend". Possibility of evidence tampering by police There are also discrepancies in the case file and missing evidence which does not appear to McGough to result from incompetence. Most prominent among them is the absence of handwritten accounts from Mayer and Hooks of their investigative actions during the first three months after Rasmussen's murder. LAPD protocol at the time called for such records, along with documents obtained through investigation, to be collated into a loose-leaf binder referred to colloquially as the "murder book", with the handwritten records duplicated by a typed transcript to facilitate review by supervisors who had to sign off on them and detectives who might later take over the case. When McGough asked the department if it could locate the handwritten notes, he was told the murder book contained all the records the department was aware of. Nuttall noted the missing handwritten chrono when he began reviewing the case in 2008; it could not be determined when it was removed. The typed record, largely a chronological record of detectives' actions called the "chrono", has its own oddities. Ruetten's last name is consistently spelled "Ruetter", suggesting a conscious effort rather than a onetime mistake, making it harder to find him should another investigator have sought to. The notes in the typed chrono do not, as they were required to, end with the initials of the recording detective, nor do they indicate who typed them. McGough also observes that the typed chrono uses the same spacing and typeface throughout, suggesting to him that it was typed in a single sitting by the same typist. During the 1990s, he notes, Lazarus, by then a detective, was twice assigned to Van Nuys, where the Rasmussen murder book was easily accessible in the detectives' office. Colleagues from that era recalled that Lazarus frequently volunteered to work the overnight shifts, when the detective at the division was unsupervised. There were few other officers on duty and not much need for her to go into the field. According to Ruetten and the Rasmussens, the chrono also does not record some aspects of the investigation they recall. Ruetten recalls that early on he was asked to take off his shirt to look for possible scratches, and photographed without it. This would suggest evidence that Sherri might have injured her attacker had been found, but this is not recorded in the chrono. There is also no record of a polygraph test Ruetten's sister-in-law says he later recalled being given the day after the crime. Her parents also recall Mayer mentioning Ruetten having taken one when they spoke to him two days later. The records do show that during a polygraph Ruetten was given two weeks later, he was very emotional and gave answers with "major discrepancies" but it was considered inconclusive. McGough questions why detectives found it necessary to give Ruetten another polygraph test at that point, since his alibi had been corroborated and they had, by then, apparently settled on the botched-burglary theory. Nels Rasmussen made regular pleas to the detectives, both by phone and in person, to look into Lazarus, but those conversations are not mentioned. Lazarus is not mentioned in the chrono until a November 1987 note that Ruetten had confirmed her name, around a time when the Rasmussens were planning to hold a news conference and offer reward money. A note also says they had been updated on the case weekly, which they did not recall. Mayer has adamantly denied interviewing Lazarus, but acknowledged he was not the only detective working the case. But during her time working for the department's background section in the early 1990s, one colleague says Lazarus mentioned having been interviewed as part of a homicide investigation involving a former boyfriend's missing wife who may have been shot. During the Parker Center interview that preceded her arrest, Lazarus also said a detective spoke to her about the Rasmussen case but was vague about details. A statement in the murder book from a neighbor of the Ruettens apparently signed by her in 1986 is, in McGough's words, "impossible to reconcile" with her trial testimony a quarter-century later, during which she said some of the earlier statements were incorrect: The Ruettens' garage door had been open, with neither car visible, an hour earlier than claimed in the 1986 statement, and her husband could not have seen it on his way to work as he was retired. She also testified that condo workers had brought her Sherri's purse at noon that day, not 4:30 p.m. as stated. In 1993, when the Rasmussens were offering to pay for DNA analysis of the evidence, the chrono records the Van Nuys detectives ordering new tests on the latent fingerprints and checking records to see if any recent parolees at the time might be possible suspects. It does not record any visit to the county coroner's office, where contemporary records show that a detective checked out trace evidence such as hair samples (while the bite swab that later incriminated Lazarus was left behind). When asked in 2009, the detective verified his signature on the form but did not recall ever having been to the coroner's office nor working the case. Several months after Lazarus's arrest, Nels and Loretta Rasmussen filed a notice of claim with the city, a necessary step before suing. They made two allegations: Lazarus had murdered their daughter, and the LAPD had abetted her coverup efforts for over two decades. It was referred to Internal Affairs, which put both claims on hold pending the disposition of the criminal trial. The officer who investigated the claim never talked to the Rasmussens and recorded that writing the report took four of the seven hours she spent on the case. Two weeks after Lazarus's conviction, the claim was closed. The first allegation was sustained automatically due to the conviction, although no disciplinary action could be taken since Lazarus was no longer a current employee. The second was ruled unfounded, with a note from a commander that "we do not condone murder". In 2025, McGough called the LAPD internal investigation a "sham ... They quietly closed it." He believed the investigators knew what they might find if they looked closely. "It's police culture", he told The Los Angeles Times. "It's a sense of 'This could look bad, and we're not going to go there.'" ==Litigation alleging police malfeasance==

Two lawsuits have been filed based on these allegations. One, by Nels and Loretta Rasmussen, was dismissed as time-barred. The other, a whistleblower suit by Francis, ended with a judgment for the city. The dismissal was upheld on appeal, where the court held that the Rasmussens' time to sue was limited once they broke off contact with the LAPD in 1998 and the case was time-barred after 2000. Jennifer Francis Francis filed her suit late in 2013, following the rejection of her claim by the city and a finding by the state's Department of Fair Employment and Housing that she had a right to sue over her belief she had been pressured into not pursuing the Lazarus angle on the case. When Nuttall called her and told her the Van Nuys detectives had identified Lazarus as a suspect, she did not share what the detective had told her several years before, fearing retaliation. At the beginning of 2017, Superior Court Judge Michael Johnson ruled that Francis could proceed to trial alleging a violation of state labor law. He found there were no triable issues of fact on her claims of harassment, discrimination, and retaliation. In April 2019, a jury found for the city. Three years later the California Court of Appeal affirmed the verdict, holding that she had not alleged a cognizable adverse employment action on the city's part. ==Parole request==

In the early 2020s, California passed a law that allowed special parole consideration for those incarcerated who had been convicted of crimes committed while under 26. Lazarus was among those eligible. She abandoned her previous protestations of innocence, admitting to the murder at her initial suitability hearing in November 2023: "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". Lazarus gave her account of the crime. That morning, she had once again called hoping to hear Ruetten's voice. Hearing Rasmussen's instead enraged her, and she resolved to go to the condo, determined to see him again. Lazarus said she planned to tie Rasmussen up if she had to in order to see Ruetten, a plan she admitted was illogical. "I was so angry that if she got in my way to see John, I was going to strangle her." After what she characterized as "a hellacious bar fight", she bound Rasmussen and shot her. Following the crime, believing she would be suspected, she disposed of her gun. Governor Gavin Newsom asked the full board to review the grant. The full board heard testimony supporting her bid from justice reform advocates, among them former inmates who served time with Lazarus. They pointed to her relative youth at the time of the crime and her exemplary behavior in prison, helping other inmates rebuild their lives. "I saw many women who talked a big talk about giving back to the community. Stephanie actually accomplished it," said Jane Dorotik, who had served 12 years alongside Lazarus until her own murder conviction was reversed. The grant was rescinded in October 2024. A 2025 request was denied. Parole Board commissioner Kevin Chappell cited discrepancies between the evidence and Lazarus's 2023 account of the murder. The minimal amount of Lazarus's DNA found, he said, suggested that the prolonged struggle she described had not occurred. "You were the only one engaging in this extreme act of violence," he told her. Lazarus had also claimed that her gun had fallen out of a fanny pack during the struggle; Presby, the prosecutor, said that too was not likely. Lazarus will again be eligible for parole in 2028. Under special circumstances, she could apply again before then. ==See also==