The Stephanie Lazarus Case Is Worse Than You Thought

It's hard to rank true crime stories. The human obsession with the sordid details of a gruesome murder is grim enough on its own without considering the possibility that some simply don't meet the fanbase's discerning tastes. True crime obsessions are very old, allowing aficionados plenty of time to pick their favorite cases. There are many factors that might make a murder especially fascinating, attracting more and more media attention. For instance, most murders are committed by men, adding a bit of intrigue to women who kill. Sex adds a lot to any story, guaranteeing a considerable level of interest for any death within a relationship. Decades of additional time can allow a case to go cold, and a long-awaited solution can prompt it to go hot again. The Stephanie Lazarus case has all of those details, making it a true crime darling.

On February 24, 1986, John Ruetten found his wife, Sherri Rasmussen, dead on the floor of their living room. Authorities investigated the scene, took away evidence, and came to the conclusion that Rasmussen died as part of a burglary gone wrong. More than two decades passed before the police pieced together a new lead, targeting LAPD officer Stephanie Lazarus, an old romantic partner of Ruetten's. It took another three years to get Lazarus to trial, eventually resulting in a guilty verdict and a sentence of 25 years to life. That's the broad overview, but the details of the Stephanie Lazarus case are a lot worse than you may think.

The 1,000-foot overview of this case is that Stephanie Lazarus attacked and killed Sherri Rasmussen because she was jealous of John Ruetten's relationship with his new bride. While it's true that Ruetten and Lazarus shared some sort of college romance, they had very different ideas about the nature of that connection. Ruetten didn't even characterize their interactions as a relationship. Ruetten met Lazarus in the late 1970s while they were both students at UCLA, sharing a seemingly loose friendship that involved some casual sex. On the stand in Lazarus' murder trial, Ruetten affirmed that he never considered Lazarus a girlfriend.

Lazarus allegedly had a very different interpretation of their relationship. She never knew that Ruetten carried on dating other women while sleeping with her, nor that he developed a more serious bond with Rasmussen. Lazarus reportedly became miserable and unhinged when she discovered Ruetten and Rasmussen's engagement. She called Ruetten and begged for a final rendezvous, which Ruetten agreed to. During that interaction, Lazarus declared her love for her former on-again, off-again fling, eventually leading the two to have sex. Ruetten later told a jury that he made that decision because he felt Lazarus "had no closure." Ruetten also admitted to having two sexual encounters with Lazarus after his wife's murder. 

The scene of Sherri Rasmussen's 1986 murder tells a grim story. The damage to John Ruetten and Rasmussen's Van Nuys home and the injuries inflicted upon Rasmussen's body suggest a considerable struggle between the victim and Stephanie Lazarus. Ruetten discovered Rasmussen's body after repeatedly calling her and getting no answer. He arrived to find broken glass all over his driveway and his front door wide open. Upon entering, he found Rasmussen's corpse on the living room floor. Two vases were found shattered on the same floor, along with a tossed drawer and several items that had been moved.

The authorities took notice of what appeared to be defensive wounds and severe injuries on Rasmussen's body. They found marks on her wrist that implied she'd been tied up at some point. Her face bore the brunt of the attack, leaving her with a bloodied nose and an eye that was swollen shut. A wound on her left arm took the shape of a deep bite mark, but she died of three gunshots near her heart. Forensic scientists theorized that she had suffered a beating, likely with the muzzle of the pistol that killed her. The brutality of the exchange led some investigators to suspect a personal motive, but the dominant theory among the police quickly implicated one or more unnamed burglars. 

When the authorities began investigating the murder of Sherri Rasmussen, they quickly came to believe that the culprit must have been a burglar. Someone, they suspected, must have attempted to break into the house to steal something, snuck up on Rasmussen, incapacitated her, and tied her up. There were definitely some pieces of evidence to support this theory. Investigators found stereo equipment stacked by the front door, suggesting that the would-be burglars intended to take them before things escalated. Rasmussen's BMW, an engagement present from Ruetten, was also missing, though it quickly turned up a couple of miles down the road.

The only other thing authorities found missing from Ruetten's home was his and Rasmussen's marriage certificate. They found one drawer forcefully removed from its housing, but the culprit only expressed interest in that sentimental object. The LAPD received extra evidence pointing toward a break-in when a similar incident occurred on the same street, locking the cops into that theory. Of course, the police would eventually discover the connection to Stephanie Lazarus, the true culprit, but the belief that the killing was the result of a random burglary pulled investigators away from the truth for far too long. 

A law enforcement agency's clearance rate is the percentage of crimes reported that result in an arrest. It's one of the most prominent measures the public uses to judge the efficacy of a police department. For example, Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore issued a statement claiming a 76% citywide clearance rate for homicides in 2023. While this implies that they solved a little over three-fourths of the year's 327 homicides, it also factors in cold cases. The LAPD could theoretically close out a bunch of old murders, add those to their tally, and come away with a clearance rate well over 100%. That exact initiative prompted the LAPD to reopen the Sherri Rasmussen case in 2009.

Clearance rate concerns were one of the fundamental forces that pushed Rasmussen's murder back to the LAPD's consciousness. A cold case unit formed in the early 2000s with the dual goals of easing old wounds and pumping up the numbers. They were quite successful. This eventually led the LAPD to consider some of the theories that they'd dismissed, including the idea of the murderer being a cop, which is part of why it took so long to arrest Stephanie Lazarus. 

The investigation of Sherri Rasmussen's death went cold shortly after it began. Cops couldn't find a culprit for the burglary that they were certain resulted in Rasmussen's death, forcing them to set the case aside. The LAPD began reopening old files in the 2000s as DNA technology, including genealogy testing, changed their methods. The advancements in technology allowed the investigators to examine this case with a font of new information. Given that they were dealing with a shooting, they wouldn't necessarily have a suitable source of DNA to pull from. However, the culprit left a considerable bite mark on Rasmussen's left arm, allowing the LAPD to pull saliva from the wound.

Investigators swabbed the bite mark when they found Rasmussen's body in 1986. The resulting 6-inch swab sat in a tube in a sealed envelope in an evidence locker for the next 18 years as technology developed. In 2004, forensic investigator Jennifer Butterworth went looking for details on the Rasmussen case. It took over a week to find the swab, which had been left in disrepair over the intervening years. It quickly revealed that the DNA profile of the culprit contained two X chromosomes, indicating that Rasmussen's attacker had been a woman. The saliva sample was one of the most critical elements of the investigation and the trial, eventually leading to Lazarus' conviction.

The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures by police. It's one of those secrets the police don't want you to know. In general, cops can't just stop a person and go through their stuff unless they have "probable cause" to suspect they're guilty of a crime. This presented a difficulty in the Sherri Rasmussen case when the LAPD began the process of hunting down DNA matches for the bite mark on Rasmussen's arm. Stephanie Lazarus' name came up several times, prompting the cops to look into one of their own. They approached this task with extreme care, trying to avoid both the risk of ruining an innocent person's good name and of alerting a suspect to their investigation. But there was also another factor in play: Since Lazarus was an LAPD detective, police had to assume she'd either be armed or have quick access to her service weapon. Given the possibility that an encounter with Lazarus could turn violent, investigators were reluctant to obtain a search warrant. 

The usual carve-out that allows cops to evade pursuing a search warrant is to somehow acquire discarded DNA evidence. To that end, investigators watched and tailed Lazarus during the spring of 2009, looking for an opportunity to surreptitiously swoop a sample. They got their chance when Lazarus tossed aside a cup and straw she'd been drinking from while running errands. That piece of evidence would prove integral to the eventual conviction of Stephanie Lazarus. 

The most integral element of the prosecution of Stephanie Lazarus was a piece of DNA evidence that resolved the cold case. The killer left a deep bite mark on Sherri Rasmussen's arm, allowing the LAPD to take a swab from the wound. Police later reopened the case, scanned the swab for DNA, and learned that Rasmussen's attacker had been a woman, leading them to consider Lazarus. At her trial in 2009, the DNA match was one of the most damning pieces of evidence, forcing defense attorney Mark Overland to attack that evidence.

That spit swab from 1986 was a thorn in the side of the defense, but the considerable gap in time between its acquisition and its application gave them an avenue of attack. LAPD investigators stored it away for decades, and when criminalists unearthed it to reopen the investigation, they found that the envelope had been slightly battered and torn. It also remained with the coroner's office long after it should have been LAPD property. Overland addressed those issues, casting a bit of doubt on the key piece of evidence by suggesting it may have been tampered with.

Jennifer Francis was a criminalist who worked on the Sherri Rasmussen case when it returned to the LAPD's attention in the 2000s. She took charge of the key piece of evidence, the swab that collected DNA from a bite mark on Rasmussen's arm. Upon testing it, she discovered that the saliva on the swab suggested a female assailant, putting a hole in the police's dominant male-burglary theory. Francis allegedly suggested a love triangle as a possible explanation, but her higher-ups encouraged her to discard that theory. Authorities moved forward with the belief that they were looking for a male-female burglary team, prompting Francis to allege a cover-up.

Francis sued the LAPD after they arrested and convicted Stephanie Lazarus. She alleged that the LAPD held up the case by refusing to hear her out, potentially jeopardizing the effort to arrest Lazarus. Her suit suggests that her bosses, including the local sheriff, told her to ignore valid evidence. Francis claims she was forced to undergo a mental health evaluation on false evidence, possibly ruining her opportunity to testify in another high-profile case. This matter went to court, where a jury found in favor of the city, denying Francis her damages. The city's attorney maintains that the fact that the LAPD eventually got Lazarus demonstrates no wrongdoing.

The Sherri Rasmussen case is the story of a police department stuck on a single idea. LAPD investigators immediately locked in on the concept of a burglary gone wrong and refused to change their mind, bolstered by another home invasion in the area. The police didn't botch the crime scene, but they did come to the wrong conclusion. When they reopened the case after more than a decade, they continued to operate under the assumption that the killer took Rasmussen's life out of circumstance.

From the very beginning, Nels Rasmussen, the victim's father, urged investigators to look into Stephanie Lazarus. Nels Rasmussen suggested both Lazarus and a fellow nurse at his daughter's place of work in 1988 as potential suspects, writing a letter to the investigators that received no response. Speaking to Van Nuys detectives, he brought up Lazarus again, only for a cop to allegedly tell him, "You watch too much television" (via The Atlantic). Rasmussen desperately asked the police to look into Lazarus, an LAPD officer, but those requests fell upon deaf ears. Only after DNA evidence pointed them in the direction of a female assailant did they start to look into alternative theories. That led them to create a list of potential suspects, ranking them in order of likelihood. Even then, the LAPD considered Lazarus the least likely of the bunch.

In 2022, California instituted rules that allowed offenders who were 25 years old or younger to apply for parole. Stephanie Lazarus was 25 at the time she killed Sherri Rasmussen, granting her a potential path toward parole. She received a sentence of 27 years to life in 2012, but she and her attorneys took a shot in 2023. In the initial hearing, the board determined that Lazarus was eligible for parole. This brought great displeasure to the family of her victim, who issued several public statements arguing against Lazarus' release. This decision stood for a few months before the parole board ordered a rescission hearing, getting a lower panel involved.

California Governor Gavin Newsom also weighed in, asking the parole board to reconsider its decision. The board did take a second look at this issue and eventually rescinded the parole declaration, keeping Lazarus behind bars in October 2024. Lazarus admitted her guilt, but she also proclaimed that she has grown since the 2012 conviction. Her 27-year-to-life sentence still stands, but she will receive many opportunities for parole beyond 2024. She could still join the list of paroled killers who murdered again.

On June 5, 2009, Stephanie Lazarus was arrested for the murder of Sherri Rasmussen. From the moment the LAPD slapped the cuffs on her, Lazarus denied she had anything to do with Rasmussen's death. During her trial, she didn't take the stand, but her lawyer denied her involvement on her behalf when she pleaded not guilty. Lazarus maintained her innocence throughout the intervening years, spending 14 years behind bars without admitting any wrongdoing. This finally changed in 2023, when she confessed to the killing in a parole hearing. She reportedly downplayed the crime in that confession.

Lazarus has expressed remorse and claimed to have grown as a person since the murder, framing her late confession as a part of that forward momentum. John Ruetten was quick to argue against that perspective. Ruetten claimed that Lazarus only confessed to the killing as part of an attempt to gain parole, alleging that she used her police training to hide evidence and deny involvement until the time came to seek release. Despite Lazarus' confession, the California parole board didn't grant her an early release. She did not appear at the parole board meeting and has still made no real public declaration of her guilt in the Rasmussen murder.