![]() ![]() Around 6:40 on the morning on June 5, 2009, Det. Police and prosecutors say DNA from that object matched the crime scene evidence.Īfter the match was made, LAPD officials devised a plan to arrest Lazarus. Police began tailing their colleague and eventually collected a plastic utensil or other object with her saliva on it. Cold-case detectives reopened the investigation and learned of Lazarus' relationship with Ruetten. Two decades later, DNA analysis of saliva collected from a bite mark on Rasmussen's arm indicated that the killer was a woman, disproving the theory of a male robber. The detective never seriously pursued Lazarus, who had recently joined the LAPD. Nels Rasmussen, the victim's father, has said he repeatedly told detectives that his daughter had several confrontations with Lazarus in the months before her death and had been frightened by Lazarus' hostility.īut the lead detective in the case was convinced Rasmussen had been killed during a botched burglary by a man who had committed a robbery in the area. The two had begun a romantic relationship while attending UCLA but broke up around the time Ruetten struck up a relationship with Rasmussen. Lazarus was a childhood friend of Ruetten's. She was found bludgeoned and shot multiple times in the Van Nuys townhouse she shared with John Ruetten, whom she had recently married. The killing of Rasmussen, a 29-year-old hospital nursing director, was one of thousands of homicides from the 1980s that went unsolved. It would have led to answers for the Rasmussens rather than letting them hang in wind," said attorney John C. "That's the interview that LAPD should have conducted in 1986. "There's nothing in the interview from which any reasonable juror could conclude that she committed this crime," he said.Ī lawyer representing the Rasmussen family disagreed. On Monday, Overland downplayed the significance of the questioning. Perry denied a request by her attorney, Mark Overland, to keep the transcript out of the case. ![]() She remains in custody on $10-million bail awaiting trial, which is expected to start in the spring. This is insane," Lazarus said minutes later after she walked out of the interview, only to be stopped, handcuffed and told she was under arrest in the murder of Sherri Rae Rasmussen. "Am I on 'Candid Camera' or something? This is insane. ![]() "You're accusing me of this? Is that what you're - is that what you're saying?" Lazarus asked near the end of the roughly hourlong interview last year, after one of the detectives alluded to evidence that implicated her in the killing. The interview transcript, which became public during a hearing in Los Angeles County Superior Court, offers a detailed account of how LAPD homicide detectives duped their unsuspecting colleague into talking about the case, and of Lazarus' disbelief and panic as she realized she was the target of the investigation. Stephanie Lazarus, the Los Angeles police detective charged in the 1986 murder of an ex-boyfriend's wife, admitted to investigators the morning of her arrest that she had confronted the victim on multiple occasions, but denied having a role in the killing, according to the transcript of her interrogation. 'This is insane,' Lazarus said when arrested. Lazarus admitted to having confronted the victim but denied killing her. Stephanie Lazarus' interrogation shows that LAPD colleagues used a ruse to get her to discuss a 1986 killing in which she was a suspect. An investigator one minute, and under interrogation the next ![]()
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