Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out at patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. Hey, Forensic Tales listeners, Courtney here. I have to tell you about Best Fiends. It's a fun puzzle game on your mobile phone. I love it because it's the perfect break from my research for the show. The puzzles are a fun challenge, which I love.
But it's also a casual game, so it doesn't stress me out, which is perfect for when I need a break from researching cases. I love that every time I open the game, there's always something new going on. I just got to level 98 and it's so much fun. If you're like me and totally over the same old puzzle game, this game is for you.
The makers of Best Fiends have created a whole world right on my phone. It's got great music, is bright and colorful with great graphics, and there's a story about all those cute characters. My favorite character is Jojo the Butterfly, because who doesn't love a strong, confident leading lady?
So join me and millions of people who are already playing this fun puzzle game. Download Best Fiends for free on the Apple App Store or Google Play today. That's friends without the R. Best Fiends. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.
On Mondays, Sherry usually woke up excited to go to work. She was incredibly successful, a young director of nursing, a newlywed to the man of her dreams, living the perfect life. But this morning was different. Sherry was scheduled to give a speech. She hated speeches. Her husband kissed her goodbye. Sherry sat alone, debating, contemplating when she was attacked.
in her bedroom? This is Forensic Tales, episode number 76, The Murder of Sherry Rasmussen.
Thank you.
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
If you're interested in supporting the show, getting early access to weekly episodes, bonus material, ad-free episodes, merchandise, and much more, consider visiting our Patreon page at patreon.com slash forensic tales.
Another great way you can help support Forensic Tales is by leaving us a positive rating with a review or telling friends and family who love true crime about us. Now, let's jump right into this week's case. The murder of the newlywed, Sherry Rasmussen, left everyone shocked. Nobody could understand who or why someone would want to harm someone like Sherry. She lived nearly the perfect life.
wife to the man of her dreams, a college graduate by the age of 16, and director of nursing by her 20s. Her wonderful life was taken away from her one morning in February 1986. But why? On Monday, February 24, 1986, Sherry Rasmussen was in bed with her husband, John Rutten, who got ready for work.
Typically, Sherry was the first one out the door in the mornings, but this day was different. Sherry was scheduled to give a speech at work, a managerial requirement that she wasn't too crazy about. So, she considered calling in sick and using a back injury as her excuse to try to get out of the presentation. Around 7.20 in the morning, John left their condo in Van Nuys, California. He was leaving Sherry at home.
On his way to work, he dropped off some dry cleaning and made it to the office by 8 a.m. By mid-morning, John decided to call Sherry just to see if she decided to go into work or not. But she didn't pick up, so he simply assumed she chose to go in and give that speech after all. He then went about the rest of his workday.
On his way home that night, John stopped by to pick up that dry cleaning and made a quick stop at the UPS store. When he pulled up to his condo, he noticed that the garage door was open, but Sherry's car wasn't inside. He also noticed some broken glass in front of the garage.
Now, John's first thought was that maybe Sherry accidentally ran into something in the garage with her car, causing there to be glass on the ground. Of course, this wouldn't be the first time that she ran into something in the garage. But when John saw the door open inside the garage, his heart dropped. John parked his car and made his way through the open door. In the living room, he saw his wife Sherry lying.
She was on her back with her entire face and body covered in blood and bruises. Just looking at her, he knew she was dead. Before calling 911, he grabbed a blanket and put it over her head. When first responders arrived, they believed that they were working on a case of a burglary gone wrong.
Sherry was shot three times, and there was obvious signs of a struggle all around the living room. A big stereo speaker was knocked over to the ground. There were smears of blood across the walls and even the front door. Upstairs on the second floor, there was broken glass from the balcony door. It was bizarre that it looked like a burglary, but investigators didn't find any signs of a forced entry.
It was also strange that the burglar or burglars didn't seem to take anything and there wasn't any signs of unexpected ransacking. Sherry had clear signs of defensive wounds on her hands and arms, suggesting to officers that she put up a fight against her attacker. Investigators also noticed that she was shot through a blanket found in the living room, likely used to muffle the sounds of gunfire.
Two bullets were recovered from Sherry's body, bullets from a .38 caliber gun. Besides the gunshot wounds and injuries to Sherry's face, she also had a bite mark on one of her arms. Investigators took a swab of the bite mark in hopes of being able to match it to her killer. They also did a cast of the bite mark for bite and teeth comparison. After studying the crime scene, investigators were a little skeptical that this was a failed burglary.
So instead, they turned to their first possible suspect, Sherry's husband, John. At the time of Sherry's murder, Sherry and John had only been married for a little over three months. However, from the moment they met back in 1984, they were crazy about each other. John had just graduated from UCLA, and Sherry was two years older.
Sherry graduated from Loma Linda University when she was just 16 years old and then would go on to get her master's. By 27 years old, she was already the director of nursing at the Glendale Adventist Medical Center. John was also incredibly successful and landed a high-paying job at an engineering firm. Slightly over a year after they met, John and Sherry got married in November 1985.
But Sherry wasn't the only woman in John's life. While studying at UCLA, John met and dated a woman by the name of Stephanie Lazarus. Both John and Stephanie were talented college athletes. Stephanie even played on UCLA's junior varsity basketball team. However, you could only describe John and Stephanie's relationship as lopsided.
Stephanie seemed to like John a little more than John liked Stephanie. If you asked Stephanie about her relationship with John, she would probably tell you that they were in a serious, committed relationship. But if you asked John about their relationship, he wouldn't exactly call her his girlfriend. To John, she was more of a casual hookup for him.
From 1981 to about 1984, John and Stephanie had what many would describe as an on-and-off-again relationship. Although they were sleeping together throughout this time, John never really considered Stephanie his girlfriend. After UCLA, John accepted a job at Micropolis, and Stephanie joined the LAPD as a police officer in 1983.
A year later is when John met Sherry and kicked Stephanie to the curb. John knew from the minute he met Sherry that she was the one, but Stephanie didn't know John met the one. Stephanie threw John a surprise birthday party for his 25th birthday, utterly unaware that John had a new girlfriend. Stephanie actually found out about Sherry at the party.
And she was devastated. After finding out about Sherry, she even wrote a letter to John's mom describing her heartache. She couldn't believe that John would leave her for someone else. Her heart sank even more when she discovered John wasn't just dating another woman. They were engaged to be married. Although John and Sherry were engaged, Stephanie couldn't stay away.
There was even a time when Stephanie brought her skis to John and Sherry's apartment for him to, quote, wax them for her. A little odd that she couldn't find anyone else to help her. And after that visit with the skis, Sherry point-blank asked John if his relationship was over with Stephanie. They were just about to get married, and Sherry doesn't want Stephanie around for the rest of their lives together.
But John assured her that his relationship with Stephanie was completely over, that she meant nothing to him. But despite John's claim, Stephanie kept coming up with excuses to go over to their apartment. On one of these trips, they did more than just visit. During Sherry and John's engagement, Stephanie dropped by John's condo when Sherry wasn't home. And the two of them slept together.
Now, John would later testify that he only slept with Stephanie to, quote, give her closure. As if sleeping with a woman already obsessed with you will give you closure or give her closure. After this incident, John told Sherry about it. He was incredibly remorseful. He said it meant absolutely nothing and that he still wanted to get married.
After a little sweet talk on John's part, Sherry took him back and agreed to continue with the marriage. With a clause, no more Stephanie, this time for good. Introducing the brand new hit podcast, The Forgiven. The Forgiven podcast retells Bible scandals in a more modern setting, focusing on forgiveness in a cancel culture.
This series will touch on forgiveness by dramatizing some of the most scandalous stories in the Bible accompanied by scripture readings, affirmations, gospel music, and personal stories of forgiveness. The Forgiven Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening right now.
Also available at theforgivenpodcast.com. Subscribe today and give it a listen. The Forgiven Podcast. Prepare yourself for a forgiven experience. Sherry's missing silver BMW turned up a week later. Someone had parked Sherry's car on a street in Van Nuys, and the vehicle was left unlocked with the key still in the ignition.
It was like whoever killed Sherry took her car, drove it to a random street, and then just dumped it there. But inside of the car, investigators found a small spot of dried blood, a couple of fingerprints, and a strand of long blonde hair, none of which belonged to Sherry. During the first couple weeks of Sherry's murder, investigators interviewed everybody in her life, her family, friends, neighbors, family.
But the interviews didn't really reveal any credible suspects. The only credible lead was from Sherry's neighbors, who said that they saw two Hispanic men trying to break into homes throughout the neighborhood. In one of the cases, these two men assaulted a woman in her home not too far from Sherry and John's condo.
But when the police looked at Sherry's case, nothing about it screamed burglary. Again, there were no signs of a forced entry. Nothing of value was stolen or taken. The only thing missing from the home was Sherry's BMW. But of course, that turned up a week later in perfect condition. And there also wasn't any signs that Sherry had been sexually assaulted. Even though John wasn't considered a suspect,
he still participated in a handful of police interviews. Right from the get-go, he was highly cooperative with the police. During these interviews, detectives asked him all those typical questions you would expect to ask a husband when a wife is murdered. Were there any problems in their marriage? Answer, no, they were newlyweds. Did they have any financial problems?
Answer, no. They were both very successful in their careers. Was Sherry having any problems with an ex-boyfriend, an ex-lover maybe? Answer, no. The police didn't suspect that John had any real motive to want Sherry dead. The news about Sherry's death was devastating for her husband and her father, Nels Rasmussen.
The police called Nels a day later to break the news to him, and he was heartbroken. Not only was he heartbroken over the fact that his daughter had been killed, but he also couldn't understand why. And he also couldn't understand why he was finding out a whole day later. Why didn't his son-in-law, John, call to tell him?
Nels loved his daughter. He was proud of her, proud of everything. Well, except for her taste in men. When Nels met John for the first time, he wasn't impressed. And he became even less impressed when Sherry told her father that they were going to get married. Now, he has even more reason not to like John. His daughter was murdered and his son-in-law never called to tell him.
He had to find out about the whole thing a whole day later when the police called him. So Nell Rasmussen sat up all night wondering, who would want to kill his daughter? That's when it hit him. He picked up the phone and he called detectives and asked them, have you checked out John's ex-girlfriend, the lady cop? Nell remembered how Sherry told him on several occasions about her run-ins she had with John's ex-girlfriend.
He couldn't quite remember this woman's name, but he remembered someone was showing up unannounced at their condo and it was upsetting Sherry. Now, Sherry wasn't the type of woman to cry easy, but Nell remembered one of the situations that made his daughter cry was this ex-girlfriend, the lady cop. Sherry cried to her dad that she wished John would just simply tell her to go away.
But instead, John assured her nothing was happening between them. He argued if they ignored her, she would just eventually go away. So Nell brought this up to detectives the day after learning of Sherry's murder. But detectives brushed him off. They said he maybe had watched too many TV cop reality shows to believe that a police officer herself was responsible for Sherry's murder.
So the police showed Sherry's father a sketch of the two Hispanic men that they believed might be burglarizing Sherry's neighborhood. The detectives explained that they believed Sherry's murder resulted from a failed burglary. Now, Nell thought the burglary theory was completely wrong. Detectives theorized that the altercation lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. Yeah.
This is odd because how could Sherry fight off two men for over an hour? Let alone the fact that Sherry is a female and her attackers are allegedly two males, but it's also a two versus one attack. That's a really long time to be fighting, 60 to 90 minutes. And then there was the bite mark on one of Sherry's arms.
Biting during a fight is not only unusual, but during a burglary? Why would one of these men bite Sherry's arm during all of this? Women typically tend to be biters, not men. Detectives could never track down the two Hispanic men seen in the neighborhood around the time of Sherry's murder. No arrests were made in the days, weeks, or months following.
Once the police collected the evidence and John was cleared as a suspect, Sherry's murder turned cold. The police never looked into Sherry's father's suggestion about the lady cop,
All the police did was take a report on November 27th, 1987, a whole year and a half after Sherry's murder, stating that a detective verified that Stephanie Lazarus, a police officer, was in fact John's ex-girlfriend. But that's it. Police did no further investigating. Without any solid leads or evidence, the case went cold.
The case would remain cold for not only years, but decades. Yet the Rasmussen family never gave up hope that they would one day solve their daughter's murder. Sherry's parents even put up a $10,000 reward of their own money to find out who killed her. Many years after the murder, DNA testing was making extensive advancements in solving unsolved cases.
Crime labs all over the country were testing DNA and solving cold cases. When Sherry's father learned about this emerging technology, he immediately picked up the phone and called the detectives. Hair, blood, and fingerprints were all collected from Sherry's condo as well as her BMW. But this evidence was never tested.
A swab of the bite mark on her arm also remained to be tested. Detectives told Sherry's family that, well, they were honest. Detectives told them that they didn't have this type of money to conduct DNA testing. To which the family said, well, that's okay. We'll pay for the testing ourselves. We even have a lab who agreed to do it for us. All systems go. Well, almost.
On October 11, 1993, seven years after the murder, and right before the family requested DNA testing, Detective Phil Morris visited the L.A. County Coroner's Office. This detective signed out all the forensic evidence in Sherry's case.
Now, before you find this strange, it's completely normal for detectives working on a case to sign out evidence, even forensic evidence. Sometimes detectives check out evidence belonging to more than one case at a time. But typically, evidence is checked out only when an investigator makes a request. In this case, evidence.
There is no record of anyone requesting to check out evidence in Sherry's case. Years later, Detective Phil Morris claimed that he didn't remember checking out any forensic evidence for Sherry's case. The forensic evidence mysteriously disappeared, and with it, any hope of having the family test the DNA sadly vanished.
For almost two decades, Sherry's file remained open. In 1989, John reunited with Stephanie. Detectives assure John that Stephanie was never considered a suspect in Sherry's murder. There was no evidence linking her to the crime. And with that assurance, John and Stephanie reunited and even took a trip to Hawaii together.
Stephanie finally got what she always wanted, John. But the relationship didn't last long. John eventually remarried several years after Sherry's murder, and he and his second wife started a family and moved on with their lives. And Stephanie Lazarus also married. She married a fellow cop and also moved on with her life. Stephanie began to rise in the ranks of the police department.
And for two decades, Stephanie lived a normal, happy life. Until 2001. In 2001, the Los Angeles Police Department created its first cold case homicide unit. As its name suggests, the unit was in charge of working unsolved murders throughout Los Angeles, which by 2001 were a lot of murders.
These specialized police officers would comb through files for cases with DNA evidence. If a case file had DNA evidence, they would test the evidence with the department's new testing capabilities. The creation of this unit was tremendous for LAPD. The Cold Case Homicide Unit opened up the possibility for dozens of unsolved murders to finally be solved.
Throughout the 80s and 90s, detectives collected DNA and forensic evidence from crime scenes but could never test it. And beginning in 2001, the department could now test this evidence. Simultaneously, other agencies were creating their own DNA and fingerprint databases. And even the federal government was creating national databases.
Three years after the LAPD created their cold case unit, a criminalist came across Sherry's case file. Jennifer Francis read how DNA was collected in the case. Specifically, they had taken a swab from the bite mark on Sherry's arm. This is great, right? A swab of a bite mark would absolutely contain traces of DNA.
But the swab wasn't listed in evidence and wasn't one of the forensic samples that was signed out back in 1993. The swab had been lost or misplaced sometime before 1993. So where was the swab now?
When you're dealing with evidence in any criminal case, detectives follow a chain of evidence. Simply put, the process and record of who collected the evidence, when and where it was collected, who secured it, and who had control or possession over it.
The record of evidence doesn't end when evidence is collected. It's also documented when the evidence leaves storage or if it's checked out and maybe presented in court. So whatever the case may be, evidence is always accounted for with who and when.
When Jennifer Francis read that detectives working on Sherry's case collected forensic evidence from the body and from the car, they sent it to a freezer at the coroner's office. Then the evidence would have been gathered and stored under the case file number, all standard protocol. But the swab was never recorded as evidence in the case file.
Instead, the swab was only listed in police reports. So if the swab was never recorded in the case, it's possible that it never made it out of the freezer and into the case file as evidence, which could only mean one thing. Maybe the sample is still in the freezer. Jennifer Francis first called the L.A. coroner's office and asked them if they knew the location of the swab.
Not surprisingly, they didn't know. So Jennifer decided she would just drive down to the coroner's office herself. And within moments of searching, this savvy cold case investigator found the DNA swab in a small manila envelope. The envelope was stuck to the side of the freezer wall.
Since it was stuck, the manila envelope began to absorb water and moisture from the freezer. And over time, the moisture caused the case number file on the outside of the envelope to be erased. When the evidence in Sherry's case was pulled from the freezer, investigators didn't know the envelope also belonged to Sherry's case.
With a missing file number, it's impossible to know which case the envelope belonged to. And instead of these officers at the time trying to figure out which case this envelope belonged to, someone decided, well, if we don't know what case it belongs to, let's just leave it inside of the freezer. No case file, no case details, nothing.
And that's where the swab sat for almost two decades inside of this freezer. And nobody knew which case it belonged to. And no one really asked any questions. Now, fortunately, no one threw it away after all of these years. They just left it inside of the freezer. Inside of the small vanilla envelope was a sealed up tube containing two swabs. Inside of the envelope,
Red Rasmussen. Jennifer Francis took the sample and sent it to the crime lab to see if they could extract any DNA. A long shot. Not only had the sample been taken almost 20 years earlier, who knows if the sample was even taken properly back in the 1980s. Remember, our ability to swab and look for DNA evidence in the 80s was nowhere near where it is now.
So not only did Jennifer Francis need the sample to be in good condition from the collection process, but it also needed to be in good condition from being inside of a freezer all of this time. When it comes to DNA testing, this is definitely a long shot. But hey, it's a shot. And when you're dealing with a two-decade-old cold case, you'll take any shot you can get.
Jennifer Francis got the DNA testing results back from the lab in January 2005. The results came back with a complete DNA profile, meaning the lab could pull a full DNA profile from the bite mark on Sherry's arm, the bite mark that could only belong to her killer. When she got the results back, she ran the DNA profile through CODIS, the national database in the U.S. for DNA.
But when she submitted the profile, she didn't get a hit. The sample didn't match any known DNA profiles in CODIS. But that doesn't mean the test was meaningless. Even though the test results didn't reveal a name, they did show one critical detail. A female left the bite mark on Sherry's arm. Sherry's killer was a woman.
The realization that Sherry's killer was a woman undermines the police's theory that Sherry's murder resulted from a botched robbery. The robbers seen in Sherry's neighborhood around the time of her murder were described as being two Hispanic males, not a female. Maybe one of the thieves was a woman? Probably not, if you ask me. So at this point, the cold case investigators couldn't pursue the case any further, and
Although Jennifer knew the sample came from a female, it didn't match any known offenders in CODIS. And without any solid evidence of a female being involved, it was pointless to pursue the case. So just like before, the sample was placed back into an evidence freezer where it remained for the next four years until February 2009.
By 2009, the murder rate throughout the county of Los Angeles declined dramatically. Of course, we all know that L.A. is still a hotspot for murder. By 2009, the murder rate was significantly lower than it had been for 10, 15, 20 years earlier. So when 2009 came around, many L.A. homicide detectives didn't have too many cases to work.
And to stay busy, detectives were being assigned cold cases. Each detective in the department was given a handful of cold cases to look at when they had some free time or if they weren't actively working a case, which to me is a brilliant idea. It keeps the hundreds of cold cases in L.A. active or as active as possible. So Sherry Rasmussen's case was assigned to Van Nuys homicide detective Jim Nuttall.
This wasn't Nuttall's first time working a cold case. In fact, by the time he got Sherry's case, he had at least a dozen other cold cases he was investigating at the same time. Of course, most detectives wouldn't be able to handle another cold case, but Jim Nuttall viewed this as another opportunity to solve a case, no matter how old or how cold.
When Jim Nuttall opened up Sherry's file, one of the first things he read about was the bite mark that came from a female. Like Jennifer, he was troubled by the contradiction to the robbery theory. He couldn't understand why something this big wasn't reinvestigated or at least looked at four years earlier.
So Detective Nuttall immediately reported this discovery to his supervisor, who assigned two additional detectives to look into Sherry's case, Mark Martinez and Pete Barba. When the three of them sat down and looked at Sherry's case, they saw an entirely different version of events. When they read the police reports, they didn't think this was a robbery.
They didn't think she was surprised by the robbers, but instead, she was surprised by someone else. As we've talked about a little bit earlier, investigators didn't find any signs of a break-in at Sherry's home. Investigators also knew that the alarm system for the house was turned off. This means Sherry wouldn't have been able to hear anybody come in, especially since she was upstairs at the time.
The police reports suggest that after the intruder confronted Sherry upstairs, Sherry attempted to get away from her attacker by running downstairs. She was probably trying to get downstairs to activate the panic button on her alarm system. But before she could reach the panic button, her attacker would have caught her up downstairs. And that's when a struggle began.
During the struggle, her killer would have bit her on the arm, leaving behind the bite mark and DNA. After biting her, the attacker would have been able to grab a vase nearby and knock Sherry over the head, likely causing her to become unconscious, giving the intruder enough time to grab her gun and shoot Sherry at least three separate times.
One of these three detectives assigned to the case looked at the report this way. The robbery theory seemed far less likely. These detectives thought the evidence didn't point to a robbery, but pointed to someone staging the scene to make it look like a robbery.
To these new set of eyes, these detectives, the evidence suggested that whoever came to Sherry's house that morning didn't intend to rob her. Instead, they came to the house with one single purpose, to kill Sherry. The only new insight that these three detectives had in the case was knowing that Sherry's killer was a female.
So to try and figure out a suspect list, they needed to look at the females in Sherry's life and which one of them would want her dead. Besides being female, these detectives knew that this suspect had to be clever enough to be able to fool the police about her identity for over two decades. They started by looking through police reports for any mention of a female in Sherry's life.
They looked at those interviewed by the police after her death. They looked at neighbors, coworkers. Then they came across a note written on a report taken on November 19th, 1987. It read, John Rutten called. Verified Stephanie Lazarus, P.O., was a former girlfriend. That's police officer Stephanie Lazarus, their coworker in the art theft division.
Detectives Nuttall and Martinez went to go see John Rutten. When they informed John, he was surprised. He told them Sherry's father, Nell, already told police that he believed Stephanie Lazarus was a possible suspect in the murder and that he'd been telling police that for years, but nobody would listen. Suddenly, Stephanie Lazarus, a cop herself, started to look like a possible suspect.
Nuttall and Martinez knew that a highly trained and skilled police officer would be very methodical if they were involved in a murder. They wouldn't do it while on duty. They would wait until their victim was alone, and they would know exactly how to stage a crime scene. They wouldn't be dumb enough to use their own service gun in the murder.
Nuttall and Martinez found out that Stephanie purchased a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson shortly after she graduated from college. Once she joined the LAPD, she was issued her service weapon.
But when the detectives traced down the first gun's serial number, they learned that Stephanie reported it stolen in March of 1986 to the Santa Monica Police Department, just three weeks after Sherry's murder. All of this information wasn't new.
This information about Stephanie Lazarus, including her missing handgun, was all known to the LAPD back in 1986. It seemed like someone in LAPD was trying to protect her from the new detectives on the case. Nuttall and Martinez presented their evidence about Sherry's possible involvement in Sherry's murder to their supervisor.
Anytime there's a case involving a fellow police officer, there is a strict chain of command about how this information is reported and how this information is investigated. In this case, a word about a police officer being involved in a 20-year-old murder investigation would be shocking to say the least. So after four months of reviewing the evidence,
The LAPD's Internal Affairs Group took over the investigation. The first thing Internal Affairs needed to do was get a DNA sample from Stephanie. They needed to get her DNA to match it to the DNA found on the bite mark swab. But getting her DNA would be tricky. They didn't want Stephanie knowing that she was a possible suspect, but they needed to get her DNA to match it to the DNA found on the bite mark swab.
So to get the DNA, a team followed Stephanie and her daughter as she made her way to Costco. They watched as Stephanie and her daughter had lunch at one of the tables outside of the store. Once she got up and threw away her trash, the officers retrieved a small straw in a cup from Stephanie. Perfect for a DNA profile.
They sent the cup and straw to the crime lab, and two days later, detectives got the results. The DNA found on the straw and cup matched the DNA on Sherry Rasmussen's forearm almost 20 years earlier. A fellow LAPD police officer, Stephanie Lazarus, was Sherry's killer.
Detectives brought Stephanie in for questioning. At first, they made it seem like they were just following up on some new leads in Sherry's case. And it was standard protocol to speak with Stephanie since, of course, she was an ex-girlfriend of the murdered victim's husband. If Stephanie was annoyed or suspected they knew about her involvement, she didn't show it.
During the interview, Stephanie remained utterly calm. She would have every right to feel that way, right? She's gotten away with murder for almost 20 years now. She thinks that this is just another interview that will go nowhere and that the case will be closed once again. After an hour of questioning, detectives tell Stephanie that she is under arrest for first-degree murder for killing Sherry.
Detectives tell her that her DNA was found on the swab taken from Sherry's arm, and they found it all these years later. So without a shred of forensic science doubt, Stephanie was Sherry's killer. In March 2012, Stephanie was convicted of Sherry's murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Before going to prison, she was a 27-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department. No other police officer was arrested in the case or have been found to have helped Stephanie get away with the murder. Since the conviction, Sherry's family has sued both the LAPD and Stephanie personally.
A preliminary ruling on the case against LAPD is currently pending as the department has argued that they are immune from these types of cases. The prosecutor assigned to the case regarded this as, quote, coming down to a bite mark, a bullet, a gun barrel, and a broken heart. The bite mark on Sherry's arm matches Stephanie's DNA.
The bullet used to shoot Sherry came from a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson, the same type of gun Stephanie reported stolen three weeks after the murder. The motive was simple, a broken heart. Stephanie couldn't allow John to be with another woman, so she killed her.
To share your thoughts on the murder of Sherry Rasmussen, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at Forensic Tales. Let me know what you think about this week's case. Also, to check out photos from the case, be sure to head to our website, ForensicTales.com. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday.
If you love the show, consider leaving us a positive review or tell friends and family about us. You can also help support the show through Patreon. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please join me next week. We'll have a brand new case and a brand new story to talk about. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.
Forensic Tales is a Rockefeller Audio production. The show is written and produced by me, Courtney Fretwell. For a small monthly contribution, you can gain access to bonus content and be one of the first to listen to new episodes. Or, if you simply want to support my show, head over to our Patreon page, patreon.com slash forensic tales.
You can also help support the show by leaving us a positive review and telling friends and family about us. Forensic Tales is a podcast made possible by our Patreon producers, Tony A, Nicole L, William R, David B, Sammy, Paula G, and Selena C.
If you'd like to become a producer of the show, head over to our Patreon page or send me an email, Courtney at ForensicTales.com to find out how you can become involved too. For a complete list of sources used in this episode, please visit ForensicTales.com. Please join me next week.
We release a new episode every Monday. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.