i'm looking forward to this trial, which is scheduled for the spring. she was an LAPD Detective, and stands accused of murdering a young woman who married her former love interest. it's a real soap opera. she threw it all away for a man. it's going to be a riveting trial. lots more to read at LA TIMES if anyone is interested.
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.
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.
"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.
"Am I on 'Candid Camera' or something? This is insane. This is absolutely crazy. 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.
Lazarus has pleaded not guilty. She remains in custody on $10-million bail awaiting trial, which is expected to start in the spring. At the hearing Friday, Judge Robert J. Perry denied a request by her attorney, Mark Overland, to keep the transcript out of the case.
On Monday, Overland downplayed the significance of the questioning. "There's nothing in the interview from which any reasonable juror could conclude that she committed this crime," he said.
A lawyer representing the Rasmussen family disagreed. "That's the interview that LAPD should have conducted in 1986. It would have led to answers for the Rasmussens rather than letting them hang in wind," said attorney John C. Taylor.
The killing of Rasmussen, a 29-year-old hospital nursing director, was one of thousands of homicides from the 1980s that went unsolved. She was found bludgeoned and shot multiple times in the Van Nuys townhouse she shared with John Ruetten, whom she had recently married.
Lazarus was a childhood friend of Ruetten's. The two had begun a romantic relationship while attending UCLA but broke up around the time Ruetten struck up a relationship with Rasmussen. 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.
But 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 detective never seriously pursued Lazarus, who had recently joined the LAPD.
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. Cold-case detectives reopened the investigation and learned of Lazarus' relationship with Ruetten. Police began tailing their colleague and eventually collected a plastic utensil or other object with her saliva on it. Police and prosecutors say DNA from that object matched the crime scene evidence.
After the match was made, LAPD officials devised a plan to arrest Lazarus. Around 6:40 on the morning on June 5, 2009, Det. Daniel Jaramillo from the LAPD's Robbery-Homicide Division approached Lazarus at her desk in the department's headquarters and asked her to accompany him downstairs to the department's jail facility, where she would not be able to bring her gun. He told Lazarus he needed her help interrogating a man who claimed to have information on stolen art, which was Lazarus' specialty.
Jaramillo brought Lazarus into a private room in the jail facility where Jaramillo's partner, Det. Greg Stearns, was waiting. After a few minutes of small talk, Jaramillo told Lazarus she was not there to question a suspect about art.
"We've been assigned a case that we've been looking at," he said. "Do you know John Ruetten?"
For roughly the next hour, the detectives pressed Lazarus for information about her relationship with Ruetten and any encounters she had with Rasmussen.
Initially, Lazarus said she couldn't recall whether she had ever met Rasmussen, but soon acknowledged they had met. "Now that you're bringing it up, I think she worked at a hospital somewhere. And, yeah, I may have met her at a hospital. I may have talked to her once or twice, or more," she said.
The detectives pushed ahead, questioning Lazarus on whether she ever had gone to Rasmussen's home. Lazarus did not give a definitive answer, repeatedly saying she could not recall. Jaramillo grew more pointed in his questions, asking Lazarus if she ever had fought with Rasmussen and harping on her when she insisted, "If it happened, I honestly don't remember it. That's all I can tell you."
"You'd remember that, right? That would be pretty specific and, you know, traumatic," Jaramillo pushed back.
On several occasions, Lazarus asked the detectives the reason for the questioning. They repeatedly assuaged her concern by telling her they were just doing their jobs and saying that they had brought her down to the jail to spare her the embarrassment of being questioned in the office.
When it became obvious to her that she was a suspect, Lazarus told Stearns and Jaramillo that they were "starting to make me uncomfortable" and asked whether she needed a lawyer. They told her she was free to leave if she wanted. When Lazarus did leave, she was intercepted by other detectives waiting in the hallway.
As Lazarus sat handcuffed, the transcript showed, one detective loosened her handcuffs and Stearns told her they would put her jacket over the handcuffs to conceal her arrest.
At the end, as she was waiting to be booked, Lazarus struggled to remove her wedding band. An unidentified person offered her advice: "Saliva works wonders."
By Joel Rubin and Andrew Blankstein, Los Angeles Times
photo of victim and her husband &
photos of Lazarus.
Stephanie Lazarus, the Los Angeles Police Department detective accused of murdering the wife of a love interest, pined for the man and grew deeply upset when he did not return her affection, according to court testimony Tuesday.
Prosecutors allege that Lazarus, a 25-year LAPD veteran, beat and shot Sherri Rae Rasmussen to death in February 1986, three months after the woman married John Ruetten, whom Lazarus had dated shortly before.
Lazarus was arrested in June, 23 years after the killing, when cold-case detectives reopened the dormant investigation and linked her to the crime through DNA tests on saliva taken from a bite mark on the victim.
On the second day of Lazarus' preliminary hearing, prosecutors called the detective's friends and colleagues to testify about the apparent heartache she suffered over Ruetten's decision to marry Rasmussen.
The testimony included recollections by Michael Hargreaves, an LAPD officer and roommate, who told about the night in the fall of 1985 when Lazarus woke him up crying and upset that Ruetten had broken up with her and become engaged. And Jayme Weaver, a former LAPD officer who worked with Lazarus, described the day Lazarus showed her a set of lock-picking tools and told her she was boning up on how to use them.
The portrayal of Lazarus as a woman desperately in love was bolstered by excerpts from a journal she kept at the time that were read aloud in court. In one entry, she wrote about waiting for 30 minutes for Ruetten to emerge from a restaurant after spotting his car in a parking lot.
During questioning of one of the original investigators on the case, Lazarus' attorney focused on a bloody hand print left on a closet door in the Van Nuys town house where Rasmussen was slain.
He asked the detective whether police had tested a sample of the blood from the print. The detective said he did not recall.
Attorney Mark Overland did not pursue the line of questioning, but should the case go to trial, he is expected to raise the notion that the blood came not from Lazarus but from some unknown killer.
Lazarus sat quietly before Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert Perry with one hand shackled to her chair. She smiled briefly a few times at her husband, who is also an LAPD detective; her mother; and other family members sitting in the courtroom.
If ordered to stand trial by Perry -- which is expected -- and convicted, Lazarus could face the death penalty.
Sitting next to Lazarus' family were Rasmussen's parents. They have been publicly critical of the detective work done at the time of the killing, saying police ignored information they provided and other evidence that should have made Lazarus an obvious suspect.
Homicide detectives broke open the two-decade-old case when DNA tests on a saliva sample taken from a bite mark on Rasmussen's forearm showed that it belonged to a woman, disproving the theory police had at the time that she had been killed by two men.
Detectives retraced the investigation, once again interviewing Rasmussen's parents and Ruetten, who led them to Lazarus.
On the evening of Feb. 24, 1986, LAPD homicide detectives found Sherri Rae Rasmussen's badly beaten body on the living room floor of her Van Nuys town house with wounds from three .38-caliber bullets to her chest.
Weeks later, Stephanie Lazarus, a young Los Angeles police officer, called the Santa Monica Police Department to report that someone had broken into her car on 2nd Street, blocks from the pier. A gym bag had been stolen, she said. In it were clothes, some cassettes, a few dollars and her personal .38-caliber snub-nosed revolver, according to several LAPD and Santa Monica police sources familiar with the investigation.
The slaying and the lost gun remained unconnected for more than 20 years until February, when LAPD detectives reopened the investigation into Rasmussen's killing and turned their attention on Lazarus, herself a respected LAPD detective.
Now, with Lazarus in custody, investigators believe the missing gun is the weapon used to kill the 29-year-old nurse. Lazarus, they believe, threw the weapon away -- possibly tossing it into the Pacific -- and made up the story of the break-in to cover her tracks, sources said.
The overlooked theft report represents another missed opportunity by the original detectives who failed to link Lazarus to the crime 23 years ago. Lazarus had had a romantic relationship with Rasmussen's husband before their marriage and allegedly had threatened the victim shortly before the killing.
Lazarus, 49, was charged this week with premeditated murder. Prosecutors said they would decide later whether to seek the death penalty. Her arrest stunned LAPD colleagues who have found it hard to accept that one among them could have harbored such a secret for so long.
Lazarus' attorney, Mark Pachowicz, said he had not yet received any information from prosecutors regarding the allegedly stolen gun and expressed frustration over learning about it from reporters. He declined to comment further.
On the day she was killed, Rasmussen stayed home from her job as nursing director at Glendale Adventist Hospital after straining her back in an aerobics workout, family and police have said. Her husband, John Ruetten, left for work that morning. A maid working in a nearby condo heard loud screams and noises coming from Rasmussen's unit around noon but did not call police, according to multiple police sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case.
Ruetten discovered his wife's body when he returned home early that evening. It was a gruesome scene that told of a desperate struggle, sources said: Rasmussen's head had been bludgeoned. Wounds on her wrist and cords on the floor indicated she had been tied up. A thick robe with bullet holes in it was close by, which police suspect the killer used to muffle the sound of gunshots.
Sometime in mid-March of 1986, sources say, Lazarus contacted Santa Monica police to report the theft. A report was taken, but the weapon was never found. A Santa Monica police official acknowledged the existence of the report and confirmed its contents, but declined to provide a copy, citing the ongoing investigation.
Though modern computer databases that track gun registration and stolen weapons made the search easier for detectives this year, police said investigators at the time would have been able to learn about the theft report had they been focused on Lazarus as a possible suspect. Since her arrest, LAPD officials have been at a loss to explain why she was overlooked at the time, despite seemingly strong circumstantial evidence that pointed to her.
Rasmussen's father came forward this week with claims that, though he never knew Lazarus' name, he had told detectives repeatedly his daughter had been threatened several times in the months leading up to the killing by "an ex-girlfriend of [Ruetten's] who is an LAPD officer." In one of those confrontations, according to the father, Lazarus allegedly showed up in uniform at the hospital where Rasmussen worked and told her, "If I can't have John, nobody can."
The detectives learned Lazarus' identity from Ruetten but pursued another theory of how Rasmussen had been killed. Stereo equipment had been found stacked near Rasmussen's body and her car had been stolen from the garage, giving the appearance that she had interrupted burglars, according to police sources. When two armed men attempted a burglary in the area soon after, the detectives believed that the same men had killed Rasmussen, Lyle Mayer, the lead detective in the original case, said in a recent interview with The Times. Mayer acknowledged to The Times that he never interviewed Lazarus and still believed the burglary theory when he retired from the LAPD in 1991.
Ruetten has repeatedly declined to comment.
The trail leading to Lazarus was a long one. In 2003, the case was transferred to a newly formed unit responsible for investigating many of the 9,000 unsolved homicides that occurred in the city from the 1960s onward. Blood or saliva samples collected at the crime scene and thought to be from the killer were sent to a laboratory for DNA testing.
In 2005, after delays caused by large laboratory backlogs, the cold case unit received results showing that the fluids belonged to a woman. Detectives at the time failed to realize that the results disproved the theory that men had killed Rasmussen, and the case remained dormant until it was sent back to Van Nuys from the cold case unit. Early this year, as part of a regular review process, a detective was asked to re-examine the case. With the DNA results, and new interviews with Ruetten and Rasmussen's parents, suspicion fell quickly on Lazarus.
A highly secretive four-month investigation ensued in which an undercover officer followed Lazarus as she did errands and collected a utensil or cup she had discarded. Lazarus' DNA profile extracted from the saliva on the object matched DNA evidence from the crime scene, police allege.
On the day of her arrest, Lazarus was lured from her third-floor desk to the jail at LAPD's downtown headquarters under the ruse that a suspect had information to share with her. She is being held without bail.
victim on left.
parents of victim.
lazarus' speciality was art theft.
i've heard this 1986 case will finally go to trial in august.
the defense is challenging the integrity of the DNA, its storage and chain of custody. it appears to be the only direct evidence. but there is plenty of circumstantial evidence. i hope the DNA stands. (her saliva was found in bite on victim)
the state is not seeking death as originally reported.
the 48 Hours episode in above post is quite good if you find time to watch.
The Los Angeles trial of a veteran police detective charged with murdering her ex-lover's new wife in 1986 will likely begin next year.
Court officials said Wednesday that Los Angeles police Detective Stephanie Lazarus is expect to start sometime in January. Jury selection was slated to begin Oct. 24.
The 51-year-old Lazarus has pleaded not guilty to murdering Sherri Rasmussen, who was found shot three times in the chest at her Van Nuys townhouse.
I'm going to try and find time where I can actually sit and watch the 48 hours episode about her, but I have my little one still awake, so maybe tonight. This case is so interesting to me, and kind of crazy. I can't believe they didn't look at her more, what fools..
I remember seeing the 48 hour episode on this one. Glad they finally getting this one nailed down.
Did the 80's LA cops just suck, or were there that many problems out there? I spent most of 85 through 86 between LA and SF, the cops I met mostly seemed to have an attitude problem, but not all of them.
February 6, 2012
LOS ANGELES (KTLA) -- Opening statements were underway Monday in the murder trial of a former Los Angeles police detective accused of killing her ex-boyfriend's wife.
51-year-old Stephanie Lazarus is charged in the 1986 murder of Sherri Rasmussen.
Rasmussen, a 29-year-old hospital nursing director, was shot to death and brutally beaten in the Van Nuys condo she shared with her husband of a few months, John Ruetten.
Ruetten, who was Lazarus' ex-boyfriend, returned home from work on Feb. 24, 1986 to find Rasmussen dead in the living room.
Investigators say the 29-year-old had been shot three times with a .38-caliber gun, bitten and badly beaten.
On Monday morning, the prosecution told jurors the case boiled down to a bite mark, a bullet, a gun barrel and a broken heart -- key elements involved in Rasmussen's murder.
Prosecutors said her murder was committed by someone with specialized police knowledge, which Lazarus had.
She was trained in lock picking, finger printing (she left none behind) and how to silence a weapon, the prosecution argued.
They said the gun used in the murder was wrapped in a blanket and three shots were fired -- the first of which killed Rasmussen.
Those facts, combined with DNA evidence collected years later, point to Lazarus, the prosecution argued.
For more than 20 years, detectives had presumed Rasmussen was killed during a burglary.
Rasmussen's BMW was stolen, and some electronic equipment was found stacked at the foot of the stairs.
Lazarus was actually mentioned in the original case file because of her involvement with the victim's husband.
She had reportedly threatened Rasmussen at the hospital where she worked and at her home.
However, Lazarus was not pursued as a suspect at the time because investigators believed Rasmussen was killed by the same men who came close to killing another woman two months later in a botched burglary three blocks from her home.
No suspects were found and the case went cold for years.
The path that led detectives to suspect Lazarus began when DNA testing, which came into use in the years after the slaying, was done on the saliva sample collected from the bite mark.
The tests showed it had come from a woman, invalidating the initial theory that two male burglars had killed her.
Homicide detectives reopened the case in 2009 and started the investigation from scratch.
In a video frame grab from her interrogation in 2009, Stephanie Lazarus, left, is asked if she recalled hearing of the death of Sherri Rasmussen, right.
LOS ANGELES – Shocking death pictures of a murdered woman were shown to jurors in the trial of former police detective Stephanie Lazarus -- huge close-up portraits of the battered face of Sherri Rasmussen, who died 26 years ago.
One eye was swollen shut; the other wide open. Rasmussen's mouth was agape, her hands held up as if in a defensive posture. Prosecutors suggested that this mayhem was inflicted by Lazarus in a fit of rage after her lover married this woman instead of her.
Another photo of Rasmussen ethereal in a wedding gown, holding a bouquet of flowers provides the motive prosecutors allege.
"Sherri Rasmussen was wearing the gown that Stephanie Lazarus believed was hers," Deputy District Attorney Shannon Presby said Monday in his opening statement to jurors.
Prosecutors contend that while Lazarus was a young patrol officer 26 years ago, she murdered Rasmussen, the new bride of Lazarus’ ex-boyfriend, John Ruetten. Back then homicide investigators concluded the murder was the result of a botched burglary attempt. They based their decision on among other things, stereo equipment left at the bottom of a staircase and the drawer of a living room table that had been flung open. Other robberies in the same neighborhood solidified the burglary theory. Cops believed the suspects were two males.
Prosecutors on Tuesday, through a series of photographs tried to paint an entirely different picture. One of personal revenge. A photograph depicted speaker wires and a white blood stained rope that prosecutors believe Lazarus used to tie up Rasmussen. Another shows broken fingernails lying on the ground near the front door. Shelves on an entertainment center were collapsed. A lamp was knocked over. A ceramic vase crashed on the floor. It was a violent struggle. Prosecutors believe Sherri Rasmussen, who stood 5’10” tried desperately to defend herself from Lazarus whom she knew. Family members contend that Lazarus had harassed Rasmussen on many occasions while she was still alive.
John Reutten, right, married former hospital nursing director Sherri Rasmussen, 29, left, before Stephanie Lazarus, 51, allegedly killed her in 1986
LOS ANGELES—The weeping widower of a woman murdered 26 years ago has testified about a love triangle that prosecutors believe led his former lover -- then a police detective -- to kill his wife.
Defendant Stephanie Lazarus avoided the gaze of witness John Ruetten as he said Wednesday that he never considered Lazarus to be his girlfriend, even though they had a long sexual relationship.
Ruetten said Lazarus summoned him to her condo when she heard he became engaged to Sherri Rasmussen. He says Lazarus asked through tears that he have sex with her, which he did.
The gray-haired Ruetten says he now considers that a stupid move. He wept as he identified photos from his wedding.
February 25, 2012
Prosecutors in the murder trial of retired Los Angeles Police Department Det. Stephanie Lazarus rested their case Friday after three weeks of testimony, including that of a former FBI criminal profiler who said the killer staged part of the crime scene in an effort to throw off investigators.
Former LAPD detective Stephanie Lazarus showed no emotion Thursday afternoon as the jury's verdict was announced -- guilty of first-degree murder in the 1986 cold case slaying of her ex-boyfriend's wife.
She stood in the courtroom, her hands clasped in front of her. Her mother was escorted immediately out of the courtroom by friends and family.
She was a new bride -- married just three months when she was murdered. A murder that remained unsolved for decades in part because police mistakenly believed this was a routine break-in gone bad. But when detectives finally reopened their investigation, they discovered not a burglar, but a suspect whose trail led right to their own front door. And this week, more than a quarter-century after that young bride's murder, there is a verdict in the case. Josh Mankiewicz reports the story of “Internal Affairs.?
Los Angeles (CNN) -- A California judge sentenced a retired Los Angeles Police detective Friday to 27 years to life in prison for murdering her ex-boyfriend's wife in a jealous rage more than two decades ago.
Stephanie Ilene Lazarus, 52, was convicted of biting and shooting Sherri Rasmussen, 29, in her townhouse in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1986.
Lazarus, who rose through ranks of the Los Angeles Police Department and became a veteran art theft detective, could be eligible for parole in 22 years. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Perry gave Lazarus credit for time served in jail since her arrest at LAPD headquarters in June 2009.
A jury convicted her in March of first-degree murder.
Friday's sentence was the maximum under state law, prosecutors said.
Lazarus was charged with staging the crime scene to look like a burglary gone bad, and police long believed that Rasmussen was the victim of two male burglars.
The 1986 case went cold for years. Then it was reopened in 2004 and again in 2009, when DNA from a bite mark on the victim's arm came back as a match to the detective.
When Lazarus became a suspect, homicide detectives faced "special challenges as Lazarus' office was located next door to the detectives who were now investigating her," police said in a statement in March.
Rasmussen, a hospital nursing supervisor, was the new bride of John Ruetten, who had been Lazarus' college sweetheart. Married for just three months, Ruetten found his wife's body when he returned home from work. Rasmussen was brutally beaten and shot three times in the chest, authorities said.
Los Angeles County deputy prosecutors Shannon Presby and Paul Nunez submitted a written statement to the court prior to the sentencing, according to the prosecutor's office.
"Lazarus has never taken responsibility for her acts," the prosecutors wrote. "Lazarus has never expressed any regret or remorse for her actions. Lazarus' profound narcissism led her to kill and continues to motivate her denial of responsibility. This unrepentant selfishness poses a real and significant danger to any person whose interests conflict with Lazarus' egotistic desires."
Before the sentencing Friday, Rasmussen' mother, Loretta, told the court that her family has endured "extreme pain" over her daughter's murder.
"Every day we miss her laughter and her love," the mother told the judge.
In his remarks to the judge, a tearful Ruetten said Rasmussen was "just trying to save her own life" on the day of her murder.
"I just can't bear thinking about these moments," Ruetten told the court.
After the sentencing, Lazarus, manacled and dressed in a jail jumpsuit, waved and smiled to an apparent loved one in the courtroom gallery as she was escorted back to jail, carrying a folder.
More than two decades after a young nurse is found murdered in her home, police charge a detective with ties to the victim's husband with the crime.
10:00 - 11:00 PM CBS
it's going to be a riveting trial. lots more to read at LA TIMES if anyone is interested. 
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