![]() In February, cold-case detectives revisited the case - one of thousands that remain unsolved. When told of the family’s allegations, Mayer declined to comment. The only things stolen, however, were the marriage license and Rasmussen’s car. Mayer left the department in 1991 still believing that Sherri Rasmussen had been killed during a burglary, he said. ![]() The retired detective said he never interviewed Lazarus. Mayer, however, contradicted Rasmussen’s recollections, saying he never discussed Lazarus with Rasmussen’s parents. Mayer said in an interview last week that Ruetten identified her as an “acquaintance.” And police sources say there is a passing reference to Lazarus in the case file. Eventually, about five years after the killing, they gave up and stopped calling.ĭetectives knew that Lazarus was the ex-girlfriend Rasmussen had spoken of. Often the parents were put on hold for up to 20 minutes or were hung up on, and at one point were told by a detective, “you should do yourselves a favor and move on with your lives,” Taylor said. When the plea to Gates went nowhere, Rasmussen and his wife kept trying, making calls to the Van Nuys police station, their attorneys said. Police familiar with the case have acknowledged the existence of the letter. Rasmussen grew so frustrated that about two years after the killing, he wrote a letter to then-Chief Daryl F. But they rebuffed the father’s claims, once telling him, “You’ve been watching too much TV,” Taylor said. Rasmussen had further conversations with the detectives over the next several months. He asked if they had identified her and examined her for scratches or other signs of the vicious struggle that police say preceded the murder, according to Taylor. Police say Lazarus, who had dated Ruetten, killed Sherri Rasmussen in a crime of passion. Stephanie Lazarus was arrested and charged with capital murder. Last week his suspicions were validated when Det. His information was ignored by police until this year when cold-case detectives reopened the homicide investigation. Then there was the call, days before she was beaten and shot to death in 1986, when Sherri Rasmussen said she believed the officer had been following her on city streets.Īll of this, Nels Rasmussen says, he told Los Angeles Police Department detectives in the days, months and years after his daughter’s slaying. He remembers the call when his daughter told him that she had found the officer, again in uniform, standing in the Van Nuys condo she shared with her new husband, John Ruetten. She told him the young female officer had shown up in uniform at the hospital where she worked and issued a chilling warning about her husband, “If I can’t have John, nobody can.” Jennifer Francis, the criminalist who found key evidence from the bite mark, unsuccessfully sued the City of Los Angeles, claiming she was pressured by police to favor certain suspects in this and other high-profile cases and was retaliated against when she brought this to the department's attention.Nels Rasmussen says he vividly remembers the calls from his daughter 23 years ago when she confided her fears that a jealous LAPD officer was out to harm her. Rasmussen's parents unsuccessfully sued the department over this and other aspects of the investigation. Some of the police files suggest that evidence that could have implicated Lazarus earlier in the investigation was later removed, perhaps by others in the LAPD. In 2015, the guilty verdict was upheld by the California Court of Appeal for the Second District of the state (which includes Los Angeles). She also alleged that the search warrant was improperly granted, her statements in an interview prior to her arrest were compelled and that evidence supporting the original case theory should have been admitted at trial. Lazarus appealed the conviction, claiming the age of the case and the evidence denied her due process. Lazarus was convicted of the murder in 2012 and is serving a sentence of 27 years to life for first-degree murder at the California Institution for Women in Corona. A DNA sample from a cup she had thrown away was matched to one from a bite on Rasmussen's body that had remained in the files. Lazarus,ĭetectives who re-examined the cold case files in 2009 were eventually led to Lazarus, by then herself a detective. Rasmussen shortly before her 1985 wedding
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