Sherri Rasmussen

Case background and investigation

Sherri Rasmussen, 29, was director of nursing at Glendale Adventist Medical Center in Los Angeles. On February 24, 1986, her husband, John Ruetten, came home to the Van Nuys condominium the couple shared and found her dead. They had married only a few months earlier. According to NBC Los Angeles and NBC News, she had been shot three times in the chest and struck on the head, and she had a bite mark on her arm.

Detectives at the time treated the killing as a burglary that had been interrupted, and no suspect was identified. According to NBC Los Angeles, Rasmussen's father long maintained that police should have looked at a female police officer who had previously been involved with Ruetten and who, he had been told, had threatened his daughter.

In 2004 an LAPD cold case unit reopened the file and found that a swab had been taken from the bite mark. Testing showed that the DNA came from a woman other than the victim, which did not fit the burglary theory, but the profile did not identify anyone at that stage. In 2009 Van Nuys homicide detectives reviewing cold cases focused on women in Rasmussen's life. According to NBC Los Angeles, they eliminated the other possible suspects through interviews and DNA testing, then obtained a sample from a cup discarded by LAPD detective Stephanie Lazarus. It matched the bite-mark swab.

Lazarus, then 49 and an art-theft detective with more than 25 years on the force, was arrested at LAPD headquarters on June 5, 2009, and charged with murder, according to KPCC (LAist). At trial, prosecutors said the bullets came from a .38 caliber revolver of the type Lazarus had bought through the Police Academy shortly before joining the department. On March 8, 2012, a jury convicted her of first-degree murder, and on May 11, 2012, she was sentenced to 27 years to life in prison. Her conviction was upheld on appeal in 2015.

At a parole hearing on November 16, 2023, Lazarus admitted the killing for the first time, and a panel found her suitable for parole, according to NBC News. After Governor Gavin Newsom requested a review by the full parole board, the board rescinded that grant on October 2, 2024, according to LAist. On February 12, 2025, a commissioner denied parole again, finding that her account of the attack did not match the evidence, according to CBS Los Angeles. She is next eligible for a parole hearing in 2028.