An everyday morning<\/strong><\/h2>\nThe morning of February 24th<\/sup> was like any other morning in the Reutten couple\u2019s condo. John woke up early to go to work and Sherri was staying home because she was feeling a bit sick. John Reutten called Sherri Rasmussen on the phone at least three times from work that day, he wanted to know if she was feeling any better, but Sherri didn\u2019t pick up. He tried to leave messages for her but the answering machine seemed to be disconnected. John also called her office in case she felt better and had decided to go to work but her secretary told him she hasn\u2019t seen Sherri that day. He thought it was a bit weird but decided to just wait until he was back home. Around 6.pm, when John gets home, he saw the garage door open, broken glass all over the garage entrance floor and Sherri\u2019s BMW was gone. With a bad feeling he goes in the living room just to find his wife\u2019s body on the floor. Sherri had been killed.<\/p>\nA botched burglary theory stopped them from seeing the suspect had been under their noses all along <\/strong><\/h2>\nWhen Los Angeles police officers and some fire men arrived to the scene, they found that Sherri Rasmussen had been shot three times in her chest with a 38 calibre gun. Apart from the bullet wounds, Sherri also had several bruises all over her swollen face and over her body. She even had a very distinctive bite-mark on her left inner forearm.\u00a0 CSI people used a rape kit and took some samples from Sherri\u2019s body including a saliva sample from the bite-mark.<\/p>\n
Since there had been some robberies around that area and the crime scene was such a mess with things thrown around, detective Lyle Mayer\u2019s theory of what had happened was a robbery gone wrong. He said the killers were probably a couple of Latin American men known in the area. Part of his theory was that Sherri Rasmussen fought back and tried to take the attackers\u2019 gun, there\u2019s when one of them bit her. He even said that, to avoid making noise, the killer had put a blanket around his gun before shooting Sherri. What was weird about this theory is that nothing else but Sherri\u2019s BMW and the couple\u2019s Marriage certificate was stolen. There was a jewellery box and other things of value but whoever killed Sherri decided to leave those things behind and take her Marriage License instead.<\/p>\n
Sherri\u2019s BMW was found some blocks away. The car was in perfect conditions it even had the keys in. Police officers started interviewing Sherri\u2019s husband, family and friends to see if they could think of somebody who would want to hurt Sherri Rasmussen. John couldn\u2019t think of anyone and he himself wasn\u2019t a suspect because they had been married for just three months, so not enough time to build grudges, they had a short but happy married life. There wasn\u2019t any insurance under Sherri\u2019s name that could raise any red flag against John either. When they asked Sherri\u2019s family and friends, they all mentioned a woman named Stephanie, who was John\u2019s ex-girlfriend. They told police detective that Stephanie would stalk and harrass Sherri all the time because she couldn\u2019t get over the fact that John had chosen her as his wife, she blamed Sherri for her broken heart. They also said that Sherri did not mention this to John because she thought she could fix it on her own.\u00a0 But Stephanie was not going to let it go and was convinced that Sherri was her Romantic rival, and wanted her to know that If she couldn’t have John then nobody would. You would assume all these things were reason enough to investigate this person or have her as the main suspect at least but It seems like Los Angeles police didn\u2019t find anything strange in this stories whatsoever. Detective Lyle Meyer decided to keep his line of thinking; there wasn\u2019t a real reason to look into Stephanie Lazarus.<\/p>\n
Back in 1986, DNA testing wasn\u2019t at its best. So, even when the police had a saliva sample as forensic evidence from the bite-mark on Sherri\u00b4s arm, they couldn\u2019t really use it. Years went by and the case would remain cold. Sherri Rasmussen\u2019s parents Nels Rasmussen and Loretta Rasmussen kept asking the authorities to look into Sherri\u2019s stalker Stephanie without positive answers. On 2001, the Cold Case Homocide Unit was created but it would be three years later that Criminalist Jeniffer Francis took a look into Sherri\u2019s forensic evidence case. DNA evidence testing was better at that time and they were able to test the sample found on Sherri\u2019s arm. Francis was surprised when the results of the test confirmed the bite on Sherri\u2019s arm was made by a woman. According to the first theory, Sherri\u2019s possible killer was supposed to be a man. So she knew they had been looking in the wrong direction all along. This seemed to be great news but even when they knew DNA belonged to a female; it didn\u2019t have a match when running it through CODIS, the national law-enforcement database. So the case was left unsolved again.<\/p>\n
Many years after, in 2009, and after crime rate in Los Angeles had gone lower, the police had more time to dedicate to cold cases. This is when Detectives Jim Nuttall and Peter Barba take Sherri\u2019s case and start their investigation. After realizing the DNA sample belonged to a female suspect and looking into the list of five women who were named during the case first period, Nuttall and Barba recognized one name: Stephanie Lazarus; who at the moment was a decorated officer in the Commercial Crimes Division, she had been a part of the force since the early 1980\u2019s. The two detectives also remembered that back in the 80\u2019s most LAPD officers chose a 38 calibre as their off duty gun. This was interesting because Sherri Rasmussen had been killed with a .38 gun. Jim Nuttall and Peter Barba still needed to compare Lazarus\u2019 DNA to the sample from the bite swab in the system.<\/p>\n
Seeing that both Stephanie and her husband, Scott Young, were a part of LAPD, detectives Nuttall and Barba decided to keep the investigation as a secret, referring to Stephanie as \u00a8suspect number five\u00a8, and started shadowing her to try and get a DNA sample from her. They finally succeeded when, after having lunch with her daughter, Stephanie dropped the soda cup and straw she had been zipping from to the garbage. The police picked it up and immediately took it to be tested for DNA. \u00a8We\u2019ve got a match!\u00a8 Yes, Stephanie DNA sample was the same as the one found on Sherri\u2019s left arm bite-mark.<\/p>\n
Stephanie Lazarus<\/strong><\/h2>\nStephanie Lazarus attended UCLA in 1978, there\u2019s where she would meet John Ruetten. They both loved being in shape and practicing basketball so became friends and eventually friends with benefits. Even though this on and off relationship lasted for a good amount of years, they never made it formal. They were never boyfriend and girlfriend.<\/p>\n
After graduating from UCLA, Stephanie applied to the police academy and would eventually join the LAPD and John got a job with a hard drive manufacturer. The relationship with John continued somehow but they would see each other less often every time. Stephanie missed John so in 1984, she threw him a surprise party for his 25th<\/sup> birthday. Stephanie\u2019s heart would be broken when she learned John was in a pretty serious relationship with another woman; Sherri Rasmussen and that he planned on marrying her.<\/p>\nStephanie Lazarus, part of the LAPD at that moment, decided to start stalking and harassing Sherri Rasmussen. She would call her, follow her, even visit her at home. In Stephanie\u2019s head she was in a love triangle but nothing further from reality.<\/p>\n