Episode Details

On February 24, 1986, 29-year-old Sherri Rasmussen was found brutally murdered inside the Van Nuys, California condominium she shared with her husband, John Ruetten.

She had been beaten, bitten, and shot three times in the chest.

Investigators initially believed Sherri had interrupted a burglary gone wrong. Her home appeared ransacked, and police focused on a theory involving unknown intruders. But Sherri’s family believed detectives were overlooking someone much closer to the victim: Stephanie Lazarus, an LAPD officer who had previously been romantically involved with Sherri’s husband.

The case went cold.

Years passed. Lazarus continued rising through the ranks of the Los Angeles Police Department while Sherri’s family continued pushing for answers.

Then forensic science changed everything.

DNA testing performed on saliva recovered from a bite mark on Sherri’s arm revealed that the killer was female—a discovery that challenged the original burglary theory. Cold-case investigators eventually turned their attention to Lazarus and secretly obtained her DNA from an item she discarded.

It matched.

In 2009, more than 23 years after Sherri Rasmussen was murdered, Stephanie Lazarus was arrested. In 2012, a jury convicted the veteran LAPD detective of first-degree murder, and she was sentenced to 27 years to life in prison.

The case also raised disturbing questions about the original investigation. How did detectives miss—or dismiss—the possibility that one of their own officers might have been involved? And could Sherri’s murder have been solved decades earlier if her family’s suspicions had been taken more seriously?

This is the true crime story of Sherri Rasmussen and Stephanie Lazarus—a love triangle, a murdered newlywed, a police officer hiding in plain sight, and a tiny piece of DNA that finally exposed a secret buried for more than two decades.

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