The Murder of Sherri Rasmussen An anthology of True Crime

By Jessi Dillard

A collection of True Crime Stories headlined by the murder of Sherri Rasmussen 
For 23 years, no one knew how Sherri Rasmussen had died. 

In February of 1986, the body of the 29 year old woman was discovered in the Van Nuys, California, apartment she shared with her husband, John Ruetten. She'd been beaten, according to the medical examiner, and shot three times in what appeared to have been some kind of struggle. 

Initially, the Los Angeles Police Department determined that the killing was simply the result of a burglary gone wrong – whoever had killed Sherri Rasmussen likely hadn't intended to do so. And with that, the crime went unsolved as two decades passed. 

Rasmussen's family, however, refused to believe that her murder was nothing more than a botched home invasion – the family, Rasmussen's father in particular, believed that a prime suspect in the case was an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department by the name of Stephanie Lazarus. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trellis Publishing
• Release date: Jun 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201131098

Book preview

THE MURDER OF SHERRI RASMUSSEN

JESSI DILLARD

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SHERRI RASMUSSEN

MAGGIE YOUNG

MANLING WILLIAMS

PAULINE ZILE

CHRISTINE FALLING

SUSAN SMITH

KATHLEEN FOLBIGG

AMELIA DYER

GENENE JONES

MARCIA KELLY

For 23 years, no one knew how Sherri Rasmussen had died.

In February of 1986, the body of the 29 year old woman was discovered in the Van Nuys, California, apartment she shared with her husband, John Ruetten. She’d been beaten, according to the medical examiner, and shot three times in what appeared to have been some kind of struggle.

Initially, the Los Angeles Police Department determined that the killing was simply the result of a burglary gone wrong – whoever had killed Sherri Rasmussen likely hadn’t intended to do so. And with that, the crime went unsolved as two decades passed.

Rasmussen’s family, however, refused to believe that her murder was nothing more than a botched home invasion – the family, Rasmussen’s father in particular, believed that a prime suspect in the case was an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department by the name of Stephanie Lazarus.

In 2009, when detectives re-examined the cold case files, they found themselves investigating a fellow detective – Lazarus, by that time, had worked her way up in the department. And in 2012, Lazarus was convicted of the murder of Sherri Rasmussen, sentenced for 27 years to life for the crime of first-degree murder.

Really torn up

While studying medical engineering as an undergraduate at the University of California at Los Angeles, from 1978 to 1982, San Diego native John Ruetten went on the occasional date with another student, Stephanie Lazarus. A political science major who hailed from Simi Valley, Lazarus was a fellow resident of Dykstra Hall and an athlete, like Ruetten – she played basketball with the UCLA junior varsity women’s team.

Ruetten and Lazarus had sex fairly regularly, but Ruetten didn’t think of their relationship as anything more than necking and fooling around. But Lazarus was growing more and more fond of Ruetten. She’d often steal his clothing while he was in the shower, or take pictures of him while he was sleeping, naked. It was all in good fun, Ruetten thought.

Even after they’d graduated, the two continued to meet up to have sex – somewhat intermittently, however, as their separate lives began to get in the way. Ruetten took a job working with a hard-drive manufacturing company named Micropolis, and Lazarus had put in an application to work with the city’s police academy – and by 1983, she’d become a uniformed officer for the LAPD.

But then, Ruetten met Sherri Rasmussen. She’d gone to Loma Linda University and was already working her way up in her own career, in critical care nursing. By the age of 16, Rasmussen had started college, and by the time she was in her late 20s, she’d earned the position of director of nursing at the Glendale Adventist Medical Centre. Her days were often spent doing presentations or teaching classes for fellow nurses or nursing students.

Their relationship began without Lazarus’ knowledge. When Lazarus organized a surprise party for Ruetten’s 25th birthday, she’d had no idea that not only had he been dating other women, but that he seemed to have begun a serious relationship with Sherri Rasmussen – and when she realized the depth of their involvement, she became increasingly despondent.

I’m truly in love with John, and the past year has really torn me up, she wrote in a letter to Ruetten’s mother in August of 1985. I wish it didn’t end the way it did, and I don’t think I’ll ever understand his decision.

She also wrote about the difficulty she was having with the situation in her own journal – I really don’t feel like working. I found out that John is getting married. And when she went to visit Ruetten to put her mind at ease about his engagement, he had sex with her. Years later, Ruetten testified that he’d slept with Lazarus again to give her closure, and claimed it was the only time he and Lazarus had sex before Rasmussen was killed. After Lazarus got home that night, she woke up another officer she shared a room with to commiserate about her depression.

Lazarus wasn’t ready to give up on Ruetten yet, however. During the time that Rasmussen and Ruetten were engaged, she showed up at the apartment the couple shared to request that Ruetten wax her skis – an odd request, Rasmussen felt, especially considering Lazarus had stopped by wearing flattering workout clothes. Although Rasmussen objected, Ruetten complied with Lazarus’ request and she left, saying she would be back in a couple of days to pick up the waxed skis.

Feeling somewhat insecure, Rasmussen asked Ruetten after Lazarus left if their relationship was, in fact, over – and Ruetten managed to convince her that he and Lazarus were, at that point, nothing more than friends. When Lazarus came by to pick up her skis, she was armed and in uniform – and Ruetten had just left for work.

When Ruetten got home, Rasmussen told him about the unnerving encounter she’d had with Lazarus, and pleaded with him to ask that she stop coming by the condo. Ruetten continued to argue that there was nothing for Rasmussen to feel uncomfortable about, and told her she should simply ignore Lazarus’ behaviour.

According to Rasmussen’s father, Nels, Lazarus later went to Rasmussen’s office to threaten her. She told Rasmussen that things between she and Ruetten weren’t over, and said, If I can’t have John, no one else will. And, shortly before her death, Rasmussen told her father that she was afraid that Lazarus was stalking her outside of her home.

Still, she married John Ruetten in November of 1985 – and just three months later, she was dead.

In nothing more than a bathrobe

The morning of February 24, 1986, started out just like any other. Ruetten departed the Van Nuys condominium before his wife, as he usually did. However, Rasmussen wasn’t sure she’d even be going to work that day. She was scheduled to present a motivational speech – a tactic she felt was ineffective for employees. Instead, she told Ruetten, she might just call in sick, with the excuse of a minor back injury she’d suffered the day before, during an aerobics workout.

A neighbour noticed at around 9:45 a.m. that the couple’s garage door had been left open, but there was no car visible inside. Ruetten placed the first of a number of calls to the house that went unanswered that day at approximately 10 a.m., just fifteen minutes later. Another call was placed by Rasmussen’s sister, but also went unanswered.

At around noon, the same neighbour was visited by two men who she believed were employed as gardeners at the condominium complex. They left her and her husband with a purse they’d discovered on the property, which turned out had belonged to Rasmussen. And a half hour later, at approximately 12:30 p.m., a maid overheard what she said sounded like a fight between two people, while she was cleaning in a nearby suite – followed by the sound of something falling.

When Ruetten came home from work that evening, the first thing he noticed was that his garage door was already open. Then, he saw the broken glass littered across his driveway. Missing from the scene, however, was the new BMW he’d purchased for Rasmussen as an engagement gift.

He found it difficult to believe that she would have left in the car herself, since she’d told him that morning that she’d been planning to stay home from work – and typically, if she changed her plans, she would have let him know. And the answering machine in their house hadn’t ever been turned on, even though they both usually activated it if they were leaving the house with no one else home.

Still, Ruetten wasn’t prepared to see what awaited him inside the house. Rasmussen’s body was stretched out on the living room floor – she’d been shot three times. There had evidently been some kind of struggle, he noticed.

A porcelain vase had been broken over Rasmussen’s head before the shooting had taken place, and there was a bloody handprint near the panic button on the condo’s burglar alarm. A credenza had fallen over, and it looked like someone had even tried to bind Rasmussen, during the fight. Defensive wounds were visible on her body, and a bite mark on Rasmussen’s arm was swabbed by the investigating criminalist who attended the crime scene.

A dark bruise on her face seemed like it may have come from the muzzle of a gun, but the shots had been fired through a quilt, it appeared – likely in an attempt to muffle the unmistakable sound of the weapon discharging.

The detectives from the LAPD who responded initially determined that the killing had been the result of a botched burglary. Based on the clothes Rasmussen had been wearing, it was clear that she hadn’t been anticipating any company – she’d been dressed in nothing more than a bathrobe, nightgown, and underwear. The perpetrator also seemed to have been in the middle of stealing the couple’s electronic equipment when Rasmussen had entered the room, which explained why the jewelry had been left behind and why the vehicle had been stolen as a getaway car.

A week later, when the BMV was found abandoned, no new evidence was uncovered with it that could help police with their investigation. The only thing that seemed to be missing from the couple’s condo was, strangely, their marriage license. And, although the maid had reported hearing the sounds of a fight coming from a nearby unit that could have easily been the Ruettens’, she didn’t remember hearing anything that sounded like gunshots. In fact, she said, she’d assumed the screaming and yelling was nothing more than a typical domestic dispute, and didn’t even bother reporting it to the police.

Evaluating the evidence

Possible suspects were considered, but seemed to not have been taken very seriously. Lead detective Lyle Mayer quickly determined that the distraught Ruetten was not responsible for the death of his wife – shortly after Rasmussen was killed, Ruetten quit his job and left Los Angeles for good. He eventually remarried, and had seemingly moved on from the traumatic incident.

Rasmussen’s father Nels and his wife, Loretta, described to Mayer how Lazarus had been harassing their daughter, and Mayer had apparently made note of the incidents Nels relayed, but Ruetten had told the police that he and his wife had never talked about any problems with Lazarus.

The investigators remained convinced that the crime had occurred during a burglary – especially since one had been reported later in the area where the couple’s condo was located. One of the suspects in the robbery had been spotted with a gun, a gun that could have been a .38 caliber like the one used to shoot Rasmussen three times in her own living room using bullets later identified as Federal .38J Plus-P, according to several experts.

The bite mark did cause a bit of confusion, specifically for Mayer’s partner, Steve Hooks. A bite sustained during a struggle is commonly inflicted by a female assailant – but the typical burglar is male. But, since there have been reported cases of men biting opponents during a fight, as well, police were reluctant to stray from the theory that the murder had happened during a home invasion.

And so, the crime was ascribed to the burglars who had robbed another area home – and, although the Rasmussen family offered a reward for information leading to the capture of the assailants and the media continued following the story, the suspects remained at large. With mounting violence as a result of gang wars and the epidemic levels of crack use happening in Los Angeles at that time, the LAPD was unable to spend much time working on the case.

According to the Rasmussen family, the detectives who worked at the Van Nuys branch were typically unhelpful whenever they called to check up on the investigation – usually, they would either hang up, or leave them on hold indefinitely. About a year after Rasmussen’s death, her family held a press conference where they repeated their offer of a reward and pleaded for the police to take more action into the seemingly abandoned investigation.

Nels even sent a letter to the chief of the LAPD at that time, Darryl Gates, and presented the possibility that Lazarus was somehow connected to the murder – possibly, had even committed it herself. However, detectives seemed unimpressed with his theories, and responded that he watch[ed] too much television. Still, Nels didn’t give up publicizing his reward, and eventually helped create a segment inspired by Rasmussen’s death for a short lived television series called Murder One.

It was difficult for Nels to accept the conclusion the police had come to – that his daughter had been killed during a botched burglary. Sherri Rasmussen had been six feet tall, with a broad frame, and had been relatively fit at the time of her death. In his opinion, anyone attempting to overpower her would have been in for an intense struggle.

Mayer had also revealed to Nels that according to the timeline the LAPD officers had been able to piece together, the events that led to his daughter’s death had transpired over the course of approximately an hour and a half – an awfully long time for burglars to remain in the home, if all they’d been after were specific items of value. Additionally, a quilt had been used in an attempt to muffle sound of the shot to Rasmussen’s chest at close range, which Nels believed was an indication that the killing was not, in fact, an inadvertent consequence of a difficult struggle, but a planned, deliberate act.

When Mayer retired, his notes about the case were passed on to a new detective. However, the detective who’d been assigned Rasmussen’s file was doubtful about the potential of uncovering any new leads, and told Nels he wouldn’t be following up on the notes Mayer had provided. In 1993, when DNA technology became widely available, Nels offered to pay to have the evidence from his daughter’s murder scene tested. But he was once again rejected – the police needed to have a suspect in mind in order to proceed with the expensive DNA testing process, he was informed.

In 1989, Mayer’s notes revealed, Ruetten and Lazarus had briefly reconnected. She’d reached out to him to verify that he was absolutely sure there hadn’t been any evidence discovered to link her to Rasmussen’s death.

Lazarus had continued working with the LAPD, and eventually launched her own private investigation firm, which she called Unique Investigations. By 1993, she’d worked with the department’s internal affairs and D.A.R.E. divisions, and finally earned the ranking of detective. She married another LAPD officer just three years later, and the couple adopted a daughter. Together, the family relocated to her hometown of Simi Valley, and she took a position