“You’re accusing me of this,” she said walking out of the room. After an hour of questioning, she became irate. Disarming herself to go through security in the building’s basement jail, she met detectives who really took her to an interrogation room. It turned out, however, she was being led to questioning. In June 2009, Lazarus was summoned by her colleagues to what she thought was police business in LAPD headquarters. A DNA test matched the object and evidence found at the scene of the murder. An undercover cop was dispatched to trail Lazarus to get an object that would have her saliva on it. Looking through the original case file, they found a reference to Lazarus, now boasting a stellar career in the LAPD. That’s when detectives, who had more time on their hands since homicides in Los Angeles had declined sharply, returned to the case and tested blood and saliva samples thought to be from the killer - which were taken from a bite found on Rasmussen’s arm. Although Rasmussen’s father, Nels, pleaded with police to question Lazarus, they never did and she was never named as a suspect in the case, which went cold. She was even suspicious that the two former lovers had not completely ended their relationship. Rasmussen had complained to relatives that she was being stalked and harassed by Lazarus, then a 29-year-old LAPD patrol officer. The incident happened much in the same way as another recent unsuccessful robbery in the neighborhood. At the time, homicide detectives believed Rasmussen had been killed after walking in on a home invasion, basing their assumption on stereo equipment that was moved around in the apartment. In February 1986, Ruetten, an engineer, returned home from work to find his new bride shot to death in their home, which had been ransacked. prosecutors have started the trial of Stephanie Lazarus, a former member of the city’s police force who worked her way up from street patrols to its elite art theft unit, for the 1986 murder of Sherri Rasmussen, 29, a Van Nuys, Calif., nurse who had married Lazarus’ ex-boyfriend John Ruetten. Follow case of a Los Angeles-area murder that went decades without so much as a suspect has come to an ironic full circle that could result in a life sentence for a decorated, veteran LAPD detective.
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