proliferation of high-powered weapons and crack cocaine hitting the streets, a tremendous homicide rate and detectives are overwhelmed. in february of that year, cops had their hands full with an especially heinous crime in the san fernando valley that was sprawling. 29-year-old sherri rasmussen had been brutally beaten and shot in her own home. no suspects and few clues. then a couple of weeks later, a possible lead. former criminal variation yolanda mcclary was a consultant for nbc news. in the same vicinity, another woman was approached in her residence by two males at gun point, also involved a home invasion robbery situation, so police, early on, thought there was a possibility these two men might have something to do with the murder. a composite sketch was released of the 2 men. the dna collected at the crime scene was useless, at least right now. police collected it any way. why?
so, sherri is now wounded and she tries to get back downstairs? that would be correct. she is bleeding profusely and very wounded and she gets down these steps and actually it would appear she is trying to go out the door, or make it to that alarm box where there is a panic button. at that point, we believe that sherri went down in this foyer area, due to the fact that you could see marks in this, as well as broken fingernails from her hands. so, there is a tremendous fight going on? well, yes. the killer is actually dragging her back into this area and then the killer takes a vase and hits her in the head with it, knocking her out. then grabs the blanket, muzzles the gun, and does and does a close contact shot into the victim. so, that is an execution? that would be correct. as for a motive? it seemed to be in plain sight. just a few feet from sherri s body
much else to work with. no eyewitnesses. no usable fingerprints. no clear motive, except for theory that this was a botched burglary. by the level of violence that occurred in this residence, the theory was that it was a man or possibly two men that had entered the residence to do a burglary or a home invasion that had not gone completely wrong, murders the victimet to cover up the crime and then fled. gone wrong because sherri somehow surprised them. they panicked, shot her, and then fled. the theory seemed to make sense, especially since sherri had no apparent enemies, certainly no one who want to kill her, or so they thought. coming up. we went to sherri s office and said if she couldn t have john, nobody could. when dateline continues. for adventure.
may have had a motive to harm her. three of them we eliminated almost immediately for insufficient motive. but there were still two names left. one of them was a coworker. a woman named debra that worked with sherri rasmussen in the glendale hospital. this person of interest was later placed by sherri rasmussen in an official capacity and problems followed almost immediately after that. so, there was bad blood between them? there was a motive. debra had moved to northern california. nuttall asked local law enforcement to watch her and secretly try to snag a sample of her dna for comparison testing. in the meantime, nuttall learned more about the second woman. he contacted john ruetten, sherri s former husband and now remarried and living in san diego. john involved he had been involved in a dating relationship with stephanie lazarus. stephanie lazarus that was the other name on the short list of suspects. nuttall
rasmussen had waited a lot longer than that. the two of you feel confident? as confident as you can be with a jury. you never know what a jury is going to do. we the jury, in the above entitled action, find stephanie ilene lazarus guilty of the crime of murder of sherri rasmussen. we further find the murder was of the first-degree. the day the rasmussen family thought would never come, finally did. as their attorney john taylor explained the family is overwhelmingly relieved that, again, their suspicions and today s verdict reflects and confirms the identity of the person who killed their daughter, and the intent with which she did it. it s a tremendous relief. for the lazarus family, their wife, daughter, sister, and once decorated detective, was now a convicted killer.