Blaped Lapd News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

So it's, obviously, a battle. >> reporter: uphill battle does not begin to describe it. the cold case the detective opened on that bleary-eyed monday morning would lead him on a w chase of a lifetime and sha the foundations of the lapd. dates back to 1986 and a battle for the truth by the parents of ah young bride. >> we miss her every day. >> reporter: those parents are nells and loretta rasmussen. >> doesn't make any difference what day it is. it's pain that is always there. there's no cure for. >> reporter: who. would want to kill sherri rasmussen? she was hard working, caring, and popular ...

It was a bittersweet day. a 23-year-old cold case they believed had finally been cracked, but the prime suspect worked right beside them. for the rasmussen family stephanie's arrest brought back their memory of the original lapd. >> i think she was a police officer so they figured they would cover this one up. >> reporter: the family hired a prominent l.a. attorney john taylor who filed a lawsuit against detective lazarus and also the lapd claiming the department deliberately ignored crews that pointed to a fellow officer. >> the earlier missteps of lapd weren't missteps. they were intentional...

Shooting was the same type issued by the lapd said prosecutors and was the same caliber of lazarus' off-duty weapon, a .38 revolver she reported stolen two weeks after the murder. the real smoking gun was the bite mark dna found at the crime scene. >> dna was definitely the centerpiece of this case. this shows she was there. without the dna, they could not have placed her at the condo. >> reporter: and the statistics were staggering. 1.7 sextillion to one chance that the dna belonged to someone other than stephanie lazarus. the defense attorney aggressively attacked that dna evidence and insis...

The trail kept getting colder. in 1993 sherri's parents would pay for the bite mark for dna but the blaped lapd declined. >> she said we don't have a suspect. if we had a suspect we would have something to match. >> reporter: so the case set for another decade. in 2004 the lapd was conducting cases on cold cases and one of them was the murder of sherri rasmuss rasmussen. it took two months to find that saliva sample buried in a refrigeration unit. the saliva was still inside and the dna was just enough to blow this case wide open. >> in that lab report, it indicated that the suspect that

Welcome back. there was a lot at stake at the murder trial of lapd detective stephanie lazarus who stood accused of murdering sherri rasmussen. the prosecution believed the dna evidence was their smoking gun. but the defense said it was tainted. what would the jury believe? here is josh mankiewicz with the conclusion of "the smoking gun." >> reporter: it took 26 years to get here. a generation of false leads, missed opportunities. a family's frustration. a police department's nightmare. february 6th, 2012, the people versus stephanie lazarus finally began in a courtroom in downtown los angeles...