Jim Nutall News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Had bitten sherri rasmussen during the struggle was a female. >> reporter: a woman, not two male burglaries as the original detectives had suspected all those years. but it would take a for you more years before investigators began to understand what that crucial dna test result meant. it was now 2009 and the case was cold once again. 23 years it sat with no apparent leads, no suspects, and no answers for the rasmussen family. then came that monday after the super bowl when detective jim nutall started peeking through that old case file and made a remarkable discovery. the dna test that had be...

They could close the deal by somehow secretly obtaining lazarus' dna. she was tailed for days, as undercover cops waited for her to leave some small piece of herself behind. finally at a retail store, it happened. lazarus ordered a soft drink and drank it. a traipse of her saliva was on the straw which she then tossed in the trash. it was more than enough for testing. two dna samples separated by two decades. 48 hours later, jim nutall got call from his supervisor. >> it was real simple. he just said, "it's a match." >> reporter: good feeling, bad feeling? >> surreal. that moment, that call, n...

Perhaps at least some of them may have had a motive to harm her. three of them we eliminated almost immediately for insufficient motive. >> reporter: but there were still two names left. one of them was a coworker. >> a woman named debra that worked with sherri rasmussen in the hospital. this person of interest was later placed by sherri rasmussen in an official capacity and problems followed almost immediately after that. >> reporter: so there was bad blood wean them? >> there was a motive. >> reporter: debra had moved to northern california. nutall asked local law enforcement to watch her an...

Lazarus had the means, the motive, the opportunity to kill sherry rasmussen. she seemed obsessed with john and jealous of his new wife. was she the came person was the scary eyes stalking sherri. >> reporter: sherri's purse and all of its contents stolen during the crime were recovered soon after the murder except for one item inside. >> the only thing to this day that was never recovered was john and sherri's marriage certificate. >> reporter: after three months of intense secretive investigation, nutall's team needed one last piece of evidence that would either clear detective lazarus or inc...

Cops tracked down debra and secretly scooped up a sample of her trash which contained dna. it was sent to the crime lab in l.a. for analysis and 72 hours later, came an answer. >> she was not the donor of the dna profile from the bite. >> reporter: that left just one possible suspect, number five on the list, john ruetten's ex-girlfriend stephanie lazarus. nutall called the rasmussens. >> we came home and there was a message on our phone from a detective that they wanted to talk to us. i thought oh, yeah, right. i thought it was just another false hope. >> reporter: this is detective nutall? >...