Murder of Sherri Rasmussen

Sherri Rasmussen, the director of nursing at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, was found beaten and shot three times inside the Van Nuys, Los Angeles condominium she shared with her husband on February 24, 1986. The scene showed signs of a struggle, including a broken vase, a toppled credenza, and a bloody handprint near a burglar alarm's panic button, and a criminalist documented a bite mark on her arm. Investigators initially concluded that Rasmussen had surprised a burglar: stereo equipment had been stacked near the stairs, jewelry in plain view had not been taken, and her car was later found abandoned several miles away with no forced entry evident at the front door. The lead detective attributed these inconsistencies to two burglars rather than a planned attack, and no suspect was identified.

Before the marriage, Rasmussen's husband had periodically dated a fellow university student who went on to become a Los Angeles Police Department officer. Rasmussen told her father that the officer had confronted her at work, had let herself into the couple's condominium more than once while in uniform, and appeared to be following her on the street in the weeks before the killing. Rasmussen's father passed this information to the lead detective, who made note of it but did not pursue it, and the investigation stayed focused on the burglary theory. The case went unsolved for more than two decades, during which the Rasmussen family said detectives were often unresponsive when they followed up.

In 2004, a criminalist reviewing cold-case forensic evidence tested the bite-mark swab and found the saliva had come from a woman, a result that undercut the original burglary theory. The case was reassigned in March 2008 to a different pair of Van Nuys homicide detectives, who concluded the burglary had likely been staged and compiled a list of female suspects. They identified the same officer, by then a detective in the department's art theft unit, as their strongest suspect and covertly collected a DNA sample from a cup she discarded in public. That sample matched the bite-mark DNA, and the officer, Stephanie Lazarus, was arrested in June 2009.

At trial in 2012, prosecutors argued Lazarus killed Rasmussen out of jealousy after her former boyfriend married the victim. The defense disputed the DNA evidence and argued the original burglary theory remained plausible. A jury convicted Lazarus of first-degree murder in March 2012, and she was sentenced later that month to 27 years to life in prison. Lazarus appealed on several grounds, including that the search warrant had been improperly granted and that her pre-arrest interview statements were compelled; a three-judge appellate panel unanimously upheld the conviction in 2015, and the California Supreme Court declined further review.

During a 2023 parole hearing, Lazarus confessed to the killing; a hearing panel initially granted her release, but the full parole board rescinded that decision in late 2024. Rasmussen's parents separately sued the police department over aspects of the investigation and did not prevail. The criminalist who identified the bite-mark DNA also later brought, and lost, a lawsuit alleging she had faced departmental pressure and retaliation over her handling of evidence in this and other cases.