Fatal Attraction: The Book Is Never Closed — Ep. 4 | MK Confidential

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1:24So are Sherry's two nieces and John Rutten, Sherry's husband. The man Stephanie killed Sherry over and still lost. A parole commissioner named Kevin Chappelle asks Stephanie about a phone call she made on a February morning in 1986. Sherry had answered. Chappelle asks what Stephanie felt when she heard Sherry's voice. Yes, sir, I was enraged. Stephanie says she went down the stairs of her condominium and took a cord off of her workbench. Chappelle asks her why she brought that cord with her to John and Sherry's home. Because I was so angry that if she got in my way to see John, I was going to strangle her.

2:10Chappelle asks what she was thinking by the time she reached Sherry Rasmussen's front door. I'm going to kill her if I don't see John. Sherry's younger sister, Teresa, watches her screen, listening to Stephanie talk about murdering Sherry. At these parole hearings, Teresa makes a point of staying visible. She told us why. Personally, I make a effort to be sure that I'm on the screen the whole time. So she has to, if she looks up, she has to see me. But she never looks up. Stephanie says she barged into Sherry's home, asking for John. And from there, she describes what happened as a hellacious fight.

2:55Kevin Chappelle stops her. Why are you calling it a fight? Stephanie thinks about this. I invaded her home. I was an intruder. So maybe it was just a fight on my part. Her trying to maybe defend herself would be a better description of the situation. Chappelle offers a different word. What about assault? And Stephanie agrees with that. Stephanie describes a violent struggle, hitting Sherry in the face with her gun, then biting her and smashing a vase over her head. And Stephanie says she picks up a blanket from the floor, wraps it around her gun, and fires three times into Sherry's chest. Chappelle comes back to that.

3:37When I think of someone in a rage, they're just out of it. They're not thinking about, well, I need to wrap this up. Why did you wrap the gun up? Stephanie shifts her eyes and answers to deaden the sound. I'm Megan Kelly, and this is MK Confidential.

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4:32But listen, Lean is not for the casual dieter with only a few pounds to lose. The doctors at Brickhouse Nutrition created lean for frustrated dieters who have 10 or more pounds to lose. You could get started with 20 % off and free rush shipping, adding lean to your healthy diet and exercise plan. Visit TakeLean.com and enter Kelly for your discount. That's promo code Kelly at TakeLean.com. 13 years earlier in 2012, Stephanie Lazarus is singing a very different tune. She is on trial for Sherry Rasmussen's murder. Stephanie was arrested in June 2009. Over the next 32 months, through preliminary hearings, motions, and other pretrial proceedings, she comes to court shackled in an orange jail jumpsuit.

5:20Then on February 6, 2012, the first day of her trial, she appears dressed in black. She pleads not guilty. She will not testify. Prosecutors tell the jury that Stephanie Lazarus killed Sherry Rasmussen because of a love triangle. John Rutten chose Sherry instead of her. They put the old evidence back on the table. The swabs from Sherry's arm, the.38 caliber revolver that Lazarus reported stolen after the murder, and Stephanie's own words about John preserved in letters, diary entries, and photographs. And then they called John Rutten to the stand. John is 53. A reporter in the courtroom watches him choke up several times and reach for a box of Kleenex when he is asked about the day his Sherry died.

6:11The prosecution begins with the relationship. John testifies that he and Stephanie Lazarus slept together somewhere between 25 and 30 times over roughly three years, beginning the summer after he graduated from UCLA. Just as Stephanie herself predicted when questioned by robbery homicide in their surprise interview, John says he did not consider Stephanie his girlfriend. John says that in the summer of 1985, weeks after he asked Sherry to marry him, Stephanie called him crying, asking to see him. So he went over and they had sex. Asked to explain it, he says, quote, basically, she had no closure.

6:54She was upset. I felt bad. I was a stupid and young man. Sherry's younger sister, Teresa Lane, is in the courtroom. She's hearing for the first time that John slept with Stephanie after he and Sherry were engaged. When we spoke with Teresa for this series, she still remembered what that moment felt like. I was devastated.

7:22I'm sorry, it's hard. Sherry's older sister, Connie Wilkinson, is in the courtroom too. John's behavior after the murder has bothered Connie for years, as she told us. It wasn't as difficult for me to hear it because John's, in my opinion, John's behavior around Sherry's death was suspect to me. He delayed notifying my parents until after they couldn't get a flight out of Tucson. And my parents weren't notified until his parents were there to support him. Also, when my dad asked him, how did you know Sherry was dead? He goes that he used his foot and touched her with his foot. And that, you know, and she didn't move.

8:11Those are behaviors I don't see as a loving, caring, loving husband. Teresa, who says she's still in touch with John, sees him differently. Sherry knew about the incident with Stephanie before they got married. Did he do wrong? Hell yes. But my sister was still willing to walk down that aisle and say, I do. So I am going to support my sister in that. Then Stephanie Lazarus's defense attorney, Mark Overland, gets his turn to cross-examine John. Overland argues that it was John, not Stephanie, who could not let the relationship go. John is already dabbing at his eyes when Overland takes him back to the night he had sex with Stephanie after becoming engaged to Sherry and to whether John tried to clean up before going home.

9:08The attorney asks, did you take a shower before leaving Miss Lazarus's place? John Rutten looks down. I don't recall that. The defense attacks the bite mark evidence. Overland points to that hole in the corner of the evidence envelope, which poked straight through the case number, and argues that someone could have used it to remove the tube and tamper with the swab. There is a second swab inside that tube. An independent lab tests the second swab with a defense representative in the room. It, too, comes back with the same DNA profile as the first. Stephanie Lazarus. The odds that the 15 DNA markers belong to anyone other than Stephanie Lazarus are about one in 1.7 sextillion.

9:5817 days after the trial begins on March 8th, the jury comes back with a verdict. We the jury in above entitled action find an amendment Stephanie I mean Lazarus guilty of the crime of her sharing mask in school. Teresa watches Stephanie as the verdict is read. She showed nothing. I mean, a woman that, I mean, you have to have, I assume people have feelings. I think the best of people that she did not shudder. She didn't do anything. She didn't even blink. She looked forward and there was nothing left in her soul. Nels and Loretta Rasmussen stay in their seats in the second row, sobbing. Two months later, on May 11, 2012, Stephanie Lazarus is back in the same courthouse for sentencing.

10:58She gets 27 years to life. Sherry's family stands one by one and tells the court what her murder has done to them. John Rutten speaks too. The fact that Sherry's death occurred because she met and married me brings me to my knees. I have resigned myself to trying to endure the daydreams about a world where Sherry is still with us. And this pointless tragedy never occurred. Teresa remembers watching Stephanie while John spoke. I remember him standing up there and talking and Stephanie did not move, flinch, blink or anything. That woman has no soul at all. Stephanie Lazarus says nothing. For Connie and Teresa, it feels like the end of the story.

11:52It was relief that finally that she will pay for what she did. Unrealistic, but it was like, OK, now we can close the book. But the book is never closed. You learned that after the verdict. I thought it was going to be closed. I thought it would be a done deal that she would be there for the 25 years. It hasn't stopped. After the verdict, it hasn't. I mean, we don't get arrests. Sherry Rasmussen was murdered in February of 1986. Stephanie Lazarus was arrested in June 2009. 23 years. The question of what's taking so long has haunted this case from the very beginning. Connie says their father, Nels Rasmussen, who was tortured by the fact that he could not protect his daughter in life, became determined to avenge her in death.

12:47He began doing his own detective work the day after Sherry died. The way that Dad coped with the loss of Sherry was to be very analytical and go over every detail and everything that she had said to him. So he did have a short list. Stephanie was on the list. Of course, we didn't know her name. We just knew that an ex-girlfriend that was a police officer. According to Connie, Nels Rasmussen gave the detectives two leads back in 1986. A woman at the hospital who had been passed over for a promotion and had been making calls to Sherry and the police officer. In his book, The Lazarus Files, author Matthew McGuff reports that Nels early on tried repeatedly to raise the possibility of John's ex and her involvement to no avail.

13:40without Mayer's clearance that likely ticked Mayer off. Nels also discussed with Mayer the two bullets recovered during Shuri's autopsy. In his 2009 LAPD interview, Nels recounted, I met Mayer on his own without Mayer's clearance that likely ticked Mayer off. Nels also discussed with Mayer the two bullets recovered during Shuri's autopsy. In his 2009 LAPD interview, Nels recounted, I mentioned to Lyle the fact that they were similar, if not the same, as what police are issued. According to Nels, Mayer never acknowledged what Nels said about the bullets. He never acknowledged. He wouldn't deny it.

14:22He wouldn't say okay or whatever. He would just go on with whatever he wanted to talk about, Nels informed the LAPD in 2009. As things went along with Mayer, day by day that week, Nels became ever more insistent and emotional about bringing up the subject that seemed to irritate Mayer the most. John's ex-girlfriend, the female cop. Nels felt Mayer was on his case from Wednesday on. After a certain point, according to Nels, whenever he met with Mayer, Mayer got loud with him. Mayer was not afraid to let Nels know he didn't want his input, and often punctuated their conversations with petulant gestures like slamming a book down, throwing papers or handing something to Nels and then grabbing it back from him.

15:08Lyle Mayer, the lead detective, says none of that ever happened. No one from the family told him about a police officer, he says, not even one time. And if they had, he would have run the lead down. According to Nels, Mayer responded to his theories with, you've been watching too much television. I asked Connie and Teresa how they reconciled those two accounts and what they believe kept the investigation from moving. Here's a critical question. Do you believe that Lyle Mayer didn't want to talk about the police officer who John used to date because he wanted to back the blue and cover up for a fellow police officer or because he had tunnel vision on his burglar theory?

15:54Connie, I'll start with you on that. I believe he had tunnel vision because if you look at the murder book and the first entry when they come to the site, he already had labeled it as a burglary. So he was not open to discussing any other theories or alternatives. And what about Mayer's denial? I don't believe that. I don't believe anything that Lyle Mayer says. I know my brother-in-law has told me that he said to the police when he was first questioned after Sherry died that he had a girlfriend that was in the police department. And John has told me that. And my dad followed up. The sisters agree that the Los Angeles Police Department failed to seriously investigate Stephanie Lazarus.

16:46They are less certain about why. I was naive at the time. I was very young. and I believe that the police were doing everything they could and they were pursuing it with an honest heart and I don't believe that happened and that's sort of as distressing to me. On March 12, 1986, 16 days after the murder, the LAPD gives John Rutten a polygraph exam. The result is inconclusive. According to the murder book, Rutten was too emotional to give an accurate reading. Mayer says the two key questions were, are you personally involved? And do you personally know who killed her? On both of those, he was deemed credible.

17:31There are seven questions listed for the exam. Not one of them is about Stephanie Lazarus. 20 months later, on November 19th, 1987, someone writes one line at the bottom of page 18 of the murder book chronology. John Rutten called verified Stephanie Lazarus-PO was former girlfriend. Her name is in the murder book. Her job is in the murder book. Her relationship to the husband is in the murder book. Exactly once. That one line is the only time Stephanie Lazarus appears in the file for the next 22 years. The handwriting has never been identified. The detectives are no closer to finding her. Then, sometime in 1992 or 1993, Nels and Loretta and Connie drive to Van Nuys trying to restart the case.

18:27Nels asks whether anyone had run DNA and offers to pay for it himself. The detective who tells him no is Steve Fisk, who runs Van Nuys Homicide. He sets a thin manila folder on the table between them. A tiny case file. According to Matthew McGuff's book on the case, Fisk says there is no point in running DNA without a suspect. Nels points at the manila folder, quote, I think it's in your record there about John's ex-girlfriend. Fisk says nothing. Connie later says he seemed eager for them to leave. Early Monday afternoon, October 11th, 1993. A homicide detective from Van Nuys drives to the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office about 30 minutes from the station.

19:14His name is Phil Morit. He works under Steve Fisk. Morit is listed as the signatory taking out all trace evidence collected from Sherry Rasmussen's body. It is never seen again. It disappears from the record entirely. Years later, Maura acknowledges the signature on the paperwork appears to be his, but says he does not remember taking the evidence and says he never worked on Sherry's case. There is no mention of this removal in the murder book. No one tells the Rasmussen family. Sherry's sister Connie has been trying to make sense of it ever since. One thing we do know is that Stephanie Lazarus was stationed at the Van Nuys Police Division during the 90s.

20:05So I don't know if she had a relationship or worked with that detective. Or she may have done and moved the items herself and put his signature. Who knows? All we know is that it's gone. Stephanie Lazarus is transferred to Van Nuys in March of 1995, which is a year and a half after the trace evidence leaves the coroner's office. She works out of that station on and off for the rest of the decade. Sherry Rasmussen's murder book is in the building, unsecured the entire time Stephanie is there. She often volunteers to work the morning shift, a time when the building is mostly empty, particularly of higher ranks.

20:50Whether she ever cracked it open or altered what was inside, no one can say for sure. I asked Teresa for her opinion. I don't see why she wouldn't have, because if you look at her track record from the day she killed my sister to 26 years later, she has... Everything is self-serving. So she has no regards for anybody else. I hate to think the worst of people, to tell you the truth. But if you look at her life and how she dealt with her family during the trial and lied that she didn't kill my sister, she has no conscious about other people. I mean, her only thing is her well-being and what she wants to accomplish in her life and her goal.

21:46That evidence is not the only thing missing from the investigation. The original handwritten log of the first three months after Sherry died disappears from the murder book sometime between 1986 and 2008. No one knows when, who took it, or why. It is the only real-time record of what the detectives did to track down her murderer, including possible meetings with family members and various leads. Only a copy of the log prepared on a typewriter by someone survives. It is dated three months after the murder, and it is attached to the 60-day report. It is supposed to be word-for-word accurate. Without the original, there is no way to verify that.

22:33John Rutten's name is misspelled as Rudder throughout. out. The break in the case comes from a piece of evidence Phil Morritt left behind at the coroner. A bite mark swab from Sherry's left arm, tucked away in the basement freezer, but it only comes after the case changes hands. Mayer has retired. Steve Fisk moves on. Cliff Shepard is now in charge, an LAPD cold case detective from the respected robbery homicide division. When criminalist Jennifer Francis finds female DNA in saliva from the bite mark, it is because Cliff Shepard first asked for a fresh look at the forensics. But Shepard does not respond meaningfully to the news that the bite mark was from a woman, Jennifer's discovery.

23:21Jennifer calls Shepard a few weeks later. She asks him about the Rasmussen case and the other woman. She means that nurse who the murder book says harassed Sherry at work. Shepard's reply surprises her. Oh, you mean the LAPD detective? She was not a part of this. He does not say that detective's name, and Jennifer Francis does not ask how she has supposedly been ruled out. That ruled out female detective's name is in the binder on her desk. Just one line, page 18, written in 1987. Stephanie Lazarus, P.O., former girlfriend. Francis had read right past it. Four more years pass with no movement.

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25:51today at Edens Plaza and Wilmette. Way fair, every style, every home. Friday, June 5th, 2009. Sherry's little sister, Teresa Lane, is living in Sierra Vista, Arizona. She receives an urgent, cryptic message from her parents. And then they called me and they said, you need to be up here today. And I said, okay. Which was, you know, sort of a nice thing and a worrisome thing at the same time. The family gathers at Nell's and Loretta's home in Tucson, and LAPD detectives are already there. They will not say why. We were sitting around in my parents' family room, and my dad was questioning the detectives to see what was going on, and they said they couldn't say anything until the arrest was made, and then once the arrest was made, They came in and told us that who they arrested.

26:54Stephanie Lazarus has just been taken into custody for murder off the DNA from a Costco cup. Teresa remembers hearing the news. It was a relief, but it was just a new starting point. After Stephanie's arrest, the Rasmussen's file a two-part claim against the city of Los Angeles. First, alleging that Stephanie Lazarus used her position as an officer to commit and cover up her crime, literally, to get away with murder. Second, that the LAPD protected Stephanie Lazarus and helped cover for her through fraud, negligence, and other wrongful acts. A judge dismisses the lawsuit before discovery begins, primarily on the grounds of governmental immunity.

27:44No witness is ever questioned under oath. No police documents are ever handed over. No court will ever decide whether the LAPD covered or one of its own. On February 6, 2012, Stephanie Lazarus pleads not guilty. She does not testify at her trial. After being found guilty, she says nothing at her sentencing. She appeals her conviction and loses, then appeals again and loses. Lazarus never publicly admits to killing Sherry Rasmussen. That is, until doing so could work to her advantage. November 16th, 2023. The California Institution for Women near Chino, California. Stephanie Lazarus' parole hearing.

28:33Two commissioners, Lazarus and her lawyer, are present. The Rasmussen family joins on a video screen. Connie, Teresa, two nieces, John Rutten, and LAPD detective Greg Stearns. Stearns is one of the detectives who interrogated Lazarus before her arrest in 2009. A California law makes offenders who were younger than 26 when they committed their crime eligible for parole earlier than usual. Stephanie Lazarus was 25 years, 9 months, and 20 days old when she murdered Sherry Rasmussen. The board asks Stephanie what she did. She describes driving over to the condominium and barging in asking for John.

29:19She mentions the cord she brought and the vase. Then she says the gun came out of her fanny pack and she and Sherry struggled over it. Two shots went into the sliding glass door upstairs. Lazarus regained control of her weapon. The hearing is not recorded on video, but it is transcribed. And here is some of what Lazarus said word for word. She stumbles throughout. Quote, At some point, she had me in a chokehold, and I couldn't get out of the chokehold. I hit her several times to the right side of her face with my gun. I still couldn't get out. Eventually, I bit her. She continues,

30:08Stephanie adds, quote, What I didn't do is I didn't check her pulse. I didn't give her CPR. I didn't call 911. All I cared about was my selfish self to get out of there. The presiding commissioner, Patricia Cassidy, asks, Why would you give her CPR when you were trying to kill her? Stephanie backpedals and stammers. She's just saying that she could have, and that she went to the condo to talk to John. Sherry was just in her way. Lazarus admits to the board that she staged the scene to look like a burglary and drove off in Sherry's car. She says that after the murder, John Rutten mentioned that he had given her name to the police.

30:51Lazarus threw the revolver she had used to kill Sherry off a freeway. Then she reported the gun stolen to the Santa Monica Police Department because she was certain the LAPD would come and ask her for it. No one ever did. For 37 years, Connie and Teresa had waited for Stephanie Lazarus to say the words. Connie remembers hearing them. The first time that we heard that she admitted that she was murdered, Sherry, was at the first parole hearing. Up to that, she exercised every appeal and every way possible to get out of prison. But she is still lying. Every parole hearing, it's not the whole truth.