She entered college at 16, and by her late 20s was the director of nursing at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, giving presentations and teaching classes for fellow nurses. Ruetten later met Sherri Rasmussen, a graduate of Loma Linda University who was on a fast career track in critical care nursing. In court, he later testified that they had sex 'twenty to thirty times' between 19, but that she was never his girlfriend. Ruetten never considered the relationship as anything more than 'necking and fooling around.' They had sex for the first time after he graduated, when he accepted a job with hard-drive manufacturer Micropolis and she applied to the city's police academy and became a uniformed officer with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in 1983. Lazarus would steal Ruetten's clothes when he showered and take photographs of him in his underwear while he slept. Both were avid athletes Lazarus played on UCLA's junior varsity women's basketball team. While an undergraduate at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) from 1978 to 1982, John Ruetten, a mechanical engineering major from San Diego, occasionally dated Stephanie Lazarus, a fellow Dykstra Hall resident and a political science major from Simi Valley, California.

Jennifer Francis, the criminalist who found key evidence from the bite mark, unsuccessfully sued the City of Los Angeles, claiming she was pressured by police to favor certain suspects in this and other high-profile cases and was retaliated against when she brought this to the department's attention. Rasmussen's parents unsuccessfully sued the department over this and other aspects of the investigation. Some of the police files suggest that evidence that could have implicated Lazarus earlier in the investigation was later removed, perhaps by others in the LAPD. In 2015, the guilty verdict was upheld by the California Court of Appeal for the Second District of the state (which includes Los Angeles). She also alleged that the search warrant was improperly granted, her statements in an interview prior to her arrest were compelled and that evidence supporting the original case theory should have been admitted at trial. Lazarus appealed the conviction, claiming the age of the case and the evidence denied her due process. Lazarus was convicted of the murder in 2012 and is serving a sentence of 27 years to life for first-degree murder at the California Institution for Women in Corona. A DNA sample from a cup she had thrown away was matched to one from a bite on Rasmussen's body that had remained in the files. Rasmussen's father believed that LAPD officer Stephanie Lazarus, who was formerly in a relationship with Ruetten, was a prime suspect.ĭetectives who re-examined the cold case files in 2009 were eventually led to Lazarus, by then herself a detective. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) initially considered the case a botched burglary and were unable to identify a suspect. She had been beaten and shot three times in a struggle. On February 24, 1986, the body of Sherri Rasmussen (born Febru) was found in the apartment she shared with her husband, John Ruetten, in Van Nuys, California, United States.

Stephanie lazarus today