Case file 0008
Sherri Rasmussen: The Preserved Sample That Changed a Cold Case
DNA from a bite-mark swab helped identify an LAPD detective, leading to a murder conviction and later parole proceedings.
Sherri Rasmussen was killed at her Van Nuys home on February 24, 1986. She was a nurse married to John Ruetten. Stephanie Lazarus, a Los Angeles police detective formerly involved with Ruetten, was ultimately convicted of her murder. The answer came decades after the original investigation. [S1]
A burglary theory, then a different question
LAPD's 2012 account says the original inquiry treated the killing as a burglary that had turned violent. Later examination of a bite-mark swab produced a female DNA profile that did not belong to Rasmussen. A CODIS search did not supply a match. [S2]
That result gave investigators a narrower question to pursue without supplying a name by itself. The absence of a database match did not make the evidence useless. It left the profile available for comparison if another line of investigation produced a candidate.
LAPD says detectives revisited the case in 2009, considered women connected with Rasmussen's life and obtained a comparison sample from Lazarus. The DNA connection led to her arrest in June 2009. She was convicted in March 2012. [S2]
DNA from a bite is not tooth-shape identification
The distinction is scientific as well as linguistic. This case involved biological material collected from a bite-mark area and later compared through DNA testing. It should not be summarized as a claim that the shape of the teeth conclusively identified a particular person. Those descriptions refer to different forms of evidence.
The DNA result also sat within a case involving relationships, testimony and other physical evidence. Reducing the investigation to one laboratory result would conceal why investigators came to consider Lazarus and how the prosecution addressed responsibility for the killing.
Conviction and appeal
Lazarus received 27 years to life. In July 2015, the California Court of Appeal affirmed after considering challenges involving the delay before charges, search warrants, her interview and DNA evidence, among other matters. Its conclusion was that the claims before it did not justify reversal. [S1]
Lazarus's position inside the police department was a central complication of the investigation, not a defense against it. The people examining the evidence had to investigate a colleague. The resulting conviction concerned her conduct, rather than permitting professional standing to substitute for factual scrutiny.
The later parole proceedings
A City News Service report published by NBC Los Angeles says a parole panel denied release again on October 9, 2026. It recounts an earlier 2023 recommendation, its subsequent rescission in 2024 and another denial in 2025. The 2026 hearing did not result in her release. [S3]
That sequence is why an old headline saying parole was recommended can be misleading when repeated without its later outcome. A recommendation and a completed release are different events. Here, the latest dated reporting checked describes another denial.
Rasmussen's life should not be reduced to a rivalry between two other people. The case concerns a woman killed at home, the long interval before an arrest and evidence preserved well enough to help answer a question left unresolved for years.