The family of a 29-year-old woman gunned down in a jealous rage by a Los Angeles Police Department detective nearly 40 years ago is hoping the former detective will not be granted parole.
Stephanie Ilene Lazarus was convicted in March 2012 of first-degree murder for the February 24, 1986, killing of Sherri Rasmussen.
John Ruetten, the widower of Sherri Rasmussen, urged the state parole board Tuesday to rescind a decision recommending parole for Lazarus. Rasmussen was shot dead in her Van Nuys condominium by Lazarus, who was jealous of her ex-lover’s new wife.
Ruetten told the board that Lazarus lied for decades until her only option was to pursue parole. He said his slain wife’s parents lost a child and her sisters lost a dear friend and confidante “because Sherri loved me and married me.”
A state parole board on Nov. 16 recommended parole for Lazarus, an art theft investigator and 25-year LAPD veteran.
Governor Gavin Newsom then asked the full parole board to review parole for Lazarus, who is now 64 and serving a state prison sentence of 27 years to life. The council is expected to make a decision on Tuesday.
During a hearing last Nov. 16, Lazarus publicly admitted to killing the nursing supervisor at Glendale Adventist Medical Center.
Rasmussen was shot three times in the Balboa Boulevard condominium she shared with Ruetten, her husband. Rasmussen had married Ruetten, Lazarus’ one-time love interest, three months before her death.
“It sickens me to this day that I took an oath to protect and serve people, and that I took Sherri Rasmussen’s life from her, a nurse,” Lazarus said, according to a parole transcript hearing last November.
“I didn’t do the right thing because I didn’t want to face the consequences of my actions. I didn’t want to go to jail.”
She said she then threw the gun in a wooded area along the highway and reported her weapon stolen to Santa Monica police, according to the transcript.
She continued to say during last November’s hearing that she would never harm anyone else as she did on Feb. 24, 1986: “When I murdered, callously murdered and gruesomely murdered Sherri Rasmussen,” the transcript said.
Two of the victim’s sisters and two of her nieces joined the Los Angeles Police Department. Greg Stearns, former prosecutor Paul Nunez, two friends of the victim and an attorney who represented the victim’s family Monday in opposing the parole.
Rasmussen’s father had urged police shortly after his daughter’s murder to investigate Lazarus, who had been an officer for two years at the time of Rasmussen’s death.
But the case remained cold until 2004, when investigators from the LAPD’s Cold Case Unit reopened the case and asked the coroner’s office to locate the tissue sample from the bite, which had been kept in a freezer in an evidence room since 1986.
Lazarus was arrested at the department’s downtown headquarters, largely due to DNA evidence derived from a bite mark on Rasmussen’s left forearm, and she subsequently retired from the LAPD.
Detectives had been tracking Lazarus and in May 2009 managed to obtain a DNA sample from her from a drinking cup and straw that she had thrown into a garbage bin outside a Costco store.
