Killer with a Badge: How the LAPD Missed a Murderer in its Ranks

Summary

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Crimes of the Times: "Killer with a Badge: How the LAPD Missed a Murderer in its Ranks"

L.A. Times Studios | Hosted by Christopher Goffard
Date: November 18, 2025

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Episode Overview

This gripping episode of "Crimes of the Times," hosted by investigative journalist Christopher Goffard, examines the infamous murder case of Sherri Rasmussen and how the LAPD failed to identify one of its own—Officer Stephanie Lazarus—as her killer for over two decades. Goffard and guest Matthew McGough (author of "The Lazarus Files") dissect the investigation’s missteps, institutional biases, and the lasting consequences for justice and trust in law enforcement.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Murder of Sherri Rasmussen ([00:00]–[02:01])

• Crime Scene & Initial Theory

  • In 1986, Sherri Rasmussen, a highly respected nurse, is found bludgeoned, shot three times, and bitten.
  • LAPD quickly concludes it was a burglary gone wrong, supported by evidence such as stereo equipment near the door and her stolen car.

• Alternative Suspicions: Stalking and the Ex

  • Family and friends believe the motive is personal, pointing to a female stalker: John Reuten’s ex-girlfriend, Stephanie Lazarus, an LAPD officer.
  • “Basically, Sherry had complained to friends and and her parents that she had a stalker... it was a woman because she made comments like, I’m being followed by someone who’s dressed like a man.” — Matthew McGough [01:42]

2. LAPD Tunnel Vision and Missed Red Flags ([04:40]–[07:50])

• Ignoring Discomforting Evidence

  • Ballistics reveal bullets matching LAPD issue and Lazarus later claims her backup gun was stolen post-murder.
  • The brutality of the crime, combined with possible insider knowledge, point to a personal—and possibly police—connection.

• Family Advocacy Dismissed

  • Rasmussen family persistently urges LAPD to investigate Lazarus, but are brushed off.
  • “The department insisted this was a burglary, up to and including telling Nels, you watch too much television...” — Matthew McGough [06:44]
  • Connie Rasmussen wonders if someone inside LAPD protected Lazarus.

3. The Lazarus-Rutten Relationship Triangle ([08:33]–[09:09])

• Explores the ambiguous relationship between Rutten and Lazarus.
• McGough summarizes: “An amorphous relationship where... they weren’t really a couple. That’s where things stood until John met Sherry... And then within a few months after the wedding, Sherry was dead.” [08:33]

4. Mishandled Evidence and Institutional Gaps ([09:09]–[10:00])

• Trace evidence—possibly damning—vanishes from case files and coroner's office.
• “It’s not standard or normal for evidence in an unsolved homicide case to go missing. That’s not supposed to happen under any circumstances...” — Matthew McGough [09:37]

5. The DNA Breakthrough ([10:00]–[13:03])

• A bite mark on Rasmussen’s forearm preserved crucial DNA evidence.
• In 2005, newly available DNA testing reveals the assailant was female, debunking the “two man burglary” theory.
• Despite this, years of neglect and bureaucratic inertia follow:
  • “Nothing happened... There’s something obvious to be investigated. All you have to do is investigate it.” — Matthew McGough [12:46]

6. The Arrest and Trial of Stephanie Lazarus ([16:27]–[18:35])

• Confrontation and Denials

  • In 2009, detectives lure Lazarus downtown and confront her; she denies knowing Sherri but then admits some contact.
  • “You’re accusing me of this? Am I on candid camera or something? This is insane.” — Stephanie Lazarus, paraphrased [16:27]

• Obsession Revealed

  • Letters from Lazarus reveal her fixation on John Rutten, further implicating a strong personal motive.

• Conviction and Institutional Response

  • Lazarus convicted of first-degree murder in 2012 and sentenced to 27 years to life.
  • Despite promises, LAPD’s internal investigation into mishandling fades without meaningful accountability.

7. Recent Developments: Parole and Partial Admission ([18:41]–[23:04])

• A 2023 parole board brief release after just 11 years citing low risk, later reversed.
• At a 2025 hearing, Lazarus admits to the killing, characterizing it as a crime of passion and loneliness:
  • “I just wanted to have, I guess, what other people had.” — Stephanie Lazarus [19:30]
  • Details of the confession hint at premeditation, but are self-serving; prosecutor Paul Nunez doubts its veracity and denounces attempts to shift blame.
• “She must have known Rutten was at work and that his wife would be alone. You can’t give a half story about a murder and put some of the blame on the victim.” — Paul Nunez [20:45]

8. Questions of Institutional Accountability ([23:04]–[25:32])

• McGough and Goffard press for answers from LAPD but encounter a wall of silence.
  • “No one had been contacted. These are basic, obvious questions, and I would say it does not serve the LAPD’s reputation... to stick with the strategy of sticking its fingers in its ears and not listening.” — Matthew McGough [25:05]
• The family’s lawsuit against the LAPD is dismissed due to the statute of limitations.

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Memorable Quotes

• “Detectives thought it looked like a burglary gone bad… But Sherri Rasmussen’s family was convinced that there was a more personal motive.” — Christopher Goffard [00:44]
• “There was an ex girlfriend of John’s who was an LAPD officer, who really kind of wouldn’t leave them alone.” — Matthew McGough [02:09]
• “It’s kind of galling to look back at her career knowing the things that she did with a murder on her conscience.” — Matthew McGough [11:11]
• “Evidence of a hellacious fight was obvious from the amount of blood and disarray in the living room.” — Matthew McGough [21:54]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |--------------------------------------------------------------|-------------| | The Crime, Burglary Theory, and Stalking Motive | 00:00–02:09 | | Ballistics, Missing Evidence, and Bias | 04:40–07:50 | | Relationship Triangle (Rutten, Lazarus, Rasmussen) | 08:33–09:09 | | DNA Evidence and the Cold Case Breakthrough | 10:00–13:03 | | Lazarus' Arrest, Interrogation, and Courtroom Drama | 16:27–18:35 | | Parole Hearing, Partial Confession & New Controversies | 18:41–23:04 | | Calls for Accountability, LAPD's Silence, Lawsuit Dismissed | 23:04–25:32 |

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Tone and Style

The episode maintains an investigative, measured, yet empathetic tone. Goffard lets the complexity and human cost of the story emerge naturally through detailed reporting and first-person quotes. McGough brings a research-driven, persistent voice, emphasizing unanswered questions and pressing for honest institutional reckoning.

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Conclusion

This episode expertly deconstructs the Rasmussen murder case and its profound implications for investigative integrity and police culture. It emphasizes the devastating consequences of institutional blind spots and the tireless pursuit of truth by both the victim’s family and determined journalists. The story serves as both a cautionary tale and a demand for reforms ensuring justice, regardless of where the evidence leads.

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Transcript

[Christopher Goffard]

This is an la times studios podcast. In February 1986, a man named John Reuten came home from work and entered his Van Nuys townhome. In the living room, he found the body of the woman he had recently married. Sherry Rasmussen was 29, a popular nursing director at Glendale Adventist Medical Center. She had been badly bludgeoned. She had been shot three times. In the struggle, someone had bitten her arm. LAPD detectives came to a quick but disastrous conclusion that dominated the agency's approach to the investigation and in many ways warped it. Detectives thought it looked like a burglary gone bad. It looked like Sherry, who had called in sick from work that day, had surprised people trying to rob the place and had been killed in the ensuing struggle. Her car had been stolen from her garage, a detail that seemed to support that theory. And there were other details.

[Matthew McGough]

There was some stereo equipment that had been torn from an entertainment center and left near the front door of the condo.

[Christopher Goffard]

This is Matthew McGough, who wrote the definitive book on the case, which the.

[Matthew McGough]

Detectives interpreted as this burglar had been preparing to steal this stereo equipment and got interrupted and rushed out and left it there.

[Christopher Goffard]

Plus two armed robbers struck another house nearby soon after. But Sherri Rasmussen's family was convinced that there was a more personal motive.

[Matthew McGough]

Basically, Sherry had complained to friends and and her parents that she had a stalker. And it seems clear that it was a woman because she made comments like, I'm being followed by someone who's dressed like a man. You wouldn't say that a man is dressed like a man.

[Christopher Goffard]

But Sherry Stalker wasn't a stranger to her. It was her new husband's ex.

[Matthew McGough]

And then she had also mentioned to others more specifically that there was an ex girlfriend of John's who was an LAPD officer who really kind of wouldn't leave them alone. Really. The one piece of key information that Sherry did not give her parents was this police officer's name.

[Christopher Goffard]

Today on Crimes of the Times, the story of the LAPD officer who nearly got away with murder, escaping notice for decades despite powerful evidence against her. I'm Christopher Goffard.

[Matthew McGough]

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[Christopher Goffard]

It should have been little trouble for police to discover that the victim's husband, John Reuten, had come to the marriage with some dangerous baggage, an emotionally volatile ex lover who was not over him. It should have been little trouble to get the woman's name and to question her about her whereabouts during the killing. Stephanie Lazarus was a 25 year old patrol officer with the Los Angeles Police Department. In retrospect, the grounds for suspecting her seem screamingly obvious beyond the fact that she'd stalked and scared the victim. There was the ballistics report. The bullets found in Sherry Rasmussen's body were the kind the LAPD issued to officers. And weeks after the murder, Lazarus reported that her backup gun, a snub nosed. 38 Smith & Wesson revolver, had been stolen from her car. Lazarus would later admit that she got rid of the gun on the assumption that detectives would come to question her and ask to see it. But they had not. Rasmussen's sister, Connie, told me that the scene seemed to reflect personal hatred as well as criminal sophistication. Her sister was smashed over the head with a vase. She was shot three times at close range with a blanket wrapped around the gun to deaden the sound. But for decades, detectives did not Bother to question Officer Lazarus as a suspect. It would take the LAPD 23 years to arrest Lazarus, who by then had started a family and risen to a high profile detective position. Why it took so long has never been definitively answered. Maybe it was investigative tunnel vision. Maybe it was the workload surrounding the crush of murders in mid-1980s Los Angeles. Maybe it was cognitive bias against the possibility it could be one of their own. The journalist Matthew McGough has spent years looking for answers.

[Matthew McGough]

Sherry's parents, particularly her father Nels, really believed from the beginning that they knew who committed this murder. And that was John's police officer ex girlfriend. And the family didn't sit on that information. To the contrary, they did everything that they could possibly think of to try to get the LAPD to focus on this angle in. The department insisted this was a burglary, up to and including telling Nels, you watch too much television, which again is you can only envision the torment inside this man.

[Christopher Goffard]

Magoff wrote a 595 page account of the case called the Lazarus Files.

[Matthew McGough]

They were free to think, well, women don't kill and certainly police officers don't kill. So I don't know what these parents are talking about. But if that's the case, then you investigate it. And if it's not true, it wouldn't take very long to eliminate it. And then you go back to the initial theory.

[Christopher Goffard]

Connie Rasmussen told me that she still wonders whether someone inside the LAPD helped Lazarus along the way. She thinks that's the case, but she can't prove it. She told me that her mother, who managed the family's dental office in Arizona, kept the original detective's business card on her desk and called relentlessly for updates. As the case languished, her father wrote a letter to then LAPD Chief Daryl Gates, pleading for his intervention. But the agency brushed off the family. Detectives kept insisting that the crime fit the pattern of a residential burglary, not a love triangle.

[Matthew McGough]

There's no doubt John was deeply in love with Sherry. John, however, had an ambiguous relationship with Stephanie, who had been his college friend and friends with benefits, amorphous relationship where he wasn't really seeing, neither of them were really seeing anyone else seriously. But at the same time, they weren't really a couple. That's where things stood until John met Sherry, fell madly in love with her, proposed to her, and married. And then within a few months after the wedding, Sherry was dead.

[Christopher Goffard]

As the years passed, some of the trace evidence vanished without explanation from the coroner's office. Other Evidence may have vanished from the case file. The so called murder book the LAPD kept at the Van Nuys office, which Lazarus would have had access to. Whether Lazarus stole the material has never been proved. And as McGough points out, it's impossible to know what could be missing if it's gone.

[Matthew McGough]

It's not standard or normal for evidence in an unsolved homicide case to go missing. That's not supposed to happen under any circumstances because as all of your listeners know, there's no statute of limitations for murder.

[Christopher Goffard]

The murder might have gone unsolved forever if not for a single piece of evidence and the evolving science of DNA.

[Matthew McGough]

One of the injuries that Sherri had, in addition to the facial injuries, the facial trauma and the gunshot wounds is that she was bitten on the forearm. And that actually ended up being the clue to solving the case more than two decades later, was this bite mark on her, on her arm.

[Christopher Goffard]

While the killing of Sherry Rasmussen went unsolved, while the case files moldered and pieces of evidence vanished and the family grieved, her killer kept her badge and her secret. Stephanie Lazarus built a solid, if undistinguished, career at the lapd. Prosecutors would describe her as a C cop. She promoted the DARE anti drug program, an initiative dear to the chief. She became a detective with the art theft detail, which gave her a high public profile. She appeared in photo ops with the brass. She bantered with reporters. She went on Family Feud. She married another cop and adopted a girl, Stephanie.

[Matthew McGough]

Now, she was a third year police officer when she committed this murder, but she continued her career. She ended up making detective, working in internal affairs, working in background check investigations again. It's kind of galling to look back at her career knowing the things that she did with a murder on her conscience.

[Christopher Goffard]

Magoff interviewed her in early 2008 when he was researching art theft, and she was a detective on the art theft detail. What was your impression of her when he met her and interviewed her?

[Matthew McGough]

Cordial, friendly, relatively helpful.

[Christopher Goffard]

By the early 2000s, detectives were diving into cold cases. A saliva sample from a bite on Rasmussen's forearm was stored separately in a freezer at the coroner's office, where Lazarus would not have had access to it. In 2005, DNA tests that had been impossible decades earlier showed that it had come from a woman undermining the two man burglary theory. A DNA analyst in the crime lab named Jennifer Francis thought the culprit might be a nurse Sherry had worked with who was passed over for promotion and might have blamed Sherry but the familiar pattern reasserted itself. Neglected leads and inaction. The analyst came to believe she was being brushed off by the cold case detective and eventually would claim she was ostracized from the department.

[Matthew McGough]

Nothing happened. You know, again, part of the threat of this case is, hey, there's something obvious to be investigated. All you have to do is investigate it.

[Christopher Goffard]

And so, even after the DNA finding, four more years passed before a Van Nuys detective new to the case asked the obvious question, did the victim have any female enemies? This finally led the LAPD to Stephanie Lazarus. They ran her DNA against the saliva sample it matched. Celebrate the 101 best restaurants in LA at this year's launch party December 9th at the Hollywood Palladium. Presented by Open Table and Square. Meet, mix and mingle with acclaimed chefs and culinary icons. Enjoy unlimited food and drink and be there for the live countdown to the number one restaurant in la. It's the LA food scene's biggest night. Get tickets [e-mail] 101event that's latimes.com 101event.

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[Christopher Goffard]

When Stephanie Lazarus arrived at work downtown at LAPD headquarters in early June 2009, detectives used a ruse to lure her to the jail facility downstairs, where she would be unarmed. At first, Lazarus told investigators she could not recall whether she had ever met Sherry Rasmussen, but her memory soon recovered. She said, quote, I may have talked to her once or twice or more. She bristled when it became clear that she was a suspect in the murder. She said, you're accusing me of, of this? Am I on candid camera or something? This is insane. She continued to deny her guilt at her 2012 trial, where jurors saw clear evidence of her obsession. She had written a letter expressing her feelings about John Reuten, the victim's husband, who she'd met in college and become fixated on. She wrote that she was devastated by his engagement to Sherri Rasmussen. She did not understand why he had chosen another woman. She wrote, quote, I'm truly in love with John. This year has torn me up. When Rutten himself testified, he described a relationship of obvious asymmetry. He and Lazarus had become friends at ucla, he said, and over the years they had slept together. But he did not consider her a girlfriend. He said he had slept with her after his engagement to Sherry, then begged his fiance's forgiveness. Lazarus, at 51 years old, was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to 27 years to life in prison. It was possible to frame the conviction as a redemption tale for the lapd, with a new generation of cops making amends for the missteps of their predecessors. But the internal investigation, promised by department leaders a probe of what accounted for the delays and blunders seemed to go nowhere.

[Matthew McGough]

Again. Nels Rasmussen would have been defeated, but he never gave up.

[Christopher Goffard]

Rasmussen's parents lived to see their daughter's killer arrested and convicted, but they died without answers to why it took so long. The surviving family was stunned in November 2023 when a parole panel decided Lazarus should be released after 11 years in prison. She had taken anger management classes and was deemed a low risk to reoffend. The decision was reversed, but Lazarus has a fresh chance at every new hearing. What might count in her favor is is her admission, after years of denials, that she did kill rasmussen. At a February 2025 hearing, she talked of having been in love with John Reuten and of her loneliness when she learned of his engagement. Quote, I had been unable to have a relationship that lasted, and I felt hopeless. I just wanted to have, I guess, what other people had, end quote. She would call him and hang up just to hear him say hello. She said she called us home that morning in February 1986 and was enraged. When Sherry Rasmussen answered. She decided to pay a visit. She found the address in a police database. She took her gun and a cord. She said, I went over there hoping to see him. I was so angry that if she got in my way to see John, I was going to strangle her. She barged in when Rasmussen answered and found herself in a struggle she compared to a hellacious bar fight. She tied Rasmussen's wrist with the cord, explaining she was getting in my way to see John. A commissioner asked her, how would binding her wrists give you access to see John? Well, Lazarus replied, it makes no sense. I talked to Paul Nunez, one of the prosecutors who took Lazarus to trial. He said she is still lying. He said her admissions were calculated to win her parole while downplaying her culpability. He does not believe that Rasmussen would have opened the door to admit Lazarus. It's more likely she picked the lock, in his view, and he considers it an insult to the victim for Lazarus to describe the assault as mutual combat. She must have known Rutten was at work and that his wife would be alone. Nunez told me, you can't give a half story about a murder and put some of the blame on the victim. He said this was a predator who was in a cage with the prey. She had complete control of everything. She had her weapon with her. She had tactical grappling training from the academy. She was physically fit. She was in the law enforcement Olympics. And she had staged the crime scene so smoothly that it apparently threw detectives off her track for decades. Nunez told me, quote, she's a long ways from acknowledging all of the behaviors that she demonstrated in this crime.

[Matthew McGough]

Evidence of a hellacious fight was obvious from the amount of blood and disarray in the living room.

[Christopher Goffard]

This is Matthew McGough again, who spent nine years researching his book.

[Matthew McGough]

Stephanie gave her explanation for why she went over to see John and to confront Sherry. But again, why? Why do you need a rope to do that? Why was Stephanie armed when she came inside? Those are the kinds of questions that we may never be able to get to the bottom of. The ones that I'm more interested in and that I hold out some faith and hope that we will be able to get answers, really is, you know, what went wrong in this investigation? And why wasn't Stephanie Lazarus brought to justice earlier? And why is the LAPD so resistant to looking inward at this institutional failure and taking any steps to ensure that something like this doesn't happen again?

[Christopher Goffard]

The case could have been solved almost immediately, long before the science of DNA became advanced enough to be useful. If the LAPD had taken basic investigative steps, they might have typed Lazarus name into a gun trace database.

[Matthew McGough]

We'll never know the intimate details of how the murder went down because Sherry is no longer with us and Stephanie is an unreliable narrator. So she's given various accounts through the years, right up to her most recent parole hearings in which she belatedly admitted responsibility for the murder and admitted killing Sherry. It's not definitive because Stephanie has lied so much about so many things in the past.

[Christopher Goffard]

For years, McGough has been struggling to get answers out of the LAPD, but with little success. What does this tell you about an.

[Matthew McGough]

Institution like the LAPD and how it operates? It's culture, I think. I have a lot of respect for the LAPD as an investigative institution, and I know what they're capable of, which is actually excellent investigations. When they fall short of it, it's really glaring. And rather than looking at it, the lapd, for whether it's fear of short term bad publicity or various other reputational concerns, again, I'm speculating because they won't say, but it seems like they're. What they're banking on is that this case and the questions about it are going to go away.

[Christopher Goffard]

When Lazarus was arrested in June 2009, then Chief Charlie Beck promised an internal affairs investigation into whether she'd received less scrutiny because she was an officer. But Magoff says the case was closed two years later without a single interview.

[Matthew McGough]

No one had been contacted. These are basic, obvious questions, and I would say it does not serve the LAPD's reputation in a case about the department sticking its fingers in its ears and not listening to stick with the strategy of sticking its fingers in its ears and not listening.

[Christopher Goffard]

I had no success getting the LAPD to talk about the case. Either. No evidence has emerged to support a deliberate cover up. The Rasmussen family sued the department, hoping the litigation would bring answers. A judge cited the statute of limitations and threw out the case. From LA Times Studios, this is Crimes of the Times. To read more about these cases, check out Crimes of the [e-mail] we also have a link to our video episodes in the show. Notes this episode was written and reported by me, your host, Christopher Goffard. Our senior producers are Mary Knoff and Jonathan Shiflet. At Studio Phonic, Executive Editor is Stuart Leavenworth, Associate Producer is Jordan Patterson, our Camera operator is Peter Grayson, our Director of Post Production is Patrick Stewart and our Senior Sound Recording Engineer is Nick Norton with additional engineering by Jordan Patterson. Destin Leigh is our senior Senior Coordinating Producer. Special thanks to LA Times Studios President Anna mczanian, President and Chief Operating Officer of the Los Angeles Times, Chris Argenteri and Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Times, Terry Tang. Crimes of the Times is executive produced and co created by Darius, Derek Shahn and me, Christopher Goffard. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't still here.

[Matthew McGough]

It is smog.

[Christopher Goffard]

I'm Pat Morrison and I've been breathing LA smog for, well, a long time. Join me to find out how this airborne garbage finally changed and how it changed us. With scientists, innovators, comedians, politicians, and a gal who drove around LA with her convertible top down and her gas mask on. Smoglandia will be available soon everywhere. You listen to podcasts.