Sherri Rasmussen

Criminology

This episode examines the brutal 1986 murder of nursing director Sherri Rasmussen, whose Van Nuys condo was staged to resemble a burglary gone wrong. For over two decades,

Key takeaways

• Sherri Rasmussen was beaten, shot three times, and bitten on the forearm during a February 1986 attack that initially appeared to be a home invasion.
• A DNA swab from the bite mark remained in coroner storage until 2004, when testing proved the biter was female, completely shifting the investigation's direction.

Main topics

• Cold case DNA breakthroughs
• Staged burglary crime scenes

Notable quotes

"If I can't have John, nobody can."

Conclusion

The episode highlights how forensic science eventually overcame institutional blind

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Speaker 2 (0:37) Hello everyone and welcome to episode 428 of the Criminology Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, what's going on? Not a whole lot. What's new with you? Nothing. You know, watching football. College is in full swing. The NFL is back. We've also got the baseball playoffs. I don't know. There's a lot in the sports world going on. Speaker 1 (1:02) Yeah, definitely a lot to keep you busy. And if you're up there in the... Ohio area, then I guess you can root for what? The Cleveland Browns, the Bengals, a little bit of everything going on up there. Speaker 2 (1:12) Yeah, actually Cleveland's doing really well, but I root for the Bengals. I'm about 40 minutes from Cincinnati, so a lot closer to Cincinnati than I am Cleveland. I've always rooted for the Bengals, which is tough because historically we've not always been very good. Yeah, both those teams have been pretty rough at points. Yeah, no doubt about it. All right, let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout outs. We had new support from Victoria and Spring Pierce. So amazing new support. Speaker 1 (1:42) We really appreciate it. Thank you so much for that support. It really helps out the show. For anyone else who would like to help out, head over to patreon.com slash criminology to get started. Speaker 2 (1:52) All right, we're wasting no time. We're jumping right into this week's case. And, you know, we have one that's truly tragic. And it really is a tale as old as time. A jealous person in a love triangle decided to take matters into their own hands by killing their romantic rival. In this case, it was 29-year-old Sherry Rasmussen, the director of a critical care nursing center. Her goal in life was to help people in need. What's so shocking is that her killer went on to have a career helping people as well. By solving crimes, That's because her killer turned out to be a rookie police officer named Stephanie Lazarus, and she would eventually become a police detective for the LAPD. And it's probably going to be shocking when you hear just how brutal this murder was and how Stephanie Lazarus Speaker 1 (2:49) used all of her knowledge to try and get away with it. Sherry Rasmussen met her husband, John Rotten, at a party in the summer of 1984. The two married in November of 1985, and John moved into Sherry's condo on Balboa Boulevard in Van Nuys. Sherry's father had purchased it for her because it was in a gated complex with a garage she could drive into, connected to the unit. She worked long hours as a nurse, and he didn't want her to have to be outside in the dark at all. When she got home after sunset, she was safe in her car until she was inside the garage. So it was clear that Sherry's dad was worried about her safety, and she was too. But as a single woman coming in all hours of the night, neither wanted to take any chances. But now Sherry wouldn't be alone in her home, so it likely felt even a bit more secure. Speaker 2 (3:38) And I get that more if, you know, as a dad to two girls, you have a girl. I just worry about them. You know, I want them to be safe. Sounds like Sherry's dad did as well. And I do think there is some safety, right? In having this kind of setup where you come home, it's late at night, you hit the garage door opener, you pull in, you shut it. Okay. You're in your safe space. You don't have to get out of the car and walk to the house. A Speaker 1 (4:15) little bit safer. Yeah, plus this is in a gated community, so you have to feel good if you're her dad that I'm helping to put her in an even safer situation with this home that she's in. By Speaker 2 (4:29) February of 1986, 29-year-old Sherry had become the director of nursing at Glendale Adventist Medical Center. John was an engineer working for a computer company. The two were happy. and just starting out their lives together as a married couple. But that safe and happy life they had forged was shattered on February 24th of that year. At around 10 a.m., John called home to talk to Sherry, but she didn't answer. The answering machine, which they both always made sure to turn on when they wouldn't be home, didn't kick in. The phone just rang and rang. He knew she wanted to call and sit, and she had still been sleeping. when he left for work around 7.20. So the fact that she wasn't answering was odd. It's not clear how worried John was or if he called home at all again, but for whatever reason, he decided not to Speaker 1 (5:25) go home and check on Sherry. Immediately upon pulling into his driveway at 6 p.m., John spotted something troubling when he noticed broken glass on the ground. The garage door was open and Sherry's car was gone. A neighbor would later say it had been that way since at least 9.45 that morning. Even if Sherry had some kind of emergency and had to leave, she surely would have called and told John what was going on. But the broken glass, the phone just ringing endlessly, and now Sherry's car being gone and the garage door being open was concerning. John cautiously made his way inside and saw that the living room was a mess. Broken pieces of a porcelain vase were strewn all over the floor. along with the items that used to be inside drawers. The TV stand was broken, and then he spotted Sherry. She was on the floor, dead. Her face was badly bruised. Investigators would eventually determine that she had been likely hit in the face with the muzzle of a gun, but at the time, it was only clear that she had been violently struck with something. She had been shot three times. One of those shots had been at such close range, the gun was actually touching Sherry's chest when it was fired. There was a bite mark on Sherry's left forearm. John raced to the phone, called 911, and police and first responders descended on the home. And, you know, to me, this is the stuff of Speaker 2 (6:42) nightmares. Speaker 2 (6:44) Finding someone you love. In this case, your wife dead in your home. And this was a violent attack, right? There's no doubt about it. She was badly bruised. She was struck with something, shot three times, bitten. I don't even know, first of all, how you handle that in the moment. And then secondly, how you deal with it, you know, later and years into the future. Speaker 1 (7:16) Yeah, what's interesting is there's no clear mention of whether there was forced entry, but it was obvious from what the scene looked like that it appeared someone had been rummaging through stuff, looking for something, maybe stealing something. So, you know, first impressions make this look like this could have been a burglar. Yeah, I Speaker 2 (7:39) would agree with that. You know, I think investigators would look at this on the surface and say, OK. Somebody was burglarizing the home. Maybe they didn't know Sherry was home, and she walked out of the bedroom, and a confrontation ensued. John was clearly shaken by finding his wife's body, but he composed himself enough to talk with investigators. In that discussion, John realized that the front door to the condo had accidentally been left unlocked before Sherry's murder. They normally use the door connecting the garage to the condo as their main door since they could pull right in, so they didn't even use the front door most of the time. But recently, one of John's friends had visited and come in through the front door, which had stayed unlocked ever since. The broken glass in the driveway was from one of the panels in the sliding glass door on their balcony. Speaker 1 (8:37) What happened to Sherry was almost immediately obvious to investigators at the scene. The fact that she was in her underwear and a t-shirt, as well as a bathrobe, was evidence that Sherry hadn't been expecting any visitors that day. The condition of the space downstairs, ransacked, with expensive stereo equipment by the door, suggested that the condo had been broken into by burglars. From the looks of things, police thought it had to be at least two perpetrators. It looked like at least one person had been gathering items to take outside in the fewest amount of trips. while the other headed upstairs to look through the bedroom for valuables. A stack of stereo components and a VCR was piled up near the base of the stairs and the front door. While forensic analysts photographed the bloody smudge on a VCR player and a red stain on the electronics, the marks were smear-like and couldn't be developed into identifiable matching prints. Speaker 2 (9:30) And, you know, Morf, I mean, burglars have, you know, historically gone for... expensive items, right? Or technology, jewelry, things like that. You know, in 1986, a VCR player was pretty expensive. And we kind of think about it now. Most people definitely don't have a VCR. I would probably guess maybe half the people don't even do DVDs anymore because of streaming. So they don't need a DVD player. I haven't had one in years. But technology has made some of that stuff so inexpensive that I don't even know if burglars nowadays target that type of stuff because it's just not that expensive. Speaker 1 (10:23) Yeah, I think a burglar, if they break in your home and find a bunch of DVDs and VCRs and stuff like that, they're really bummed out and probably not happy. Plus that stuff. is kind of big and bulky. I always wondered when a burglar robs a house and carries that kind of stuff out, aren't they worried they're going to be drawing attention, hauling big stuff out of a house that doesn't belong to you? I always wondered that. Yeah, TVs. Speaker 2 (10:47) I mean, in the old days, TVs were so heavy and big and bulky. But even nowadays, TVs are really big. They're just not nearly as heavy. But what does it look like when you're carrying this? 65-inch TV out the door. But yet again, I think you can go to Walmart and get those now for like $400 or $500. So I don't think they're as sought after as they would have been in the past. This was looking more and more like a burglary, and police thought that, unfortunately, Sherry was home at the time. The burglars hadn't planned for this, but they were prepared for the possibility. At least one of them brought a gun. Evidence at the scene painted a pretty clear picture, or so it seemed. Investigators theorized that Sherry had surprised the intruder and then there was a struggle. Sherry was shot once in the dining room and then tried to make her way downstairs and to the front door. There was a bloody handprint on the wall next to the panic button on the alarm panel. Sherry tried hard to summon help to the condo, but her attacker stopped her just short of the button. She actually fought back so hard that two of her fingernails had come off in the Speaker 1 (12:02) struggle. Speaker 2 (12:03) The Speaker 1 (12:03) fact that Sherry's car had been stolen further bolstered the theory by police of more than one burglar. Sherry's car was parked in the garage that morning. If the burglars came to the condo looking to steal something, they would presumably have their own vehicle to get out of the area with the stolen goods quickly. However, the complex was gated. It appears you can get in through a walking pass if you're on foot. Looking at the current Google Street view of the property, there are gates on those paths, but it's unclear if they're locked. If the burglars were planning to steal their getaway car, how did they know that Sherry's car was in the garage? She was supposed to be at work that day, but she ended up calling in sick. Could that mean that the burglars were close to Sherry and knew her schedule? I know a couple people that have... gate gated community homes. When you go there, it's kind of annoying. You have to stop. You have to punch in a code and wait for the gate to lift. And, you know, that's obviously part of the security. And I don't know if that was the same exact arrangement back then, but I do find that interesting because, you know, if I assume they can track those numbers or the person has to know those numbers, if they came in that way with a vehicle, assuming there was one in some places even had a. like a person on duty at the gate, depending on how fancy the place was. So it makes me wonder if this person came there by car, you know, how