![]() When Lazarus did leave, she was intercepted by other detectives waiting in the hallway. They told her she was free to leave if she wanted. When it became obvious to her that she was a suspect, Lazarus told Stearns and Jaramillo that they were "starting to make me uncomfortable" and asked whether she needed a lawyer. They repeatedly assuaged her concern by telling her they were just doing their jobs and saying that they had brought her down to the jail to spare her the embarrassment of being questioned in the office. On several occasions, Lazarus asked the detectives the reason for the questioning. "You'd remember that, right? That would be pretty specific and, you know, traumatic," Jaramillo pushed back. Jaramillo grew more pointed in his questions, asking Lazarus if she ever had fought with Rasmussen and harping on her when she insisted, "If it happened, I honestly don't remember it. Lazarus did not give a definitive answer, repeatedly saying she could not recall. The detectives pushed ahead, questioning Lazarus on whether she ever had gone to Rasmussen's home. I may have talked to her once or twice, or more," she said. ![]() And, yeah, I may have met her at a hospital. "Now that you're bringing it up, I think she worked at a hospital somewhere. Initially, Lazarus said she couldn't recall whether she had ever met Rasmussen, but soon acknowledged they had met. "Do you know John Ruetten?"įor roughly the next hour, the detectives pressed Lazarus for information about her relationship with Ruetten and any encounters she had with Rasmussen. "We've been assigned a case that we've been looking at," he said. After a few minutes of small talk, Jaramillo told Lazarus she was not there to question a suspect about art. Jaramillo brought Lazarus into a private room in the jail facility where Jaramillo's partner, Detective Greg Stearns, was waiting. He told Lazarus he needed her help interrogating a man who claimed to have information on stolen art, which was Lazarus' specialty. June 5, Detective Daniel Jaramillo from the LAPD Robbery-Homicide Division approached Lazarus at her desk in the department's headquarters and asked her to accompany him downstairs to the department's jail facility, where she would not be able to bring her gun. Police and prosecutors say DNA from that object matched the crime-scene evidence.Īfter the match was made, LAPD officials devised a plan to arrest Lazarus. ![]() Police began tailing their colleague and eventually collected a plastic utensil or other object with her saliva on it. Cold-case detectives reopened the investigation and learned of Lazarus' relationship with Ruetten. Two decades later, DNA analysis of saliva collected from a bite mark on Rasmussen's arm indicated that the killer was a woman, disproving the theory of a male robber. The detective never seriously pursued Lazarus, who had recently joined the LAPD. Nels Rasmussen, the victim's father, has said he repeatedly told detectives that his daughter had several confrontations with Lazarus in the months before her death and had been frightened by Lazarus' hostility.īut the lead detective in the case was convinced that Rasmussen had been killed during a botched burglary by a man who had committed a robbery in the area. The two had begun a romantic relationship while attending UCLA, but broke up around the time Ruetten struck up a relationship with Rasmussen. Lazarus was a childhood friend of Ruetten's. She was found bludgeoned and shot multiple times in the Los Angeles townhouse she shared with John Ruetten, whom she had recently married. The killing of Rasmussen, a 29-year-old hospital nursing director, was one of thousands of homicides in the 1980s that went unsolved. It would have led to answers for the Rasmussens rather than letting them hang in wind," said attorney John C. "That's the interview that LAPD should have conducted in 1986. "There's nothing in the interview from which any reasonable juror could conclude that she committed this crime," he said.Ī lawyer representing the Rasmussen family disagreed. ![]() On Monday, Overland downplayed the significance of the questioning. At the hearing last Friday, Judge Robert Perry denied a request by her attorney, Mark Overland, to keep the transcript out of the case. She remains in custody on $10 million bail awaiting trial, which is expected to start in the spring. This is insane," Lazarus said minutes later after she walked out of the interview, only to be stopped, handcuffed and told she was under arrest in the murder of Sherri Rae Rasmussen. "Am I on 'Candid Camera' or something? This is insane. "You're accusing me of this? Is that what you're - is that what you're saying?" Lazarus asked near the end of the roughly hourlong interview, after one of the detectives alluded to evidence that implicated her in the killing.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |