The Murder of Sherri Rasmussen By: Kimberly Miller Biological Evidence I-2
On the night of Feburary 24, 1986, John Routten came home to find his new wife Sherri Rasmussen a critical care nurse beaten, bludgeoned, and shot numerous times by a .38 caliber handgun, leaving her dead. The Los Angeles Police Department thought Sherri had been disrupted a robber and it costed her her life. Police found a trail of blood coming down the stairs and a bloody hand print with pieces of her fingernails broken off by the front door which suggested to them that Sherri had put up a fight and tried to escape. Sherri had appeared to be struck over the head with a vase from the home and shot 3 times, causing punctures to her chest, lungs, and spine at close point range by a .38 caliber gun that had been wrapped in a blanket to muffle the shot sound. The suspect had bitten her left forearm. The police swabbed the bite mark for saliva DNA even though the DNA analysis was not in existence in 1986. The police believe that Sherri was killed in a robbery gone bad by 2 Latino men that were wanted in connection of other robberies and assaults at this time. Sherri Rasmussen’s BMW and her and John’s marriage license was the only things stolen out of their home. Sherri’s BMW was found a mile down the road from the crime with the keys left in it. The parents and husband of Sherri told police the day after her murder to look at John the husband of Sherri ex-girlfriend Stephanie Lazarus.
Stephanie Lazarus had caused a couple different confrontations with Sherri Rasmussen. One of the incidents was when Lazarus showed up at Rasmussens job at the Glendale Adventist Medical Center making threats that if she could not have John then no one else would. Lazarus was an employee of the Los Angeles Police Department and later started her private investigation firm. Rasmussen and Lazarus had a couple more confrontation at the home of John and Sherri and one was when Lazarus was waiting on the inside of their home in her police uniform when Rasmussen arrived home and this happened about a month before the murder of Sherri Rasmussen. The father of Rasmussen had recounted the confrontations for the police via what Sherri had told him on numerous occasions. There were also alleged reports that Rasmussen had reported to her father of Lazarus had been stalking her on the streets. The case then went cold for 18 years.
In 2004, the new and evolved technology of DNA testing and the new LAPD Cold Case Unit wanted to start looking into older cases that had gone cold over the years and one of the cases that they focused on was that of the murder of Sheri Rasmussen. They ordered new testing on the DNA (Saliva) from the bite mark on Sherri Rasmussen forearm. The testing of the DNA found and revealed that the suspect was not in fact a male, but a female’s DNA; which then caused a disposed link to men committing the robberies that police suspected. It took LAPD detectives another 5 years to go through the case files and focus on suspects who were women who were originally reported as a suspect in the beginning of Sherri Rasmussen murder case.
There were DNA samples collected from all of them ruling them out one by one as the killer except one and that was Stephanie Lazarus. The collection of Lazarus’s DNA sample was a challenge for police, but, not because they could not find her they knew exactly where she was and where she worked (LAPD). The challenge was actually getting her DNA presented difficulties due to the fact that they wanted to do it without her knowing. They got Lazarus’s DNA from a cup of soda she had gotten from a resale shop that she had drank leaving traces of Saliva (DNA) on the rim of the cup and she threw the cup in the trash can. The detectives now had 2 DNA samples that were taken 23 years apart from one another to test. It took the DNA analysis of the samples 24 hours to come back with results and both DNA samples
