Murderess ex-LAPD cop who gunned down ex-boyfriend’s wife in 1986 is denied parole after being branded a liar with no remorse

Plans to release former LAPD detective Stephanie Lazarus from prison were rejected by the California Board of Parole Hearings after dramatic testimony from the friends and family of the woman she killed in 1986.

Tuesday’s decision rejected a November recommendation from a parole board that Lazarus should be released after serving 15 years of a life sentence.

The 64-year-old former member of the Los Angeles Police Department was jailed in 2009 after a dramatic trial that led to Lazarus’ conviction some 25 years after the murder of her ex’s new wife.

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office asked the parole board to review the plan to release Lazarus in April.

According to the LA timestears flowed as John Ruetten spoke about the brutality with which his wife, 29-year-old Sherri Rasmussen, was murdered.

Sherri Rasmussen and John Ruetten on their wedding day, just four months before Stephanie Lazarus murdered Rasmussen

Lazarus, jealous of the couple’s relationship, murdered the new bride, a crime she eventually confessed to before a parole board last year.

Lazarus had been an LAPD detective for 25 years when homicide detectives reopened the cold case of Rasmussen’s murder and tested DNA from a bite on the victim.

The reopened investigation led to the arrest in 2009 of Lazarus, who had skillfully covered up her actions all those years ago and then lied to friends and family for decades.

Lazarus met Ruetten when they were both students at UCLA in the late 1970s.

The couple did not date seriously for several years after graduation, but Ruetten testified at the murder trial that he would not have used the word girlfriend to describe Lazarus.

Shortly after Ruetten proposed to Rasmussen, Lazarus confronted him and begged him to break it off.

But Ruetten and Rasmussen married in 1985, just a year before Ruetten came home from work one day to find his wife dead after being severely beaten several times and shot in the chest.

The initial investigation revealed that Rasmussen had been the victim of a robbery by two men in the home she shared with her husband. No arrests of suspected murderers have ever been made.

On Monday, some of Rasmussen’s friends and family, including her two sisters, asked the parole board to keep the killer behind bars.

Lazarus, they said, was anything but a “youthful offender” at the time – she was 25 at the time of the murder – and, according to her opponents, was a highly skilled member of the police force who used her knowledge to plan and carry out the murder . murder.

John Ruetten, pictured at Lazarus’ sentencing hearing in the mid-2000s, making a victim impact statement

Sherri Rasmussen was just 29 years old and had only been married for four months when she was murdered in her marital apartment

Parents of shooting victim Sherri Rasmussen, Neil Rasmussen and his wife Loretta appear at a press conference after a court hearing for Los Angeles Detective Stephanie Lazarus, Tuesday, June 9, 2009 in Los Angeles

Although criminal justice reform groups have called for Lazarus’ release, a parole board decided against it on Tuesday

Criminal justice reform groups have long been focused on Lazarus’ case and advocating for her freedom, in part because of the leadership she has shown during her time in prison.

Jane Dorotik of LA’s Innocence Project called Lazarus “kind, compassionate and a dedicated individual.” She has taken full responsibility for her actions.”

Dorotik previously served a dozen years before her conviction was overturned.

Others told the board they believe Lazarus is a “transformed person.”

Lazarus himself did not appear before the board on Monday, but spoke to the panel about the murder in November:

“It sickens me to this day that I took an oath to protect and serve people, and that I took Sherri Rasmussen’s life, a nurse. All I could think about was getting out of there before the police arrived.”

The LAPD detective who arrested Lazarus a decade ago, Gregg Stearns, spoke out against her release.

“Stephanie Lazarus stalked her victim, choosing a time and place when she knew she would have the victim alone. He brought rope to tie her up, used a makeshift suppressor to execute her, committed a burglary, threw away the murder weapon and filed a false police report with an outside agency to explain the weapon’s absence,” the veteran said. Robbery-Homicide Division. officer.

‘Those are not the characteristics of juvenile crimes. They are the hallmarks of criminal sophistication and maturity,” he added, noting that he believes Lazarus is certainly capable of committing the same type of crime again.