Stephanie Lazarus, who was an L.A. police detective when she killed her former boyfriend’s spouse in 1986, was beneficial for parole by a choose committee Thursday.
Lazarus, 63, was convicted in 2012 of murdering Sherri Rasmussen, a 29-year-old hospital nursing director. After the preliminary investigation into Rasmussen’s loss of life, the case went chilly for 23 years. New proof led police to reopen the case, and Lazarus was arrested in 2009. She is at the moment serving a jail sentence of 27 years to life on the California Establishment for Ladies in Corona.
John Taylor, an legal professional who represented Rasmussen’s mother and father through the trial, stated the slain girl’s siblings and widower, John Ruetten, attended the parole board panel listening to Thursday, held through Zoom, throughout which a number of of them spoke. The panel listening to is a part of a multi-step course of for the granting of parole.
Taylor stated the siblings had been shocked that the board would advocate Lazarus for parole.
“She had 23 years of freedom whereas this household needed to battle coping with the grief of Sherri’s loss of life,” Taylor stated.
Rasmussen died Feb. 24, 1986, within the Van Nuys residence she shared with Ruetten.
Ruetten and Lazarus had met as college students at UCLA within the Seventies, and although the 2 dated casually for a number of years after graduating, Ruetten stated in testimony through the trial that he by no means thought-about Lazarus his girlfriend.
He subsequently met Rasmussen, and so they turned engaged. Shortly afterward, Ruetten stated, he was confronted by Lazarus, then an LAPD patrol officer, who pleaded with him to not get married. Reutten and Rasmussen wed in 1985.
The day of Rasmussen’s loss of life, Ruetten returned residence from work to search out her badly crushed and with three gunshot wounds to the chest. The preliminary investigation decided Rasmussen died throughout a theft by two males on the residence, however no arrests had been made.
The case was reopened in 2009 and used DNA proof from a saliva pattern taken as proof from a chunk mark on Rasmussen’s arm. The pattern was discovered to have originated from a girl. Undercover officers surreptitiously collected Lazarus’ DNA, and he or she was arrested.
When the homicide case lastly went to trial, it garnered media consideration, and Lazarus gained notoriety as a jilted lover who sought revenge.
The parole board panel’s advice of parole for Lazarus is step one within the course of and doesn’t instantly grant her launch. The choice will now endure a evaluation by the California parole board. If it passes, Gov. Gavin Newsom has 120 days to approve or deny granting parole.
If all goes off with no hitch for Lazarus, she may very well be launched from jail in six months, in line with Taylor.