Hello and welcome to my favorite murder this Thanksgiving episode. All right, it's Thanksgiving for y'all today. It's Thanksgiving Day episode. How is it not having to see your family this year?

How do you mean with the ideal, the way it should always be done? That's that's Karen Kilgariff. Oh, that's Georgia Stark. Hi. We're here. They are. Oh. So, you know, in this in the middle of this episode this week, I asked about mid century modern dollhouses. Yes. And is there like a hashtag and a bunch of people tagged me in this really great one called Tiny House Calls k l l. S.

And it's by Dr. Quando Roberts. And it's just beautiful interior design, mid century, modern, like cute style, our fucking style. But it's all mini look. Can you see that. Whoa, that looks like real.

I know it doesn't look small at all. It's oh mini. Look at that.

I want my house to look like that is this is this decorator slash designer making like they have a mid century dollhouse that they're then filling with mid century furniture, just making the furniture.

I think they do the whole thing. I think I think you design a room. So I don't know if it's an actual house like Dollhouse or if it's just room by room. But I follow a lot of the journalists makers and it's I mean, it's fascinating. In the same corner corner, we can say last week I made a I was actually going to have Stephen cut it out when I talked about my newest candy obsession, which is so scary.

I wrote it down the night to be like, stop talking about Candy. Look, stop. Stop pretending. That's interesting.

It's not. Well, then I got some support on Twitter and I really want to think their names Butel on Twitter and there at is Bailly Eschbach like an impossible.

I don't know if it's a name or if you're trying to sound drunk. I don't know what it is. It's a Russian spy or whatever you are.

Thank you Butel because they wrote to me. I am also not super proud of my Sauers Ghedi needs so I buy it in bulk and showed a picture of a whole box.

Oh so scary that they have sent you to their house which I really respect. There it is Haribo. You got to love Haribo. Come on, shame dies in the light. So thank you. Thank you for being there with me in that.

Oh I'm reading a book that I really like that Oprah. Oprah likes to so clearly it must be good. It must be good and she and I must be best friends. It's not really Elegy is it.

No, no. But I really want to watch that because everyone keeps saying it's the worst movie they've ever anyone's ever seen, which makes you absolutely want to see it. I mean, sure. My thing is people keep posting pictures of Amy Adams looking dumpy from that movie. Every time I see it, I go, Oh, that's a cute shirt.

Every time I see it, I get really I feel supported and seen and I'm like, yeah, I like messy hair.

Oh, it's she's supposed to look bad. Oh, that's like finally Amy Adams is like like my style.

Oh she's supposed to be playing. Oh I guess it hasn't come into style yet. Not, not brushing your hair.

You know that's the eighties and nineties and it hasn't come back yet but you're welcome to wait. Hold on. So I'm listening to this incredible book called Hidden Valley Road by Robert Colker. And it's the true story of this family with 12 children. And from the nineteen like forty five on and six of those children end up getting diagnosed with schizophrenia. So at the time, of course, there's not a ton of research done on it. And they become kind of this like study of the science of schizophrenia, you know, based on their family.

And so psychiatry and brain doctors and scientists study them to figure out the how and the why of the what of schizophrenia and the diagnosis and what it means and how it can be treated. And it's just really fascinating. If you read the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, it's really similar to where it goes between, you know, the family and what they're going through and their life. And then the next chapter is about the scientists in the study and the brain.

And it's just it's a really interesting read. And if you're fascinated by psychiatry, which I am, it's it's such an incredible book. So that's Hidden Valley Road by Robert Colker. That's great. Yeah, I love it. I highly recommend it.

That sounds really good. I well, I just binge the crown. The fourth season of the Crown. I watched my first episode I've ever seen of it last night of the Crown.

And now you start it on for the young. Yeah. Because. I wanted to see lady die on it, and then it's just Olivia Colman, but I'm fucking really enjoying it and I'm like, oh shit, I might have to go back and just start from the beginning.

You really should, because it's just as good one. Claire Foy is the queen. And it is it's really I was surprised how much I liked it. Yeah, OK, I might do that. I don't think Vince is interested though, so I'm on my own.

I'll say this. The, the they're not it's not just one of those kind of like, oh, it's a historical, you know, like drama series or whatever. They know how to make TV. The people that make this show are really good at making TV. So it's very compelling. You know, you learn and grow, but also it's just good, good to me. I'm into the World War two history of it all. So that sounds super exciting.

Yeah. I mean, it's great. So you benge that I enjoyed it. There's a couple episodes near the I didn't get I think I got like six episodes in and then I fell asleep, which I think about all the time where I fall asleep when I'm like, does my is my brain still listening? And do I know what happened at the end of season four of the Crown? And I just my conscious brain doesn't know, but it's like in there somewhere.

Maybe it works that way. The dream doctors fucking or anyone who a dream diary dictionary that let us know please. Yeah.

What if I go and try to pitch the back half of season four of the crown and people are like this is word for word what they already as a podcast.

No, it's a great idea. I can't do that. Um OK. What else did you see.

This is one of the better videos I've seen on Twitter all week in Utah.

They made because so many animals were being killed on Interstate 80, I think it is they made an overpass for animals and then they put video cameras, day and night scope video cameras. And so you can watch the video.

It's like, see who's crossing, look who's crossing, look who's crossing guard. There's there's deer. There's tons of bears. There's little squirrels and tiny mice. And like in the in the overpass, there's like it's dirt. And then they put like logs and rocks and natural things so that they can hide if they're scared or whatever.

How do they know to is it like there's just like great I'd rather do this than run across the street or whatever.

So yeah, I got to do it. I guess maybe they like, maybe they like heard them heard there.

But there's like a there's some kind of a really bossy deer crossing guard that's on one side, like this way. We're doing it this way now.

OK, clear with your clipboard. Get it. You're in charge.

Claire, I want to go down the highway. No, no, no, no. I'm not doing that anymore. I'm Claire, the bossy deer.

Yeah, you got to see that. It's really that's worth a I like how everything's feeling a little lighter and a little, you know, a little more positive these days.

And then you see videos like that. You don't need them so much. You just like, great. Yeah. I'm not like you're holding your phone, crying and staring, going, oh my God, there is good in this world. Just go watch for yourself. You'll see how great it is to watch a bear walking and then stop and stallion's hind legs and look around like could just be trusted, you know.

Yes, it can be.

Another reason I'm real bummed is that I had to stop feeding the squirrels, my neighbors, that squirrels that are like essentially taken over our deck are like patio because it's theirs now. So I have to stop giving them. And that's all the time. Yeah. So they're not going to come around anymore. And I'm really fucking sad about it. I watched them grow up and say bye good bye to the squirrels.

Oh. You know, just because they don't want them around, they're now like living on our outdoors.

They'd like to live there and we can't go outside now. The cats can't go outside. I'm worried about mites and fleas and stuff. They're all of our furniture, patio furniture.

They're throwing my plants over the balcony like it's just there. It's a little too much this time.

You didn't you really didn't think it all the way through it when you started going through food over here. Oh, my God. Look how cute they are. And Vince was like, hey, I'm from Michigan. Don't do you shouldn't you know, it's like, no way. It's so cute. I love them.

It's like, OK, but Snow White, you're that's snow. That's like the time that I put out a bird feeder because I'm like, look, I like birds. Yeah. This is my passion. I put out a bird feeder. Birds are coming into my backyard. And then like three days later I looked outside and there was no joke, like thirty pigeons just standing around. And what they would do is one would jump up on the bird feeder and spin it.

Yeah. And just flick the bird seed everywhere. And they just found out it was just like free food in this backyard.

We just went out and took it right back down. Exactly. No thanks.

But exactly what was happening. You see the. Two of the old guy in Florida who rescued his dog from a little alligator, I saw a screengrab of it and I couldn't watch it. But he survived. The dog survived.

Oh, yeah. Oh, thank God. Oh, my gosh. The old guy goes in. He's got a he's got a cigar in his mouth, like, clamped between his teeth. That thing never fucking comes out of his mouth.

He pulls the dog. The alligator is only like this big. It's it's you know, either either it's a baby alligator or crocodile. I'm not sure in that area or wherever, but or it's the kind that doesn't get any bigger. But he basically is holding it like this. And his little dog, he just like opens its rivals, the dog this way, the dog takes off running and let me just like throws it. At no point he's smoking a cigar the entire time he's like this.

He's the ultimate old Florida man. Love him. Yeah. Graduation's Dode. Yeah. And the dog had a punctured lung, but he's doing fine now. Oh. I mean, he was like in the jaws of an alligator series before his eyes. Little, tiny little people.

Sorry, did you see the huge alligator on the on the other end of the alligator news spectrum? Well, they took a picture of this alligator that was walking across a golf course in Florida.

OK, I think I did see this. And it's the size of a fucking minivan. Truly, truly GI Buck.

And can you see the moose that someone took? It was a while ago, but it was a moose in Alaska walking down the center of a highway and someone pulled up to it. And it is the size of a small building, really. Did you know moose for this fucking size? Did you? I saw Moose. I thought you're going to say the moose video where the moose fucking running through snow top speed, like in the snow was like four feet deep.

And this was runs by and it's going 30 miles an hour.

And the people are just like, whoa. And it's like it's as if the snow is not there. Like it doesn't impede that moose at all. I hope he used the the cross, the bridge, the bridge crossing he was running to, not the bridge down. He's he's a.. Which, you know, it's going to happen.

Those anti bridges. They will not Remzi. Speaking of which, friend of the family of Phoebe Bridgers nominated for a Grammy. Yay!

Congratulations, Phoebe.

She's so talented. Did you hear her cover of Iris? Yes. It was so incredible. It was so good. Her and Maggie Rogers, Maggie, her and Maggie Rogers covers even. Are you a super fan?

Maggie Rogers record is really great. Too obvious to be Phoebes record is like the best record this year. Yeah, Pitchfork says so that means it's a fact.

Um, cool. Um, so do a little, a little business. A little less. Sure. A little. Exactly. Right corner news. Well what's really exciting is that our newest show, Ten Fold, More Wicked, premiered on Monday. I mean, which we hope you're already a love it and subscribe to it and adore it. Yeah. If you need a new true crime podcast, this one has everything. That's right. I said I'm doing I said no gifts at the end of the month.

Oh, I started. I'm like really nervous and I'm a really nervous gift giver. So I've already started collecting things to maybe give Phrygia two days before you go on the show, you're going to come up and tell them what the gift. I absolutely I'm that's so I'm to send them. I felt like I just. This is for a friend. Which one of these would you rather have?

I'm so nervous. Um, all right. Yeah. You guys know all the. I saw what you did. Bananas. We have so many good podcasts on our network. Check it out. Pretty soon we're going to have so many podcasts. We're not going to be able to do this because there's too many to talk about. But until that time, we get to stoke the fire. Yeah. Oh, this is fun. This is a quick a quick mention.

And it's the twenty twenty is almost over sale. Right. So we're doing twenty percent off all merch in the store from Friday at midnight until Monday at midnight Pacific Standard Time. So just use the code. Goodbye. Twenty twenty.

When you check out and you know, get yourself something nice, get yourself a little something, something and celebration. Yeah. So that's my favorite murder. Dotcom and the store. Goodbye. Twenty twenty is the promo code. There's so much stuff on the tip of my brain to talk about that I can remember today. So. So why don't we get to the murders instead.

The murder. Yeah, the murder. The story.

It's I'm all alone this week. Yeah. Karen's going this week. I'm going to go next week. I have a big one for next week because guys.

Yeah. We've been podcasting all the way through twenty twenty and I realized that you know this because you listen to the podcast and thank you for that. But it has not been easy. You know this year has not been an easy one to just continually churn out content for.

Right. Yeah, that's very true. That's very true. And and we've been we're doing other things. You know, we're running this network. There's another thing we're doing that we can't talk about yet that's really exciting.

Yeah, we're not allowed to do that. Sorry, Stephen. Like that. Just. No, no, no. Just bleep the word. Yeah, that's how we make it exciting.

Good idea. So, yeah, there's a lot going on, but we of course the most important thing is the podcast and we fucking love it and we just want to make sure that this is that this is sustainable for the two of us so that we can keep doing it through what's going to be the best year in anyone's existence. Twenty, twenty one, hopefully fingers.

First of all, just let's just talk each individually about the first celebratory action we're going to take once the vaccines have been distributed and proven to be effective, suddenly everything's open again.

Normal life has started. Georgia dark. Where are you going to go downtown Las Vegas and go fuckin play the buffalo, Bo and Vince and I are going to and just have it out in Vegas.

It's going nice. Yeah.

Oh, you mean fighting big boxing match the time of our lives. You're going to fight in Vegas, OK?

We're going to finally we've been getting along so well through the quarantine that we're just going to have a huge fight in the middle of downtown Las Vegas. That'll be very cathartic, like right by the Fatburger that we went to that time. Did the show. Yeah. What about you? I just think I should start drinking again and go straight to a bar, a terrible bar, like an old man bar that no one wants you there.

Yeah, I just sidle right up right up to the bar elbow. People out of the way. Yeah. I'm just like, see that bottle of creme de menthe?

Bring it over you. Oh, and then Karen is gone. I just go back to drinking the most disgusting beverages I can.

What if you just drink really low alcohol percentage crash and that's like you never get drunk.

Yeah. Peachy hops mixed with creme de menthe.

All right, let's do this thing. I have a story to tell you, an incredibly terrible oh, which I think is what you're going to like about it. OK, this one we've never done before. It's obviously the B word I'm going to do the one you did. This is one I've actually done before. And so I'm really excited to tell you again. Yeah.

I just want to this is a quick reminder of the one you just did.

No, I've actually I almost did this one before, but it was very long and involved and kind of intimidating. So I knew from the quilt episode that I would have time I would have time for Jay to do the research.

Jay Elias, by the way, is he works for us. He works at exactly right. But then he also does my research and he's so great at it. So thank you, Jay, once again.

So this week I'm covering the murder of Sherri Rasmussen.

Oh, wow. OK, so I and I love you. I hate this murder. I love this story. Yeah, right. Yeah. That's usually how it goes.

Yeah. So in twenty twelve, a writer named Mark Bowden wrote an article for Vanity Fair called A Case So Cold it was blue. And so that's an amazing article if you want to read it. We also used research from Los Angeles magazine article by a writer named Steve Mechelen. It was from twenty twelve and called In Plain Sight. There was an article on the website Crime Library written by Tricia Romano. And of course, there's an exhaustive Wikipedia page about this case.

I should tell the story probably that we were supposed to report at six. And right around that time, I was finishing up a final notes on this, and then my computer screen screen turned very dark blue, so it wasn't off the screen, just died.

And for five full minutes, I thought that, like, the computer screen had gone out.

And then finally I was able to turn it off and turn it back on the classic things. And when it came back on, the document was in its original form for hours previous after four hours of work.

And it was very upsetting. And then slowly but surely, it knew itself. So the the most recent version came back a lot of drama. So we start here on the morning of Monday, February twenty fourth, nineteen eighty six, Sherri Rasmussen wakes up in her Viennese condo alongside her new husband, John Rutten. They're newlyweds. They just got married three months earlier. She's the director of nursing at Glendale Adventist Medical Center in Glendale, California. And she's supposed to be going to work that day because she has to give a speech for human resources.

They're doing a class in human resources. And she's supposed to give like an inspirational speech, but she kind of isn't feeling up to it because she injured her back working out the day before. So she's considering using that as an excuse to just take the day off and call in sick. So around seven twenty in the morning when John leaves for work to go to work at the engineering company that he works at, she's still laying in bed. So around nine forty five, one of Sherry and John's neighbors notices that their garage is open.

There's no car inside. Then around 10:00 a.m., John calls the house to check in with Sherry, but there's no answer. And he notices the answering machine doesn't go on.

So for all the children that don't know what that means, when back long ago your answering machine lived outside of your phone, it was a big, huge, weird, like tape recorder and you literally turned in. You could turn it on and off. So obviously they turned theirs off. And she she was before she left for work, she was to turn it on. So it hadn't been turned on. But that was something she'd forgotten to do before.

So he didn't really it didn't click with him and he didn't really think much about it instead of you just try Sherry at work. But there the person he talks to tells them that Sherry hasn't arrived yet. She said that Sherry most likely went straight to that H.R. class and didn't come into her office. So John tries Sherry at home again a couple more times throughout the day, as does Sherry sister. Each time no one answers around 12:00 noon. All right.

There are two gardeners who are working on the condo grounds and they find a purse. So they give it to one of the neighbors, a husband and wife. They look the husband and wife look inside and they realize that the purse belongs to Sherry Rassman. Around 12, 30 p.m. A maid who's cleaning another neighbor's condo hears two people arguing coming from the direction of Sherri and John's unit, followed by a thump and what sounds like a hard fall that may doesn't hear anything else assumes it was just a normal argument that people sometimes have.

And she just continues on with her day. So John is on his way home from work. He does some errands. First, he stops at the dry cleaners. He stops at the UPS store. When he finally gets home, he sees their garage door is open. And Sherry's BMW, which was his engagement gift to her, is gone. Wow. So then he notices there's broken glass in the driveway. So like recently, Sherry had dinged her car door.

And so John thinks maybe she accidentally hit something while she was pulling out of the driveway. Right. And broke one of the car windows. You know how your brain just kind of tries to put a story together? Yeah, not the craziest conclusion. Yeah. Just like, oh, this could be what happened. But then as he walks in the through the garage door and up the stairs, he sees that the door leading into their living room is open.

And now all of these separate minor details of the day suddenly add up and panic sets in. He rushes up the stairs only to find Sherry's lifeless body lying face up on the living room floor. She's still wearing her robe from that morning. Her face is swollen and she's covered in blood. John then realizes that she has bullet wounds in her chest. He checks her pulse, he can't find one, and he immediately calls the police. The investigative team arrives and it's led by a detective, Lyle Maier.

So they determine that Sherry has been shot in the chest three times with a 38 caliber gun. There's a bruise on her face that suggests she was hit with the gun before being shot. There's a quilted blanket with blast holes lying nearby that indicate the killer used it as a makeshift silencer. And they find a bite mark on Sherry's left inner forearm. They swab that for saliva and they make a dental mold for later analysis. So investigators see that there's clear signs a fight took place.

There's a porcelain vase that looks like it was broken over Sherry's head. There's a stereo speaker that's been knocked to the floor.

There's the shelving of a display. Cabinet is knocked off its brackets and the TV's amplifier and receiver are both just hanging by their cords. And then at the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor, there's a VCR and a CD player. They're neatly stacked as if someone was planning on taking them. And the CD player has blood smears on top of it, which matched the blood smears on the east wall and the front door. And on the second floor, the back balcony sliding glass doors have been shattered.

So this is the glass that John saw in the driveway. But there's no signs of forced entry. Nothing appears to be actually stolen except for John and Sherry's marriage license. Why so? John's question, of course, because you know, the husband and he recounts his day. It's clear to investigators he's not a person of interest that his alibi can be proven by many people. They questioned the neighbors and then they learn about the disturbance the maid heard.

They learn about the open garage door and they learn about Sherry's purse being found by the gardeners. So after a few hours and.

Basically, with John's alibi in place, Detective Mayer tells John that he believes Sherry was the victim of a burglary gone wrong just around 10 a.m. that day. So a week later, Sherry's BMW is found abandoned on the street and denies it was unlocked and the keys were in the ignition. Investigators are able to pull a couple of fingerprints from the car and a spot of blood and also a single brown hair. But those clues yield no immediate results. And then over the course of the next few weeks, police continue interviewing neighbors, family members, friends, co-workers.

And a picture of Sherry's life begins to come into focus. So Sherri Rasmussen is originally from Tucson, Arizona, but she moved to Los Angeles in 1973 to study critical care nursing at Loma Linda University when she's just 16 years old. Wow. She's really, really smart.

She excels in school and she's on a fast track to a promising nursing career by her late 20s. Sherri has been promoted to the director of nursing at Glendale Adventist. She's also an avid runner and athlete. She's really beautiful and she's really confident. And so in the summer of nineteen eighty four, when she meets the handsome, talkative twenty five year old John Rutten, it doesn't take long for sparks to fly. So John's originally from San Diego. He moved to Los Angeles to study mechanical engineering at UCLA.

He graduated in 1982 and he is head over heels in love with Sherri and they date for about a year and a half. And then in November of nineteen eighty five, they get married.

But it's of course, as any marriage, all is not as perfect as it seems because just remind InvenSense, except for Georgia and Invensys, even though she wouldn't take his last name, I don't know why.

Anyway, just weeks before John and Sherry's wedding, they visited by an old friend of John's named Stephanie Lazarus.

So Stephanie has dark hair and an athletic frame, and she shows up unannounced one day carrying a pair of water skis, asking if John will wax them for her.

Not wanting anyone stuck in water skis as being so she imitates Sherri immediately, suspects John is cheating on her with this woman. John assures her he is not. He says that they were just old college friends and that while they used to sleep together every once in a while, Stephanie was never his girlfriend. Either way, Cherie sees through this kind of wax my skis ploy as a way for her to get face time with John. She basically tells John, don't do that, like just say no.

But he says it's just better if I do it and now and then just she'll go away.

But of course she doesn't. So when Stephanie shows up again unannounced to pick up her skis, which are just basic manners of weird, this weird popping in on, people know that. Yeah, on an X, on an X or even like a a friend, just kind of like, hey, I'm here. Right. Very suspicious. So John basically gives the ski skis back and then Sherri just asks certainly if she's just like, yeah, you're not hanging out.

So Stephanie leaves. A few weeks later she shows up again, but this time she's in uniform, complete with a gun on her hip because it turns out Stephanie Lazarus is an LAPD police officer.

She's dropped by the house at a time of day when sherries usually already left for work. And John is still at the house. But this morning, John had left early and Sherry was still there.

So. Cherries immediately like this. This is not good, like this is a very bad thing and basically she's just like, you need to get out of here to Stephanie. And of course, now her suspicion that her husband's having an affair with this woman grows into a real fear. And that fear is confirmed when she gets a third unannounced visit from Stephanie Lazarus. This time it's a Cherrie's work.

So apparently is definitely Lasser's just walks into Glendale Adventist Medical Center right past the front desk, and she just walked straight into Cherie's office.

And if that's not weird enough. She's wearing like tight short shorts and a tube top. Mm hmm, which is that's that's insane.

No matter what the scenario that is bizarre. Bizarre, you know, unless you're going to like a roller rink.

Right. Not a hospital. Yeah. Know, so she's she basically goes there and tells Sherri things are not over between her and John.

And and essentially before she leaves, she makes this ominous declaration. She tells Sherry, If I can't have John, no one else can go away.

So now Sherry doesn't know what to believe or what to do. She's super worried and confused. So she calls her father, Nel's Rasmussen. He's still back in Tucson and she confides in him about this insane situation. She not only tells her dad about Stephanie's disturbing visits, but she also says that she thinks Stephanie has been stalking her.

So Nel's is a very protective father, and he's also never really been a fan of John's. He always thought John was too soft to properly take care of Sherry. And now that he hears this story, he's convinced he was right because John clearly doesn't have the guts to stand up to this weird ex. And even worse, Nel's thinks John's cheating on his daughter. So in the aftermath of Cherie's murder, when Detective Mayer interviews Knowles and his wife, Loretta Nelson's first question is, have you looked into John's ex-girlfriend, the lady cop?

And Detective Meyer immediately dismisses the idea, telling Nel's he watches too many detective shows.

Oh, my. To a newly grieving father of one.

Also, just as as an investigator, why wouldn't you keep everything open? You're trying to solve a murder case.

So anyway, John Brunton meets Stephanie. So this is this is a little history between the two, John and Stephanie Lazarus. So they met sometime around nineteen seventy eight. Seventy nine. They're both undergrads at UCLA and they're both in the same dorm. Stephanie is originally from Simi Valley, so she's a local she was there studying political science. She also played on UCLA's JV women's basketball team. And then after she graduates, she applies to the L.A. Police Academy.

And by nineteen eighty three, she'd become an LAPD officer. According to John, he and Stephanie were just basically just friends. They had like the same big friend group, although he admits that she did do things like steal John's clothes while he was in the shower and she would take pictures of him in his underwear while he slept.

That was when that was when they were friends. And then after a few years, sometime around nineteen eighty one, they start sleeping together. So they just kind of are hooking up, off and on for the next three years. During which time John estimates they'd had sex somewhere between 20 or 30 times and he maintains that they were never dating.

I'm sure she was fine with that. Well yeah, she just she didn't see it that way. She actually believed that they were in a relationship. So then when she finds out that John is seriously dating Sherri Rasmussen and I think she basically found out that they had gotten engaged, it's a total shock to her. So she falls into a deep depression. She's really broken hearted over this this piece of news that John's gotten engaged. She even writes a letter to John's mother in August of nineteen eighty five saying, quote, I'm truly in love with John in the past year has torn me up.

I wish it didn't end the way it did, and I don't think I'll ever understand his decision. Here's what I have to say about this, because I've actually heard of people doing this, reaching out to people's family members, especially their mothers. When someone breaks up with them, if someone breaks up with you that don't go on a letter writing campaign to their mother or any family member.

Yeah, you just accept it. Even if you don't like it for your future self, don't go begging. Like, what's the end game there? He's going to show back up at your door going, hey, I don't want to be with you, but my mom wants me to.

My mom talked me into it. It's just that grieving when you get broken up with, it's hard to handle rejection.

No one no one likes rejection. But what you're basically doing is going, I don't accept your feelings and your feelings about me either. Never were there in the first place. And you're letting me know the more they've changed and you're letting me know either way, the person. Saying no thanks, there's no other answer to that, yeah, there just isn't even no matter what your feelings are, you just got to like it. You just got to you got to play the dignity card.

And just like, you know, here's a thing.

There's seven point eight billion people in the world. So you're going to find somebody else that smells really good and likes the same Netflix shows as you like. You're going to be OK eventually. Yeah, you are block off six months to be insane.

But don't be insane with his mother. Yeah. They don't need to know about then the insanity and they won't. I know so many people who do that thing where, like, I was really close with his mom, so we've been talking and it's like it's not going to work that's making you look crazier, like it's that that plan doesn't ever work.

So anyway, sorry to tell you about your breakup. OK, so shortly after this and only weeks before John and Sherry's wedding, Stephanie begs John to come to her condo in Woodland Hills to talk. And he does. And the two of them end up now having sex. Yeah. And John later says he did it to give Stephanie a sense of closure. That doesn't that's not how that's bullshit, buddy. Yeah. So he said sacrifice for him, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So if you're breaking up with the girl and then you think, oh, this is going to be my last great gift, like you're you're giving her here's all your sweaters back or something. If your last break is not the same, includes you having an orgasm, it's not a gift. And now it's a gift to you right. As your gift so you can give yourself elsewhere. That's right.

John actually quoted saying she was upset. I felt bad. I was a stupid and young man. But when Stephanie starts showing up at John and Sherry's condo, that's when it becomes clear to John that his sense of closure rationale was self-serving and short sighted. Yeah. So when Detective Mayer talks to John again, John tells the detective that he doesn't have any problems with his ex-girlfriends. He says there's no reason to suspect Stephanie Lazarus of being involved. John, simultaneously grieving over the loss of his wife.

He's at odds with his disapproving father in law and for good reason. John waited a day to tell the parents, Sherry's parents, that she had been murdered. Why? So they're livid. I mean, they're already livid and, of course, grieving themselves, nor what the thought process was behind that.

Yeah. Did it just like he wasn't thinking straight or what? That's awful. Yeah, I don't know. But they're they're furious.

Of course, all of this makes Detective Mayer sympathetic towards John, so he takes his word for it about Stephanie, quote unquote.

Cool. Another officer points to the bite mark that's found on Jerry's arm as a sign that a woman may have been involved in her murder since that's an injury that's typically inflicted by women. Mayer notes it's not entirely unheard of for a man to bite during an attack and ultimately he sticks to his burglary theory. So this is one of those things, too, where he was like, it's either the husband or it's a it's a burglary gone wrong. And since it's not the husband now, this is what it is.

And I'm not looking anywhere else.

And I'm certainly not looking at a fellow police officer, of course. So Detective Mayer, he shows Sherry's parents the Rassmussen sketches of what he calls two possible Latin male suspects. Nel's pushes back on the theory of the burglary gone gone wrong. He says that he tells Detective Meyer that he himself had said that the destruction in the condo indicates the struggle may have lasted as long as an hour and a half because there's so much damage to the condo. And he says Sherry was fit, but she wasn't strong enough to fight off two grown men for upwards of an hour.

Yeah, plus, the shot to the chest through a makeshift silencer seem more like a calculated assassination, like someone was planning to kill rather than a burglary gone wrong, because that would just be like, oh, someone surprised them and shot them. You wouldn't take the time to silence the gun. Totally. So this supposed Latin male suspects are never found. And soon the LAPD turns their focus to the ongoing crack epidemic of the 80s. So because that overshadowed everything, cases like Sherri Rasmussen's murder are neglected.

Nel's and Loretta Rassmussen repeatedly try to follow up with the police over the next two years, pushing them to follow this Stephanie Lazarus lead. So eventually, on November 19th, 1987, which is a year and a half after the murder, one of the investigators finally calls Stephanie Lazarus on the phone. They quickly rule her out from that conversation. And those details from the conversation are never shared. They're never written up until a report.

The only part of the case is official report that mentions Stephanie Lazarus is a line that reads, quote, John wrote and called Verified. Stephanie Lazarus, P.O., which means police officer was former girlfriend.

So Knowles and Loretta keep pushing for justice. They post a ten thousand dollar reward for information on sherries murder and they participate in a segment on. A show that was called Murder One that features sherries unsolved case in 1993 after being told the police department does not have enough money in the budget to test the blood and hair samples because, of course, DNA testing had begun in the early 90s. Nel's offers to pay for the DNA testing himself. But before he gets a chance to a detective named Phil Maarit signs out all the forensic samples at the L.A. County coroner's office that may have been useful to the case.

It is possible, Mort, find out the samples from several cases to take to the lab for testing, which would have been standard procedure. But he himself, one later asked, doesn't remember signing out the samples and now those samples are nowhere to be found.

OK, and this is the point where it's like you're protecting a police officer, that when someone's ready to finally do it and you give them this blasé excuse about it not having enough money and the person's like, well, I'll fucking pay for it and then they disappear.

But yeah, it's always bad when when material evidence disappears. That's because it's in custody. It's in his hands. So how else would that happen? Right. I mean, sometimes it's like, oh, they clean something out or there's a fire, there's water damage, there's some excuse. But nobody was making any excuses. It was just kind of like it's gone. Right. So in the years following Sherri's murder, Stephanie Lazarus continues working for the LAPD.

She's promoted up from patrol. Now she's working in the DARE program. She is promoted from there to the homicide unit from there to Internal Affairs. And eventually she's she starts working for the art theft division. She is considered a tough and tenacious detective, yet friendly, and she's well liked. And so basically, everybody that works with her, you know, she's she gets along well with her, with her coworkers. So this is this here's a weird kind of strange twist.

In 1989, Stephanie and John reconnect. Stephanie invites John on a scuba trip to Hawaii. Before leaving for that trip, John calls Detective Meyer and he asks him if he's absolutely sure there's no evidence linking Stephany to Sherry's murder.

He is. He just wants to make sure Somaya assures him there isn't and John goes to Hawaii with Stephanie. Oh my God. So a few years later, John remarries and he starts a family. Stephanie also gets married. And it's she marries a fellow police officer and they start a family. She continues to succeed in her career. She's it's noted that she's never received a citizen complaint or disciplinary hearing. And she's starting to she really making a name for herself in the LAPD?

Mm hmm. So then in 2001, now that, like the crack epidemic has subsided, kind of everything else is calming down. The LAPD creates their cold case homicide unit. So in 2004, a cold case criminalist named Jennifer Francis picks up Sherry's case and she discovers something very troubling. The saliva swab that was taken from Sherry's arm and marked down in the report isn't available in the evidence archive and it isn't in the list of samples that Mort signed out back in nineteen ninety three.

It's gone. So she calls up the coroner's office that Jennifer Francis, the criminologist, she calls up the coroner's office and they say they don't have a sample on file either, but they agree to search their freezers just in case it's fallen through the cracks. And lo and behold, they're in the back of one of the freezers at the coroner's office in a manila envelope, which is not properly labeled. There's no case number on it, but it does have the name Rasmusson written on it in eighteen year old ink.

Inside, there are two sealed saliva swabs. Holy shit. So this kind of like lost evidence actually gets found, which is a miracle. So Francis has these swabs tested and she gets the results back in January of 2005. There are no hits in the system for this DNA, but she does learn that the saliva belonged to a woman.

Mm hmm. So she's unaware of the rasmusson suspicions about Stephanie Lazarus. There's nothing on any report that mentions her. And she she does know that the now retired detective mayor suspected to, quote, unquote, Latin men. That's the phrase he used with Latin men. So she asked her colleagues if this discovered this new information, upends that initial burglary theory. But these colleagues quickly point out that one of the burglars could have been a woman. So it's fine.

Don't worry about it. I they boxed the case back up and it remains unsolved for another four years. So they were so close. It goes right back in.

And and apparently it's a whole separate story and it's all it's all about this kind of serious internal corruption in the LAPD. But but Jennifer Francis, she had a lot of disciplinary and she had a really hard time after that because she kept trying to track down and wanting to investigate this case and find out what like what all of this meant. But there were roadblocks. And because of a lot lots of roadblocks, lots of lots of issues with within the department.

So now we go to February of 2009, so with a dramatic decline in the L.A. homicide rates, two more detectives named Jim Nuttal and Pete Barba, they dive back into Sheriff Rasmussen's cold case and they noticed that the saliva sample being from a woman is inconsistent with that original burglary theory. But this time they officially reopen the case. So they treat it as a murder staged to look like a burglary because the evidence that they have fits that theory because they were saying, you know, as they look at everything, they think if someone was trying just trying to rob John and Sherry, they easily could have taken Sherry's jewelry box, which is out in plain sight.

Plus, the condo was a gated complex, so it would have been easy for the neighbors to spot two burglars walking around at 10:00 a.m., but no one saw anyone. And as Detective Meyer noted, there were no signs of forced entry, which indicates that whoever came into the condo just walked right in. But now these new cold case detectives discover something even more telling that if the fight between Sherry and the intruder did actually start upstairs and work its way downstairs, as mayor originally thought, it's likely that that VCR and CD player that were stacked up there at the bottom of the stairs would have been knocked down in the process rights, plus the blood smear found on top of the CD player was parentless.

It was a thumb mark, but it was parentless, which means that somebody was wearing the blood belong to Sherry. But clearly somebody was wearing gloves when they when they put that there. And that means that that those things were stacked after Sherry was killed. Right. To make it look like someone was trying to rob the place.

So with all this in mind, all and Bahbah devise a new theory that Sherry was upstairs at home when an intruder walked in through the unlocked front entrance and surprised Sherry upstairs. So the intruder fired two shots at Sherry Mrs.. And instead shoots out the sliding glass door, which would then explain the glass that's down in the driveway. Yeah, John saw when he first pulled up and thought somehow was connected to the car. Sherry makes a run for it downstairs.

She tries to hit the home alarm systems panic button, but the intruder grabs her and they struggle. Sherry manages to get the intruder in a headlock. The intruder bites her arm and then with the other hand, grabs a vaisse and smashes it over Sherry's head, stunning her. And then now free. The intruder takes the gun and fires it at close range into Sherry's chest. But that's not enough. She grabs the quilt, holds it to his chest and fires two more shots than before leaving.

The intruder stacks up the VCR and CD players to make it look like a botched robbery, steals Sherry's BMW and then later abandons it. So armed with this new theory, the investigators comb through the case files again to try to find female suspects they pin down for other potential suspects when they come across the line from Detective Meyer's report from November 19th. Nineteen eighty seven that says John Rootin called verified Stephanie Lazarus. P0 was former girlfriend. They searched the LAPD department directory.

They find Stephanie Lazarus was and still is an LAPD officer and that she's currently working in the art theft division. So not all Amber Barba eventually rule out the for the the other suspects, including a coworker who Sherry had had arguments with in the past. And because their remaining suspect is a police officer, they have to operate very carefully and very discreetly. So they mark the case classified and the only refer to Stephanie Lazarus as number five. So upon further investigation, the evidence begins to add up again.

Stephanie Lazarus, she was off duty on the day of the murder and the murder weapon matched her personal weapon, which was a 38 caliber Smith and Wesson Fach. Then they find out in March of nineteen eighty six, a few weeks after the murder, Stephanie Lazarus reported that her personal thirty eight caliber Smith and Wesson had been stolen.

So now now the officers are convinced there's a good chance that they may have their killer here. So they go on, they go to their commanding officers in May of that year and they basically get their their bosses to authorize a special ops team to tail Stephanie Lazarus. So they follow her to cost. One day and she eats there, so after she leaves, the officers retrieve a cup and a straw that she used from the trash, they take it back to the lab and they test it.

And two days later, the results come back. Stephanie Lazarus's DNA as a confirmed match with the saliva sample taken from Sherry Rasmussen's arm.

Amazing. OK, so now they have to devise a plan to question a fellow police officer without raising her suspicions. So basically what they do is they get there, they get like the top boss or whatever the police chief to get in on this.

And they order her down to the lockup, which is in the basement of department headquarters, telling her that they need her there to question a suspect about an art theft. So she thinks she's going down to join like an interrogation already in. You know, that's already happening.

And this is so that so that other to, like, maintain the her privacy.

It kind of this, you know, and this is so that they don't hyp her to the fact that she's the suspect because in lockup, all police have to check their guns. No one can bring their guns into lockup. So she couldn't bring her weapon in, which is what they needed. They needed to get that weapon off of her in case when she when she realized she was being questioned for this cold case, she didn't pull her gun on on the officers.

Wow. Yeah. So on the morning of June 5th, 2009, detectives Dan Jaramillo and Greg Stearnes asked Stephanie to join them in the lockup. She is excited by the prospect of questioning a potential art thief. She follows them downstairs. She hands over her weapon per procedure. They all have a friendly chat. And Stephanie's only slightly confused when they ask her to take the seat. That would normally be the suspect's chair.

So they talk casually for like an hour until they finally land on the subject of John Rotton. So. So Stephanie is trying to be helpful at first. She tells the detectives, yes, she did know him. They were friends in college that they dated, but they talk about it so much she starts getting suspicious and she finally says, what's this all about? They tell her it's about his wife and they ask Stephanie if she knew her. And she's like she says, quote, Not really.

I mean, I knew that he got married years ago. God, I mean, it's been a long time. I may have met her. Jeez. And then she's, like, shrugging, you know, she's clearly annoyed, but she continues the conversation. She says, I wouldn't I couldn't even tell you the last time I talked to him. It was kind of a weird relationship we dated. I can't say he was my boyfriend. I don't know if you would have considered me a girlfriend.

We just dated. So Jaramillo and Stearn's continue pressing her about any sort of like heated exchanges that they may have had any fights. Stephanie tells them she doesn't remember any, but soon her tone changes from friendly to sharp, and she outright calls them out on suspecting her of Sherry's murder. And she says, quote, If you guys are claiming that I'm a suspect, then I've got a problem with that. OK, so if you're doing this as an interrogation, you're saying, hey, I'm a suspect now I've got a problem.

You know, now you're accusing me of this. Is that what you're saying? So the detectives tell her that she's not under arrest, that she can walk out any time she wants, and then they ask her if she'd be up for a DNA test. She says maybe and then says she has to speak to a lawyer first. So soon after that, she stands up abruptly. She looks super pissed. She's offended that she's been targeted and she walks out.

But the second she gets out into the hallway, she's handcuffed. And Detective Jaramillo read her her rights. And twenty three years after Sherri Rasmussen was violently murdered in her home, Stephanie Lazarus is arrested. So when she's in custody, Lazarus is allowed to, quote, retire early from the LAPD.

And then she's held for six months before her bail is set at a whopping ten million dollars. Wow. OK, so Stephanie's defense lawyer, he tries to have the entire case dismissed, saying that because police failed to identify Stephany as a suspect in the initial investigation that the whole thing should be thrown out.

That's not how things work because they didn't think it was you, then you don't have to ever. Yeah, the court doesn't count parts of the original case file or missing, as we know, like interview recordings, Sherri's blood toxicology report, a polygraph test that John rootin had failed. And because twenty three years have passed, the defense argues that the remaining evidence has degraded and that thus denying Lazarus of her due process. The judge denies that motion. The trial starts in early 2012.

So the prosecution builds this argument around the love triangle. John admits to having sex with Stephany while he was engaged to Sherry. But the defense argues that Stephany had actually been dating several other men during the time as well. And those men she did mention in her private journals and that the defense said they that Stephany was not as distraught over John as the prosecution is making it seem.

But. And then they pull out those letters to his mom. Oh, no, no, no, no, sorry. I mean, I'm sure they did at some point because it's just like, are you kidding me? Right. Anyway, the story that the defense team craves is no match for the DNA evidence in the prosecution's hands. And after a few days of deliberation, the jury finds 52 year old Stephanie Lazarus guilty of murder in the first degree on March 8th, 2012.

Stephanie Lazarus is convicted of first degree murder of Sherri Rasmussen. And on May 11th, she's sentenced to twenty seven years to life.

Wow.

So, Nelson, Loretta Rassmussen file a lawsuit against the LAPD alleging a cover up benefiting Stephanie Lazarus, unfortunately, is thrown out because of the statute of limitations.

So because no one investigates this murder in any meaningful way, right then later on, they can't get in trouble for not having investigated the murder, which doesn't make a ton of sense because the timer, the timer went off on how long you had to fucking solve it.

Right.

Also, criminalist Jennifer Francis files a lawsuit against the LAPD alleging that the detective that was supervising her purposefully steered her away from Stephanie Lazarus as a suspect. In the years following her discovery, Frances claims to have encountered punishment and retaliation for pursuing that lead. Ultimately, though, that in that case, the jury sides with the city of Los Angeles and she does not win that case. Wow. So Stephanie Lazarus remains in prison at the California Institution for Women in Corona, California.

She'll be eligible for parole in 20 30 for Nelson Loretta Rasmusen. We're relieved to see their suspicions were correct and that their daughter's killer was convicted. On April 20th, 20 19, a writer named Matthew McGoff released a nearly 600 page book detailing the case of Sherry Rasmussen's murder, entitled The Lazarus Files A Cold Case Investigation. And when asked in an interview with the L.A. Times if he believes that Stephanie Lazarus actively destroyed the evidence against her or if she had help from other police inside the department, McGuff says that he believes it's, quote, an open question.

And he states, quote, When Stephanie was arrested, the LAPD promised it would do an investigation into what went wrong. That never happened. Is that an oversight or is that something else more intentional? It's certainly evocative of what happened in nineteen eighty six. A couple of years later, they stated their reinvestigation, found no evidence of any intentional cover up, but no one I spoke with had been contacted by the LAPD and that is troubling to me. Nils Rasmussen passed away on June 20th of this year.

He's remembered as a loving father who relentlessly pursued justice for his daughter, Sherry.

And so I was trying to look up a quote to talk about police corruption. And obviously, if we're going to talk about police corruption, we're going to talk about things like this. It all leads back to, you know, the police brutality and the kind of cases and the kind of stuff that we've been seeing lately and seeing for a long time, systemic racism inside the the culture, the culture inside the police force.

And I found this pretty amazing quote. A writer named Mikki Kendall wrote this article in 2015 for The Washington Post after Walter Scott was shot in the back in North Charleston, South Carolina. And the person who recorded that murder was too afraid to give that recording to the police because he was afraid then he would be killed to Syria.

And this article is really, really, really well written. It's about police murder, the police murder of black people and the cover ups within it and the way this system is breaking down. But it is relevant to all of it. And this basically the name of the article is the police can't police themselves. And usually The Washington Post is behind a paywall and this article is not behind a paywall. So you can read it and it's the fact that it's in twenty fifteen and the amount of police murders of black civilians, the amount that she is listing and the different details and how nothing is done and or that they got covered up, it's it's unbelievable.

And it's very prescient to like what we're all now really looking at and really trying to be do something about these issues. And so here's this quote from this article that is it's about Walter Scott, but it kind of is about all of this in general when the. System is the problem, individuals cannot be expected to counteract the problem alone, much less except that the only countermeasures available are in the hands of those with a stake in maintaining the status quo.

If you can't trust the police to serve and protect, how can you trust them to maintain order within their own ranks? The argument that, quote, not all cops are bad only works if there's a way to be certain the bad cops are being removed from service as soon as they're discovered and that those who report their misbehavior have an assurance of safety.

Hmm.

And that is the story of the murder of Sherri Rasmussen.

Wow. Wow. Well, that was heavy. You did a great job. Tough. It's a tough topic. Thank you.

I appreciate it. Should we do something to raise a little bit? Yeah. OK, here's my first checking her. This is from Meg Underscore the random horse on Instagram. It says fucking her in preparation for a second lockdown in Toronto as a half birthday gift for myself. My partner and I adopted a gorgeous gray blue kitten who we named Milhouse and finally a cat mom and now have a legitimate reason to own so much cat paraphernalia. He's the most playful and cuddly boy, and I'm so in love.

Yay, everyone get a kitten. Hooray! Congratulations, Cat. Mom, let us know how the litter box goes.

All right, here's mine starts. Heads up. My punctuation sucks, as does my spelling. Please don't make fun because I fucking don't care.

Yeah. And then why did you bring it up? This is anyway long time listener. First time writing. I'm a 60 plus years old timer recovering with a few more years of recovery on me. And I also have chronic PTSD with years of counseling under my belt. So here goes. Yesterday after my doctor's appointment, I went to the food co-op and noticed an art store across the street. So I went in. I was looking at their art books.

I must have spent ten or so minutes with this one book. I decided I'd already spent too much money and the book was a bit pricey. So I put it down and continued looking around the store on my way out. All of a sudden, this 20 something young lady came over and gave me the book. I had no idea what was going on. She looked at me and said she saw me looking at the book and it looked like I really wanted it.

So she bought it for me fucking her day. I was about to argue with her, but then I remembered my counseling and my sponsor saying, just accept the compliment. So I looked her in the eyes and said, Thank you so much. That is so nice. And then she just disappeared. She even left me the receipt. So needless to say, I hope she is one of us. And here's this piece. Yes, I am now looking to pay it forward.

Thanks for being here. A year ago, I was in a deep depression and was slightly suicidal. I turned you on and I don't remember what you two are talking about. Something mental health issue, I assume. But when it was over, the ideation had lifted and I have been better since. Thank you again, Chris.

Oh my God, that's beautiful on so many levels.

I know it's really vulnerable. It's really fucking honest. It's all out there. And then this and then just to basically say this beautiful thing, how to me. And it's so hard to accept beautiful things sometimes.

And I did a great job. Christobel, thank thanks for staying with us. Yeah, awesome. Let's end on that. I love that. OK, good.

Yeah me too. Great. Really good.

Yeah. Send us your fucking ideas. You can just comment on Instagram or Twitter or in the fan called to tell us your fucking raise. And thanks for listening guys.

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving where you were, whether it was all by yourself or if you have somebody with you or a couple people, it's, you know, help you get through it and have some nice some nice food and some good times.

Yeah. And hopefully next year will be a huge celebration of how about Thanksgiving in Vegas, guys? Yeah, that's what I can do it.

Let's fight in the street in Vegas next year.

That's right. Stay strong.

Everybody wear a mask and stay sexy and don't get murdered by Elvis.

Do you want a cookie? I.