Eventually, about five years after the killing, they gave up and stopped calling.ĭetectives knew that Lazarus was the ex-girlfriend Rasmussen had spoken of. Often the parents were put on hold for up to 20 minutes or were hung up on, and at one point were told by a detective, “you should do yourselves a favor and move on with your lives,” Taylor said. When the plea to Gates went nowhere, Rasmussen and his wife kept trying, making calls to the Van Nuys police station, their attorneys said. Police familiar with the case have acknowledged the existence of the letter. Rasmussen grew so frustrated that about two years after the killing, he wrote a letter to then-Chief Daryl F. But they rebuffed the father’s claims, once telling him, “You’ve been watching too much TV,” Taylor said.
Rasmussen had further conversations with the detectives over the next several months. He asked if they had identified her and examined her for scratches or other signs of the vicious struggle that police say preceded the murder, according to Taylor. Police say Lazarus, who had dated Ruetten, killed Sherri Rasmussen in a crime of passion. Stephanie Lazarus was arrested and charged with capital murder. Last week his suspicions were validated when Det. His information was ignored by police until this year when cold-case detectives reopened the homicide investigation. Then there was the call, days before she was beaten and shot to death in 1986, when Sherri Rasmussen said she believed the officer had been following her on city streets.Īll of this, Nels Rasmussen says, he told Los Angeles Police Department detectives in the days, months and years after his daughter’s slaying. He remembers the call when his daughter told him that she had found the officer, again in uniform, standing in the Van Nuys condo she shared with her new husband, John Ruetten. She told him the young female officer had shown up in uniform at the hospital where she worked and issued a chilling warning about her husband, “If I can’t have John, nobody can.” Nels Rasmussen says he vividly remembers the calls from his daughter 23 years ago when she confided her fears that a jealous LAPD officer was out to harm her.
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