Plans to release former LAPD Detective Stephanie Lazarus from prison were denied by the California Board of Parole Hearings following dramatic testimony from friends and family of the woman she murdered in 1986.
Tuesday’s decision overturned a November recommendation by a parole panel 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 his ex’s new wife.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office asked the parole board to review the plan to release Lazarus in April.
According to the Los Angeles TimesTears flowed as John Ruetten spoke of the brutality used to murder his wife, 29-year-old Sherri Rasmussen.
Stephanie Lazarus, now 64, was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of murdering her ex-love’s new wife in 1986 and subsequently covering it up for decades.
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 girlfriend, a crime she finally confessed to committing before a parole panel last year.
Lazarus had been a Los Angeles police detective for 25 years when homicide investigators reopened the cold case of Rasmussen’s murder and analyzed DNA from a bite mark on the victim.
The reopened investigation led to the 2009 arrest of Lazarus, who had skillfully covered up his actions all those years ago and then lied for decades to friends and family.
Lazarus met Ruetten when they were both students at UCLA in the late ’70s.
The couple dated casually for several years after graduating, but Ruetten testified at the murder trial that he would not have used the word girlfriend to describe Lazaro.
Shortly after Ruetten proposed to Rasmussen, Lazarus confronted him and begged him to break up.
But Ruetten and Rasmussen married in 1985, just a year before Ruetten returned home from work one day to find his wife dead after being brutally beaten and shot in the chest several times.
The first investigation determined that Rasmussen had been the victim of a robbery by two men in the home she shared with her husband. No arrests were ever made of any suspected killer.
On Monday, some of Rasmussen’s friends and family, including his two sisters, asked the parole board to keep the killer behind bars.
Lazarus, they said, was anything but a “juvenile delinquent” at the time (she was 25 at the time of the murder) and according to her detractors was a highly qualified member of the police force who used her knowledge to plan and execute the murder.
John Ruetten, photographed at Lazarus’ sentencing hearing in the mid-2000s, delivering 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 condominium.
The parents of shooting victim Sherri Rasmussen, Neil Rasmussen and his wife Loretta appear at a news conference after a court hearing for Los Angeles Police Detective Stephanie Lazarus, Tuesday, June 9, 2009 in Los Angeles. .
Although criminal justice reform groups have advocated for Lazarus’ release, a parole board decided against it Tuesday.
Criminal justice reform groups have long focused on Lazarus’ case and argued for his freedom due in part to the leadership he has shown during his time in prison.
Jane Dorotik of the Innocence Project in Los Angeles called Lazarus “a kind, compassionate and dedicated individual.” ‘She has taken full responsibility for her actions.’
Dorotik served a twelve-year sentence before his conviction was overturned.
Others told the board they believe Lazarus is a “transformed person.”
Lazarus herself did not appear before the board on Monday, but spoke before the panel in November about the murder:
“It sickens me to this day that I took an oath to protect and serve the people, and that I took the life of Sherri Rasmussen, a nurse. The only thing she could think about was getting out of there before the police showed up.
The LAPD detective who arrested Lazarus a decade and a half ago, Gregg Stearns, spoke out against his release.
‘Stephanie Lazarus stalked her victim, choosing a time and place where she knew she would have her alone. “He brought ropes to tie her up, used a makeshift silencer to execute her, staged a robbery and then disposed of the murder weapon and filed a false police report with an outside agency to explain the absence of that weapon,” the veteran Robbery-Homicide Division said. official.
“Those are not the characteristics of the youth offense. “They are the hallmarks of criminal sophistication and maturity,” she added, noting that he believes Lazarus is certainly capable of committing the same type of crime again.
