“I am also sorry it took us so long to solve this case and bring a measure of justice to this tragedy,” he said. “Not only did the family of Sherri Rasmussen lose a wife and a daughter, a life that can never be returned, but also the LAPD family felt a sense of betrayal to have an officer commit such a terrible crime,” Beck said in a written statement. “I just can’t bear thinking about these moments,” Ruetten told the court.Īfter the sentencing, Lazarus, manacled and dressed in a jail jumpsuit, waved and smiled to an apparent loved one in the courtroom gallery as she was escorted back to jail, carrying a folder.įollowing Lazarus’ conviction in March, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said the case was “a tragedy on every level.” In his remarks to the judge, a tearful Ruetten said Rasmussen was “just trying to save her own life” on the day of her murder. “Every day we miss her laughter and her love,” the mother told the judge. This unrepentant selfishness poses a real and significant danger to any person whose interests conflict with Lazarus’ egotistic desires.”īefore the sentencing Friday, Rasmussen’ mother, Loretta, told the court that her family has endured “extreme pain” over her daughter’s murder. Lazarus’ profound narcissism led her to kill and continues to motivate her denial of responsibility. “Lazarus has never expressed any regret or remorse for her actions. “Lazarus has never taken responsibility for her acts,” the prosecutors wrote. Los Angeles County deputy prosecutors Shannon Presby and Paul Nunez submitted a written statement to the court prior to the sentencing, according to the prosecutor’s office. Rasmussen was brutally beaten and shot three times in the chest, authorities said. Married for just three months, Ruetten found his wife’s body when he returned home from work. Rasmussen, a hospital nursing supervisor, was the new bride of John Ruetten, who had been Lazarus’ college sweetheart. When Lazarus became a suspect, homicide detectives faced “special challenges as Lazarus’ office was located next door to the detectives who were now investigating her,” police said in a statement in March. Then it was reopened in 2004 and again in 2009, when DNA from a bite mark on the victim’s arm came back as a match to the detective. Lazarus was charged with staging the crime scene to look like a burglary gone bad, and police long believed that Rasmussen was the victim of two male burglars. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Perry gave Lazarus credit for time served in jail since her arrest at LAPD headquarters in June 2009.Ī jury convicted her in March of first-degree murder.įriday’s sentence was the maximum under state law, prosecutors said. Lazarus, who rose through ranks of the Los Angeles Police Department and became a veteran art theft detective, could be eligible for parole in 22 years. Stephanie Ilene Lazarus, 52, was convicted of biting and shooting Sherri Rasmussen, 29, in her townhouse in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1986. A California judge sentenced a retired Los Angeles Police detective Friday to 27 years to life in prison for murdering her ex-boyfriend’s wife in a jealous rage more than two decades ago.
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